A brief encounter, and the sad aftermath

Tuesday, December 2nd was our first significant snowfall this season. Temperatures have rarely risen above freezing since then. Just after midnight Friday morning temperatures dropped to 16F, and then dropped further to 9F by 9:00 AM. Friday saw a bit of a warmup, so temperatures were around 27F when I left work at 12:40 AM Saturday morning.

It has been my habit lately to drive past the cemetery on my way home from work to see if the candle on my mother's grave (easily visible from the road) is still lit. I replaced it on Sunday, and it had still been burning the previous morning. It was out. From repeated observation, these candles only last five days.

This path home takes me through some densely forested areas. Most of Northeastern Pennsylvania is heavily forested, so this is not unusual. Still, deer, skunks, rabbits, and other woodland critters (including bears) pose a collision hazard year-round, and can unexpectedly step out of the woods.

Coming down the Sans Souci parkway into Nanticoke I had to brake hard and swerve as a thing walked directly into my path. Black fur with white on the belly. Nearly as long as a deer but much shorter. Weirdly-shaped head. Too many legs. ...two tails?

It was two dogs walking briskly across the parkway side by side, pressed against each other, one walking a few inches behind the other. They paid me little heed as they passed from the direction of Tractor Supply towards the railroad tracks, towards the vacant building that used to be Dundee Gardens.

Where did they come from? Where were they going? What were they doing outside in subfreezing temperatures? I don't know. I'm just glad I didn't hit them.

...at least, I didn't know until I saw this:

Please hold your animal friends close and don't let them roam. Bad things can happen to them if you let them roam.

First significant snowfall, December 2, 2025

I won't call it a *major* snowfall. Only about three inches or so - but three inches of wet, heavy snow. I don't think I had to shovel once last year, except maybe on Super Bowl Sunday; otherwise the snow was generally light, fluffy stuff that could be dealt with with a pushbroom. But today's snow called for a shovel.

It was a work-from-home day, the first since we were all ordered back into the office five days a week in February. Odd that when it works in The Company's favor, when there would usually be mass absenteeism due to weather or even a building closure, work-from-home is suddenly perfectly acceptable. No snow days for us. But the cats were happy to have me home, and I was happy to spend the day in their company.

COVID

FOREWORD:

Haven't posted all summer. Summers have gotten to be particularly tough for me the last few - many - years. Generally I'm OK through the third week of June, basically to the Solstice. But after that point temperatures tend to spike, humidity soars, rain becomes an almost daily event. Blueberries and grapes ripen and sit on the bush or vine, to be eaten by birds or just wither. And I become a summertime hermit, staying inside with a fan on and the drapes drawn, hoping not to need the air conditioner.

This year, Summer ended abruptly on Labor Day. Suddenly it was Autumn, three full weeks before the equinox. Temperatures plummeted.  The air turned crisp. Leaves began to change color. And suddenly, I was released from my hermit status. I could go back outside and do things. Unless something else came up.

Something else came up.

PRELUDE:

Since we returned to the office full time earlier in the year, we've been looking for little things to boost morale. Potlucks have helped. Many people - not everybody, which is actually a good thing - bring in something, and we have a daylong feast. There is more than enough to go around, with plenty for everyone. If everybody brought in food the amount of food would be unmanageably excessive.  Offerings range from pizzas and chips to elaborate homemade meals and desserts. It's disappointing if your contribution doesn't get devoured, and everyone takes a wide sampling of foods.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2025

We had one of these last Wednesday, for the first night of football season. I brought in tortilla chips, queso, and salsa. I filled my plate with a huge variety of foods for both of my breaks and my lunch. At the end of the night I joked about calling an Uber to get to my car, and shared a concern that I would regret this in the morning.

I did.

My diet has become fairly simple and routine. Breakfast is a bowl of bran cereal in the morning half-filled with fruit - either chopped apples with cinnamon, or a sliced banana and strawberries, paired with a protein - plain Greek yogurt with honey, cottage cheese with grapes, or some eggs. A second lunch-ish meal usually featuring chicken, pork, or shrimp and potatoes or rice, or maybe spaghetti and meatballs with vegetables on the side. For "lunch" and snacks at work I take nutrition bars. I used to take ZonePerfect Chocolate Mint bars (which tasted just like Thin Mints) until the entire ZonePerfect line was discontinued last year. Since then I have experimented with many different replacements, but have settled on Clif Chocolate Mint bars (which contain caffeine) to keep me going at the start and end of the day, and a lemon zest Luna bar with tea for lunch. When I get home after work I treat myself to a before-bed snack of cheese or ice cream.

