a life uncertain
I'm feeling better today than I was yesterday. I guess.
Chris J has been working more at the office lately as well. He's two desks away, in front of me. Krish, our CFO whose desk is between his and mine, is in the office occasionally. Anyway, Chris struck up a conversation with me this morning that turned fairly lengthy, as we talked about the pros and cons of working from home versus working at the office; the changing nature of mask restrictions (and how they are currently required for store staff and customers alike but not for office staff who are vaccinated); and the broader expectation of how long we'll be being affected by this fucking pandemic, possibly for several more years to come.
I even mentioned to him how depressing it's getting. But, at least for now we can still work at the office without masks. I think at the moment I am leaning toward staying at the office even if they change the mask policy here and tell us we have to be masked to work at the office. I'll just wear the disposable mask instead of the cloth mask, which is easier to breathe through. I mean, for all I know, if this Delta shit gets serious enough, I'll be required to work from home again. Any time I mention that to Shobhit he's just like, "The cats will be happy." Whatever, I'm still hoping it doesn't come to that.
I did think of this yesterday: what if all this had started with a strain as transmissible as the Delta variant, when we were still months away from any vaccines? Holy shit, would we be in a far more horrible situation right now—probably something closer to what was depicted in movies like Contagion. A lot more people would be dead. Probably both Mom and Bill would have died a lot earlier. I mean, I get that the Delta variant literally only exists because it mutated from the original virus, but we could easily have started with a virus just as bad. Delta may be making things worse at the moment, but vaccinations are combatting even that strain a huge amount, and we would be far worse off right now without them.
A friend of my cousin Jennifer posted something really stupid to Facebook this morning. It has this tone of egalitarianism, saying they respect everyone's choice, whether to get vaccinated or not. Seriously, fuck that shit. That entirely misses the point of public health and saving lives. I'm so tired of dipshits posting comments like "My body my choice"—an argument they literally stole from the pro-choice movement, a movement most of these same people actively work against. I'm so weary of the abject hypocrisy and craven attitudes of these fucking people.
There's not much to update about last night. Ivan wanted to watch another episode of The Leftovers, and so we did—the second episode of season one. Shobhit watched most of it with us. Otherwise, though, Shobhit spent a lot of the day, he told me, in the bedroom rather than watching TV in the living room, just to be quiet so as not to disturb Ivan while he was sleeping. He had his first overnight shift Tuesday night, so when I saw him last night I asked him how it went. He was surprisingly positive and upbeat about it, and seems to be feeling very good about the job so far.
He did still look at his phone a fair amount while we watched the episode, although not quite as much as during the first episode on Monday. When it ended, I asked if he was good for now or if he wanted to watch another episode. He said he was good for now, I suspect because he wanted to go take a nap for a bit before he went off for another graveyard shift. Apparently he'll be working five nights a week, but which days of the week will vary, as he'll have to work every other weekend. He seems fine with this.
I went to the bedroom for a little bit after that, but Shobhit wanted me to spend time with him in the living room, and since I really wasn't doing anything important otherwise, I came back out, and found something else to watch: I still hadn't finished season one of Schitt's Creek (recommended to be ages ago by Ivan, incidentally); Shobhit and I both really enjoyed the three episodes we watched before I went to bed. I now have only one episode of season 1 left. But, I also keep forgetting we now have season two of Never Have I Ever to watch, so we'll need to get on that.
I just got back to my desk at the end of my lunch break (I ate out on the patio alone; Tracy didn't come to the office today), and laughed because a vendor sent me an email in which he wrote, in part, "I love you, you're the best!"
After hearing me laugh, Scott quipped, "Matthew didn't I tell you you're not supposed to sound happy at work?"
I then told him about the email. Scott giggled and said, "Tell him everyone who sits next to you says they love you too."
Everyone loves me! Okay, not everyone. But most people and that's enough for me! And this little exchange sure as shit brightened my day.
[posted 12:35 pm]