The Month That Was - December 2021

2021 was a rough one.  I have a couple of nagging injuries that, in a frightening preview of the future, have not been healing.  I nearly lost my job.  I got Covid (more below).  Still, every time I feel myself yielding to sorrow I acknowledge that I have it better than most, perhaps even WAY better than most.  I don't need to count my blessings, they are always evident.

I find New Year's resolutions silly, but I do like to renew the two rules I try to live by:

1. Enhance and enrich the lives of the people I care about.

2. Fight sloth (the Deadly Sin, not the adorable forest creature).

If I can do those two things well, everything else is gravy.

[Covid19] Covid For Everyone

[TV] Binge Monkey

[Travel] Travel Friends

[Covid19] Covid for Everyone

So, yeah, I got Covid.  Delta variant I believe.  It truly kicked my ass.  It was as sick as I ever remember being in my life.  That said, I never felt like I was in mortal danger or considered going to the hospital.  But, at its peak, it did keep me in bed for three days straight and kept me near bed for a couple days on either side of that.  As I write this, perhaps three weeks from my first symptoms, I still have a bit of a cough and my endurance hasn't yet recovered.  Here is the full timeline; more than you want to know probably:

11/28 - It feels like I might be getting a cold.

11/29 - Yep, definitely feels like I'm developing a chest cold.

11/30 - Um, this is getting bad; I should get a Covid test just in case.  I stop at several pharmacies and none have a rapid test available.  I snag a quick drive-thru lab test appointment at CVS, wait in the drive thru line for 45 minutes, get to the window and they no longer have my appointment and won't give me a test.  I am done with CVS forever.  I make an appointment at Rite-Aid for the next day.

12/1 - OK this is bad, I'm coughing incessantly and I have the sorest throat in recorded history.  I made a few short, futile attempts at doing work (from home) and got to Rite-Aid for my test.  Otherwise bed-bound.

12/2 - This is awful. It's Covid, I just know it.  A couple more futile attempts at work, but I'm pretty sure this is not a bad cold and, since I had my flu shot, it's probably not the common flu.  Even without my results, I'm pretty sure it's Covid.

12/3 - Is there any way I can be unconscious until this is over?  I don't even make an attempt at work.  I sleep as much as possible.  Going through cough drops at an alarming rate.  Acetaminophen and Naproxen are my best friends.  Finally, at 6pm on Friday, I get the email verifying that I have Covid.  Duh.  I consider contacting my primary to see if I can get the monoclonal antibody treatment, but my primary won't be around until Monday.  I consider calling urgent care, but I am not in a high risk group and they will tell me to keep taking OTC stuff and let them know if it gets worse.  

12/4 - Worse?  How could it be worse?  Well, the fact is that, yes, it could be.  It's awful, but in truth I am nowhere near death's door and I'm breathing pretty freely.  I write off seeking treatment.  Suck it up buttercup.  It's Saturday.  And my third day bedridden.  If there's no improvement by Monday I will call my primary.

12/5 - I'm hungry.  I'm actually hungry.  This is great!  I eat some soup, which I realize may be the first thing I have eaten in over 48 hours.  The soup tastes like a pound of salt has been dumped in it.  Some people lose their sense of smell or taste and others (like me) experience everything tasting like salt. Cough and sore throat are still with me, but I have the strength to actually get out of bed and watch an hour or two of TV.

12/6 - I think I'm going to survive. I still can't work a full day.  I'm weak and fatigued. But, from this point on each day is an incremental improvement.

As I write this I guess I am in what might be called the long tail.  Coming up on three weeks since my first symptoms.  I am back to working full days and light workouts at the gym.  I have a minor cough that doesn't affect me other than to possibly scare people (when in fact I may be one of the safest people in the world to be near at the moment). My quarantine is over, and I am flush with antibodies.  The process has made me terribly jealous of those who have mild or no symptoms and deeply sympathetic for those who are in mortal peril.  

If you're curious about my status, I was vaxxed.  Regular readers know that I was vaxxed as part of the Astra-Zeneca clinical trial when they were trying to get approval by the FDA, a thing they appear to have given up on.  My second shot was 10 months before my infection.  To my knowledge Astra-Zeneca has never issued guidance on boosters. A week or so before I contracted Covid, the folks who are running my part of the clinical study (Michigan Medicine) finally just threw up their hands and said to go get the Pfizer booster, I just hadn't gotten around to it yet.  So for those of you obsessed with the vax, I can think of three possibilities.

1. The vax did me no good.  I got full on Covid anyway.

2. The vax worked for a while, but eventually wore off and I was too slow in getting a booster.

3. The vax worked because were I not vaxxed I would really have been at death's door.

I have no idea which of these is correct, although I suspect (2).  In any event, I'm going to live with my natural immunity for two or three months, then I'll probably go for a booster.

