During this entire pandemic, as the world went to working from home / remote learning, Skype has been sitting over there, alone in the corner. Installed on my computer, (came with the OS at this point) unused and forgotten. Steamrolled by Zoom, Google Meet, etc.
Way to drop the ball, Skype.
The last of the snow melted off. Not the normal middle of the field snow, I mean the snow in my neighbors yard. His driveway is 120 feet long with a few extra spots on the side, and when his plow guy comes, it gets piled into a mountain. The giant pile is often taller than I am.
That's the pile I'm talking about. It's gone. Nothing left of it. We've had temperatures in the high 60's (today reached the low 70's), but it's finally gone. The ground is waking up. I had to go outside this morning, and was surprised at how the sun actually warmed me.
That part of the spring when you finally open your windows, and the fresh air finally blows out all the winter stuffiness. It gets all the places your forced air furnace can't reach. So nice.
Was anyone else expecting worse? I was promised an apocalypse. World-ending pandemonium. In the US, with our 320+ million and otherwise excellent sanitation and healthcare, we lost half a million people.
Ok, that's nothing to sneeze at (please don't sneeze on me), but far lower than what I was expecting.
India. India with it's 1.3 billion. That's four times the population in one third the space. They had 160K deaths. India, a country that's almost famous for poor hygiene and sanitation, where people are packed in like sardines. I expected much worse, yet their outcome seemed far better.
This is the most confusing apocalypse I've ever been through.
I have a lot of friends I haven't seen in a long time. The past year has been brutal, that goes without saying. Social media has been carrying a lot of weight, and I don't think I realized just how much until earlier today.
It's been a year since I've seen so many people, that was obvious. But I saw the list of people I'm connected with, and saw so many names that not only had I not seen in many, many years, but hadn't so much as exchanged messages with in that time. It's become a list of people I used to know.
What really kicked off the thought was seeing one person; we were everything to each other. For years, we spent nearly every day together, we told each other everything. We didn't knock, we just let ourselves into each others apartments. Randomly sleeping over, last minute trips to anywhere.
Circumstances took us in different directions, and it all faded away.
Last message sent: 7/18/10
Since my dear wife has a birthday only once every four years, she has a lot of time to plan ahead, and a lot of clout when it comes to that day.
Last year, at the end of February 2020, we went to the Great Wolf Lodge in Pocono Mountains PA. A great big indoor water park in the dead of winter. The boys ran off and did their own thing, and my daughter was tall enough to ride, but short enough that she needed an adult. I made sure to teach her that she had to scream full volume every time she entered a tunnel. I regret nothing.
I'm surprised that I didn't mention it in my blog last year, it was quite the event. Though at the time I was somewhat distracted. An impending plague loomed on the horizon. It hadn't reached home by then. During lunch that day, I mentioned the absurdity of being at a water park in the winter. (They had these giant windows lining the walls, I would walk by with an inner tube as the snow piled up a mere arms length away) My wife, in a moment of foreshadowing, mentioned that we may not be able to go in the summer.
The local pools weren't even open this past summer.
I look at pictures from that day. Crowds of people, visible smiles, and no plastic barriers separating everyone. It all feels like another world. I hate what's become of us.
