Well, here we are at the beginning of 2022 and still dealing with this crap.
My company’s holiday party is this week. I go solely for the political capital every couple of years or so. They’ve changed the venue this past week due to low expected numbers (original location expensive for the low number of people expected). The company has also announced a major organization change a couple of weeks ago. I feel it is important to make an appearance this year. My wife is freaking out due to the recent outbreaks. I’m at the point where I’m tired of putting my life on hold.
I hope they have some good sense of selecting a suitable venue, lot’s of space, maybe some fresh air, and some useful concept of keeping everyone as safe as reasonable. I know it makes limited sense to say it under the circumstances, but still: stay safe…
I feel the same way. In 2020 it was critical to stay put. In 2021, especially once you had your shots, there was still much self-imposed stay-at-home-ness which led to this creeping feeling of “inside good, outside bad” and “no contacts good, people bad” which I have made a resolution for the new year to get past.
While I am far away from exceeding any Covid regulations, I have a feeling that I am straying on the side of being too far away from exceeding them and instead just turn into the complete couch potato. So, in 2022: there will be travel, there shall be meeting of more people in other towns, and so an and so forth - if at all possible. Plus: booster appointment on Jan 24th, and then on to the likely continuously new “Covid Patch Tuesday” vaccination.
Covid is a big issue, but I am gradually (also) seeing it as a growing psychological challenge which seems to favor a fearful outlook, lethargy, and reclusiveness. Not even necessarily all due to particularly careful regulations, but simple since the signaling encourages to be lazy, secluded, and more or less dormant - if not working.
Sure, we cannot risk driving our health systems into a wall, but we can also not get permanently paralyzed into asocial and immobile lethargy by every new variant of some old bug. Too many bugs for that. And we cannot evolve into the Zoom species. Too close to Matrix.
Where I came from they referred to this as “face time”. I question the value of “putting your face out there” in a mask (cause I surely hope you’re all masking.) I was never any good at office politics thou… I cared too much for the customers and thus the product and thus cared too little for my advancement seeking peers.
Well, originally we were having it at a country club, now its the function room in a restaurant. Not sure how big. I know that parents of young kids not able to be vaccinated are bowing out.
I was hoping to time this with a trip to my office to clean my desk there out. We’re moving to a new office space that is 1/3 less space so I won’t have a desk there. Plus, I’m trying to get new switches and need to figure out exactly what we need now that our infrastructure will be smaller.
Yup.
I went to our main customer event in October for this reason. We do a massive golf tournament. I don’t golf so I went in the morning, shot over to the office for a couple of hours, and then went back as people were finishing up. I’ve worked for the company for 16.5 years, so even with this pandemic I understand the need to make an appearance.
We had a Christmas party at the beginning of December. Most signed up in October. By the end of November, most people had cancelled. I’m not even sure whether it took place. The whole IT department cancelled.
We didn’t get a Christmas present from the company this year. They donated the money to the Ahrtal Floor Relief Fund, which everybody found a good move. They reckon that it will be the best part of a decade, before the region has fully recovered, so I don’t think anyone begrudge providing relief to those that have lost everything.
I got my booster just before Christmas, a month earlier than planned, because they changed the rules.
But even so, we have not had much external contact. Just our closest family. My wife works in after school care and has to be at work every day. Somehow, despite half a dozen Corona cases in the centre in the last 2 years, we have all remained Corona free.
I’ve been „shopping“ once in the last 2 years (I.e. something other than going to the supermarket) and we had a colleague over from the States in October, so I went to a restaurant twice during his visit, and that has been the limit of my socialising.
My best friend has enough health problems and has pretty much isolated himself. I’ve met him twice in the last 2 years, both times. We sat in the garden at a safe distance.
We are looking forward to when this is all over and we can have a whisky tasting evening.
South Australia has gone from a state with zero covid cases to 14,000 since borders with other states opened in November when fully vaccinated figure was just below 80% for 12+. Currently, the figure is sitting at around 87%. It was fine for a while when borders reopened - slow tick up in cases due to people travelling from states with high infection rate. Then omicron hit and numbers have been increasing sharply - currently sitting at around 11,000 active cases for the state. Density restrictions that were to be lifted after Christmas has instead gone backwards, and have been told to work from home where possible for at least the next few weeks. So who knows when “normal” will return? I might get worse yet before it gets better. There is a push to get people to get booster shots now; hopefully that will stop omicron, but who knows what is around the corner. I am hoping that the new treatments for covid coming on stream will ease the load on health systems and get us closer to the dream of normal.
The problem is, the booster is only around 80%-85% effective for the first few months, dropping to sound 70%, against Omicron. But normal vaccination is only around 70%, dropping to around 55% after 3 months.
But, in both cases, it should mean that any infection remains relatively mild.
I’m not sure how many people are planning to attend the party. At this point, not sure I care.
I’m fully vaccinated, and boosted. I hardly leave my house anymore. We will go out to dinner a couple of times a week, and I’ll grab takeout for lunch maybe once a week. My wife works with children who are unable to be vaccinated daily (she works in early education).