In terms of Covid response gripes, I have 2:

1. We really need more rapid tests.  I understand in the UK they give them directly to households for free.  Here I couldn't even buy one.  This would have saved me a couple of days of wondering and may even have permitted me to get some treatment.

2. Treatment should not require extra steps.  If you get a positive Covid test, the prescription for treatment should come along with it.  No trying to track down your doctor and explain yourself and beg and have to prove how bad off you are.  "Here's your positive test and here's your treatment," should be the goal. (I understand production of treatments may not be ramped up enough to do this yet.)

Sorry, but I can't resist further rumination.  The latest expectation on Omicron is that it is much more contagious, more resistant to our current vaccines, but significantly less deadly than previous strains.  Also interestingly, I read somewhere that it follows a pattern of how the 1914-18 Spanish flu subsided. Newer, less deadly strains began to dominate eventually leading us down the road to where we are now -- most everyone can handle the flu, or respond well to treatment, and an annual vax for high risk or anyone else who wants it is available.

It's beginning to look to me like that's where we are going to land in a couple of years with Covid.  I stand by my original prediction from more that a year ago, which is eventually, we will all get Covid.  It will just be in a form we can handle for the most part.  That suggests we should stop over-emphasizing masks and travel limits and start focusing on ramping up treatments and having a regular vaccine available, perhaps even a combined flu/covid vaccine. 

Anyway, I really don't want to deep dive back into the state of Covid like I did when I was doing a monthly update.  I'm just weary of it and am confident that, over time, it will sort itself out and not be a concern anymore. 

Related: A variant-proof vaccine is getting closer.  This could be another huge step forward. 

[TV] Binge Monkey

Between the holidays and my Covid downtime I went on massive TV binges. Get ready for a lightning round of reviews. 

True Detective Season 1 -- I binged this while I had Covid and was in need of something familiar.  This was the first time I had seen it since its initial run.  My opinion hasn't really changed.  The plot and action was marginal TV police procedural level stuff.  Where it excelled was in the expression of the dark souls of the lead characters, both nihilistic -- one knowingly by choice, the other uncomprehending -- and the portrayals of those characters by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConnaughey.  It was familiar but offered no comfort so I switched to…

Justified -- I think I watched seasons 1,3 and 5.  Just wonderful as I remember.  The dialogue sizzles, the plots are Elmore Leonard-clever, drama and comedy are perfectly balanced.  There are subtleties like the protagonist and antagonist both having fathers that tried to kill them.  The deft handling of the trope of the hero who does great harm in the course of administering justice.  My favorite dramatic moment: the hard-won closure Raylan gets when he finally sees his deceased and hated father's secret cabin, a place of fearsome legend, only to find there is nothing to it.  I get the feeling this series will eternally be my comfort food.

Trailer Park Boys -- I can't for the life of me remember why I started watching this. It's a very low budget, almost amateur level, schoolyard humor comedy about some lowlife white trash criminals in a trailer park in Nova Scotia.  It certainly is not for refined tastes.  Yet, in every episode I found at least one thing to laugh about, whether it was a sublime bit of character acting or a piece of outright slapstick.  I'll also suggest that it is more accurate than most people would like to admit in its portrayal of lowlifes.  Even when presented with straightforward and obvious ways to sort out their lives, they still choose to repeat the behavior that keeps them beat down. The show became a bit of a cult sensation garnering guest appearances from actual celebrities later in it's run. If you watch one episode, you will know if it's for you.  

Squid Game -- This was the hottest show around a few weeks ago, remember?  It's Korean with subtitles.  A shadowy organization gathers up people who are desperately in debt and offers them riches in return for playing a series of what seem like kids games, but failure means death.  It is a truly compelling watch. Alliances are built, and betrayed. Truly nail-biting stuff.  The ending is a failure as we discover it's the most prosaic trope imaginable, all in the service of a sequel.  Still, absolutely worth watching.  It deserved all the attention it got.

Tiger King Season 2 - Could have been subtitled "The Insanity Continues".  Those who came out of the first season OK and now in trouble.  Stories flip-flop.  Attention-whores of all stripes latch on to share the ride.  And, dare I say it, it looks like Joe Exotic might actually find his way out of jail early.  If you're the type who likes to settle in with a bowl of popcorn and gawk at the crazies, this is for you.  

Hawkeye -- probably the best MCU series yet.  It suffers from the inveterate pacing problems all the series have.  It spends too much time on talking and not enough on resolving plots in a coherent way.  But, in the absence of razor sharp writing or direction, these series live or die on the likability of the main characters and how well the actors portray them.  In that category Hawkeye did well.  Jeremy Renner did his fine reluctant hero stuff.  Hailee Stienfield didn't really spread her wings but played the slightly daffy precocious upstart well.  Some of the supporting cast, notably Tony Dalton (who you may remember as Lalo Salamanca) got to chew a bit of scenery.  And of course, the mighty Vincent D'onofrio made his MCU Kingpin debut. All in all entertaining and nicely Christmas themed.

