Month: May 2020

The PVP Diaries #37

Andy4 Comments

I didn’t prep the coffee last night. Shame on me. But it isn’t hard to make me happy when it comes to coffee (or in general, really), so the instant stuff from Trader Joe’s is more than good enough.

Update 5-4

Almost strictly single digits for the last week or so. 5, 2, 10, 9, 11, 8, 5, 7.  Maybe it’s just that I’m not a worrier, by nature. Maybe it’s that I don’t project outcomes of misery and defeat as a default condition. Maybe it’s just that I’m a pathetic little optimist, a pesky Pollyanna, for whom no apocalypse is without a silver lining. I’m skeptical of pessimism, dubious of doubt. I think that people who are unsatisfied with their own intelligence use objection and obstruction as a proxy for wit. They carry the belief that no smart person ever simply accepts what is put in front of him, and will foresee eventual failure in any seemingly successful arrangement.

A crisis is always exacerbated by that tendency – the unwillingness to say “we’ll be ok,” combined with the fear of being duped by reality. So we shave off all the little parts that can’t be used to distinguish ourselves in some way, abandon the idea of acceptance (and with it, advancement) until we’ve whittled a nice, round reality into a square peg that doesn’t fit anywhere except our own hip pockets.

So yeah, maybe I don’t do enough doubting, enough questioning, enough worrying. But all of the obsession with appearing smart is keeping us locked up and locked down and not getting anywhere, figuratively or literally. If it takes a mediocre mind to move on, to advance, to progress, then by all means pass me over for all the accolades ever made for the mighty. Forget me, please. You’re only slowing me down, anyway.

………

The golf courses in Seattle have been given the green light.  It’s so easy to get snarky about the smell of privilege and elitism that wafts in from the club house in a move like this. Of all the things for the champagne clinkers on Capitol Hill to free from confinement first, it’s the traditional pastime of the rich. But two things:

  1. I’ve golfed a lot and I know that most of the people on the course are knuckle-dragging day drinkers trying to escape from their families for half a day to flirt with the girl on the beer cart.
  2. It’s one less restriction. Is it enough? Surely not. Is it good for me? No, I don’t golf anymore, and I have no urge to do it now. But as much as I would like to grab a few guns and throw a tantrum at the Capitol, I know that’s not going to move anything any faster.

You’ll say I’ve grown too happy with the scraps that my masters deign to throw into my cage, but frankly, beyond those assinine arrests that have happened around the country, and the short-lived nailing of 2×4’s to park benches so nobody could sit there, I don’t see a whole lot that’s been unreasonable. Unnecessary, yes, but we had two options once the flu arrived from China: underreact or overreact. Either way would have been fraught with complication and failure, and would have been met with protests and anger from some, gratitude and joy from others. And if there’s anything that’s true about all that breath I wasted in the first section of this post, the overreaction was the only course that was ever really possible. Nobody in a position of power had or has the mental fortitude to appear unintelligent by believing in the wisdom of acceptance. When your audience is packed with idiots, they have no idea what it looks like when you’ve done something smart, so you have to dumb down in order not to alienate them. It’s the only way to get re-elected.

………

Overall, Governor Inslee, I say you’re doing fine, brother. Hiccups and imperfections, yes. But in this state the voters who elected you were, and continue to be, clamoring for restrictions, so you are doing your job by listening. A few hiccups here and there, but of course. This one was pretty jarring, though: When a reporter asked Inslee  a question about businesses and how they would handle the phased re-opening, etc, he responded by saying that he spoke with the Starbucks leadership, and so he is confident that it will go well. Now, maybe I’m an idiot, but I’m guessing that the reporter wasn’t asking about the Starbuckses and Amazons and Boeings, but about the small businesses – the mom-and-pops, all that. So that was a blisteringly horrible response. Bad Jay, bad. I don’t think that public speaking is his strong suit, though, and boy howdy do I ever sympathize.

………

The boy dissected an owl pellet yesterday, found a vole skull:

I dug more:

Dig

Forgot to post this rabbit yesterday:

Coronabunny

………

Your “Homeless in Coronafornia” update is back, and here it is:

well, everyone is out and about
but still not many people working

Sounds about right. Here in West Seattle we’re not as active and busy as we were in the days before the plague, but it’s hardly a ghost town. Plenty of people out and about, and more than enough traffic on the road to prevent anyone from thinking “where is everybody.” It’s just about perfect, actually, people-wise. It would be nice if things were always like this, except with, you know, freedom.

