I’m the only one of my workmates and regular acquaintances who (still) hasn’t tested positive for COVID. But, I catch everything else. Been properly ill since December 23 (hence the current run of Filler entries for the Post Per Day effort).
The amaryllis bloomed before New Year’s Day and bravely held on through the first two weeks of the year. I broke open one of the paper chromatography lateral flow devices I used over the break and found nothing really interesting there. Largely, that’s how the month went…things working the way they were supposed to without surprises.
Running: 140.1 miles, 80 of which were on the 9 Rail Runs. One bottle of bourbon (to finish the Christmas hoard), 18.8 bottles of wine, and 8 beers for an approximately 20% decrease from last January. End of the Christmas weed. No psychedelics left. 13 negative lateral flow tests. One kebab, one fish & chips, two pubs. Progress on living room floor, stairwell walls and stairs, and dining room trim.
Trump is still free. We’ll check back on that at the end of February update.
Slow morning at work, Monday, and so I entertained myself by chasing down a Wu Tang Clan name generator. Using the simplest form of my actual name, I transformed into “Iron Toad Visible” for the rest of the day. On Tuesday, I put that into the genny and was reborn as “Illusionist Pinkish.” This continued the rest of the week, with the input on the day the output from the day before:
Monday – Iron Toad Visible
Tuesday – Illusionist Pinkish
Wednesday – Mink Ungrateful
Thursday – Tiger Midnight
Friday – Adventurer Sarcastic
Saturday – Hoodoo Unpleasant
Sunday – Lamp Eye Wandering
It is like casting the I Ching or reading a horoscope.
The sign says “Wash hands and keep 2m apart” but I look like a jackass when I do it and have to go through doors sideways.
One of the PhD students commutes and carries his gear in a suitcase. Tuesday he left it in the middle of the office floor creating a Tripp-ing hazard:
Fines and fees: £84.17, but no penalties for the bad jokes.
Until next week, this is Lamp Eye Wandering signing off.
Arrived at work at 8 Monday, set up some work to do for the day, then checked my email for fires to put out before commencing. First email up told me the MS student I was training Thursday tested positive for COVID Sunday so I wiped my workspace down with alcohol and headed home to work online. I tested negative and reconfirmed it Tuesday before heading in for the, now, abbreviated workweek.
And, an odd week it was. I put on the medieval ecclesiastical garb commensurate with my rank and graduate school of origin — actually, for the first time — and attended the Biosciences graduation ceremony. [I didn’t attend my ceremony at The University of Georgia — now almost 20 years ago — since I turned in my dissertation on a Monday, defended it Tuesday, made minor corrections Wednesday morning, and gathered signatures Thursday before boarding a plane with the wife and cat bound for 2 years in Amsterdam that Friday.]
Fines and fees: £60.50. Mileage: 21 with nothing especially long or interesting. Somehow, I also managed to put in an after-work hour-and-a-half on the shed project each day.
The plan was to leave the house early to get a commute in with time to clean up before training a couple of masters students in how to use the FTICR-MS (easily the least novice-friendly bit of kit in the mass spectrometry corral at the uni). Someone in that research group tested positive so they instead had to schedule PCR tests and otherwise self isolate. So, I started a little later and took a more scenic route with some paths I haven’t done in months. About 9.5 miles (9.8 by GPS but it inexplicably freaked out in two areas).
This morning I got my long awaited 2nd dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine. I wouldn’t say I’ve ever been fearless — despite evidence to the contrary– but ploughing ahead into the routine maelstrom of daily terror will be a lot more tolerable now that I’m only dealing with my own demons (whether actual or paranoid delusion).
I don’t know how I’ve dodged the COVID bullet without ever stopping work (key personnel at the Uni, dontchaknow?) or mixing with the — shudder — general public throughout the lockdowns to date but here we are. The vaccine needs to age and mellow in the whiskey cask that is my carcass for a couple of weeks to be fully effective but I now feel like I’m taking the lateral flow assays for you lot instead of me and the missus.
Good luck out there.
Surveying the garden, I realised it needs a thorough tidy-up. I also had the odd feeling I was being watched.
I had a burger whilst waiting for a train in Sheffield in the pre-COVID days and splashed a bit of the sauce on it from the bottle the bartender brought with the meal. SWEET JUMPING JESUS ON A STICK! Newby mistake: I only expected a knock off Worcestershire and not a life changing flavour bonanza. I drenched the rest of the bap and my chips then drank a couple of spoonfuls neat. Henderson’s Relish is The Shit (as I kind of mentioned before). I finally chased down a stockist locally and now my life is complete.