Aside: One final note about Hawkeye, there was the introduction of a character called Echo, who is deaf, and in the comics starts out as a Kingpin sidekick then eventually becomes entangled with DareDevil.  There seems to be plans to build an entire series around her.  This is horribly misguided.  From what I saw she has only very rudimentary acting skills (she can make an angry face, and that's about it).  Both D'onofrio and Charlie Cox (as DareDevil) will make her disappear in every scene they share.  She is simply out of her league.  Big mistake to make her the centerpiece of a series like that.  I hope Marvel rethinks it.

Another Aside: Yes, I watch too much TV.

[Travel] Travel Friends

For many people, travelling is an exercise in trying to save every penny.  They use every tool and trick on the internet to save $20 here or there. I understand this for folks on a shoestring.  In fact, one thing I have noticed in people such as myself who were raised in lower-middle class frugality, getting the best deal, even if it is just by a few pennies, is a reward in itself.

What's interesting to me is that once you have the means to loosen the purse strings a bit, there are many different ways you can use your newfound freedom.  People often think that the way to spend extra travel money is on luxuries and extravagance.  I disagree with that entirely.  I believe the way to spend extra money is on convenience.  And convenience in this case can often mean having travel friends.

My main travel friend is Delta Airlines.  Delta is certainly the best domestic U.S. airline.  That makes me lucky that the airport nearest me is a hub.  It means I can fly direct to most places in the country.  But that's not why I always fly Delta.  Delta was formerly Northwest and when they were Northwest they were the rudest, most antagonistic organization in service industry in history.  They outright hated their customers and were not shy about it.  It got to the point where, despite living near a hub, I would fly two, sometimes three legs just to avoid flying Northwest.  The turn around in corporate culture from Northwest to Delta has been astonishing.  It's a story I hope someone tells it one day.  I am not usually a corporate fanboy. I generally feel no loyalty to corporations or products because I know they mostly have none for me.  But I do admire Delta and that keeps me from hitting Kayak.com or any other price comparison site when I need to book a flight.  I feel confident Delta will take good care of me.  This eases my mind of the possibility of having to go ten rounds with a gate agent over some idiotic snafu.

The other aspects of surrounding flying are also rife with opportunities to simplify your travels.  Going through security, I am registered for TSA-Pre and signed up for Clear.  With Clear I don't even have to show my ID.  They scan my eyes to verify my identity, I flash my boarding pass on my phone, and I move on.  The downside to Clear is that they are not in all airports yet and you can still get a random check, in which case I have to show my driver's license (how awful, eh?).

I have found no way of speeding through the actual screening, although I think TSA-pre helps some with that in that I don't have to take off my shoes.  Still, and this is going to sound prissy, I have a certain pocket in my carry-on and I always take everything out of my pockets and my watch and glasses and so forth and put it there. That way, once I'm through, I can quickly reverse the process and I'm back to normal.  Like I said, that's prissy, but it also stops me from forgetting anything which I have proven very, very capable of doing.

The last thing I do flight-wise is what I would consider my one true luxury splurge.  I pay a healthy amount of money for a high-end American Express card that gets me access to the airline lounges.  Again, this seems like a huge luxury, but really it's a convenience.  There is nothing you can do in the lounge that you can't do in the terminal, it's just a little better and easier in the lounge.  The wi-fi is a bit quicker.  The food and drinks are better and included in the cost.  The bathrooms are cleaner.  The chairs are more comfortable.  Recharge outlets are more available.  If you have to work, there are desks. I have taken to stopping in before or after flights for a quick meal and refresh.  And, believe me, if you have an extended weather or mechanical delay, it will feel like the best money you ever spent.  I once spent nearly an eight hour weather delay in the lounge in Houston slowly sipping cocktails and working on my laptop in comfort as opposed to the madness in the terminal just outside.

So I guess I better list American Express as a Travel Friend.

Another key source of stress in travel is rental cars, and oh boy am I about to go on a rant.  Car Rental agencies are awful.  The best of them nickel and dime you.  The worst of them outright scam you.  The cheap ones are outright crooks.  They play the games and make veiled threats to get you to buy insurance.  They upsell you at a certain cost, hoping you don't realize that it's not one amount but per day.  They hurry you on your way without noting any damage to the car then try to charge you for it upon return. Honestly, if there is one area of travel I would suggest you focus on to reduce stress it's car rental.  Here's how I do it.

I belong to the National Car Rentals Emerald Club.  It's free to join.  When you sign up you give all the relevant information about yourself -- DL#, credit card, etc. -- which they keep on file.  When you need to rent a car, you go to their site, sign in with your Emerald ID number, and make the reservation.  Upon arrival, you don't have to wait in line for anything, you just go to the National lot and there will be a row or two of cars that are reserved for Emerald club members.  You just pick the car you want, the keys will be in it.  At the exit booth you show your ID, they look up your reservation, record that you picked up the car, and you're off.  Trust me, once you get used to this process, if you have to go back to waiting in line to pick up keys at a rental desk, you will want to cry and curse the universe.