The party food disrupted all this, of course. I anticipated some digestive issues in the morning. I was not disappointed.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2025

I was extremely ill for several hours Thursday morning. Eventually it seemed I had purged the entire feast from the previous day from my system, and then some. 

Everything was back on track by Thursday afternoon.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2025 

On Friday, I advised my coworkers that I would be off on Monday to observe what would have been my mom's 92nd birthday, but I would be back on Tuesday.

RFKJr, the insane goblin in charge of health policy for the United States, decided to ban COVID-19 vaccines for most Americans, for insane goblin reasons. Within a week, Governor Josh Shapiro and Democrats in the Pennsylvania legislature took action to re-establish the ability of Pennsylvanians to get the COVID vaccine. On September 3, 2025 the State Board of Pharmacy issued a press release announcing this. I planned to get mine over the weekend. Maybe Monday.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2025

I woke up Saturday with a fever.

I didn't think much of it. Saturday was a busy day. I did many loads of laundry. I made plans for the rest of the weekend. I ran out and cashed in my Weis rewards points, set to expire the next day, getting an 18 pack of eggs for just $2.99. I got a lot of stuff done.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2025

Sunday I woke up with a painfully sore throat. Oh crap, I thought. COVID. 

I dug out my stash of COVID tests . How old were they? I couldn't remember. The expiration dates indicated January 2023. We were told that they would still be good for a while after that. Every previous test I had taken came out negative. Could I trust a positive result on an old test?

I pulled out the kit and followed the steps. Waited fifteen minutes. Squinted to see if there was any hint of a little faint red line. If I looked at it juuust right and used my imagination a bit - yes, there it was. OK, now what?

I let my family know. My primary care physician retired a few months ago. If I wanted confirmation, treatment, or official documentation, I would need to go to an ER or a walk-in clinic on Monday.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2025

Monday morning I woke up with a runny nose, very sore throat, and laryngitis. I was feeling a general wooziness, and occasionally had a roaring sound in my ears, like driving with the windows down. Even though it was my day off, I let my supervisor know. I've never used sick days before, except for appointments, so I wasn't sure how they worked. She advised I could use up to three consecutive days before I needed a doctor's note. That would take me through Thursday without it. It didn't seem safe to come back Friday, so I decided I needed a note.

Monday afternoon I went to the local clinic for the regional megahospital. After some delays, it was finally my turn to be seen. I told the admissions nurse I was there because of COVID. She went in the back, and then came back and told me that they didn't do any testing for COVID. In fact, she advised me, there was no vaccine, no treatment, no cure, and I should just leave.

I really wasn't prepared for that. I asked if there was anything they could do for me, and she said no.

I walked out furious. I got on the family chat and raved a bit. I was going to go to the cemetery to calm down. My sister-in-law would drop off some fresh tests at my house. I resolved to go to a different clinic on Tuesday.

My at-home test Monday afternoon, courtesy of my sister-in-law, was a little less ambiguous.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2025

Monday night I slept very little. My nose was running all night, and I had to keep getting up to blow it. My pulse oximeter - purchased back in 2020 when COVID was spreading across the country - showed an O2 saturation level of 98%, so I wasn't panicking. On Tuesday afternoon, after some misadventures, I got to another clinic. As I walked in I was greeted with a sign advising that they did COVID-19 testing, but only by appointment. It gave a phone number to call for testing.

I was the only client there, so my wait was minimal. This time, instead of immediately stating I was there because of COVID, I described my symptoms, then added that I had tested positive for COVID. The admissions nurse told me that the information I had been given previously was accurate, they did not test. I told her about the sign, and she asked me where I had seen that. I told her it was just outside the door next to us. (After she got me checked in, she went out to see the sign for herself, and called over the rest of the staff to have a look. They considered taking it down, but in the end decided to defer to management.) She explained to me that they had just gotten a directive advising that they were not testing anymore because insurance is no longer paying for tests - something new from the Trump/RFKJr regime, I suppose. But they would be able to do a basic checkup and write me a note.

