I am somehow an essential employee. I work as a project engineer at a car paint manufacturer. I have a 6 year old daughter. Being an essential employee really sucks right now, especially with children, because I need someone to watch my kid while I go to work. Her regular babysitter hasn’t been able to watch her the past week because we had suspected Covid-19 and her husband is at risk for complications. She just wanted to extra time to make sure my daughter wouldn’t be a carrier. And now she’s under 14 day quarantine because someone else in her household was exposed.
I found someone else to watch her, who was willing to risk being around my kid during these times. Except she’s be so unreliable. She straight up didn’t show up on Friday and today, she’s an hour and 15 minutes late though I am guessing she’s not going to show. Meanwhile, I look like the least reliable engineer on the planet as I have to keep working from home at the last minute. This sucks.
Nope, I’m here to claim the title of least reliable engineer on the planet. I just realized this morning that, for whatever reason, my desktop-based email app hadn’t been processing incoming messages, so I missed a flood of rather important emails on Friday morning. While I was working on that, I glanced down at the taskbar and realized that the chat app used by my company had failed to log me in automatically this morning, so it appeared to anyone who opened the app that I was offline. Once I managed to get the damn thing to log me in, I immediately received a message from my manager that I had missed by nearly 45 minutes. >.<
On the plus side, the new monitor cable that arrived last week has fixed all of the problems I was having with the second monitor, so that’s nice.
A young adulthood of post-apocalyptic novels and watching movies about diseases really didn’t drive home just how *boring *a world-wide pandemic would be.
I’ve been in lockdown for almost a month now. It’s still cold and snowy here and I’m trying to avoid going to the store, so I have been going days without even stepping outside of the house. When I do need to go out, I find myself feeling more than a little anxious- I think I’m becoming a bit agoraphobic.
Paradoxically, I’m getting more exercise now than I was before all of this. I work from home, in my basement- and just ten feet away is the home gym I’d managed to put together just a few weeks before it became clear this was going to be the lockdown it is. Most of my work meetings don’t require my participation, so I’ve been passing the time by working out. I’ve lost five pounds so far.
On Saturday, the big dog tore his shoulder open on a nail. We had to go to the emergency vet and wait for four hours. Of course it cost a small fortune too.
Saturday night, a huge branch fell, blocking our driveway. It got wedged in the fork of another tree, making it a right old bitch to remove. Even with the chain saw and tractor, that took up most of Sunday.
However: We were so lucky the dog found that nail with his shoulder instead of his eye. And the injury is so high up, he doesn’t need to wear an e-collar.
And that fallen branch? It didn’t hit anything.
So really, a kind of sucky weekend, but I can’t complain!
My birthday is tomorrow. I’ll get together with my family (we’ve all been pretty isolated) and we’ll order delivery. I’m not super sad about it, but I am really hoping restrictions ease up enough for me to go on my trip in June…
We cut our grass this weekend. Everything looks great, unfortunately nobody will see it.
I was picking up dinner Saturday evening and saw a person cutting their grass on a lawn tractor. (S)he was wearing a quilt/blanket over their head and wrapped around like a cloak, also wearing a mask. Whatever, I guess.
Goddamn squirrel apparently got into the garage sometime Saturday, and has been absolutely trashing the place today. I’ve been tearing the place apart this afternoon; I started both vehicles, and moved the one on the side of the garage that shows all the squirrel activity, but so far nothing. I’m wondering if the little bastard scampered out when I opened the garage door.
I own that exact product. I’ve had it for years, it hangs on the wall of my garage right next to the door so that I can easily reach in and grab it when needed. I’ve owned cheaper, less-powerful zappers, but they don’t work. That thing lives up to its name and has worked for years.
The problem with swatting a flying insect is that it will feel the air movement long before you hit it and get out of the way faster than you can react. What I do is take the zapper, stalk up slowly to the critter as it is at rest, very carefully extend the zapper over it and activate it. I will then lower it toward it gently and steadily. Either I will trap it between the zapper and whatever it is on while it is electrocuted, or if it is startled it will fly upward into the device, electrocuting itself.
With the tougher critters (say an unusually large house fly) a glancing zap may not kill it, but it will be guaranteed to stun it, enough that it can’t get out of the way of a follow-up zap. And then it’s toast.
That item was a great purchase. I heartily endorse it. Don’t buy other brands of zapper; I went through a good half dozen at least before I found one that reliably killed insects on contact.
I’m so nearsighted I can’t function without them outside my apartment, and functioning in my apartment without them is iffy.
On a supply run this morning, being about the fourth person to enter the store netted me a can of Lysol and a tub of disinfectant wipes (the latter is destined for my desk at work). This should hold me for a while, since I wasn’t yet TOTALLY out of either. Hopefully, by the time I need more (probably in a few weeks) supply will have normalized a bit.