The second car rental luxury I treat myself to is prepaying for gas if I am unfamiliar with the area around the airport or fear I will be in a hurry.  For those who don't realize, a rental car comes with a full tank of gas.  You are expected to return it full.  If you don't, they will charge you an exorbitant rate to fill it, like half again higher than the going rate. What that means is that you can find yourself scrambling to find a gas station in an unfamiliar locale when you are already in a mad rush to get to your plane.  Rental companies let you out of this by effectively buying a full tank of gas at the time of rental, this time at a low market rate.  If you do that you can bring the car back with any amount of gas, even empty.  So it's a game.  Any gas you return is effectively out of pocket cost to you.  So, is the cost of whatever gas you return worth less to you than the hassle of finding a gas station at the last minute?  If I know the area I'm flying into (most places in Florida, for example)  I don't prepay and fill the tank before I return.  If I am in an unfamiliar place and likely to have used the bulk of the gas in the tank, then I allow myself the luxury of pre-paying just to avoid the last minute refill hassle.  IF I return with a quarter tank, I'm out a few dollars, but…oh well.

So those are my travel friends as of now.  Delta, Amex, National.  If I had a hotel friend it would be Hilton, but my experiences have been a bit spotty the last few times.  And AirBnB has made inroads with me.

As I look back on this post, why on earth did I go through this exercise? I generally dwell on this topic when I am confronted with stories of travel hassles accepted in the interest of saving a few dollars.  I genuinely understand that for people who are really on a shoestring budget and need to scrimp on travel expenses so they can, perhaps, spend more at the destination.  But I also know others who put themselves through difficulties and hassles on principle as if saving $100 by putting up with a stressful or uncomfortable situation is some sort of moral victory.  Not worth it.  Not when you're on vacation.

As I read this, it makes it seem like I am some sort of snotty rich guy throwing money around.  I'm not.  I spent many years shoe-stringing travel where I could.  I can't count the number of times I drove from Michigan to Florida in the summer heat (off season), in a car without a/c and only an AM/FM radio.  So I get it. But why do that if you don't have to. A little bit of money can go a long way to making travel more convenient.  NOw that I've stopped sweating every dollar, I have virtually no travel anxiety and it has improved my state of mind while venturing about tremendously.

The Month That Was - November 2020

For what I think is only the third time in history I am not going post this month (except this).  A while back I quipped that my expectation is that, eventually, we will all get Covid.  Well I can now say I have done my share to make that true.

It nailed me hard right after Thanksgiving.  Oppressive cough, monstrous sore throat, fever, chills, deep fatigue.  There was a three day stretch where I was barely ambulatory.  I am still fighting a lingering cough and general weakness.  It was as sick as I have ever been in my life.

Question 1:  Were you vaxxed?  Yes.  Since January.

Question 2:  Boosted?  No, that was delayed, for reasons I'll discuss in the full story next month.

I'll have a lot to say about the experience next month, along with a lot of other stuff, but for now I'm going to rest and heal and leave you with only apologies.  Thanksgiving-wise, I am grateful to be above ground and, at the moment, that's enough.

The Month That Was - October 2021

Another month passes into the mist.  Cognitively, I think I look at a year as about the same amount of time I would have thought of as a month when I was a wee lad.  A lot will happen, but once it's over, it just slips into an indistinct time frame of the past.  As a child, if I needed to know the month something happened in the past, I would probably try to relate it to things like summer vacation, who my teacher was, something that happened on a TV show, and from there figure out the more specific time frame.  I now do that with years.  If I have to remember when a certain event occurred, I will try to remember things like what car I was driving, or what tech I was using, or what happened on a TV show.    

Actually, most everything from the past 30 years has blurred into something like "grown up lifetime" and it's really hard to timeline the events in that era.  Apropos of nothing except that it's fall again, and I'm beginning to think I'll survive another year.

[Movies] Flick Check: Roundup

[Books] Book Look: Piranesi, by Susanna Clark

[Arts] Go Van Gogh

[Movies] Flick Check: Roundup

Many Saints of Newark 

Da hell?  That was awful. How did this steaming pile emerge from perhaps the most celebrated and renown TV series in history?  The tone is inconsistent; the motivations vague and unjustified; the acting (with the exception of the mighty Ray Liotta) was lame.  An entire subplot (maybe 30-40% of the film) was a misguided paean to social justice. It even fails as wanton fan service. Just a top-to-bottom disaster.