All of my vitals were perfect, as usual. Temperature 98.0 degrees. Oxygen saturation 98%. Blood pressure 118/68. Lungs sounded clear. No throat irritation visible. If I didn't know I was sick, and if I weren't so woozy and tired, I would think I was healthy. The PA wrote me a note taking me through Friday, told me to keep up with the regimen of fluids and the occasional Tylenol that I've been following, and go to the ER if things take a turn for the worse. I will retest on Sunday and if I am still positive, we will take things from there.

(I experienced another, very strange, possible symptom of COVID as I drove home from the clinic: a sudden love for everyone I saw. As a child I would play a game where I would try to slip into the consciousness of anyone I saw as we drove past, trying to imagine the world as they experienced it: who they were, how they happened to be standing there, what they were thinking, what they were planning, everything that had led up to that moment in their lives. Now I saw a couple walking past, a Hispanic couple in their late 30s, in another part of the country or another part of the state they might be worrying about Donald Trump's ICE bounty hunters pulling them off the street to make their daily quota, but here on Main Street in Wilkes-Barre they were smiling and laughing as they walked along, and I wanted to smile and wave at them, which seemed weird, so I just smiled and stared as much as I could without crashing the car, which was also weird; next was a guy in his early 20s, walking along, face buried in his phone, and I thought he's talking to a friend, God bless 'im, or maybe he's talking to his mom, what a lucky guy. This happened several more times on the way home.)  

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2025

Another fun symptom: I have completely lost track of the passing of time. Today could be Monday or Tuesday for all I know. I might have been sick for a day, a week, or a month. I am writing this account to try to organize my memories while they are still distinct.

It is possible that the digestive issues I experienced Thursday morning were a case of "something I ate," or "everything I ate," or "simple food poisoning." It is also possible that they were, along with the fever an sore throat, a symptom of this latest strain of COVID.

It is likely that I picked up COVID at work. Which means that at least one other person at work had COVID and was contagious. It is possible that I was also contagious while I was at work.

So. It finally got me, Five years and six months after the pandemic was declared, more than two and a half years after it killed my mom. All without so much as a cold, a bout of hayfever, anything. After all this time I have finally contracted COVID. We'll see how it goes from here.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2025

I've observed over the decades that one sure sign that I am sick is an increase in typos. Virtually every sentence that I have typed here has contained at least one typo. It just took four tries to spell the word "Virtually" correctly, and in this sentence I spelled the word "four" wrong. I have considered leaving all the typos in place, but that would render this generally unreadable. 

Even though I feel less sick today, I am still clearly sick.

Dead battery, again

And so this "new year" begins on a familiar note.

I needed to go grocery shopping this weekend. This used to be a weekly thing, but lately I've been shopping once every two weeks. I meant to go on Saturday, or maybe early Sunday. But after my trip to the cemetery on the anniversary of my mom's burial - capped with a graveside changing a windshield wiper in the rain - I didn't feel much like shopping for groceries. Sunday, for various reasons, I was not able to get out as early as I would have liked, and wound up leaving around 8:00 PM.

The shopping trip was uneventful. I found everything I needed except lettuce - the section for iceberg lettuce was empty. I jammed my purchases into the trunk, pulled out of the parking lot, and drove home the long way around, crossing the Nanticoke-West Nanticoke bridge, which may be torn down and replaced in a few years. I got home, pulled into the driveway, shut off the car, sat for a minute to listen to the radio, and watched the dome light get dimmer and dimmer.

I tried to restart the car. The starter clicked and buzzed.

OK. Don't panic, I thought. We've been here before. The battery just needs to rest a few hours and then it will be able to start the car again. I contemplated driving in to work Monday afternoon, walking out of work in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, and finding that the car would not start.

I got ready for work today. Made my goodbyes to the cats. Made my way to the car with my computer satchel, a Zone bar for my lunch, my drink, and a raincoat for the rain expected tonight. Loaded everything in the car. Put the key in the ignition and turned it. Heard a click and a buzz.

Tried again, several times. No good.

I called my supervisor to see if I could take today as a work-from-home day. She looked into it. Called me back to tell me no, that option wasn't available today, but I could take "annual leave" - basically a day off. I'm not hoarding my time off to spend with my mom in the event of her contracting COVID-19 or some other medical emergency, not anymore.

