Lockdown: The island of lost time

I don’t know exactly why I’m planning to stay up super late to do some work, but I am. I’m not behind. I am a little swamped. So maybe it’s that. Kill it this evening so I get less swamped?

Not wanting to give my whole night over to the work, now I will write about me to me.

The stupid pandemic is going the wrong way. My boss took an informal survey, asking some of us if we were feeling more anxious with this delta variant exploding, and most people said yes. I said no. It’s pretty much the same amount of anxiety. I do not want this stupid virus, but if I get it I feel confident I won’t suffer from it much, and I’m unlikely to pass it along. I can live with that for now until data indicates I’m mistaken.

I’ve been dining out like a madman lately, apparently in an effort to make up for lost time. Mostly I get lunch on days I’m at the office, and occasionally dinner on the way home, and sometimes breakfast on the way in. On days I work at home, I mostly just eat at home. I’ve tried new places and they’ve been good. So Gong Dong for Korean food. Mian for Sichuan. Jejubing for Korean shave ice. A couple of bars for a cold one and whatever food looks good. I’ve dropped in on some old faves, like La Pizza Rina, IHOP, and Wendy’s. So far so good.

I even showed my vaccination card to get into one place. Bars are allowed to operate at full capacity if they check cards, and we had a work thing for someone’s birthday with an intended party of 13 to 15 that ended up being just 9. So cards were unnecessary but I didn’t know it when I showed up first, so I whipped my card out.

The birthday thing was fun. We reserved a private room mostly for privacy (and to get away from the bar’s VERY loud, constant K-pop), but we ended up singing karaoke the whole time. I’ve crossed the karaoke line with coworkers at this place of employment. Not a big deal. Two years ago I crossed the board-shorts-no-shirt line when we had a company picnic at this most gorgeous of beaches.

Speaking of lost time (yes we were; back up three paragraphs), the depression about wasting the gift of time this past year and a half is still on me, following me around and hovering, like a cloud of gnats. And (I guess) like gnats, it swoops in in waves, just invading my brain and bringing me way down for, you know, not all day or night but some amount of time.

I’m told I’m not alone. This makes me feel a little better.

It’s just a couple of nights before Ted Lasso season two starts. Do yourself an enormous favor and check out season one. I mean it.

Mythic Quest season two ended in a place where it could have been the series finale. I’m satisfied. I definitely want a season three, but it hasn’t been announced yet so who knows? I’m glad we got what we got.

Apple TV+ has this terrible original series called Physical. It stars Rose Byrne, who is terrific and whom I love, so I checked it out and now I can’t stop watching. I can’t say I like it, though, because all the characters are terrible. If you’ve already watched Mythic Quest and Ted Lasso, you might check it out. Trigger warning for bulimia.

I’m four episodes into season one of the Leftovers, which I only put in my Netflix DVD queue because Andy Greenwald kept talking about it when it first came out. I finally got to it (Aha. Who wasted his pandemic year? Not this guy!) and it is the most dismal, dark, depressing show ever. One of my coworkers says she loved this show so I’m going to stick with it for now. It’s compelling; I’ll give it that. But yikes. People who look askance at me for loving heavy metal with its themes of war and pestilence and death and decay but who can watch a show like the Leftovers can suck a lemon, a lime, and the marrow from the shattered bones of the fallen.

I’m about to fire up season three of Halt and Catch Fire too.

Okay I’m sated. Going to take a short nap and pound that work. Maybe.

Friday 5: Touched by your presents, dear

From here.

My sleep is so messed up this week I can’t tell if at 3:42 a.m. Friday I’m up late or up early. I should be in bed either way but I don’t want my whole evening-morning to have been a waste so here’s something useful (ha!) instead.

  1. For what ability do you seem to have a natural gift?
    You should just see how easily I let food in my fridge go to waste. It’s amazing! I stick some broccoli crowns or green beans in, and *pow* despite being home all the time, and despite loving my greens, in just a few days I’m throwing them all out with all my unrealized good intentions! I had a funny, snarky answer here about repelling the sort of women whose company I most enjoy (middle-aged divorced teachers or librarians!) but despite my status as a professional writer I couldn’t make it not also sound pitiful and pathetic, which was not the vibe with which I want to begin my Friday morning. Or end my late Thursday evening.
  2. What’s pretty good about the present moment?
    I didn’t have dinner, and I’m sorta looking forward to either a couple of small sandwiches when I finish typing this (I’ve two rolls left of half a dozen I bought Sunday night) or the leftover Indian food I brought home from lunch with some coworkers. If you live on Oahu and dig Indian food, check out Spice Up on King St. between Piikoi and Keeaumoku. It’s where Choi’s Family Restaurant used to be. Delicious.
  3. What nearby, everyday object would be a good symbolic bequest to someone in your life?
    It would be funny to leave my Kindle Paperwhite to R to represent the love we never rekindled, but she’s married so I doubt she’d receive it in the intended spirit, if she made note of my death at all. So I’m bequeathing this large bottle of naproxen sodium to all the girls I’ve loved before who wandered in and out my door, to remind them of all the pain we caused each other and to accept this gift as a token of our mutual healing. Why I’m thinking about relationships at this late (early) hour is a bit of a mystery, since I’ve been feeling pretty great in my self-sufficience these days. Although now that I’m emerging from this long lockdown, I suppose I’m craving the company of the fairer sex.
  4. What recognitions, large or small, have been bestowed upon you?
    My senior year of high school, the newspaper staff named me Most Likely to be a Televangelist (this in the years of the Jim Baker and Jimmy Swaggert scandals) but I think the newspaper advisor made them think of something else (It was a small, moderately conservative Christian school) so I was renamed Most Likely to be a Used Car Salesman.
  5. What was your most recent charitable donation?
    Spelling names correctly is of severe importance. I was freakishly devoted to it when I taught high-schoolers, and I’m nearly as devoted now that I work in a nonprofit. So I have this rule. Anything I’ve written or edited, if it gets published with a misspelled name, I anonymously donate $20 to the associated fund at the university, if there is one. If the misspelled name is in an article about an engineering scholarship, for example, I donate money to that scholarship. If there’s no immediately related fund, I find something close. Someone else misspelled a coworker’s name in our staff newsletter, and for some reason I didn’t check spelling on the names when I edited (which I always do, even the names I absolutely know the spelling of), and it went out with the mispelling. I made the donation to the staff social/party fund, a little side account not budgeted by the foundation but by bake sales and bottle recycling.

Happy long weekend and happy Independence Day. I don’t have plans beyond Friday night but I hope to do some catching up on personal writing. I have so many unreviewed books, films, and TV series. And I’m doing July’s Camp NaNo, so there’ll be a bit of noveling all month.