A month back I speculated whether any of the pantheon TV from the aughts could get made today.  I think this is the clear answer: no.  This is what The Sopranos would be in the current cultural atmosphere. It is a sad, sad time for the arts. My advice: do not watch this.  In fact, let's all agree it never happened.

Black Widow 

Not bad.  Nothing revelatory.  As seems to be common in movies of late, the tone is haphazard and the motivations contrived.  But then, it's a superhero film, not high art.  It's saved by likeable characters and engaging portrayals. Middle-of-the-road MCU fare. In the grand scheme it would probably have seemed more relevant had it come out a pre-Endgame.  

Dune

It's gotten to the point with movies that my first expectation of anything is that it will suck. Filmmakers generally have so many priorities that supercede dramatic quality (social justice, sequels and universe building, the Chinese market) that if you end up with a coherent, humanistic story you can count yourself lucky.  In that way, Dune was a pleasant surprise.

I read Dune as a youth and was left uninspired.  Perhaps I should read it again, but it strikes me as an odd story to have gathered so many admirers.  It is effectively an allegory of an aspect of late twentieth century cultural interaction between an advanced civilization (The Empire in Dune; The West in reality) and an un-advanced civilization (The Fremen in Dune; Arabs/Muslims in reality) where the un-advanced have a resource that the advanced need and will fight for (The Spice in Dune; Oil in reality).  From this we make a gumbo out of with imaginative tech and paranormal people and organizations as de rigueur for speculative fiction.  The elemental narrative is the bog-standard trope of The One.   

Saying Dune is visually impressive is an understatement.  On my 65-inch plasma it was mesmerizing; I can only imagine how good it would look in Imax.  It could have trimmed a bit of excess running time, but it never bogged down for too long.  To director Denis Villenueve's credit there was minimal wokery in a story line that is ripe for it.  To his discredit there was virtually no humor or light hearted moments to offset the rather grim tone and story.

Still it set the stage very well for the upcoming sequel (this movie only covered the first half of the book) and carried my interest enough that I am looking forward to the next installment.

Here's a question:  If Dune is an allegory for West/Islam relations in, say, the 1970s and '80s, why not make a contemporary movie of it.  Reset it in Riyadh in 1975, where Duke Leto is a British Petroleum exec assigned to Saudi Arabian production and the Bene Gesserat are, oh, I don't know, al-Jihad or something, and Ollie North is Baron Harkonnen.  I am only half kidding.  It could be the stuff of serious adult historical drama if handled correctly, which of course it would not be. It would require cliched, narrow, Aaron Sorkin-level viewpoints if it was to be greenlit.  Sigh.  But mix in some blasters and mind-control and you're golden.

[Books] Book Look: Piranesi, by Susanna Clark

This is a delightful book in so many ways.  Briefly described, a man is trapped in a sort of alternate reality which consists of a building of some stripe with an infinite number of cavernous rooms filled with gargantuan statues.  The building is such that it has its own sky, its own ocean, its own ecosystem.  The man, Piranesi, has completely acclimated to reality such that he never seems to question its existence or the existential contradictions of it.  Through his interactions with the only other person in the reality, a man he refers to as The Other, the mysteries surrounding the building resurface and he must face a disturbing new reality.

Yes, but.  The unravelling of reality is not where the beauty of this book is found.  The loveliness here is in the descriptions of the building (referred to as the House) and how Piranesi has adapted not only to survival in the House, but building a belief system and a scientific philosophy out of it.  It is both beautiful and, to my mind, quite realistic.  The house contains dangers, but also great beauty; natural rhythms and random surprises.  Confronted with this Piranesi has created both a scientific outlook -- he assiduously maps his world, tracks tides, observes causal connections -- and religious beliefs -- he has faith the house will provide for him, reveres the dead, accepts the fate the house grants.  Clark's prose builds a beautiful aesthetic for all this, as one would expect from the author of Jonathan Strange & Dr. Norrell, so much so that I was somewhat disappointed that actual reality had to intrude on it.

The other blessed aspect of this book is that it is short.  Clark offers no fluff, no padding, nothing to skip over.  My hobby horse over the years has been that books are almost universally 30%-40% too long.  Not Piranesi.  God bless Clark for that.

Should you read Piranesi? Yes. You may not be as touched by it as I was, but I can;t imagine you regretting it. If there is a larger moral to the story I can't see it, it's just a lovely and intriguing way to spend some time.

[Arts] Go Van Gogh

I had a spontaneous opportunity to see the rather popular Van Gogh immersive experience that is touring the country.  It was pretty cool (that's my deeply considered, intricately reasoned opinion).  The entire experience takes just shy of an hour.  I suspect the installations may vary in their processes. In Houston where I was, you are ushered into a  large room, roughly the size of the gymnasium and are seated on the floor on cushions or, if your entry is well timed, on one of a handful of benches scattered about the room.  You can get a feel for it from the website.

