Entry No. 6,231
I didn't mean to skip yesterday. It just happened.
Sunny and hot today. Our high was 91˚F, with a heat index of 98˚F. At twilight, it is currently 90˚F, with a heat index of 96˚F.
Yesterday began by discovering that, in my sleep, one of my problematic teeth had lost a chunk, which I presumably swallowed. There's no going to the dentist in Birmingham at the moment. No, not even if you're vaccinated and everyone in the dentist's office is vaccinated. If you think that, you do not understand what is presently known about the delta variant. So, I used some temporary filling gunk to rebuild about a quarter of the tooth, and, unless it abscesses, it waits until the world's a little safer.
Which may be a slow train coming. I cannot stress enough how bad things are in Alabama. Right now, we are at a -29 on available ICU beds, and Governor Meemaw is whistling in the dark and still telling the world that Alabama is open for business. As of Thursday, school districts in Alabama had reported 5,970 cases to the state already this school year, and classes started, I think, less than two weeks ago; only about a third of our school systems even have mask mandates, much less vaccination mandates. Do people really care so goddamn little for their children and the children of others?
Here's something Kathryn posted to Facebook today: If Jefferson County, AL (where we live) had the same population density as Providence County, RI, the COVID-19 cases would be over 16 times what they are right now (presuming the same percentage of the population got sick - likely, it would be more). This is what barely 1/3 fully vaccinated and hardly anyone wearing masks gets you with the Delta variant. Yesterday in Jefferson County there were 559 cases. Multiply that by 16 and you get 8,944. Pretty sure that at no point in the pandemic did the whole state of RI have that many cases in a day. Alabama is about halfway there.
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I did not mean to go on at suck length about COVID-19.
This morning I was up at 6 a.m. (ugh) and wrote 1,026 words on a new piece that I'm calling "Celebrity Lifestyle."
A couple nights back we saw Craig Zobel's The Hunt, which was actually a lot better than I expected. I also had not realized that he's the same guy who created our beloved Homestar Runner, way back there in the late '90s, when the world sucked so very much less than it sucks right now. We also watched the first three (of eight) episodes of Netflix's Brand New Cherry Flavor, based on Todd Grimson's 1996 book. Honestly, I've never read the book, but I hope it's a lot better than the series. I don't think we'll be watching more. It's bad, yeah, but not bad enough, or nor bad in an interesting enough way, that we'll go back from the sheer car-crash factor of the thing. It's just...sorta awful.
Today, I got back into listening to the audiobook of Houses Under the Sea. I made it through "From Cabinet 34, Drawer 6," which I liked better than I remember liking, and also "The Drowned Geologist (1898)," which I was pretty sure I had grown to hate. But Bronson Pinchot reads it for the audiobook, and I think he actually convinced me it doesn't suck like, you know, Brand New Cherry Flavor.
Yesterday afternoon's comfort film was Tarantino's The Hateful Eight (2015) and today's was Inglourious Basterds (2009). I needed a little Tarantino.
Oh, and yesterday I wrote a second preface to accompany the original preface for Cambrian Tales.
This entry got away from me somewhere, and it's almost 8 p.m., and I'm just gonna stop it here.
Later Tater Beans, From Perdition,
Aunt Beast
9:43 a.m.
Sunny and hot today. Our high was 91˚F, with a heat index of 98˚F. At twilight, it is currently 90˚F, with a heat index of 96˚F.
Yesterday began by discovering that, in my sleep, one of my problematic teeth had lost a chunk, which I presumably swallowed. There's no going to the dentist in Birmingham at the moment. No, not even if you're vaccinated and everyone in the dentist's office is vaccinated. If you think that, you do not understand what is presently known about the delta variant. So, I used some temporary filling gunk to rebuild about a quarter of the tooth, and, unless it abscesses, it waits until the world's a little safer.
Which may be a slow train coming. I cannot stress enough how bad things are in Alabama. Right now, we are at a -29 on available ICU beds, and Governor Meemaw is whistling in the dark and still telling the world that Alabama is open for business. As of Thursday, school districts in Alabama had reported 5,970 cases to the state already this school year, and classes started, I think, less than two weeks ago; only about a third of our school systems even have mask mandates, much less vaccination mandates. Do people really care so goddamn little for their children and the children of others?
Here's something Kathryn posted to Facebook today: If Jefferson County, AL (where we live) had the same population density as Providence County, RI, the COVID-19 cases would be over 16 times what they are right now (presuming the same percentage of the population got sick - likely, it would be more). This is what barely 1/3 fully vaccinated and hardly anyone wearing masks gets you with the Delta variant. Yesterday in Jefferson County there were 559 cases. Multiply that by 16 and you get 8,944. Pretty sure that at no point in the pandemic did the whole state of RI have that many cases in a day. Alabama is about halfway there.
-----
I did not mean to go on at suck length about COVID-19.
This morning I was up at 6 a.m. (ugh) and wrote 1,026 words on a new piece that I'm calling "Celebrity Lifestyle."
A couple nights back we saw Craig Zobel's The Hunt, which was actually a lot better than I expected. I also had not realized that he's the same guy who created our beloved Homestar Runner, way back there in the late '90s, when the world sucked so very much less than it sucks right now. We also watched the first three (of eight) episodes of Netflix's Brand New Cherry Flavor, based on Todd Grimson's 1996 book. Honestly, I've never read the book, but I hope it's a lot better than the series. I don't think we'll be watching more. It's bad, yeah, but not bad enough, or nor bad in an interesting enough way, that we'll go back from the sheer car-crash factor of the thing. It's just...sorta awful.
Today, I got back into listening to the audiobook of Houses Under the Sea. I made it through "From Cabinet 34, Drawer 6," which I liked better than I remember liking, and also "The Drowned Geologist (1898)," which I was pretty sure I had grown to hate. But Bronson Pinchot reads it for the audiobook, and I think he actually convinced me it doesn't suck like, you know, Brand New Cherry Flavor.
Yesterday afternoon's comfort film was Tarantino's The Hateful Eight (2015) and today's was Inglourious Basterds (2009). I needed a little Tarantino.
Oh, and yesterday I wrote a second preface to accompany the original preface for Cambrian Tales.
This entry got away from me somewhere, and it's almost 8 p.m., and I'm just gonna stop it here.
Later Tater Beans, From Perdition,
Aunt Beast
9:43 a.m.