It's been almost three years since the last time I needed to replace the car battery, on March 20, 2021. The time before that was October 30, 2018.

I've made arrangements to get the battery replaced tomorrow. We'll see how long this one lasts.

NOTE TO SELF, March 6, 2024: This new battery has a 42 month full replacement warranty. Considering that the last battery lasted 36 months and the one before lasted 29 months, this is important...as long as all parties involved are still in existence in 42 months.

A Dream of my Mom

It's been about five and a half months since my mom died, and I finally had my first dream about her. I want to write it down before it fades.

In the dream my mom had suffered brain trauma similar to the stroke that ultimately killed her in real life. But in the dream she had not died, but had recovered, in what could best be described as a lobotomized state. She was awake and ambulatory and aware of her surroundings, but could not communicate or be communicated with. If you spoke to her she might appear to be listening, or might just as often completely ignore you. She was living in a nursing home with a companion nurse who watched her and exercised her and generally took care of her needs. One of her greatest needs was a photo ID; she had lost all of hers and the only thing that came close to serving was a photo ad for the nursing home that featured her prominently.

One theme in this dream was me needing to get ready for work as time ticked away. I kept seeing a clock, with its hands showing later and later times each time I looked at it.

Another theme was me trying to get the latest COVID-19 booster. It turned out I wasn't eligible because it is only being made available to people over a certain age (which is also true in real life.)

At the end of the dream I heard my mother's voice. She said "Get up, it's nearly 10:15." I got up and checked the time. It was nowhere near 10:15.

I had sleep apnea three times last night. Bad sleep apnea, the type I used to get where I realize my airways have blocked, and if I can't unblock them I will die. I shoot upright in bed and force my airways open. It has worked every time, so far. I think I know what brought it on, and will try to avoid it in the future.

Barbie and Me

With Greta Gerwig's movie about how the beloved doll Barbie became Death, the destroyer of worlds* coming out soon, there's a lot of Barbie discourse going around. I am reminded of my own Barbie story.

No, I never played with Barbie as a kid. My sister had Barbie dolls, as did my cousins. I think my sister even had a Ken doll, with preposterous stick-on facial hair. But my own Barbie story comes many years later.

It was probably 1999 or so. The CD/DVD manufacturer I worked for was still classified as a profit center, meaning our role in the corporate ecosystem was to maximize profits. (Years later we would become a cost center, where our goal would be to minimize costs.) We were all flush with cash, and the company expected us to be good corporate citizens and contribute generously to its charitable efforts.

Every year at Christmas we had a "giving tree" covered with tags bearing the names of local underprivileged children and their wishes for Christmas. You could grab one at random, or you could shop around for something that interested you. That year there must have been a major video game system release, because half the tags were kids asking for the expensive, ephemeral system. Others asked for other expensive gifts. But I found one that just said "BARBIE." This one, I thought. This one will get more than she asked for.

I stopped at Toys 'r' Us on the way home, the destination for toy shoppers, which had outlived other toy stores like Kidz and Kay-Bee, though it would itself go out of business in little more than fifteen years. Toys 'r' Us had the legendary Pink Aisle, the home of all things Barbie. I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and entered the aisle, an enormous man dressed all in black, pushing a shopping cart, surrounded by pinkness.

I first grabbed a classic Barbie. Blonde, pink skin, blue eyes. About $7. I was prepared to spend much more.

Who am I shopping for? I asked myself. Is she white, black, Latino, Asian? I had no way of knowing. Will she see herself in the doll she gets for Christmas? 

No problem. Even then Barbie had a broad racial diversity. I grabbed one of each and tossed them in the cart. Now she will have one that will look like her, and she can share the others.

Barbie needs clothes. I grabbed a multi-pack of clothing, and then another. She would have lots of outfit options. Barbie needs shoes. I found a shoe collection, tossed it in the cart. Barbie needs a place to store all this stuff. I found a wardrobe case. Into the cart.

Then I saw a Barbie playset. Barbie as a veterinarian, with a little girl figure and a dog. Yes, that too. That rounds things out nicely. Into the cart.

I came home and arranged everything so I could wrap it together. I taped the tag to the package and took it in to work. 

I hope some little girl had a great Christmas that year.