Various famous Van Gogh paintings are given subtle and quite lovely animations then projected onto the walls so you feel surrounded by the paintings.  The motion is gentle and the details of the paintings really get highlighted well.  Of course it is set to music which ranges from ambient to lo-fi to pseudo-classical.  Photography is encouraged, and the result is a room full of backlit people shaped images angling the brightly colored screens to get brief snippets of videos.  The net effect is to almost embed the audience in the animated presentations of the paintings.  Like I said, it's pretty cool.  Certainly worth a trip if it comes to your neck of the woods.  (It's been in Detroit, but I don't go to Detroit.)

I would love to see more of these sorts of shows.  Even more interesting would be to embed them in commercial areas.  There is a tunnel in the Detroit Metro Airport that connects terminals wherein they try to pump calming music and have a '70s era light show.  One of these installations would be much cooler.  Or better yet, how about a bar/restaurant.  It would beat the hell out of having a crummy guitar player with synthesized back-up. I hereby copyright that idea. Hit me up if you want to buy the rights.

The Month That Was - September 2021

For the first time in my life, I think I'm really beginning to feel my age. This may be psychological as my 61st birthday passed in September, but it sure seems like muscle and joint soreness have kicked up a notch and I can't tell you the last time I made it through the day without a short (10 minute) nap.  And if you want to see what an old man looks like, you would look at me when I get out of bed in the morning.  You would think I was 90.

Still, I don't count myself out of any physical activity, and am in fact quite healthy in general.  My mind is not as pliable and quick to understand new concepts as it was, but I can still focus as well as ever (although that may not be saying much). So, no, as much as I may feel like I'm slipping, I am far from out of the game.

Aging is tricky.  It's easy to blame failings on age, but that can also be a convenient excuse.  Whenever I'm tempted to use "because I'm old" as an explanation I ask myself, is it really any different than before and often I find I may be romanticizing the past.  And, even though I can't do everything I used to, behaving as if I could at least keeps the degradation from being self-fulfilling.

I now have two separate versions of my manuscript.  One is not historically accurate but flows a little more smoothly and is more economical, the other is historically unimpeachable.  I'm on the fence about which one to publish.  I think the accurate one, since the work is very niche oriented, meaning the handful of people who eventually read it may be jarred by any inaccuracies. I remain disheartened by this last minute setback.

[House and Home] Amidst Pestilence

[TV] Outer Banks

[Travel] Weekend Warrioring

[House and Home] Amidst Pestilence

I am inundated with Stink Bugs.  These pestilential nasties are an invasive species from Japan.  They look like dime sized alien life forms.  If you crush them they make a horrible cracking sound and the smell they emit upon crushing is the very definition of dank.  To kill without crushing them you have to carefully grab them in tissue and flush them down the toilet.  They are slow and stupid.  All they do is fly around very awkwardly and haphazardly seeking heat sources and breed at an alarming rate. They thrive here as they have no natural predators (yet).  I have a south facing wall in my house and when the sun comes out, they cover the outside.  That's bad enough, but at peak times I'll kill as many as 20 that have somehow wandered inside over the course of the day.  I hate them.  I want to end their species.

Chemical warfare can help and I have called in pest control services for that.  I've also taken to sealing up any cracks in window casing or other structures like the fireplace where they might be sneaking in.  Still, it seems like an eternal battle.

There are some minor rays of hope.  One is that it seems local predators (birds, larger bugs) are very slowly adapting to eat these things.  More promising is the arrival of a new invasive species from Japan, Samurai Wasps.  These heroic little critters are the native predator of stink bugs in Japan and so it only makes sense they should follow the stink bug invasion with one of their own.  Not to be confused with murder hornets, samurai wasps are so small as to be barely visible.  They do pretty much nothing else but hijack stink bug eggs to grow more wasps.  God bless them.

Long term, it's hoped that the samurais will bring the stink bugs under control, to the point they aren't a nuisance.  I should note it's not just having these nasty things in your house that's the problem.  They can devastate crops.  So our little samurai buddies have real economic value.

You know, I post occasionally about what I call the "Roaring 20s 2.0" and the astonishing technological and scientific advances that will pay off in the coming years, yet here we are in the 2020s still fighting plagues and pestilence.

[TV] Outer Banks

A teenage acquaintance of mine developed a minor obsession with the Netflix series Outer Banks.  Evidently it's quite popular with teens so in an effort to be the World's Dopest Boomer I did a quick binge. 

It's a standard Romeo & Juliet variation.  Instead of Montagues and Capulets we have the Pogues, who are the poor folks, and the Kooks, who are the rich folks.  It is unclear where those labels came from, I suspect they are just made up words. (Insert Thor meme: "All words are made up.") The Pogues and the Kooks fight and rage against each other, while the Pogue boy and the Kook girl start at odds but eventually become a couple.  Their first kiss was named "Best Kiss" at the MTV Awards.  Because teens.