Same stockist had another product nearby that made me smile. Backstory: A guy from Ireland came to Tucson to meet up with a woman who was in my old drinking club, the jHavelina Hash House Harriers, and who wrangled him into running with us four or five times in the week he was there. He absolutely earned his Hash Name, Gentleman’s Relish, referring to a bit of Ulster innuendo. Haven’t tried the stuff, yet, but it makes me happy just having it on the shelf.
It was a drinking week. Fines and fees: £53.50. Double dip fines were largely attenuated by split weekend and psychedelica exemptions.
A very busy week at work coming off a week of vacation and winding rapidly toward the Easter nearly-a-week University shutdown was capped by the complete failure of a cryocompressor supporting the Bruker superconducting magnet. These would be a great idea to slow the boiloff of liquid Helium except that when they fail — frequently — there is no liquid Nitrogen jacket so the boiloff runs away which could lead to a quench (and, possibly, an explosion). Plus, the cost savings are eaten entirely — and then some — by the £40K per year ‘service contract’ that only the most well-heeled academics can afford. As I say for Thermo, “Fuck Bruker.” No response to my frantic request for help (which I am certain I would be billed a few thousand pounds for had they felt obliged), I found the problem to be a blown fuse which may well be a planned failure a la Samsung video devices…especially since the replacement was mounted right next to it, hidden where only the Field Service Engineer would find it. Bastard capitalists.
Movie of the week was a documentary, White Riot, which chronicles Rock Against Racism (I’m stalled halfway through Inherent Vice). Bastard skinheads. And, stinky hippies.
And, don’t get me started on (literal) bastard Harry and Meghan calling out the bastard racists in his mother’s husband’s bastard family. I think that’s accurate but, even if I cared about accuracy here, I really don’t give a fuck about any bastard Royal family.
Fines and fees: £28, with Sunday estimated to land at 1/2 bottle of wine and 5 large whiskies. Low this week due to the utter lack of fines which doesn’t reflect good behaviour so much as losing a couple of days to the vaccine’s side effects. Bastard AstraZeneca.
Spring has sprung. Bastard daffodills:
Tuesday, I was inducted as a new recruit to Bill Gates’ zombie army. As I write this, my very genetics are being slightly altered. I’m not bothered by that having taken serious and sustained risks with my DNA throughout my youth. A friend once photoshopped a massive cock on my head, and I am tempted to send this to my GP if asked about experiencing side effects. It was an Astra Zeneca jab, for the record.
A friend in the States had a rough time with her first Moderna stick so I was pleased I only felt a we bit tired Tuesday evening. Bed early (10-ish) and an hour later awoke to shakes and shivers so violent I couldn’t make it across the hall to the bathroom, opting instead to put on a hoodie so I’d have something to hold heat in my head.
Eventually, I had to use the pissoir and crawled into the bathroom. After relief, I was parched and drank some water at which point I could suddenly tell that I had a blazing fever.
That’s how you know it is working.
Anyway, no sleep for the night as those events repeated every 15-20 minutes until time for work. I made it to work for about a half hour and headed home to bed until a zoom meeting I needed to attend at 3pm. By this time, a migraine had set in. During a grad student’s presentation I vomited. I was back in bed by 6 having managed to watch about 30 minutes of Inherent Vice and retaining about the first 10 minutes worth. What a waste of a day.
{Side note: another grad student asked how the transition to one of Bill Gates’ robots was going. “How dare you utter the name of The Master?” I demanded.}
Now it is Thursday. Much better but I still haven’t felt this bad since my last real illness 13 months ago (which, from all indications, was probably COVID-19).
Second jab at the end of May. Woo-hoo!
A post-doc who was on her way out to Hungary for Christmas, today, came up with less than favourable travel plans changes and the work we did together today took on a lot less urgency.
I offered her the Christmas meal with us (we have no contacts outside work and she has been preparing to visit elderly relatives…we are the perfect two-household bubble). I don’t think she will take us up on it (guidelines discourage overnight stays and the public transport is completely off and she would be unable to drive for the next 36 hours within minutes of arrival).
Also, the easement on this kind of mixing is limited to Christmas Day (although travel on Eve or Boxing for the purpose of yuletiding is allowed).
This is almost certainly the last commute run of 2020. It has been fun.
Endless British Pub Crawl (Part 3) 
