Grigory Lukin.com

Friday evening, though the only real difference is not having to set an alarm.

Odd day at work today: I may have helped save the day in an entirely avoidable emergency. Scored some reputation points with newbies, got some assorted kudos, bought myself some more time. It feels so very strange to know that my entire future, my very ability to stay in Canada, depends on holding on to the same job, at the same location, from which I may not quit or transfer. Those are some stakes, eh? Until and unless I become a permanent resident, I can’t feel fully secure.

If something were to go wrong, I’d have to go back to the US – that bizarre plague-infested ungovernable region that keeps children in cages and elected an angry orange clown (on technicality, that is) to represent them. Hard pass. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has physiological needs as the foundation of its five-stage pyramid of happiness. I have a picture of that pyramid saved on my computer. If I’m not wrong, the file name is something like “hahahahahahahahaha.jpg” which should give you some idea where I stand on that issue.

Just 29 more weeks, tops, until I get the coveted permanent resident status. Somewhere, right at this moment, my application is getting closer and closer to the front of the queue – likely just a virtual file and not an actual paper-and-ink folder on the desk of an anonymous bureaucrat tasked with deciding my future… Really, can’t wait.

In somewhat more upbeat news, the zoom lens I got myself for my birthday is on its way from Japan. There’s a minor thrill in refreshing the FedEx tracker to see how much closer my shipment has gotten to me since the last update. Two technological wonders, one tracking the other. Isn’t globalization great?

In covid news, the US data reporting has been bounced back from the HHS to the CDC. I doubt they did that because of the PR reasons or due to some public outcry. More likely than not, they just couldn’t wrangle all the different data streams. If we ever do find out what happened, it’ll be a while. Birx tried to put a positive spin on this, promising a “revolutionary new data system.” Either she singlehandedly created a next-gen version of Excel, or she’s completely out of good news, and has to resort to the technological equivalent of dangling a set of keys in front of confused little children. Ho hum.

To wrap this up, here’s a pretty hilarious GIF that rather perfectly encapsulates the lockdown lifestyle:

Wednesday night. And just like that, we’re close to the weekend. Time is so strange these days…

My plan for corny memorable days has hit a bit of a barrier due to my lack of supplies (and knowledge) required to make waffles on Waffle Wednesdays. Ho hum.

My Vietnamese landlords downstairs are either having a very passionate discussion or arguing with their 16-year-old son at the top of their lungs… This lockdown is bad for everyone.

At work, I am the last one left. We’ve been having some attrition and transfers out of our team, with more and more newbies hired as replacements. This really hit home earlier today, when I caused blind panic in approximately 20 coworkers when I inquired how close they were to completing the first draft of an important annual document. Heh. I’d forgotten none of them were even here a year ago. Funny, that. …I always did relate to Deckard Cain, the last of the Horadrim.

…yeah, they’re definitely yelling at each other. Damn. I’m not close enough to any of them (and none of them speak English well enough) to interfere or do anything meaningful. Double damn.

In covid news, it looks like my Arizona friend is feeling better. Hopefully, this isn’t one of those rollercoaster headfake recoveries that turn on a dime.

The official US death toll (aka the lowest number they’ve managed to come up with) has officially crossed 170,000. (Unofficially, the US has passed 200,000 in excess mortality at the end of July.) In Canada, the official death toll is 9,049. Considering the 10x difference in population, the US death toll per capita is twice as bad as it is in Canada. There are no winners in this macabre game.

Monday evening. Got some vitamin D and much-needed exercise by marching back and forth in my landlords’ backyard. (I live in a small suburban development here in Mississauga – hard to walk outside with all the neighbours and the occasional car.) Did a bit of news-reading, a bit of money-related research, and learned a few new French words.

My relatives each got me an Amazon gift card – I went and bought a gently used zoom lens for my old DSLR. It should arrive from Japan within a couple of weeks. I know, my quarantine hobbies are getting a little bit too numerous and ridiculous, but hey – I absolutely nailed it with rockhounding. (Xgf’s friends loved their party favours – small ziploc bags filled with gems.) There’s not a whole lot of wild nature in Toronto’s suburbs (there’s Lowe’s across the street) but I’ll see what I can come up with. Something to look forward to, anyhow.

