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The Slow Crawl Back to Humanity

It’s been just over a month since I came down with The COVID, and it’s been difficult to motivate myself to do much of anything after being sick for so long. I lost almost 25 pounds, which I’m pretty sure was mostly muscle, so it’s been a real treat forcing myself to be vertical again.

So much has happened in that time. In the first couple days of COVID, I tried and failed to become a ramen chef. We hired a new guy that started taking care of my work orders at the high school. My family packed and delivered an entire Thanksgiving dinner feast. The school board approved a really hefty Christmas bonus for everyone, so Allen actually retired, like for real. The McRib came back. Noah finally got his driver’s license, then basically had to move in with Summer when his stepmother got COVID. The kids set up the Christmas tree and baked gingerbread to make a gingerbread house. We had our department Christmas party on karaoke night, where Ben belted out a hot take of Hit Me with Your Best Shot, and Melinda introduced Summer to her friend, Jose Cuervo. The superintendent tried to leave for Conway, but didn’t get the job. Then he caught The COVID and took a 30 day leave of absence just as I tried to return to work with half days. Neither of the assistant superintendents got to fill in for him though. That privilege was given to another random assistant principal of a school.

Of course the girls got the virus too, but luckily their symptoms weren’t nearly as bad. Summer lost taste and smell, and still hasn’t fully regained either. The kids hardly felt a thing. I never lost taste aside from one questionable bowl of macaroni and cheese. I spent my blurry two and a half weeks basically bedridden, with nightly fever spikes over 104°F, and a high score of 105.6°F. I had chills and hot flashes that I legitimately thought would end me. The triage nurse nearly sent me in for a transfusion because I was so low on blood. Worst of all, I had a complete decimation of willpower that kept me from doing anything at all for over two weeks. Then I got bilateral pneumonia that carried my fever on well past the expected 10 day COVID timeline. I would probably still be laying in the floor of the shower with cold water raining down on me if Summer hadn’t eventually brought me home and taken the best care of me.

It’s been a wild ride that I don’t at all recommend, but there is some comfort in finally having “the dadgum antibodies for that crap, man.” Looking at the recovery times for pneumonia, I’m guessing I’ll have this cough for a few more months, but it’s a good time of year at work to be able to get some rest.

I’m getting better! I don’t want to go on the cart. I feel fine!

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The Sickening… IT’S HAPPENING!

Days are running together a bit. I haven’t really done anything but lay around in bed since Tuesday night. I’ve watched some TV when I’m able to get comfortable on the couch. The Algorithm decided it’s sappy romance week.

I went to the Triage Center on Thursday to get tested. I called it right by going when I did, because there was nobody in line ahead of me. I expected a nasal swab, but they got my tonsils instead. Nobody said anything about my Wuhan Wild Wings shirt, but now that I think about it, I bet that’s why those two Indian guys that came in after me kept staring. I’m also pretty sure the girl that swabbed me was Chinese.

Afterward, I waited in Summer’s parking lot for near hours to see if I could talk to her for a moment through my sunroof. She was backed up the whole time, and stuck in the pit, so that didn’t work out great. I ended up just grabbing some contactless Zaxby’s on the way home.

I wasn’t really sleepy, but I hurt too much to do anything else, so I curled up under the blankets and put on some music. It did the trick, because I woke up hours later with the sun. I got up feeling the best I had since Tuesday, and went outside to clean up the turn signal switch on the Shadow. Then it was back inside to bed and TV.

I’ve become a true Master Chef, with creations such as Ramen à la Céleri et Cheddar Brätwurst. Summer saved my life for a late lunch/dinner with a double pretzel burger from Wendy’s, but it was sadly pretty cold.

As if this all wasn’t enough, Google has forced me to switch from Hangouts for SMS to their Messages app, and it’s just godawful. If you could believe it, it actually loads more consistently badly than Hangouts ever did. It’s been chewing through my phone battery a couple times a day, and I honestly don’t even know if it’ll ever stop.

I got a call in the evening with positive COVID-19 results, so I’m in quarantine for at least seven more days, assuming three of those are without fever. We didn’t think to have Summer and the girls tested at the same time so that we could at least quarantine together. It’ll be until at least next Tuesday evening before we’ll know if that’s possible. In the meantime, with the clinic closed, all we can really hope is that none of them have it.

NEW HIGH SCORE: 102.9

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Bieber Fever

I slept pretty well last night, but still felt pretty crummy, so I was glad I took the morning off. I started the day thinking I could go back in the afternoon, but after getting around and taking a shower, I just felt worse and took the rest of the day off as well.

I didn’t get anything accomplished at all. I remember laying on the couch and watching TV for most of the evening. I did get up and make some ramen for lunch/dinner, and cut my thumb a bit while cutting the hard green beans I harvested from the high school’s garden. The beans were good in the soup, apart from a super tough edge that ran down the sides of every one of them. Thus concluded my life’s lesson in stringing beans. Also, I’m pretty sure that lettuce I took was really mustard greens.

Why does the lettuce burn in my mouth?

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I Was Shorai Did It Right!