Haven’t gone shopping pretty much at all. We started using Instacart for groceries, but in all honesty we can’t stand grocery shopping anyways.
As I said before, I’m running out of patience. I think we are at a point that Covid exists, and we either deal with it, or stay hidden away.
With regards to vaccinations, I’m of the opinion that at this point, anyone eligible for vaccination that wants it has gotten it, and will be boosted when eligible. Those that have yet to be vaccinated won’t be, unless something forces them. And in the US, any attempts to force vaccination have been met with court cases, some allowing it, some not.
No Christmas party at twit for the second year. We gave the employees the money we’d have spent instead and I think they’re happy with that choice.
I am being very careful even though I’m only two weeks out from a booster. Omicron is in the air and a great many people I know got sick, including our Space Guy Rod Pyle and his family. They’re all OK, thankfully, but who wants to take the chances? Not I! I’m enjoying staying home.
Two TWiT staff tested positive this week. So the stress continues.
Add inflation, recession, and general economic gloom to an impending resurgence of the plague with two new variants and I’m still pretty stressed. It’s settled into the low-level background noise that’ll kill you slowly, however. And now my retirement savings are melting away in the stock market slow crash. So I’ve got that going for me.
Leo, I understand. I’ve already accepted that Covid isn’t going away. But, I’m at the point now where I’m not going to hide. I’ll keep my vacs up, and if I get it, so be it. I also feel you on the stock market. I recently moved my IRAs to a new firm for better management, versus handling them myself. Besides seeing their value go down, I’m also seeing administrative fees I never saw before. I’m just accepting that one. I know things will eventually rebound…
The big thing on my mind right now is that my company was acquired at the end of last year. While it has been a good thing in some ways, one thing that I’m stressing out is our benefits. Things were kept “as is” for the first year, but I’m expecting things to change. For example, I know the new company doesn’t match 401Ks, but we have had that since I started. I’m also concerned about what might happen to our health benefits. We’ve had a very generous package, including deductible reimbursement. Not sure what is going to happen now. I’ve been with the company for 17 years. Not sure I want to start fresh at this point, but its been on my mind.
And I guess I should add, my house is heated by oil. Just got our first of the season delivery. Only 100 gallons. $570. Once it gets colder, we normally go through 100-125 gallons every couple of weeks. I have a couple of heat pumps, but I’m not sure they will be able to keep up. I’m supplementing with space heaters where necessary.
My sis and her husband just had a pretty bad case of it. Think that’s 3rd time for them. ukgov has imploded, many can’t afford food, elec, gas, oil etc. anymore, my old boss was describing how rota disconnections would work this winter, mortgage rates now 3 or 4 times what they were a few weeks ago, I’m still masking on public transport and flights, had my bivalent boosters now, although they’re BA.1 and not 4/5.
Masks are still required in public buildings (council etc.) and on public transport, they are optional for shops. Our company has a mask in the corridors policy again and there was an outbreak at the children’s daycare, where my wife works, so she has to test every day, before she goes to work.
I’m still testing twice a week for work, when I’m on site. Still disinfecting hands and surfaces in the office and every time I get into the car.
Went out for lunch with my daughter last weekend. That was the first time since 2019 that I’ve eaten out, other than twice when we had visitors at work & we had to eat in a restaurant.
With gas prices uncertain (up 50% so far, but the government is talking about capping bills) and general inflation on top of that, it is not getting any better. Worst thing is, government recommendation, when we replaced our heating 5 years ago was gas… Now gas is the worst possible and we should be installing a recuprative heat exchanger, instead. But that means tearing all the external brickwork down and putting in additional insulation, new roof with additional insulation, take out all the radiators and replace them with underfloor heating (marble or tile floors throughout the house), plus around 50,000€ for the heating itself! And I think most of the windows would also have to be replaced as they are no longer up to code, so I don’t think we’d see much change out of 150,000€, although if it is don’t correctly, we could get half the money back from the government - but who has 75K just sitting around doing nothing?
My daughter and her husband are currently going through this, but they bought a house and are still in their old flat, until the renovations are completed.
We’ve gone old-school for our heating as oil is so expensive. Using the heating much less, only used 100 litres so far. Normally would have used 500 litres by now. Been about gathering logs, got some coal in the old bunker I’ve used a bit of. And wear warmer clothes!
It’s been an interesting exercise, highlighting how much we didn’t think about the energy we used.
Problem is, my environmental impact is no better. Possibly worse.
We are heating less, but no option for coal or wood. We already heated to around 20C, so dropping it to the recommended 19 isn’t going to help much, likewise, we already only heated the rooms we use regularly, the rest are of frost protection. The average house is heated to around 24C, so there is a lot of room to save money there, but not for us.
We have bough a Dutch Oven for cooking with charcoal, which will be interesting. We’ve got several sacks of charcoal, so we should be able to save money on cooking.
