day/break
Well! In a certain sense, my Birth Week has already begun: I picked up my rental car this morning already. And this kind of cracks me up: it has Tennessee plates. People are literally going to think that's where I'm from. I wonder how this happens? Do car rental places let customers return cars in other states, maybe?
Anyway, I had to be away from my desk for about an hour this morning to do this, first taking the bus downtown to the Hertz location at the Convention Center—which was also how I learned their location is actually on the sixth floor of the parking garage. It felt like it took forever just winding around down to the bottom to get out of there. And then, to kill two birds with one stone, after I had already gone to the office to swap out paperwork after work yesterday, I did the back door receiving paperwork before leaving this morning so I could just drive the rental to the office this morning and return that stack. This way I am officially caught up on that paperwork as of today; I won't have that stack to add to my backlog of receiving to do the week I return; and the backlog thereafter will also be shortened by at least that much. I'm so smart!
I also watched and reviewed my last movie of April—thus totaling 13 reviews this month, not bad at all considering I won't have time for any movies the last entire week of this month—last night, that being The Mole Agent, some of which I really enjoyed, and some of which really could have been better. In any case, I am now all set for the Academy Awards on Sunday evening.
And then? Sometime during the week after my Birth Week ends, I think I will finally venture out and see a movie in the theater—fully vaccinated, wearing a mask, probably still annoyed by anyone else in there stuffing refreshments into their faces without masks on. We'll see how my comfort level plays out there; in a way it will be a bit of an experiment. Capacity remains limited, and they may still not be even meeting that, I don't know. So, it won't be crowded, at least, but I am really ready to see a movie in a theater again.
That said, a fourth wave of infections in this state is now official, and by that very week, we might well be looking at increased restrictions yet again. Holy shit, do I hope transmission rates start going down again once we finally reach a point where a large majority of people have been vaccinated. At this point, it's the people resistant to the vaccines who are the biggest problem. Just last week Angel shared an idiotic meme on Facebook that said, Stop saying you did your research before you got the injection / You are the research. Which, of course, shows zero understanding of what research actually is, or the months and months of clinical trials that already happened before the general public even started getting the shots. It's this shit that is literally prolonging the pandemic and costing health and lives. It makes me what to bash my head against the wall.
Anyway! I'm posting a bit later than usual today because I had virtual lunch with Karen, rescheduled from yesterday, and then shifted from noon to 12:30 due to a newly scheduled call with a client. I'll be seeing her an extra time on Saturday next weekend, when we will have a Birth Week meeting (which I do with her kind of sporadically, not strictly every year) at Saint Edward State Park in Kenmore. That one will be the closest park to home that I go to.
Karen did kind of a funny thing today, as she found an Oscars quiz printed in The New York Times, so she gave me the quiz. She'd have gotten virtually all of the questions wrong; I did all right. I didn't keep track but I would guess my score would have been about a B. We did this while I made chai in the kitchen, which I decided to make and put in the picnic thermos pack for my trip to Dash Point State Park in Federal Way this evening.
So! I have about two and a half hours left now. I think I'm going to make a sandwich to bring for dinner too; this way Gabriel won't have to think about catering to me in any way in terms of food, which I know he'd rather avoid when it comes to covid precautions. I should get to the bit of work I have left to do, though. Some of the mercantile new items I still have to work on, which have been on the back burner for like two months, I'm going to send over to Cathryn, who may or may not be able to work on them while I'm away. I'm not going to worry about it—I never worry about work while on vacation. I'm very good at that.
[posted 1:36 pm]