Today was supposed to be a bit rainy, but the rain never came. I drove to work anyway, since I had to pick up my life vests I had loaned to the theater. Daniel had to come help me work on Chrissy’s Mac, and three out of my four Adobe packages worked after manually shutting a bunch of apps down. Any sane person would think a restart would clear that, but no, not in Apple’s world.

The morning went by a little slowly, but I made it through to lunch. Jeff from Belkin called and confirmed what I already knew – that my brand new WeMo light switch had a firmware problem and needed to be replaced. I wanted to try installing my other one too, just to see if it had the same problem, but that would have to wait for after work.

I went by the shop after lunch and gave Ben the Internet Yellow Pages book I found in the garage, and then helped him haul a smashed Newline touch panel into a dumpster out by the bus barn. I’m not looking forward to walking the SMART E75 models down there, but I think that’s happening this week.

The afternoon was slow as well, as I walked across campus again, then spent a little time outside working at the picnic tables. When I got home from work, I started right away on replacing my WeMo switch, and discovered that it was working as intended, so I only have the one that needs to be replaced. My MotoMummy package came in as well, and they hooked me up with my requested drawing and a stack of decals, so I spent the rest of the evening replacing the battery in the Shadow. I finished with just enough time to ride over and surprise Summer and Eaddie after karate. I gave Eaddie a ride home, then made it back to my house in the cold evening air.

My phlegmy cough had me pretty ragged last night, but I figured that’s all it was. I slept pretty horribly and felt absolutely exhausted when I got home from work. It wasn’t until later in the evening that I started to feel a little feverish, so it was an early night to bed, hopefully without the COVID.

100.7, The Edge!

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Tall Stairs

We had a few short showers today, but it was dry enough to take the bike to work. I started out in the band area and had to carry a huge ladder down the hall so I could reset the power on an Airtame that refused to connect to the network.

The rest of the day was pretty quiet all to myself. Summer had a lunch break scheduled, so she picked me up and we went to Bocadillos. An old student of hers was our server, and he seemed super excitable, but a little forgetful. Otherwise it was pretty great, but I ate too much.

There wasn’t much more going on in the afternoon, so I had a bit of trouble focusing on anything. I had half of an energy drink just to keep myself going for the rest of the day. A third guy from Belkin called to troubleshoot my WeMo, but unlike the first two, this guy only works business hours, so I’ll have to try again tomorrow on my lunch break.

After work, I went home to change and start washing dishes before picking up the girls and bringing them down. Summer beat us home for the evening, and after she had a shower and picked at some leftover ham, we watched an episode of Cobra Kai and then went to bed.

I’m a phlegmingo.

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Lotería!

Summer got up this morning and made some delicious eggs scrambled with a variety of peppers and onions for breakfast. Then she picked up Autumn from her Explorers camp trip before we went to Walmart to pick up what we needed for her work Friendsgiving dinner.

When we got back, she started on her broccoli salad, and then I got the ham started in the oven and took a shower while they went to get Eaddie from her friend’s house. Everything finished up right on time, and one of Summer’s employees dropped off her foster kid to hang out with the girls while we all attended the party.

We had a really good time. Everyone put together a really great dinner party with lots of good food. Summer got to announce her two promotions at the shop, and made a heartwarming speech that had everyone’s hushed attention. Then we gambled quarters in a game of Lotería, which was a lot like Bingo with tarot cards.

We were the first to go, partly so the rest of the crew could enjoy themselves and partly so we could get back to the kids. Everyone settled in for the evening and I headed home just to make my morning a bit easier after getting all gussied up today. My blood pressure seems to be high in the evenings after being low throughout most of the day. The clinic cancelled my last appointment and declined my medication refill though, so that’ll have to be a discussion once I get a little closer to the bottom of the bottle.

Just keep cleaning. Just keep cleaning. Just keep cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. What do we do? We clean, clean!

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Re-Pathing

I made little ham sandwiches for brunch this morning before Summer took Autumn to her Explorers group for their camp trip. Eaddie decided to stay with her friend for another night, so after the gym, Summer came back to help me rearrange the garage.

We finally got the workbench moved to the other wall under the cabinets, which required us to move a whole lot of stuff out into the driveway first. I didn’t get to explore quite as much as I wanted, so there’s still a ton of stuff to get rid of, but I still felt really accomplished. The motorcycles are going to be problematic once we’re ready to garage two cars, but I’ll have some time before I need to tackle that.

It really was like going through a time capsule though. It was a real bummer that John got motor oil all over my NEW flag. I never really put much thought into the publishing of stock prices back before the internet. We also got rid of a huge red carpet, but I don’t have a clue how I inherited it. I don’t think it was the first carpet in my house, but it could have been.

We took a break and got some Zaxby’s for dinner before moving everything back inside. With the motorcycles lined up on the right wall, I had a slightly different path into the house. It’ll be much better once I have some more time to reorganize the things I have in there. After the move, everything was stored pretty inefficiently.

Once we finished up, Summer went home to clean house a bit. I had an amazing shower to get the grime of a good day of work off of me. Then I headed up to her house for the evening before her work Friendsgiving event tomorrow.