*Maybe that's the Oppenheimer movie, coming out the same day.

Snow

Currently at my workplace we are working one day a week in the office and four days working from home. After several weeks spent mostly on FMLA and Bereavement Leave, yesterday was my first day in the office in over a month.

Snow was in the forecast. Predictions kept fluctuating, suggesting we would either dodge the worst of it or take a solid hit. During my final break at 8:00 PM nothing had started yet, and it looked like we might be spared. But the snow was coming down hard when I left around 10:40 PM. 

It kept coming down, harder and harder. Flakes the size of goose down, then the size of feather duster feathers. Thick flakes that made the windshield wipers work hard to scrub the windshield clean. My normal commute runs along the south rim of the Wyoming Valley, but I decided to drop down to a lower elevation and come in through Wilkes-Barre. It helped, a little. Still, a drive of 20 minutes wound up taking nearly an hour.

My mother would have been worried sick. I'm glad she was spared that.

2020: A brief review

We knew it was coming.

I wish I had saved the tweet. That tweet that someone posted from when the news was just starting to leak out of China in December or early January, news about a highly contagious respiratory disease, a sort of superflu with deadly consequences, rapidly spreading beyond the major city (and international airline hub) of Wuhan. Someone wrote "THERE. That's it. THAT'S what was missing."

On Sunday, January 26, 2020 I was coming back to Nanticoke from a quick afternoon shopping trip. I decided to come through the newly-reopened new road that runs between Route 29 and Kosciuszko Street. Driving past all the newly-built warehouse distribution centers, I thought about all the low-to-middling-wage jobs that had been brought to the area, and wondered how long we would be able to hold onto them - and what it would take to disrupt them. I got home and was greeted with the news that Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and several others were killed in a helicopter crash. The next day, USA Today ran this on their front page:

Even then, we knew. 

We watched through February as the disease raged through Seattle, and New York, and Los Angeles, and San Francisco. We heard about the special affinity had for nursing homes, chewing its way through the captive resident populations. Prisons, too. We watched the first cases appear in Philadelphia, and then in the counties bordering New Jersey. We knew it was here in Pennsylvania. It would just be a matter of time.

One of the first deaths in the area was a man from Hanover Township - or was it the Hanover section of Nanticoke? - who had just come back from a trip to Italy, where the disease was burning through the highly sociable population. 

Saint Patrick's Day weekend came, and suddenly people realized there was a stark choice to be made:  go out like nothing was wrong, or stay home. A lot of people made one choice, a lot of people chose another. Everybody went back to the office on Monday, one big happy workplace family.

Las Vegas shut down, and we knew things were very serious.

Later that week we had a meeting. We would be leaving the building, going home to await further instructions. As I left the office on that last night, I told my friends we would be seeing each other in two weeks to eighteen months. I whistled "The End of the World" by Bob Geldof as I hobbled out on my slowly-healing stress-fractured leg. 

Two weeks later we were back to pick up our computers and headsets. We would be working from home for the indefinite future.

The Spring ground on, became Summer, all feeling like a unending slog - the Long March, some called it, because the world seemed to be frozen as it was when last we had believed ourselves safe and secure. Racial conflicts arose, fueled by a series of police abuses and outright murders. Protests were met with more abuse of authority, and the use of what could generously be called "irregulars" to supplement official forces. The police and their mercenary allies took particular delight in exercising their abuse against members of the media. News crews were attacked and arrested. A photographer was shot in the eye and blinded with a rubber bullet.  A Navy veteran who approached a line of mercenaries in Police gear to ask them on whose authority they were engaging in their unlawful behavior was beaten and pepper-sprayed for his audacity. An assault rifle-toting teenager who had crossed state lines in the hope of engaging in conflict shot and killed several protesters during a confrontation. Another individual was shot and killed by a private security guard for a media group after he attacked the guard and the reporters.

John Lewis died. Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. Over 345,000 Americans died of COVID-19. 

COVID-19 forced a rethinking of how elections would be run. Paper absentee ballots became the norm. But at the same time, Trump appointee Louis DeJoy took steps to destabilize the US Postal Service and reduce its ability to handle mail in a timely manner. Millions of voters took their votes to drop boxes. Hundreds of thousands of votes, perhaps more, were likely lost or delayed in the USPS system and never got where they were going. (DeJoy's trumpery would have long-lasting repercussions: I sent out three packages on December 14. One got to Florida on December 18. One got to Columbia, MD on December 26. And one did not get to Dover, PA until December 30.)

Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by the same electoral margin that Trump had defeated Hillary Clinton. Biden also received the largest number of popular votes in history, and defeated Trump by a margin of over seven million votes. Trump, who had declared his defeat of Clinton to be a "landslide," refused to accept (and still refuses to accept) the results of the election.

...and that's pretty much it. Working from home. Ordering what we need online. Making furtive trips to the grocery store and elsewhere to buy the things we can't get online. Going to church online. Not letting my mom out of the house except for trips to the doctor and visits to the cemetery. My leg got better, since I wasn't hiking from the parking lot to my desk every day anymore, and was able to give it time to heal. 

The dying keeps going on. The Trump administration's response to COVID-19 has been a series of failures and disasters. Trump's failure to provide leadership has turned mask wearing into a political issue. The same people who are denying that COVID-19 is a real disease are also furiously denying that Joe Biden won the Presidential election.

The best guesses at when things might return to some sort of normal range from July to October. Other countries have been able to wrestle the disease into submission through stopping social transmission, through the use of bubbles and masks and public compliance with scientific guidance. Not the United States. Our spread is out of control. And still millions had no problem going out and partying to see in the New Year.

The dying isn't over. Trump still has nineteen days in office, and can still do some damage. Things won't magically change January 20, any more than they changed January 1. But we have hope.

Sometimes it feels like that's all we have.

Dream: Back to Work

Someone posted a question on Twitter the other day: Has anyone been having especially weird dreams lately?

It's a weird time in America. Deaths from COVID-19 continue to rise. Donald Trump, who somehow won the electoral college in 2016 and was installed as president, has managed, after considerable effort, to contract the virus, and while he received levels of treatment unavailable to us peasants, it is likely he is still infected - and he insists on having in-person campaign events, including one yesterday at the White House. (2000 were invited. About 400 showed up. Word is many of those who showed up were paid to do so.) Trump is trying to push through hearings for Amy Coney Barrett, the ultra-conservative activist judge (with three years experience on the bench) he nominated to fill the Supreme Court seat of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg just days after Ginsburg's death and less than two months before the election. Right-wing terrorists in Michigan have been arrested for plotting to abduct Governor Gretchen Whitmer and overthrow the state government through armed violent insurrection. Huge swaths of the west coast are still on fire. We've run out of letters in the alphabet for hurricanes in the Atlantic, and Louisiana is currently dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Delta. Less than four weeks to the election, Luzerne County's mail-in ballots were (allegedly) just sent out on Friday from a facility in Akron, Ohio.

I'm still working from home, as I have been since March. My organization is taking this disease seriously, but there are concerns that the top management of our parent company may issue a business-as-usual order and call us back to the building at any time. And that's what my dream was about.

It didn't start off like that. Or maybe it did. It started off with me going to visit my cousin a block away, something I haven't done since the disease took hold in this area. While in real life she is holding a book for me that she acquired from the books-for-sale shelves at the library where she works, in the dream I think I was going up to pick up some plants. I got them from her father, who has been dead for fifteen years, and we spoke briefly, possibly about me going back to work.

Next thing I knew I was there, standing in line waiting to go back into the building for the first time in ages. (In reality I've been there two or three times since we bugged out.) I don't remember the process of getting inside, but I do recall that once inside I realized I wasn't wearing my ID - it was in my pocket. The building I went into wasn't the Kafkaesque office building that I actually work in, but seemed to be the nightmarishly complex factory building I last worked at in 2012 - and which was demolished earlier this year. I took a wrong turn almost immediately and realized I was lost. Looking down, I also realized I was barefoot, a startling and very odd detail.

I wandered the building for a very long time, well past my starting time, past areas where things that I couldn't comprehend were going on. (I am suddenly remembering that I have had several other dreams in a similar factory setting.) I finally found some people I could talk to and asked about directions to my work area. They tried to help me, but I wound up getting lost again, and at one point I stopped to scratch the belly of a large white wolf-dog that was casually stretched against a wall. Eventually I found my way to a security desk, and they had a helpful YOU ARE HERE map posted above their desk. I worked out that I was on the opposite end of the building from the area where I was supposed to be, an area marked SUTTON COMPLEX. I woke up wanting to look up where that name might have come from. 

