Pandemic Meme Time!

 

1. Are you an Essential Worker?

Sort of? My employer makes an essential pharmaceutical and my job is essential in getting the product out the door to the market. My worksite has “essential business” authorization to continue in-person operations (and even to continue with construction activities to support future operations). I’m also a “100% WFH” worker. Discussing this with others, it seems to me that people are falling into roughly three groups: the WFH-privileged who are basically continuing with their job as normal without significant risk of exposure; the frontline-essential people who are authorized/able/required to continue working, but whose jobs require a physical presence and therefore put them at risk (which covers everyone from medical personnel to essential service workers to delivery people and so forth); and the work-excluded who had jobs that needed to be done in person but where the jobs are not considered essential enough to balance the exposure risk.

2. How many drinks have you had since the quarantine has started?

Who’s counting? Honestly, I haven’t been drinking alcohol at a different rate than I usually do. But my usual is a couple drinks a week.

3. If you have kids... Are they driving you nuts?

No kids.

4. What new hobby have you taken up during this?

You see, this is the thing that keeps slamming me in the present situation. I don’t really have any more “free time” than I did before. I’m still working a full time job. I’m still doing my blog and podcast. The time that I previously spent commuting is now spent doing yardwork and cooking, but those aren’t “new” hobbies. If anything, I’m feeling over-extended simply continuing with my existing hobbies. The closest I’ve come to anything new is that I’m succumbing to the sourdough cult and am being sent a culture to adopt and care for.

5. How many grocery runs have you done?

I’d have to go back and count up (since I’ve tracked them in my running contact-trace comments). Less than one a week. Normally I do “just in time” shopping, with generally 2-3 stops at a store per week.

6. What are you spending your stimulus check on?

I’m not getting one. My income is above the threshold. Before that information was available, I’d already pledged to distribute my stimulus check to worthy causes. So far I’ve distributed about half of what the stimulus check would have been and I’m still keeping my eyes open for things to support.

7. Do you have any special occasions that you will miss during this quarantine?

Not particularly special, though a number of SFF conventions are either cancelled/postponed/gone-online. I probably won’t be able to do my usual June post-birthday party, but it’s not a big deal.

8. Are you keeping your housework done?

A little more than usual. The kitchen is being kept more in order (because I’m using it more). I’ve run the vacuum a bit more often than usual. But most of my “work around the house” energy is going into the yard, which is usually way behind schedule this time of year.

9a. What movie have you watched during this quarantine?

I’m part of a regular co-watching club via zoom on Tuesday evenings. So far we’ve watched Emma (the new one), Amelie, and Clueless.

9b. What are you reading right now?

Feminine Masculinities by J. Halberstam (for the LHMP blog). I read Don’t You Know There’s a War On? by Janet Todd in preparation for an interview last week. Otherwise, my reading is broken at the moment.

9c. What video game are you playing?

I don’t do video games. No time.

10. What are you streaming with?

I don’t do streaming. No time.

11. 9 months from now is there any chance of you having a baby?

LOL. No.

12. What's your go-to quarantine meal?

I’ve been enjoying getting back to regular, creative cooking. In the Before Times, I almost never cooked on weekdays. I don’t have any specific go-to meal (except maybe breakfast skillets?). I’ve been making a program of working through some of the meat-share beef and lamb that’s been in my chest freezer for a rather long time. At the start of quarantine, I made a game of including some element fro The Produce Of My Estates in every meal, but dropped that when it started feeling like a burden rather than a fun challenge.

13. Is this whole situation making you paranoid?

My go-to defense against existential despair has always been pragmatic preparation combined with a large heaping of denial. I’m most anxious about the national-scale consequences rather than the personal ones. I want us to come out of this having learned some important lessons and having pledged to make this a better, more equitable, more just nation (and having determined to throw the right-wing bastards out permanently). But I’m paranoid that instead the 1% will leverage the pandemic as a means of becoming even more entrenched in power and finding ways to profit even more off of everyone else’s disaster.

