Welcome to Glenn's Blog!

Here I will periodically post random thoughts and stories about what's going on in my life and the world around me. As if anyone cared. But seriously, you've found your way here, so hopefully you will enjoy at least some of what I have to say, even if you aren't entirely interested in it. At the least, it should be a good way to waste time.

Friday, July 31, 2020

Today

Today I'm out sitting along the shore in Benicia, just watching and listening to the waves lap at the shoreline filled with tiny little pebbles of varying colors. I didn't know when I got up this morning where I'd end up. I knew I wanted to get out of town a little bit, preferably somewhere cooler than Sacramento has been. Usually my go-to place is San Francisco of course, and I almost did that again. But along the way I got sidetracked to the Benecia State Recreation Area.

Well, It means about an hour less of driving than if I had gone all the way to San Francisco. So, there's that little bonus.

I had actually been here a couple times before, albeit briefly. It was a chance find when I was playing a musical at a nearby high school. I came early for my show just so I could look around a little. But I didn't have enough time to have a real chance to explore it. Today I corrected that oversight. And now after walking about 7 miles and having a picnic lunch, I'm just sitting and enjoying the sounds of the waves and the nice refreshing breeze. Just a little bit of paradise.

It's the last day of July. Tomorrow, August is here. Connor will start 1st grade in August, although with distance learning. Somehow. I will undoubtedly return to work at some point, after a long hiatus. I'll likely have Connor with me, since he can't very well stay home. I'll probably end up moving from my house, assuming the house sells. Not sure to where. The realtor thinks there will be lots of interest and that it will sell quickly. Lots of change on the horizon. Change change change.

I never cared much for change. But it's an inevitability of life, I suppose.

But today is just...today. Simple. Peaceful. Relaxing. Ordinary. Tomorrow will be a new day.

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Time Capsule

So today I went back in to work for a bit. Like, actually on campus. Being back after all this time was a little surreal. But it looked just like we left it, way back at the end of March. Stuck in time, advertising upcoming concerts and with ads on the board still posted, just as they were. It's like the whole campus was stuck in a time capsule, just waiting to be reopened and rediscovered. I wasn't there too long. Just taking care of some business which required live signatures and a live presence to push some buttons on the lighting controls. It seems they needed to be rebooted after all this time, sitting dormant. 

This is the longest break from I've had since...well since forever I suppose. I mean I've worked from home a little bit, logging an hour or two here or there. But for the most part, I haven't really worked for three and a half months. That's one long vacation. Even in high school with breaks for summer, it was never this long.

Boy, it's going to be difficult to go back to work and get into the routine again. Well, maybe not. I've always been good at routines.

Sunday I took a walk after Connor left me for a week, and I eventually ended up at Jamba Juice. As this picture will attest to. It's nice to get both exercise and your daily serving of fruit, all in one trip.  I've made a habit of walking to and fro, whenever I can. I mean, it's not really new or unusual, as I've been averaging 5-6  miles of walling per day for some time. But I keep expanding my route, to keep it fresh I suppose. But also, I think, to enjoy it while I can. The realtor came by with a photographer yesterday to take photos of the house, so it will be on the market soon, and this chapter of my life will finally draw to a close. And then I'll move to an entirely new neighborhood, likely, so I won't be walking these now familiar paths much longer.

There really are nice trails and paths around here.

But anyways, as July draws to a close around us, and this ridiculous virus is still dictating our lives, it just becomes all the more obvious that I have little idea what August will hold. I guess I'm stuck in a time capsule too, just waiting for the world to open up and let me out again.

Monday, July 13, 2020

The World Is Crazy

Well here we are nearing the middle of July, and more or less the middle of summer. I'd like to say things have calmed down, returned to normal. Or some semblance of normal anyway. But no, it hasn't. If anything, it's even more crazy today. Who'd have thought this is where we'd be, way back in March, when we were first dealing with this mess? Not me. Not anyone, likely.

So COVID-19 cases are on the rise, with the CDC reporting the highest daily totals of new cases we've experienced, at over 60,000 per day nationwide. The uptick has been attributed by most politicians and news media to poor social distancing at BBQs and parties and whatnot, mostly from the recent holiday weekend. The government's response to this today? Close the hair salons. Yeah, really. I'm not making that up. Because, that makes sense. Apparently. If ever our society was starting to resemble a mid-20th century dystopian novel, this is it. I mean, it's like we're all a bunch of kids being put on restriction by our parents for breaking curfew. Of course, it's not just the hair salons. It's also museums, movie theaters, zoos, and so on. Basically any form of recreational or social activity. Is this our...spanking??

Honestly, the government should have never starting making mandates. Our society just isn't up to the task of accepting mandates. We're too stubborn and independently minded. And we're not a "mask" culture. And, sorry, but you can't change the nature of a culture through mandates. I think what they should have done was to make a concerted and unified approach to recommending specific guidelines - and then lead by example. All of them. But they won't, they won't. Individual stores and businesses should have been free to implement their own policies and procedures. Which they were doing. Before all the mandates. I think we were on the right track. Then the government tried to intervene and tighten the noose, and the public turned their nose up to it.

And now here we are.

Sigh.

It also looks now like all schools will start the fall in total distance learning mode. They habven't all announced this, but several have. The rest will follow suit. Just like when the schools started to close in March.

