box of surprises
I'm sitting at my work desk as I write this, and Shanti is laying in my lap, purring. On the one hand, I truly love it, because I love my cats and I love when they are affectionate. On the other hand, it does make typing a lot more awkward, and it certainly applies to when I am doing actual work for my job as well.
And then there's Guru, who is sometimes in the same position Shanti is in right now, but as I write this, is yowling incessantly about something neither Shobhit (who is not working today) nor I can decipher, and it's annoying as fuck.
I really would rather be back at the office. I just still don't know when that will be. My position right now is that, even though I actually have the option of coming back to the office to work now—I'd just have to wear a mask all day—I won't do so until a majority of the office staff are also returning. And there just isn't any definitive sense yet of when that might be. Sometime mid- to late-summer at the soonest, I would imagine. It probably also depends on what kind of modeling forecasting is being done at the time; I read recently that currently there is an expectation of a dramatic drop in COVID infections this summer, but then a spike again in the fall. So, who the fuck knows?
Remember when we thought this would all be over in just a matter of weeks or months last year? Hahahaha! We were all seriously deluded. That said, it's entirely possible epidemiologists, other scientists and health care workers weren't deluded at all, but smartly deluded the rest of us just so we wouldn't panic. I feel like that is seriously within the realm of possibility. We're nearly a year and a half into this pandemic now, and no sign if it being truly gone any time soon; we've just got positive expectations of mitigation strategies now. I think people a year ago had this idea that we'd get past this a lot more quickly than we did the Spanish Flu a century ago, precisely because it was a century ago . . . but: not so much. What we are doing, rather, is getting through this with a far lower body count. That's not nothing.
It did occur to me to wonder yesterday: how long did people continue wearing masks, even after the Spanish Flu pandemic was clearly over? It's probably not a fair comparison anyway; my understanding is that masks were far more effective at curbing COVID-19 infections than they were against Spanish Flu, which was far more contagious and far more deadly.
Tracy did tell me something during our day trip to the Green River Gorge that I had not considered, though: that our current, annual seasonal flu shots are for seasonal flu that has only really been around since the Spanish Flu. Is that true? Apparently, it is. This also brings up the question as to whether that is the fate that basically awaits COVID-19, where some form of it just persists in annual fluctuations, and becomes part of the annual flu shots. Will they be combined? Or will we now need two separate flu shots every fall? I suppose only time will tell.
As for any updates, I rode my bike to the office after work yesterday, and discovered a delightful surprise on my desk: a large box that basically amounts to a "Root Beer Float kit," using the new, fantastic "Creamy Root Beer" flavor they have. The concept kind of cracks me up, because it touts the sugarless-ness of the soda, but: do they really think I would use sugarless ice cream for this? And since I wouldn't, what's the point? I guess the point would be that at least it's a lot fewer calories with zero-calorie soda.
Also: we've needed a decent new ice cream scoop for a while. Now we've got one! I don't even care that it's branded with Zevia.
I had already been given another one of those beer mugs another time, so now we have two. Shobhit has seemed to like using it for whenever he brought beer home.
Anyway, I clearly could not ride that home on my bike. Shobhit had a Braeburn Condos board meeting, during which I watched this week's episode of Mare of Easttown on HBO Max, and after which he wanted to go to Costco just before they closed, to pick up just a few things and also get some gas. Since we'd be going out anyway, I suggested going back to the office. There was also a bunch of frozen vegetable bag samples free for the taking in the Merchandising freezer, so we needed to do a sort of "shop stop" at the office anyway.
It was nearly 9:00 at this point and no one else was there, so, for the first time in at least a year and a half, I had Shobhit come up to the office with me. We still both wore our face masks. He helped me decide which of those bagged vegetables to take—I took four, about half of them. He used one to make a paneer dish for dinner today, which was done this morning. Anyway, I signed in and signed out as always on the log at the front desk; I told Shobhit he could make his own choice about that, and he did not sign in. We were both masked and vaccinated and no one else was there anyway, so it hardly matters.
I pulled the Zevia box apart, thinking all that was in it was the sodas, mug and ice cream scoop. This was when I discovered there was actually a second layer of goodies beneath all that, including a folded blanket tote, a Jenga game, and a tote bag. All three of them are also branded with Zevia of course, but I don't care. They are all still perfectly functional and I think it's fun that we have a Jenga game now.
[posted 12:31 pm]