It’s important to remind myself that in just another six months or so, things will be much better. There’ll be some kind of vaccine that may or may not be available to mere mortals like myself. (The 1% will get the first dibs, of course.) There’ll be fast tests available just about anywhere. …hopefully, there’ll still be a closed border: until and unless the US gets its shit together, they’ll remain an existential threat. It’ll be mighty different, and hopefully for the better. It’s the waiting part that sucks.

In covid news, more and more colleges around the US are realizing that maybe, just maybe, having thousands of students on campus was horrible idea. There are quite a few headlines: some schools are setting up online learning as an option, while others are closing down their campus entirely. (Which is a remarkably evil thing to do to students who live in the dorms and have no easy alternative.) If only someone could have predicted such a happenstance occurring. Verily, we live in the age of mysteries.

Sunday night. Today is the first day of the 20th quarter of my five-year plan. (I can’t help it – I’m Russian, and five-year plans might as well be part of my genetic makeup.) I started the plan in mid-November 2016, when things seemed particularly dark. So far, it looks like I’ll complete it, and likely ahead of schedule. I’ll describe it in more detail if and when that happens.

Today was the first of my highly corny themed days – the Sundae Sunday. It’s been ages since I had ice cream… When you’re on the run from the pandemic in AirBnBs, every cubic inch of the freezer is vital, and there just wasn’t that much space for sugary luxuries. I’ve yet to find a place that sells chocolate syrup (the organic food place across the street didn’t have any, and neither did Shopper’s), but strange allegedly organic sprinkles made for a fine topping.

Considering occupational dangers in my line of work and at my company (and because they require way more ingredients than I’d thought), Margarita Mondays are hereby changed to Money Mondays. Mmmm, money… Ever since moving to Canada, I’ve been procrastinating on learning about the local retirement accounts, tax incentives, etc. Come to think of it, I haven’t actually seen (nor touched) a $100 CAD bill. Huh. It’s been months since I’ve dealt with cash, so I don’t really remember what any of it looked like. Anyway, yay money.

I’m dealing with the stress of the pandemic and my work by engaging in hardcore escapism, much like I did in the past when things got too dark. After all the hiking and rockhounding I did on my vacation, the open world of Elder Scrolls Online no longer seems that great in comparison. I’ve started playing my old love, 7 Days to Die, once again. The plot is simple: you wake up naked and afraid in a world overrun by zombies, and need to assemble tools, find food, water, and shelter, etc – while trying not to get eaten. Every seven days, an endless zombie horde attacks you. Fun game. To keep the stakes high, I stop playing once my character dies. Somehow, some way, I’ve made it further into the game than ever before. I’ve just witnessed something truly horrific – zombies with suicide vests. That will be interesting. (It really does help you forget the so-called real world.)

In covid news: yesterday, FDA granted emergency approval to a saliva test used by the NBA. It delivers accurate results in a matter of hours, and can be done much less intrusively than, well, any other test their currently have. (Nasal swabs are no one’s idea of fun.) The expectation is that the test will cost $10 a pop. We’ll see how that actually plays out. If this works, it’ll be a game-changer. No more waiting for days on end, no more training covid-seeking dogs… It’s a little sad that it was the NBA that drove this change, and not, say, the CDC. (At some point, someone will explain why the hell they’d been so insistent on using their own covid-testing kits back in March.)

In somewhat covid-related news: for the first time ever, the US National Weather Service issued a “fire tornado” warning. Northern California is on fire, as is often the case this time of year, but it’s usually fire-tornado-free. The first time that happened in recent memory was 2018, in the Redding, California wildfire. Now the freak phenomenon is back. The flames are getting mighty close to my old haunt – the biggest little city in the world, Reno, NV. With the disaster season in full swing (fire tornadoes, wildfires, hurricanes, what have you), there’ll be a lot of misplaced people who will unwittingly start new covid clusters. Disaster management is never easy (especially under the current administration), but when you also have to keep everyone separated and equipped with masks… This might get ugly.