For the record, I do have a mask. I got it from my mommy. Several months ago. It's one of those simple and common blue disposable ones. I only wear it one I need to go into a store that requires it. Which is every store, these days. It makes my face hot and makes it difficult to breathe and cause my glasses to fog up which effectively blinds me. So yeah, that's fun. I take it off as I soon as I can, and then fold it up and put it back in my pocket. Somehow I don't think I'm making use of it correctly...

You won't see a picture of me wearing it. I won't take a picture with one on. A lot of people do, though.

Is this our new way of life now? Our we doomed to live in this new society for the rest of our days? Will our children's children never know what it's like to go to school, meet and make friends, play on a playground together, have play dates and sleepovers? I sure hope not. I'm already tired of this. Ready to go back to MY world again. Because this alternate reality of ours is just too crazy.

Saturday, July 4, 2020

Independence Day?

Oh yeah, today is July 4. I almost forgot that when I woke up this morning. As I've alluded to before, the numbers of the days and the days of the week just kind of blur together in this melting pot that is what remains of our former livelihood.

I'm not really celebrating. I didn't buy fireworks. Connor doesn't come back here until tomorrow. That's actually the one way I keep track of the days now. I always know when it's Sunday. I would have gotten fireworks for him. We would have had a grand time. But alas, that's not the case. And besides, I don't feel like celebrating this country right now anyway. We've become the laughingstock and embarrassment of the world. Not that we weren't far removed from that before. It's been a long slow process in that direction, it seems. Don't get me wrong, I love my country. But our leaders and half of our people just need to pull their collective heads out of their asses. Instead we are even more divided now than when Donald Trump took office. Everyone is bickering it seems. Wear a mask or don't. Socially distance or throw a holiday BBQ. What to do, what to do. The photo here was taking as I sit secluded away in my house, just me and the cats, as I wait for my French bread pizza to finish cooking in the oven.

But I digress.

And boom goes the dynamite. That's actually a Family Guy reference of a rather...crass nature. But it's what I think about as I hear fireworks going off outside. Pop. Boom. Pop. It's going to be a long night. And speaking of Family Guy, I'm actually watching back episodes of The Orville right now, which was created by the same guy, who also stars in this show. I could write a whole review of this show if I wanted; it's a pretty decently fun show, even if the writing displays some glaring plot holes. But it's basically a parody of Star Trek, in which character are less serious and display the personalities of 1980s and 1990s era humans. And a little bit of the potty humor that's made Family Guy famous. Fun times.

So this is it, the big 4th of July holiday. Oh wait, the oven timer just went off. Time to pull my pizza out of the oven. And maybe I'll pour myself another glass of chardonnay. Bon appétit! And, boom, pop, and all that.

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Summer Continues

Well, here we are on the 1st of July. The month of American Independence. Fairly ironic considering that we've now been socially distancing for over three months now, held back from our liberties by mandates to stay at home and avoid people and wear masks and on and on. Restaurants and bars were just ordered to close again today for dine-in services. Seems like they just opened. Well anyways. People like to panic when numbers of infections spike. All in the name of public health. We've already been warned, as a society, not to have gatherings for the 4th of July.

Meanwhile, I take walks every morning and every evening and sometimes in between. And especially in the evening, you can see people playing basketball and volleyball at the park. And the playgrounds are full of children. The parks are essentially re-opened. Even though they're not. Guess we can't enforce that. But we can make Chili's close so that I can't go and have a pleasant sit down meal by myself. Sigh. Anyways. Moving on.

So it's July, and I'm still (not) working from home, owing to the fact that there's simply no volume of work to do. All of our summer events were cancelled. Haven't heard yet about the fall. The public schools are proposing a two day a week schedule for children, with learning from home the other three days of the week. Not sure how that's supposed to work with many parents working full time. Who has time to also home school? I mean I'm still hopeful that I'll actually be returning to work at some point. Well who knows, maybe I'll win the Publisher's Clearing House sweepstakes so I can quit my job and then I can homeschool my kid.

Speaking of my kid, we did a beach day at Crissy Field Beach in San Francisco this past week. It had been a couple of years, it seems, since I took him to the beach. He loved running around the sandy beach and into the waves, and hunting for little pieces of seashells in the sand. Unfortunately he only lasted about an hour and a half before he was ready to go home. Four hours of driving back and forth for 90 minutes at the beach. Well it was a good experience for him, anyway. Though it was a little colder than I had anticipated. Sure was nice to get out of the 100-degree weather of the central valley. But now I'm back in it. Slowly melting away.

And life goes on. No idea what the rest of the summer may hold. I mean at some point I need to return to work, right? Paid administrative leave and vacation time can only last so long. l suppose this is what retirement must be like, frittering my days away going for walks and watching TV and playing Minecraft and reading. Yeah, that's it. I'm doing a trial run of retirement right now. Oh and yeah, I play Minecraft now. Connor got me into it, or rather I started so that I could share that with him. It's actually a fun and stimulating game. And we're playing on a family-friendly server run by a 15-year-old and his dad from Seattle. So that's fun. I was never a gamer, admittedly. It was just never something I got into. We had an Atari 2600 when I was a kid, and an Apple IIe computer that could do rudimentary graphic games like Speed Racer. But that was about it. So gaming is, or at least was, a bit of a foreign world to me. But now I'm learning. God forbid.

Anyways. So continues the summer.