Interesting to me is that the Capulets and Montagues were equivalent families (IIRC). An R&J rehash from the 20th century, West Side Story, featured whites and Puerto Ricans, both equally stupid and racist.  In contrast, the factions in Outer Banks we have clear good guys and bad guys and, as you can guess, the rich Kooks are the bad guys. There is a think-piece to be written about how the earlier opposing sides have a rough moral equivalence, whereas this current one clearly has a bad guy and it's The Rich.  I will not be the one writing that think piece.

Still you have the proven star-crossed romance theme coupled with a Scooby-Doo level missing treasure mystery as the McGuffin.  Pile on more teen targeting: The adults have little effect on the teen scene, they don't understand them, they just want control.  The teens want nothing more than independence and to pursue their lives away from the pesky grown-ups. Yup. Another timeless theme.

Apart from the class warfare thing, it's not overly wokey.  It's a pretty solid teen fantasy aimed mostly, but not exclusively, at girls.  If your teen is obsessed with this, it's probably nothing to get too concerned about.

Three further observations:

First, I don't know if the soundtrack is a good source for understanding what music teens are listening to.  I don't recognize the songs so I guess it's possible.  One exception was at the high point of the season when we got an episode closing to "Police On My Back" from the Clash.  Straight out of the late 1970s.  Yes, I did think it was better than anything else on the show, by miles.

Second, there is absolutely no reason for this show to be called Outer Banks.  It is not shot in the Outer Banks -- evidently the producers disagreed with the politics of North Carolina on woke grounds.  There are no Outer Banks locations referenced.  The show-specific vocabulary -- Kooks, Pogues, The Cut (where the Pogues live), Figure 8 (where the Kooks live) -- is entirely made up.  Literally the only thing related to the actual Outer Banks (a place I love) is the name.  I supposed they started by hoping to really create a locally flavored show, but when they needed to cancel the State of North Carolina, they decided to keep the name because it's so cool sounding.  It's actually shot in South Carolina near Charleston.  I guess "Hilton Head" wouldn't have gone over so well.  Hmmm.  There's also a Folly Beach nearby.  That would have been more apropos.

Third, everything I said about the show only applies to Season 1.  Season 2 is abysmal by any standards. Just astonishingly bad.

[Travel] Weekend Warrioring

I took three long weekends in a row for differing reasons.

Savannah/Hilton Head

The purpose of this trip was to help a college student at Savannah College of Art and Design move from one apartment to another.  That was a trip down memory lane -- last minute packing scrambles, multiple trips with large boxes, scumbag landlords, unexpected expenses -- been there, done that.  I didn't get any time to see Savannah, but I've been to Savannah on several occasions so it was a small sacrifice in the aid of youth.  

Fortunately once the moving was over we were able to decamp to Hilton Head, about an hour-ish north into South Carolina, for some beach and chill time.  I knew enough to snag a well located airbnb in the Sea Pines plantation.  A quick explanation:  Hilton Head is divided into districts which they call "plantations" although they are nothing of the sort.  They are basically gigantic homeowners associations with their own commercial district and services. A couple have gone so far as to limit access by the public.  To my mind, the best of these is one called Sea Pines.  It has the best commercial areas and a fine beach club.  If you're not a resident or renter it'll cost you a tenner to get into the plantation.  As snooty as that sounds, it works to keep the area from being overcrowded.  (I would say "works to keep the riff raff out" but really there is very little riff raff on Hilton Head.  You have to pay a toll just to get on the island to begin with.)

Even within Sea Pines parking can be tricky.  The beach club parking is limited to actual residents, not renters.  There is a shuttle of questionable convenience for renters.  So if you're going to have a beach day, the smart thing is to get your rental within walking distance of the beach club as parking elsewhere, while troublesome, is manageable.  Of course, the better plan is to ride a bike if you can.  (I write this as much for my own future reference than for any other reason.)

This was the last weekend in August so it was quite warm, both air and water, but the beach breeze was strong and 4-foot waves were rolling in steadily. I can't imagine better beach day conditions.  It was a perfect reward for a couple days of hard moving. 

We also managed to take an afternoon sail on the Stars and Stripes, the America's Cup championship sailboat from 1987.  In 1983 the America's cup was lost (to Australia) for the first time in 132 years.  In 1987 this was the boat that was built to win it back.  It has been modified for safer cruising, but you still have to crank on massive winches to raise and adjust the sails.  In this activity guests are recruited and naturally I volunteered.  It's a workout, believe me.  The gearing is very long to facilitate precise adjustments, so cranking is a very arduous task.  The winds were light so the sailing was sedate.  Still a great way to nab some drinks out on the water.

Hilton Head is a good spot and worth a visit if you have the means.  (If you don't have the means, you go to Myrtle Beach.)  A little intense at times, in the sense of crowds and money and rules, but it's as fine a beach vacation as any.  