We literally rolled out the red carpet to make room for the motorcycles.

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On Queue

I woke up half an hour early today just to go to Starbucks for a plastic red cup. When I got there, the drive-through was coned off and traffic was wrapped around the parking lot, so I waited for just a minute before leaving after I saw absolutely no movement.

That threw me a little off of my morning routine, and I ended up late by a few minutes, but nobody was talking about anything at work. In fact, there were only five of us there, with Melinda and Josh out with COVID, and Allen taking a vacation day to avoid a cable pull. Ben said he’d buy us all lunch since we all made it to Friday.

I didn’t have any group work in the morning, so I went to the high school until lunch. Then I beat everyone else back to the shop. We decided to check out the Ridgewood Brothers’ first Friday lunch first, and would move on to Peg Leg if the line was too long. Our third option was Fat Daddy’s in London if Peg Leg wasn’t open for dine-in. Fortunately there was hardly a line, but unfortunately they were out of everything but loin back ribs and pulled pork. It still made for an incredible lunch though, and it was a beautiful day to eat outside.

After lunch, I had to help Kyle take some carts to Sequoyah. It was predictably awkward, and then he wanted me to put the truck away afterward since he had some other work to finish up there. I went back to the shop for a little while, then ended the day at the high school.

When I got home, I traded for the Murano to get some gas, then came home and waited for Summer and Autumn to get there. Autumn and I set up a dome tent I found in a repossessed vehicle back when I worked at AAF, and surprisingly it looked brand new aside from a couple missing pieces. As long as it doesn’t rain this weekend, she should be fine to camp in it.

Meanwhile, Summer got a fire going in the pit out back, and then we cooked some brats over it for dinner. We ran out of fire just as we finished as many marshmallows as we wanted, and then we came inside to watch Ralph Breaks the Internet. It didn’t have quite the amount of easter eggs as Ready Player One, but it was really good. I wish we had watched it in 3D though.

Queue? Cue? Que? Q?

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MacNuggies With Bae

Ben emailed us early this morning to say that Melinda tested positive for COVID. We were all pretty sure she had it the other day when I was at the shop, but evidently she refused to go home. Surprisingly, I don’t think anyone else chose to quarantine. Even Zach, who I think jokingly hugged on her that day, was at work today. Josh apparently took COVID days, but refused to test because if it comes back positive, his breadwinner wife would have to quarantine as well. The level of selfishness kind of astounds me.

I stuck to my office for most of the day, but was mostly aimless. I left for a late lunch and got a big bag of McNuggets to share with Summer, and we ate on the bench outside her shop. Then I went to our office for some parts and to talk to Ben for a bit before going back to the high school.

I wrapped up the day at the Center, getting their new box office ticket printer working. There wasn’t a lot of useful troubleshooting I could do, but through enough tinkering, I finally got it to work.

I stopped to see Summer again on the way home, then spent a quiet evening alone at the house. I got some more laundry done while Inception played, then went to bed.

You’re waiting for a train.

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On the Subject of Customer Service

I had a few new things come in this morning, so I spent all day working on those. The kids were back, which meant I had to work around the bell schedule again. I also kept getting phone calls instead of work orders, but fortunately it wasn’t anything too serious.

Summer got a lunch break, so I picked her up and we went to Brangus. A big group of the guys were there with Dale, and it hurt my feelers that not one of them said a word to me about it. I knew it was Gary’s birthday, so I guess it was my fault for not finding my way back to the shop before lunch, but a text doesn’t seem like too much trouble if they wanted me there. On the plus side, our waitress was my favorite, and remembered my order.

I spent all afternoon fighting my way around a switch configuration, which really ended up being due to port security and forgetting that there was another network device in line that kept breaking things as I fixed them. I won in the end, except for some lag in how often PaperCut updates printer IPs.

After work, Julie brought me some leftover donuts from work. Then Summer came over and took a bath while I finished up some leftovers. Autumn called for a ride because Nick’s car quit on them on the drive over, so we picked them up.

While the girls were inside watching TV, I called Belkin WeMo support for help with my new light switch that won’t update firmware. The support was surprisingly really great in spite of having to call back when the line went dead the first time. The guy I got the second time could tell I knew my stuff, so we sped through the troubleshooting stuff really quickly and he escalated the issue with an expected callback in a day or two. Best of all, they’re open 24/7, so I really can take care of it when it’s convenient for me.

Once off the phone, I had to play catch-up on a conversation with emotion that the girls were having. We de-escalated pretty easily, and set some expectations. With that, the leash will get just a little bit shorter, and the behavior will have to show marked improvement.

Finally, just before bed, I ordered a new Shorai battery for the Shadow. I had to email the manufacturer this afternoon for the correct part number, and they responded in like an hour. Of course I went back to MotoMummy for the battery, since they’ve always been spectacular on top of having the best price by a long shot. This time we’ll see if they can draw my namesake on the shipping box.

“Like hugging a giant rotisserie chicken.”
Sometimes you just have to take the compliments as they come.