Isolation Report, Week #22

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Today I drove to Burbank Airport (much closer and more sedate than LAX) and dropped off The Mother and my littlest one.  By this point, they’ve landed in Denver.  Flying during these trying times is certainly not something our family was looking forward to.  But due to some family medical issues, this trip really couldn’t be postponed.  So we put masks and goggles on them, we availed ourselves as often as possible of the many thoughtfully placed hand sanitizer stations, and we got in and out as quickly as possible.  That’s the best we could do.

I have to say, this was only my second time at Burbank, and obviously my first during the pandemic endtimes.  I was quite impressed at how helpful the airport and airline employees were.  When there were buttons to be pushed (such as the “walk” button for the crosswalk), there was nearly always a masked and gloved employee to push it for us.  We ended up touching nearly nohting the whole time, and everyone was super polite, not annoyed as you sometimes see with overworked transportation workers.  It was easy in, easy park, easy out.  I hope I get the opportunity to use Burbank more often.  You know, if flying ever becomes a thing we do on a regular basis again.

At $work, I was able to polish off a new project that came up with some urgency, so I’m pretty happy about that.  It wasn’t a difficult one, but it had deployment challenges, and a few times when I could have taken shortcuts: that is, doing lower quality work that could be completed faster.  But happily my bosses weren’t interested in that route, so we got it done in a relatively short timeline without compromising.  I was pretty pleased about that.

I haven’t been keeping up with the news as much due to Colbert being off for the past two weeks and Noah being off for the past one.  Possibly this is a good thing.  From what little I have heard, I’m probably better off taking a short break from it.

The grocery store Friday was the best it’s been for a while—possibly the best it’s been since pre-week-zero.  So that’s something to be appreciated.  Then there’s the fact that ... actually, come to think of it, that’s it.  That’s about all the silver linings I can come up with right now.

Recommendations for how to pass the time:

• I’ve finally gotten caught up on The Adventure Zone: “Graduation”.  If you haven’t checked it out yet, and even if you don’t normally care for D&D podcasts, I highly recommend it.  As good as Griffin is as a GM, I think Travis may be even better.
• Umbrella Academy season 2 is pretty friggin’ awesome—possibly even better than season 1.
• Portal Knights is still a great timewaster, although now my gaming partner is gone to Colorado.  No worries: my middle child just got a copy of PixelJunk Monsters 2.  We used to have a great time playing the original, years ago, so we’re hoping to recapture a bit of magic.  So far, it’s been pretty cool.
• Quibi, in its desperate attempt to remain (or maybe even become) relevant, has stumbled on a fun way to leverage the pandemic: they’ve done a “remake” of The Princess Bride, with different celebrites reprising the roles, each one shooting their part in their backyards or what-have-you.  Each scene features different actors for the same characters, and of course the whole thing has to be cut together to make it seem as if they’re interacting with each other when in actuality they’re nowhere near each other.  It’s all very low-tech, of course, and nothing matches (for instance, the Man in Black hands Vizzini a glass of red wine, but it’s become white wine by the time it gets to Vizzini’s hand), but that’s part of the charm.  Some of the casting is utterly inspired—Jack Black for the Man in Black’s climb up the cliffs of insanity, Dave Bautista for Fezzik’s rock smashing, Patton Oswalt for Vizzini’s battle of wits (for the princess? to the death?)—and it’s all great fun.  Of course, you can’t watch the whole thing, unless you have Quibi (which of course no one does), but you can watch what might be the best stretch of it on YouTube.
• I find that just sitting outside (by the pool, if it’s not too hot, or under the patio fan in the side yard) while working from home can be quite relaxing.  I have a new laptop and its battery life is much better than my old model, so I can be outside for quite a bit longer than I used to manage.  I’m still working, but just reminding myself that the outside world didn’t go away just because I never go outside any more can be good for the mental health, I think.

That’s enough for this week.  Shooting for a longer post next week.