…I think I’ll help myself to another sundae, since the world is running a little short on good news tonight.

Saturday night. This week was not a good one.

The events of Thursday, as well as their implicaitons, dehydrated me too much to truly grieve on Friday. I’m updating my LinkedIn.

How do you deconvert from a company to which you have dedicated 67% of your adult life? How do you change your viewpoint from “I’m a devoted employee who has a few hobbies” to “I’m an amateur guitar player who learns French, and I have a job to pay the bills”? (I bought that poor guitar over two years ago and barely touched it. Really gotta do something about it.) The past few days have been bad… A negative feedback loop of “what if” scenarios and old conversations running nonstop through my head, impossible to distract from. Perhaps, if I nap or sleep more, my brain will put enough cycles between the recent past and the present to lessen the impact, if not archive it altogether. The echoes from the past are coming back: I hope this won’t turn into the hellscape that was the late 2016, when something very similar occurred.

One bright spot: today was the birthday celebration for xgf. It was myself, her, and her three friends. All five of us maintained our distance in her large backyard. We wore masks when we stepped inside (always just one at a time), and drank and feasted and conversed beneath the open air till late at night. Turns out you can play Pictogram without having any close contact, and we laughed way too hard at the shadow puppets we made with our hands. That kept the thoughts of work at bay.

A friend of mine (a roommate’s girlfriend, from eight years ago in Reno) has tested positive. As far as I know, this is the first time a friend of mine caught it. (There was also a work buddy in the US, but we’re not that close. He and his wife got better.) My friend lives in Arizona these days. She said she took all the precautions (masks, alcohol spray, etc) and doesn’t know how she got infected. Considering the runaway infection rates in that state, she could’ve caught it just about anywhere. She says the fever, the muscle pain, and the headaches are terrible. I hope she makes it…

The way the world is handling this crisis, with major countries like Brazil, the US, the UK, etc completely ignoring the advice of their scientists, doesn’t bode well at all for the climate change crisis. If major superpowers can’t act responsibly when thousands of their own people die every day and hospitals are full, what hope is there for prompt action with a less visible emergency, one that’s more gradual and will kill far more? We’re blowing past more and more points of no return. Has existential hedonism been the answer all along?..

In covid news, Robert Trump, Donald Trump’s younger brother, has just died. He was 72, and his cause of death was not released. Trump visited him in the hospital just yesterday. If that was covid-related, there could be an interesting domino effect. If it wasn’t covid – well, at least his death was probably more peaceful than it would’ve been with the virus.

New Zealand’s streak is over. There’s a new cluster, and it’s an odd one. Contact tracers are stumped: their best bad guess is that the virus came on the packaging of imported refrigerated food. If true, that’s rather horrifying. That reminds me of the “Wild Cards” sci-fi book series: space aliens infect New York City with an experimental “wild card” virus that immediately kills 90% of its victims, gives 9% horrible deformities and mutations (the so-called jokers), and gives the final 1% (the aces) superpowers. The world’s history is permanently altered, and since the virus was spread in the stratosphere, the particles landed all over the world. As the series goes on, it spotlights unlikely pockets of infection around the world as people come into contact with the dormant virus. So… there’s a distinct possibility that nowhere will be safe, even if your region’s response is as perfect as New Zealand’s.

This is a cheery blog post, eh?

In other covid news: there was a sudden departure of two CDC VIPs: chief of staff Kyle McGowan and his deputy, Amanda Campbell. McGowan was Trump’s political appointee, and had previous ties with the HHS. Allegedly, he and Campbell were encouraged to depart because they were insufficiently loyal to the White House. I can’t imagine how much worse things will get once they’re replaced with “true believers.”

And finally, the sabotage of the US presidential election is gaining steam. The new postmaster general, Louis DeJoy (another political appointee), is consolidating power, removing expensive and necessary mail-sorting machines, and, apparently, has ordered the removal of blue mailboxes from key cities in politically important states. The ones that didn’t get removed… This really is absurd, but folks online are posting pictures of the remaining mailboxes that got padlocked shut, meaning it’s literally impossible to drop your mail, or letters, or mail-in ballots.

