The day that everything changed forever

March 5th, 2020.  It was a Thursday.  I woke up at 5:58 am like I do every work day.  I brushed my teeth and went downstairs, poured myself a bowl of cereal, but instead of eating it immediately, I went to let the dogs outside, because I like my cereal a little bit soggy.  I prepared my wife’s breakfast smoothie, like I had done over the last two weeks, because she wanted to switch things up from the bacon, egg and cheese English muffins that I’d been making her every morning for the last month prior.

Mythical wife and I left for our respective jobs, and as is always the case, I went straight to the gym first.  This was a cardio day, where I spend my entire time running on the treadmill.  6.9 speed, no incline, for 20 minutes, and then I push it over the last five, before giving myself a five minute cool down and then hitting the showers.  I always think twice about what I change into after cardio days, because I tend to keep sweating even after a shower after doing cardio.

Afterward, I return my gym bag to my car and head up to the office, as is the norm every single working day.  I plop down at my desk and feel the existential dread of the inevitable emails of people pointing out my flaws as a worker or people in other departments making their problems become my problems, and then I contemplate why I stay with this company before realizing how much worse I could have it elsewhere, and then try to think positively about my reports and the people I work with as bright points in an otherwise deteriorating opinion of my job.

But more importantly, I set out to tackle my biggest concern of the day: how to get more 10K eggs in Pokémon Go.  I had made a point to use a bunch of incubators to hatch away several 5K eggs, because 5K eggs are like herpes in which you get saddled with them, and there’s no way to get rid of them, except for getting them to hatch.  They hog up your limited inventory and prevent you from getting the more coveted 10K eggs.  I had cleared up four valuable eggs slots, and wanted to figure out if there were any way to hedge my bets and get 10K eggs in their stead.  I searched on the internet and I asked the community on the work’s Slack channel because there are a few hardcore types who work for the company.

Then, I get a text message from mythical wife: she’s going to the hospital.  She’s feeling otherwise fine, but she was appearing to be leaking fluid that was in all likelihood not urine.

Uh oh.

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Only in the south

What could possibly go wrong – Georgia senate panel approves legislation that would make it legal to “pull or show” your firearm during a dispute as long as you don’t “aim it offensively” at someone

In other words, Georgia is trying to make it completely legal to show that you have a gun in order to attempt to deescalate a conflict, but not necessarily point it at another human being.

Yeah, that’s really going to go over real well; especially when jobber A flashes that they have a piece during a heated argument over the last $16 waffle maker at Walmart on Black Friday, and then jobber B responds by flashing their larger, more powerful piece.  Surely, the hypothesis is that jobber A will immediately stand down and forfeit the waffle maker to jobber B and then everyone will resume what they’re doing peacefully.

But the reality is that the two of them will eventually reach this uncomfortable and tense stalemate before one of them inevitably breaks the law and flashes it at the other, causing mass hysteria around them, before the highly armed and concealed-carrying rest of Georgia all begin brandishing weapons all around and then Milledgeville ends up on the news for the first time since Ben Roethlistberger raped a chick way back when.

Seriously, this is some only in the south kind of shit logic, and if there were ever any more proof that industries like firearms have their hands in the pockets of old white men in political power, dry rubbing their flaccid old dicks, it’s stories like this, because in no scenario in the world involving people who are not law enforcement, does the introduction of firearms ever have a chance at hell at deescalating anything at all.

Digging deeper, I love how the impetus behind this ridiculous bill is that the previous punishment for brandishing a weapon is a 20-year felony, and a bunch of hicks decided that they shouldn’t have to go to prison for two decades because they have a gun and want to show it off.  So why not just change the fucking law?

Anyway, I look forward to the statistics that will never be published where gun violence actually goes down as a result of laws like this.  Or the amendment where it will not-so subtly exclude black people from this law and in fact make it a 25-year felony for the colored folks for even saying the word “gun” around old white people.

A catch-up post

Usually, after a week or so, my internal brogging meter starts panicking if I haven’t taken the time to write anything.  After two weeks, I get anxious that I haven’t written anything other than a mundane email at work, and nothing for my own gratification.  And anything beyond that is just pure chaos in my head, and I begin to descend down this rabbit hole of thinking if I don’t write anything soon, I’ll fall into this pit of never writing again. 

Obviously that’s ludicrous thinking, and I can start back up whenever I feel like it, but the overlying factor is that when the day is over, I simply need time to write.  Topics aren’t necessarily the issue, I’ve got a small queue of things that I found to be thought-provoking to want to blab on about for a little bit, but unfortunately the need for time didn’t necessarily sync up.

So instead of trying to write backwards and backfill a queue of mostly inconsequential topics, I figured I’d just start off with writing for little else than the sake of catching up, because this isn’t necessarily going to be one topic I touch on, and I’ve definitely got a lot on my mind these days that I think wouldn’t hurt to put into writing for me to reflect back on in the future.

First and foremost, let’s talk about my impending journey into upcoming fatherhood.  Obviously, I haven’t really written a lot about this, but it’s not because I don’t care, but it’s mostly because it’s a tremendous amount for me to process, and I don’t always know how to express myself when it comes to it.  I think things are a little bit clearer now these days, but over the last few months, it’s always been more of a “when” kind of thing, but as the expected due date has dwindled from months to weeks, we’re at the point where mythical wife explained to her parents that we’re in the stage where our kid can actually show up any time now, regardless of the fact that we’re still a little around six weeks away.

That notion, kind of got my blood pumping, and suddenly it doesn’t feel like I have enough time left to do all the things around the house that we both know will probably never get done once the baby arrives.  On account of this, I’ve been working pretty much non-stop when I’m at home, doing painting, minor repairs, and more painting, to get the house to a stage where we’ll be content to let it sit for many years before we feel the need to freshen things up later on.

Needless to say, I fucking hate painting with a passion.  It’s about the worst activity in the world for homeowners, and it always makes me want to pay someone to do it for me, but I know that the estimates for the labor will often times be around 10x more than it would cost for the paint and for me to do it myself, and because I’m Asian and cheap, I end up doing it myself no matter how much I revile it.  I’ve decided that in the future, painting, will be the most adequate form of discipline I can apply to my kid if she ever becomes a bratty teen that steps out of line.

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