—It’s gonna be ok, Comrade Citizen!—

Weekend on the Plagueround

Andy3 Comments

Just floating a song for fun; not saying anything. It’s really a good highway song, and in the winter, but you can take it anywhere, anytime:

The party raged for seven days until it was complete
Bottles buried in the snow lay hidden until spring
Monuments abandoned, wet dreams unfulfilled
Inspired us to descend when goes on down the hill

In the county of el dorado by the old casino
From a jail cell phone so crowded and so alone
Failed by memory, robbed of technology
Can’t remember your number
I wish you’d get me out of here
Come get me out of here

Prepared for the adventure
Braced ourselves for the cold
Winter coats, pockets filled with ammo for the road
Out into the twilight we braved the icy streets
We never reached our destination
That would not be our destiny

………

Food, of course, has been a thing:

The bagel is store bought. My daughter made the cookies, I made the bread, and my wife made the cinnamon rolls. Her glorious past includes a mildly ignoble run as a manager of a Cinnabon store in a mall food court. Her brother was one of her underlings. The chili is just chili. I do not boast of an award-winning recipe. The weather cooled off and dampened on us a little bit the other day, so I threw together a pot of the good stuff. Bread? Bread is life.

………

When they want to paint, they will paint, rain or shine:

It started out as my daughter helping our neighbor/her friend work on an art project for her 4th grade class. They just went a little crazy from there. They are so, so bad at anticipating cleanup, and they were not happy to be pulled away from some other playtime in order to come back home and pick up their mess.

………

Have I mentioned I’m digging out a patio?

Patio Before
BEFORE

There’s a lot of clay, rocks, and roots, so it’s slow going:

Too early to call them “after” pics. Let’s just say “during.” I’ve had a lot of time to wonder whether I’m an idiot for taking on such a big job with nothing but a couple of shovels, a mattock, and a cumbersome, overcomplicated dirtwagon. The thought of renting a tiller crossed my mind, to help get the dirt up, but honestly I’m enjoying the labor. And it’ll be that much better to step back and take it all in when I’m done. Sporadic progress reports will be a nice, cheap way for me to get you all coming back, anyway.

See you tomorrow.

 

The PVP Diaries #36

Andy2 Comments

Montoya

And here goes another week. 36 entries. Have I been doing this for 7 weeks now? Lord hammercy.

Update 5-3

Whatever that means. Seems to me that as the numbers stay lower, the weird explanations for why we shouldn’t be comforted get more creative. Governor Inslee told us on Friday that we’re going to have 6 more weeks of wint – sorry, wrong unreliable authority – he said that we’re in lockdown until at least May 31 now, with this “phased approach to reopening” beginning then:

Unphased 2

We’re essentially in phase 1 already, so not much help there. Whatever. It’s a (laughably small) step in the right direction.

………

The grocery stores are now requiring masks to be worn while shopping. Grocery stores have been the lightning rod from the beginning, being as essential as anything else out there, and the most voluntarily visited indoor place where many people are likely to be. When people want to virtue signal now, it usually involves a reference to their last trip to the store:

“There were only, like, 40% of the shoppers wearing masks, and the seafood guy wasn’t wearing one, either. What don’t people understand about the SCIENCE? They won’t be happy until they’ve killed everyone.”

Oh, my. Your handwringing is audible everywhere in a 3 mile radius. Or there’s this stalwart fellow…

“I went to the store without a mask on yesterday. You should have seen all the weak, obedient little sheep that were terrified to walk past me! Just to mess with them I went the wrong way down the one-way aisles!”

Oh, my. The exhaust on your pickup is audible everywhere in a 3 mile radius.

Yay for both of you.

Still, an axiom that I’ve always lived by:

People in masks

………

You may accurately deduce that the boy and I watched The Princess Bride over the weekend. First half Friday night, second half Saturday (with mom!). The movie is perfect in so many ways, especially one that I had no way to recognize the first dozen or so times I watched it. All those moments when Fred Savage gets annoyed at Peter Falk and interrupts him because the story gets too mushy are exactly right. The Boy could sense the mushiness coming and would already be hiding his face to avoid having to see Westley and Buttercup kiss. He loved that the kid in the movie felt the same way. Man, the kids hate that stuff. And in classic kid form, he squirmed a bit and even complained a little while we watched, but oh boy was he pissed off when I told him we had to turn it off and go to bed on Friday night.

I did story writing with him on Thursday last week. They get the big gray sheets of paper with blue lines – two solid with a dashed line in the middle for practicing the handwriting – to write their stories on. It’s usually something topical: What did you do over the weekend, where will you go this summer, what did you do for the holiday (that’s pretty much the topic after/before every holiday in the year). Favorite pet or pet you’d like to have, etc. When school was in session I volunteered in his classroom on story writing days, helping them spell and trying to keep their stories from being too disjointed and wild. Since the homeschooling began he has resisted it somewhat, and last week one of us (I can’t remember who) had the idea that maybe I should sit next to him and write one, too. So I did. I grabbed one of those pieces of paper and wrote a story in what I hope is a sort of grade school-ish language. It turns out that keeping it simple makes for easy and enjoyable reading (take that, Joyce). We decided to write about how we’ve been spending our weekends. I even drew a picture like they always do when they’re finished:

Story time

I’m going to turn it in with the Boy’s work when I go make the bag swap this morning. I hope they like it.

