Get me through this Friday, please

The bad news: I arranged my schedule so that I don’t have any classes or labs on Friday. The dream was that I’d have this one beautiful day to catch up on grading and have some lab time. The dream is dead. Instead, my Fridays have filled up with meetings. My calendar is packed with meetings, meetings, meetings today.

The good news: Mary and I are scheduled for our second vaccine shot this evening!

Cat story

As many of you know, I live with an evil cat who demands my obedience. But she’s also a weird cat (all cats are weird) who has some predictable behaviors.

Every morning is like Christmas when I get up. She knows I’ll use the bathroom first thing, so she rushes in there, finds a good vantage point, and watches patiently while I pee. Then she runs up and down the hallway because her patience has expired, and while I do pointless things like comb my hair and brush my teeth and put on a shirt, she has to gallop back and forth waiting for me to finish, because the real point of my rising is to give her her morning wet food.

I walk to the kitchen with this annoying beast darting about underfoot, I don’t know why — she could make me trip and fall and break my neck and provide a big mess of meat to gnaw on, but she’s very picky: her cat food has to be fish flavored, and she won’t even touch chicken or beef or long pig (I haven’t tried the latter, though, maybe she has an appetite for it). Once I get to the kitchen, she starts yowling and making strange sounds, as if she’s trying to tell me to hurry up in Human. She’s uncontrollably eager, until I arrive at her plate with an open can of food. Then she goes silent and sits and waits.

I plop a big lump of fishy brown stuff on her plate. She looks at me nonchalantly — she seems to be saying, “What? For me? You shouldn’t have.” She walks a little closer, stops, sticks her neck out and sniffs cautiously. “Really? I don’t know if I should.” She looks at me again. “I’ll think about it. You may go now.” Once I turn my back on her, only then will she charge in and snarf it all down.

She puts on this little act twice a day, because I feed her when I get up in the morning and when I fix dinner for us humans. I haven’t told her yet that I’m not fooled, because if she thought her secret was out she might decide to silence me.

Things we’re accustomed to here

Just to inform you: if call in to a location in the upper midwest at a particular hour in, usually, the first week of the month, you may find yourself drowned out, as this bewildered reporter discovered. She seems a little flustered and concerned.

Every month, communities around here test out the tornado alert system. When I first moved here, it sure startled me — piercing sirens suddenly going off once a month, and at first I had no idea what it was about. Air raid? Nuclear war? Nah, it’s just a routine test in case a howling funnel of savage destructive winds descend on you and wreck all the buildings around you. Nothing to worry about.

Don’t call it “childish”

Here’s a too-common story about how some citizens are responding to the pandemic by shirking their responsibilities.

Kelly Sills paid a small fortune for an enchanting trip to “the most magical place on Earth.”

Instead, the Baton Rouge resident — like several other Disney World guests who have defied coronavirus restrictions — visited the Orange County jail.

Amid heightened precautions for the virus at the major Florida tourist attraction, Sills, 47, skipped the temperature screening required of guests, authorities said. He was confronted by security about it at a Disney Springs restaurant, the Boathouse, when he yelled and refused to leave, according to an Orange County Sheriff’s Office arrest report from Feb. 13. When deputies insisted he would be charged with trespassing, he pointed to how much he spent on his vacation, according to body-camera footage released this week.

My first reaction: people spend $15,000 on a vacation? What? How?

My second reaction: you booked a trip to DisneyWorld during a pandemic? That’s nuts.

My third reaction: and then you’re so petty and obnoxious that you skip past basic health checks? That’s how plagues spread, ya bozo.

My fourth reaction: my two-year old granddaughter is more mature and responsible than Mr Sills.

Smarter, too.

Portents and omens

We went for a walk yesterday. We saw one of these soaring overhead.

One is nice and impressive, but then there was a whole flock of turkey vultures wheeling overhead.

Then they followed us home.

I’m a little afraid to walk over to the lab now, but I must. My dental records are on file at the Dental Depot here in town, in case some skeletal remains need to be identified.

I don’t understand how Thoughtslime can be more popular than me

You know, I just posted a happy, joyous video that should lift your hearts and make you feel good about the world. At almost the exact same time, Thoughtslime posted a miserable, depressing video that will make everyone feel bad, and he’ll get a gajillion more views than mine ever will. It’s not fair!

His video is about Amazon, rather than awesome spiders. See? You already know it’s going to be horrible.

Amazon is kind of indispensable in my part of the world. We are a small town with few retail services (well, we do have a plague pit of a grocery store), which means if we want anything but the staples we rely on Amazon. Wait, I wonder…is the ubiquity of Amazon one of the reasons we don’t have many local businesses? Maybe Amazon ought to be nationalized.

Anyway, the video does explain one thing to me. A month or so ago, I had ordered something (not even from Amazon, though), and I got an email notifying me of delivery. I went outside to check, and nope, nothing, it was mystifying. The next day I checked again, in case it had fallen down behind the shrubbery or something, and no, it just wasn’t there. So I went through UPS’s horrible lost package web site, filled out some forms, and awaited their response. I figured it had been misdelivered. This has been a common problem lately, because our county arbitrarily decided to renumber our house — I’ve gotten messages from people asking me why I didn’t answer their mail, and it’s because our old address no longer exists.

Then, the next day, a UPS driver shows up at our door with the package. Great, no worries! But she was so cravenly apologetic and so anxious to explain everything to me, I was somewhat embarrassed for her. Our house was late on her route, it was dark, she drove back and forth trying to see our address, the GPS was no help at all, she’d flagged the delivery because she’d thought she’d found the place, but it wasn’t, on and on and on. Really, I understand, I wasn’t that worried about it, I was aware of how the county had scrambled addresses, and she was so, so grateful when I signed off on the delivery and signed a note saying I was happy with the service. It was a bit wild.

Honestly, friendly UPS delivery driver who dropped off a package at my house in early March, it’s OK. I worry about you now, since it sounds like you’ve got quotas and unrealistic and maybe even dangerous demands on your time. If it takes an extra day or two to get something to me, that’s fine, I won’t give you grief about it, I’m not demanding instant gratification. Be well. If you’re not already, I hope you unionize.

Slack. More slack.

I’ve been slipping up. Our local grocery store, Willie’s, only reluctantly and belatedly started insisting on customers and staff wearing masks, which was why we’ve been driving an hour each way to do our shopping. But lately I’ve been ducking into Willie’s for quick items — like today, I was hoping for a fresh salad for dinner tonight, and taking a few hours to get that was too much. They’ve also been much better about requiring the workers to mask up.

But today…four separate clueless idiots wandering the aisles, maskless, and no one said a word. I guess we’re going back to driving long distances to find stores with responsible management, because this place is not trustworthy.

Are we ever going to get out of this pandemic mess? Not at this rate.