Not pictured: The map from my dream

The facility in Olyphant, PA known as Specialty Records, WEA Manufacturing, CINRAM, and finally Technicolor. I worked here from 1992 - 2007 and again from 2007 - 2012. Technicolor closed down in 2018, and the place was finally demolished in June 2020. Fun fact: for much of the time I was there, my emergency evacuation spot was "the big oil tank in back," top center in picture - one of many places I would not want to be in the event of an emergency.

 

As far as dreams go, this isn't even in the top ten for weirdness. It seems like a variation of the standard "can't find my class" / "can't find the room for the final for the class I forgot to go to all semester" dream. The "barefoot" detail was something I've never had before.

(...I just remembered I had another dream a while ago, about being summoned back to Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Sciences as an adult. While I had a hard time finding the classroom and got there late, I wasn't the last one to show up, and I quickly relaxed when I realized that this was a program solely focused on learning about cutting-edge science, in a non-competitive, ungraded environment. I meant to write about that, but never did.)

Note 1: Getting lost in the bowels of a building is something I'm familiar with in real life.

Note 2: There was apparently a sequence in this dream where I attempted to make eggs for breakfast and discovered all of our eggs were broken. Some had fractured shells, others were completely shattered, bits of shell floating in raw eggs in the egg keeper. I was pretty upset about this, and was relieved to see that in reality our egg supply is intact.

A white crocus before the storm

Sunday, March 15, 2020. We knew what was coming. We knew what COVID-19 had done in other countries, what it was doing in other parts of our own country. San Francisco had been on lockdown for a while. New York City was about to follow suit, sort of, if it hadn't already. Death was burning its way through nursing homes in Washington and California. The dying had already begun elsewhere, on a scale so small it seems laughable now. Perhaps 150 deaths altogether attributed to COVID-19 in the U.S. by March 15. A far cry from the 100,000 milestone we probably crossed today.

It was St. Patrick's Day weekend. A few days early; the day itself wouldn't be until Tuesday, March 17. But that didn't prevent people from celebrating that weekend, despite the threat posed by the virus, despite the warnings. Some chose to stay home and stay safe, only to find themselves mingling with partygoers when they returned to work on Monday - most workplaces hadn't closed yet. (My own workplace wouldn't close down until March 20.)

I couldn't get a fix on the March 15 data point. By March 18 the U.S. had 189 cumulative deaths attributed to COVID-19.

Governor Wolf hadn't issued the stay-at-home order for Luzerne County yet, and wouldn't for another twelve days. The Bishop of the Diocese of Scranton lifted the obligation to attend Mass on Sunday but did not close the churches; he advised that anyone attending Mass that weekend take appropriate precautions. (I watched the televised Mass held at Saint Peter's Cathedral in Scranton that weekend, and it was obvious that almost no one in attendance was taking appropriate precautions. I imagine the Bishop was as horrified as I was, because he immediately shut down all Catholic churches in the Diocese going forward.) March 15 felt like it might be the last day I could move about freely without concern for an invisible killer lurking in the air. I took my camera and headed out to the cemetery to get photos for my mom, whom I had already been keeping quarantined for a week. To see if the crocuses were blooming.

They were. We had a bumper crop this year: over a dozen purple crocuses, at least one yellow crocus, and a brilliant white crocus that had sprouted up away from all the others. I took numerous photos to share with my mom, to give her a taste of a world she was now locked away from.

The photo at the top of this post is the last photo of that set. The purple and yellow crocuses form a dim background against the granite base of the family tombstone, almost like a tapestry or set painting. The white crocus shines like a brilliant promise of better things to come.

The crocuses are all dead now. The flowering bits, at least. The underground parts are waiting to come back next year. Since that time, nearly 100,000 other Americans have died. Now, without any justification, there's a huge push to reopen, to return to normalcy. "Enough is enough, reopen now!" is the rallying cry. Soon, I fear, the 100,000 dead will seem as quaint and small as the number of deaths on March 15, barely seventy-five days ago.
                                                                     

Another job done

After nearly seven months, my most recent job ended yesterday, June 19, 2019.