Mackinac Island

Or "The Island'' as I refer to it.  The Island is a paradigmatic wedding destination and that's why I was there this time.  The wedding itself was being held at Stonecliff, a lovely country house-style resort about a mile and a half outside town and a truly beautiful setting for a wedding, in fact weddings are kind of their thing.  

Now, here's the thing about The Island: Staying anywhere outside of town presents difficulties unless you are in good physical condition and inclined towards activity.  It bears reminding you there are no cars.  You can get a horse drawn taxi with a significant wait as long it's not too early in the morning or late at night.  Otherwise you will be biking or hiking anytime you need to get somewhere and back, often up steep hills.  As there was no way the Stonecliff resort was able to house all the wedding guests, there was much long range to-ing and fro-ing among the wedding party.  In my case I made a couple of trips back and forth on foot, including one at about 2AM in a state of significant inebriation.  Since I am in good physical condition and inclined towards activity, I was mostly fine.  The inebriation part was a throwback to my college days from whence I knew most of the attendees, and was mostly less than fine.  It has been decades since I was in a true state of drunkenness and I'm good if it never happens again.  I did a 6 mile run the next day as penance...although you'd have to define run very broadly to include any manner of forward locomotion.

That aside, it was still a wonderful trip to The Island as always.  The wedding went off beautifully. Though it was a rainy day, the rain timed itself exquisitely to allow the ceremonies to continue unhindered.  And it was good to see many familiar faces from all around the country -- Virginia, North Carolina, even as far as California.  The Island is such that in a situation like that you will randomly happen across folks you know as you are trolling around, making it all feel very serendipitous.

More often than not, my trips to The Island have been solo; occasionally I've had Island-savvy friends along, but this is the first time I got to see The Island with a number of first-timers.  They confirmed my view of it as a very special place.

Saugatuck

A last word about The Island is that it was packed.  It was as busy as I have ever seen it.  Frankly, I was lucky to get a room.  The following weekend was the weekend of the 8-mile race I did for ten straight years pre-covid. I could not get a room for that weekend, and believe me I tried everything.  That has never happened before.  I have occasionally

had to pay an arm and a leg for a room at the last minute, but I have never been skunked. That left me and a few friends with no destination, no race, and an empty weekend.

Enter Saugatuck and the Mount Baldhead Challenge.  Saugatuck is a little "arts" community on the west coast of Michigan.  By "arts" I mean a very picturesque, wealthy, walkable town with lots of shops and bars, frequented by boaters, with a sizeable and visible gay community. I'm sure there is some actual Art involved too.  It's a sweet little place about a 2.5 hour drive from my house. It's actually closer to Chicago than Ann Arbor or Detroit, so it gets a lot of weekenders from the Windy City environs.  So when The Island fell through for us, I picked it for an alternate destination.

Serendipitously, this was also the weekend of the Mt. Baldhead Challenge, a short-ish (less than 10k) but truly brutal trail race through the woods and dunes of Saugatuck.  So, lucky us, we not only had a new destination, but a new race also.  

The race was beautiful.  It started on the beach, wound through wooded trails of rolling and fairly steep hills, featured a stair climb of 300+ steps (a staircase built over the highest sand dune -- Mt. Baldhead, hence the name), and a beach run.  Beautiful, yes, but I bonked early and it became real torture for me.  I struggled as hard as I ever had in a race, even though the distance was relatively short.  My friends were a decade or so younger than me, so I had an excuse, but these are folks I was generally able to keep with previously.  Now I was finishing a short race 10 minutes behind them.  The specter of my age, and the degradation of my body, is starting to hover over everything I do.  Something must be done, but I don't know what.  But my angst aside, it was a great race in a great setting.  I'd probably do it again, and endure more angst.

One thing that stands out about this weekend for me was how compatible everyone was.  When I travel with others, I usually find that my inclination is to be more active than everyone else.  Not this group.  No ubers were ordered for short walks into town.  Walking a more scenic route was gladly accepted at the cost of an extra few hundred yards.  Besides the race we had a beach day that included a 5k beach walk in addition to the usual sitting and sunning.

Another thing that everyone was agreeable about was food and drink.  Usually in a group of people you have strong feelings about where to go and who likes what kind of food and who wants to go somewhere nice or somewhere casual.  Again, not here.  Nobody really worried about where we ate, knowing they could find something they liked anywhere. 

I am fond of saying that, while traveling with others is good in that you create shared experiences, it also means everything is a negotiation.  This weekend was a counter-example to that.

The last thing that stands out to me is how everyone (all Michiganders) commented, "how did we not know about Saugatuck before this?"  As with the newbies to Mackinac Island the previous weekend, it felt wonderful to share such a gem and have it so well appreciated.

So that was that.  Three great weekends in a row.  Could I live my whole life like that?  Make every weekend a fabulous getaway with friends? I'd like to try.