I was in MoMA in NYC on February 28th, 2020. I was at the Midtown Hilton for an O’Reilly Architecture conference, but it was boring, so I went to MoMA. I have pictures on my phone from running around and taking pictures of the art. My favorite is OOF. Edward Ruscha, 1962.
“The single word, its guttural monosyllabic pronunciation, that’s what I was passionate about,” Ruscha has said of his early work. “Loud words, like slam, smash, honk.”
How I avoided getting COVID, I have no idea. I should have gotten it.
My last day in the office was March 12th, 2020. I went home a day before we closed the office because I was having terrible allergies, and didn’t want to drive into DC for one day. After all, we’d all be back in the office by May, at the very latest. How long could this last?
March 19th is the day the pandemic actually started for me. Lots happened on that day, but the one that sticks in my memory is sales 0. That was the first day that the sales ticker did not turn over, not once, not even for fraud. It was the first of many. Not a great look for a business travel startup — one I am no longer with, because sometimes there’s no path except through.
All kinds of deeply insane things have come to pass between then and now. Donald Trump told us all to shoot up Clorox bleach. Australia — the entire continent — lit on fire. George Floyd riots. Hong Kong protests. Kobe Bryant died. Volcanos erupted. Killer bees. We elected the most improbable man, Joe Biden. The notorious RGB died. Crazy QAnon people rushed the Capital. Millions of people got COVID, and 500K+ Americans died.
Today marks one year. I’m still struggling with reading non-fiction and writing anything more long form than a blog post. I’m still not going anywhere.
Gaming saved our sanity through the pandemic. Without tabletop gaming over Zoom, I’m not sure what we would have done. We haven’t gamed so much since college. It was the one social activity we could do over Zoom that was consistent, predictable, and totally worked. We come to praise D&D, for lo, it was a gift in the pandemic.
2021 seems to be looking up? The world lacks swarms of killer bees. Granted, Texas did improbably freeze, but these things happen. We’re in line in Howard County for vaccines.
I’m done thinking about this. Let’s go for the stats:
We’ve had 30,422,504 cases of COVID-19 with 553,899 dead. But, according to the Vaccine Progress Bot:
- 115,730,008 given, that’s 20.7% done! 442,277,181 to go.
- Optimistically we’ll be done by 08/08/21.
- Our current pace is 2,503,731/day, which is up 29,969/day dod. At this rate, done by 09/11/21.
PS. THE Ohio State was just eliminated from Tourney by Oral Roberts in the first round. 2021 is definitely looking up.