Oh, I'm starting a new job Monday, June 24. But it's important to keep a running track of when jobs begin and end. For the record, I started my last job Monday, November 26, 2018. At that time I was convinced that Joey or Thor would be dying in the weeks that followed. They are both still alive, and Thor's condition seems to have improved a bit. Friday I will find out how Thor is really doing.

My hours at this job were from 3:30 PM to midnight, though we were allowed to clock in up to 15 minutes early or late and clock out a corresponding number of minutes early or late. Most of us chose to start at 3:15  and leave at 11:45, last call permitting.

Today my last call came through at about 11:44:59.

Fortunately it was a quick one, and I had things wrapped up in about five minutes. But by then most of my co-workers had headed home.

Now on to the next adventure.

Overtime

Today is my Friday, and I'm working my first scheduled overtime. Just two hours - 1:00 to 3:00. My normal shift starts at 3:30, but I have the option of starting at 3:15 and leaving at 11:45. So there's a possibility I can squeeze in a fifteen minute break and still get out at 11:45 PM. There's also a possibility I'll be stuck on a call from 3:00 to 3:30 and not get that break at all.

If this works out, I'll do it again on Saturday.

Back to work

Well, this was a quick and not particularly brutal weekend. Again, I didn't accomplish some major goals, and some of those really can't be put off much longer.

Our era of easily-available overtime, which lasted through our training and into our first week of being on the floor, ended just after Valentine's Day. We can manage to rack up unscheduled overtime  anytime a call runs past the scheduled end of our shift. Still, I hope additional overtime becomes available soon.

Here we go, here we go, here we go again

So here we are at the start of another work week. Just five days this tie. Doesn't seem so bad compared to last week's ten-day marathon. The weather is much nicer, so the commute should be a bit easier.

Whupped

Ten consecutive days of work - well, the last five days of training, on the 11:00 AM - 7:30 PM shift, followed immediately by my first five days of actual work, from 3:30 PM to midnight - have left me exhausted. It didn't help that the last two nights - err, early mornings - had me driving back in snowy, icy conditions, puttering along at 40 miles per hour for much of my nearly 15 mile commute home, or that I didn't get out of work until 12:49 this morning because of the complexity of my last call. But the alternative was to take one day off, work five days, take another day off, and work another five days. I think it's better this way.

I had plans for today. I didn't get most of them done. We'll see how things go tomorrow.

A song of snow and ice

That's pretty much what we had Tuesday into Wednesday: light snow, coated with sleet, sealed in with freezing rain. Fun times.

The all-hands meeting scheduled for Wednesday morning is postponed, so I can sleep in a bit. Then I have to haul out the garbage, shovel, and head in for day ten of ten.

Here we go

I'll be leaving for work in a little bit. Won't be back until at least 12:30 in the morning. First time I've done a shift like this in over five years. We'll see how it goes.

Shifting

I worked from 11:00 AM to 7:30 PM today. Tomorrow, and for four more days after that, I will work 3:30 PM to 12:00 AM. I will have Thursday and Friday off, and then continue on the 3:30 PM to midnight shift.

I went grocery shopping after work. I had a fairly huge list, and added on a few things. As I packed my purchases into the car, I realized I had forgotten something. I went back in and bought it, and more than twenty dollars of additional groceries.

This shopping trip has to cover the rest of the week and beyond. I've gotten used to being able to pick stuff up as needed when I'm on my way home from work. But there are no longer any stores between work and here that stay open past midnight. The Walmart in Pittston is open twenty-four hours, but going there would involve a ten mile detour. Until I can come up with a better plan, I'll need to get any shopping done on Thursdays and Fridays.

Third day

Wednesday. Once upon a time, this would have been "humpday," but today it's just day three of ten. Two more days of training, and then we hit the floor for another five.

As a bonus, right after we began training, payday was moved to Wednesday. Today's pay is already in my account. Time to spend it. Most of it, anyway.

So it begins

The new shift started today. My "before work" hours rapidly filled up with things that needed to be done. Traffic was lighter going to work, but the parking lot was more full. I left work in the dark for the first time in a while - though when my old place closed at the end of September, it was already getting pretty dark at the end of the work day.

The new training class started today, and there are at least two people in it who used to work at my old place. I keep telling my co-workers that if they ever need travel advice, there are over a dozen of us there with experience in the travel industry.