………

Lots of little doing over the weekend – I’ll throw up a supplemental post with pictures here pretty soon. Otherwise, little else to report.

— Be a giant, Comrade Citizen! —

 

The PVP Diaries #35

Andy1 Comment

 “The animals were thoroughly frightened. It seemed to them as though Snowball were some kind of invisible influence, pervading the air about them and menacing them with all kinds of dangers.”

THE MENACE:

Update 4-30

“Let’s just keep it around ten until the turnip’s dry.”

“Yes, sir.”

THE ANIMALS:

The city’s picked someone to stabilize the bridge while continuing to figure things out. Maybe it took them too long, maybe it didn’t. I have no idea. It’s an enormous bridge with, literally and figuratively, and awful lot riding on its present and future. I’m sure this is ridiculously complicated and frustrating for the people making (or not making) the decisions. This is where, love him or hate him, someone like Trump would have been the right person to be in the mayor’s office. 5 minutes after the closure he would have said “tear it down and build a new one, starting right now.” There would have been an uproar and all kinds of shouting and disagreeing, and experts would say why they shouldn’t do it, and the people would have stamped their feet over the costs and been upset that the option to repair instead of replace wasn’t considered. Which of course is exactly what’s happening now, anyway, without a whole lot of progress yet. But that bridge would be half demolished (or more, I don’t know how fast these things go) by now, and we’d be well on our way. Best decision? I don’t know. But eating your dead shipmate and bailing water on a leaky raft is better than starving to death while treading water and being slowly eaten by sharks from the toes up.

I should mention that there is a very long term plan to build light rail between West Seattle and Ballard, just north of downtown Seattle, plus a few other branches around the city. The Future is coming! And it’ll be…a train? Another train? Nobody rides the last one we built. Anyway, it’ll be on some undetermined route over Elliott Bay, with at least a couple neighborhoods along the way getting a nice, new, concrete canopy in the process. You can imagine the tumult, the neighborhood associations mobilizing like angry rabbits, and now, the calls to incorporate the light rail into the new West Seattle Bridge. I have no doubt they’re considering it. Here I am again: good idea? Bad idea? Here, again, is a place where politics will strangle progress, and the usual administrative paralysis will set in, all because of people being afraid to upset anyone (read: lose votes).

THE MANY SNOWBALLS:

  • We christened the new freezer by putting ice cream in it yesterday. Now it’s time to stock up on meats and let that thing earn its keep.
  •  I started a dough for a loaf of bread that’ll be kneading (oh, dad) my attention again at 9:00 this morning.
  • The Boy and I took a walk. He rode his scooter. That sucker’s at least 7 years old and has been on the verge of being thrown away more times than I can count. But it keeps getting used:

I let him wear pajama pants yesterday. Apparently the kids on our not-so-dead-end street have decide that it’s what they’re doing. I told him it’s ok, but tomorrow it’s real pants again. It’s still a school day, I have to keep reminding him, not a vacation. Then my daughter came down in her pajama pants and I was a little more stern. 6th grade now, she’s on Zoom classes, etc. I said that I have the same policy as her school (which is true): you don’t attend classes from your bed, and you need to be dressed. “But tons of people are in their pajamas.” “Well, then they’re breaking the rules.” That’s all it takes for her – she doens’t like breaking rules. She got huffy about it, but went back up and changed her pants. She’s awesome.

I mentioned my favorite bakery the other day. Went by it on our walk yesterday and it looks like this now:

OGB

The takeout windows are new. No doubt they’ll get plenty of use even after the (indefinite) lockdown. The ordering area inside is small and gets crowded easily, mostly with people who aren’t staying anyway, so this will help ease that. No word on opening yet, but we’re all looking forward to it.

The weekend is upon us! I’ll probably take my usual break for the next two days, unless something comes up. Until then it’s just me and the miserable patio project that’s just gotten into the serious phase. Am I capable? Yes. Am I willing? Not very. At least I’m building this particular windmill for Snowball, and not Napoleon.*

*Full disclosure: I don’t know the Animal Farm story. It’s one of those classics I’ve never read. For now I’m assuming that Snowball is a good guy because of the way things have fallen out so far. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong.

— The Leader wants you in pants, Comrade Citizen! —