There are still 80 days to go until the November 3rd election. I really, really fear what else will happen, what abuses of power will become normalized by then… If we all somehow make it through this, I feel like we’ll collectively agree to never mention 2020 again, much like the 1918 pandemic survivors refused to mention it in their memoirs and textbooks.

Wednesday night. Today was my 34th birthday. I broke a very long-running annual tradition – so old that I don’t even recall when I started it. Each year, I go to Denny’s and get their free birthday Grand Slam meal. The coffee isn’t included, of course, but it’s still a hell of a deal. (Followed, of course, by a big tip.) I’ve done this for many, many years… Alas, with this pesky once-in-a-century pandemic, going to a diner is not really a good idea. I’ll raincheck myself and grab that Grand Slam (though no longer free) when I eventually get the vaccine. Another thing to look forward to, eh.

On the upside, I had my first birthday celebration in over decade, I believe. (I’m not big on parties.) Had a nice socially distanced meal with xgf: she baked a cute cake, prepared a pizza, made a wholesome birthday card, and then we played the same old video game we’ve been chipping away at this whole time. Her birthday is in a few days, so I’ve already got something neat for her: there’ll be a backyard party (just as socially distant) for myself and her two closest friends. These two tiny back-to-back birthday parties will likely be the social highlight of my year, not counting the work conference in Nashville back in January.

On the Trump-loving side of my family (in New York, of all places), my step-nephew (in his 20s and fully Americanized) decided to go to Miami to party it up. He’s going with his friend’s family: the family claims they all had covid in April and tested positive for antibodies. They believe it makes them immune. My step-nephew has no antibodies, but he might have an irrational belief in his immortality, like all young people do. My sister (his step-mom) has some health issues, so things would not go well if she got exposed to the virus…

There’s just so much we still don’t know. Either it really is possible to get reinfected just months after recovering, or there’s no good way to truly determine when someone is fully recovered. (Both possibilities are equally terrifying.) Or perhaps all the divergent – and ever-diverging – strains of the virus are sufficiently different that the antibodies of one strain might not work on the others. We just don’t know, and it’s really rather infuriating, intellectually speaking.

In covid news – future historians really won’t believe most of our pandemic stories. Florida’s Marion County sheriff Billy Woods has banned masks for his 900 employees and visitors. He claims he thought of that for two weeks, decided that there’s just as much “evidence” against masks as there is for them, and made an executive decision, while allowing a handful of exceptions. (Mostly when deputies respond to at-risk groups.) The sheriff is the epitome of the “Florida man” trope. Somewhere, at least a few lawyers are already cruising for clients who would sue him for exposing them to the virus. (Unless, of course, some national legislation forbids such lawsuits, which would be interesting to observe from very far away.) My best bad guess is that the sheriff is looking to launch his political career with this insane stunt.

In every zombie movie ever made, the most irrationally acting person is still far more rational than some of the authority figures we see around us. There’s some interesting commentary from the creators of the 2011 Contagion movie: they claim the things happening right now never would have been added to the film, especially the part about the erratically behaving president. Back then, they couldn’t have possibly predicted that a real-life president would tell Americans to inject bleach. Heh.

Speaking of… Another Florida man and his son got caught in Colombia after their fake miracle cure (just bleach, basically) killed seven people in the US. The profiteer used to refer to himself as an archbishop of a cult-sounding little church. That part, at least, isn’t stranger than fiction: in World War Z (the book, not the terrible movie) there was profiteer selling placebo anti-zombie pills during the early stages of the worldwide outbreak.

I’m more than a little worried about the rogue sheriff’s county. The greatest manager I’ve ever had lives there now, in the city of Ocala. Florida is a covid hotbed at this point, and things are likely to get even worse, especially with such militant stupidity among its elected officials.

The annual Perseid meteor shower was tonight and last night. Xgf and I stepped outside when it got dark, but there was too much light pollution. We each made a wish on a passing satellite instead. Here is hoping…