Tuesday evening. Today was the first Taco Tuesday of my new corny day-name schedule. (I just want them to stop blending together.) Ye gods, it’s been a long time since I had any sort of taco. Last I remember was around June 2019, when I made amazing avocado & smoked salmon tacos for my roommates. (I picked up the recipe in Costa Rica, though damn if I know how they got smoked salmon all the way down there.)

Good news from my old haunt, Seattle: both of my work buddies who had been stuck at the same un-promote-able level look like they’re about to get promoted. All they had to do was leave behind everything they’d had, everything they’d been. Heh. Life sucks when you’re an L4 at Amazon. There’s nothing remotely similar in the cards for me, but I have many plans, and this was only one.

My escapism this week consists of binge-watching the Umbrella Academy on Netflix. Fun show, and yet another reversal from the Golden Age of comics, when superheroes were upstanding boyscouts. See also: The Boys, the comic and the TV show. See also also: “Soon I will be invincible” by Austin Grossman.

In covid news: the CEO and founder of MyPillow, Mike Lindell, who apparently has zero medical qualifications, allegedly got Trump excited about using oleandrin as a cure for covid. Oleandrin is highly toxic and could very well kill you. I’m positive there’ll be at least a handful of death reports about the true believers who consumed it because the TV told them to. (Anecdotally, there had been a few cases like that after Trump suggested injecting bleach and consuming hydroxychloroquine.) Hell… I was a rescuer in my spare time, and I’m fairly certain even I received more medical training than Lindell.

My Arizona friend is doing better, though she did have to go to the ER over the weekend. She started having issues breathing, which triggered a panic attack, which triggered a very bad reaction. The local ER got her back together. She’s back home now, and apparently feeling better, but she says she feels very fatigued and can’t even tell a long joke because she’s so out of breath.

Deborah Birx is in the news again, claiming she wishes the US had had more Italy-style lockdown measures at the beginning of the pandemic. Knowing what I know about people, everyone will forgive and forget (mostly forget) within a decade. Still, that’s rich, especially coming from someone who never stood up to Trump and actually claimed things would get better in May. She may not have caused as much incidental damage as Trump himself, but her hands are far from clean.

…kill a single person, and you’ll go to prison. Cause tens of thousands to die through your inaction, and you’ll get a CNN interview. Likely a book deal, too. No hope for human race.

It’s becoming more and more of a chore to remind myself that things will likely get better within six months. Just 100 more business days. Just 26 more weeks..