14. Has your internet gone out on you during this time?

It did briefly for one afternoon early in the shutdown, but rebooting the modem fixed it.

15. What month do you predict this all ends?

I’m not even going to speculate on that. It also depends on what you mean by “ends”. When can we be entirely back to normal? When we have an effective vaccine, a better understanding of long-term epidemiology of this thing, and solid control over treatment of critical cases. As to when the quarantine ends...that’s going to happen in dribs and drabs, depending on the local political wisdom, depending on local conditions, depending on local disease dynamics. I expect that my employer will continue to take a conservative approach (just as they did at the beginning) and that my own specific job may continue to be remote for quite a while.

16. First thing you're gonna do when you get off quarantine?

When I feel it’s absolutely safe to do so? Spend a Saturday morning sitting at Peet’s coffee working on my laptop. When the international situation is under control? I was really looking forward to going to New Zealand for Worldcon. Maybe I’ll do a tour of NZ and Australia just because I’ve never done it.

17. Where do you wish you were right now?

About 15 feet away sitting in my garden, not feeling guilty for blogging rather than doing my dayjob.

18. What free-from-quarantine activity are you missing the most?

Hanging out in coffee shops, just passively being part of a crowd.

19. Have you run out of toilet paper and hand sanitizer?

Not even close. I’d just picked up a 24 pack of TP before all this came down, and switched to using a “squirt-bottle bidet” technique for #1 when took TP usage down to about one roll per week. (Is this TMI?) Immediately before shutdown, I’d mixed up a batch of home-made hand sanitizer (aloe vera + everclear) to make available at FOG Con, and the remainder of that batch could easily see me through the end of the year. (I keep a pump bottle in my car, but at home I wash rather than sanitize.)

20. Do you have enough food to last a month?

I think I could last 2 months with what I have on hand, if necessary. But I’d run out of things like fresh veg and cream for my coffee very early on.

21. Anything else?

I’m trapped in a cycle of feeling overwhelmed by all the online quarantine activities people are making available and promoting, feeling left out that I don’t have time to participate in much of any of them, and then feeling guilty for feeling left out because it’s a privilege to be able to continue in my regular job uninterrupted. While I don’t feel direct personal anxiety about getting sick (see: denial; also, I don’t tend to get badly sick when I do get sick) I do feel the same overwhelming looming sense of doom that nearly paralyzed me when Trump was elected (and for much the same reason). This would be a bad enough situation if we had someone intelligent, sane, competent, and compassionate in charge. I keep flashing back to that SNL skit with the actor playing Hilary Clinton holding up a sign to the woman answering the door that says, “He’s going to kill us all.”

Gin Review: Aviation

 I used to to a regular series of "ingredient reviews", especially picking a random item in the produce department that I'd never eaten before and trying it. On twitter today a bunch of us got talking about what brands of gin we had sitting around and I said I'd start doing gin reviews. So here goes. Reviews will be based on a gin & tonic, using a high quality but relatively neutral tonic water, with a slice of Lemon Of My Estates. (I always keep a bag of sliced and frozen lemons in my freezer to serve as combination flavoring and ice cubes).)

To be clear: I am not an expert. I have no training on what one looks for in a gin. This is stream of consciousness. I've had gins that I didn't much care for. I've had ones I love.

Aviation Gin - OK, I confess, I'm shallow. I first tried Aviation because they had a hilariously funny commercial. No, not the one mocking the Peleton ad, though that is also fun. I mean, this one. Check it out. If you're going to drink, drink something with a sense of humor. My shallowness in picking brands to try will become a theme, but they say that picking a wine based on the label is as good a method as any other, so what the heck.

But while the goofy marketing caught my attention, the gin itself is anything but a joke. I'd call it "floral with a metallic bite" if that sounds attractive. It's complex and smooth and doesn't leave any unpleasant aftertaste. I bought Aviation once for the amusement value, but bought it a second time for the taste. Falls into the "premium price" category, but worth it for those times when you want to slow down and pay attention to what you're drinking.