Sunday night. Who knew the end of the world as we know it could get so monotone?

Today was filled with mildly productive procrastination. A bit more gaming, followed by finally sorting out the big pile of shiny rocks I gathered during my roadtrip vacation in July. I now have a small box of gorgeous gems (about 5% of the total), a bag of plain-looking rocks that glow in the UV light, a bag of okay-looking amethysts, and about 50 lbs of uggos. (They should still be fun for your average non-rockhound person, though.)

Along the way, I played around with my DLSR, only to find that somewhere, somehow, I misplaced the memory card reader and a bunch of other accessories. Gotta love that two-day Amazon delivery, eh.

Speaking of which: at some point in the past 18 months, Amazon must have enabled the Pandora skill on Canadian Echoes. (This sentence would make zero sense to someone from the year 2000.) The best thing about Pandora is being able to listen to stand-up comedians and set up your own comedy stations: as far as their algorithm is concerned, Maria Bamford and John Mulaney are just unusual-sounding musicians. It’s a little sad how refreshing it is to hear human voices all around me again…

In covid news, several of VP Mike Pence’s staff have tested positive for covid. That includes his chief of staff. Allegedly, both Pence and his wife (the Second Lady? the first Lady-in-Waiting?) have tested negative, so Pence can continue campaigning and traveling, seeing as he is somehow defined as “essential personnel.” Then again, at this point there’s so little trust in the White House communications that even if Pence did have covid, there’s a fair chance they’d just say the same thing. (It’d make his reelection odds even worse if he had to stay in isolation for the next two weeks.)

Tomorrow, the Republicans in the US senate will hold the final vote on Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment to the Supreme Court. That says all you need to know about their priorities: no stimulus bill for regular Americans, but filling an empty Supreme Court is urgent business. If you were to write this in a political novel (before the pandemic, of course), any sane editor would’ve told you that the satire and jaded humour were a bit too on the nose. To make things more interesting, there’ll probably be another maskless White House celebration tomorrow night. There’s every reason to believe it’ll turn into another super-spreader event…

Hang in there, my yankee compadres.