It’s been 14 months since I had a haircut. Today it’s been two weeks since I got my second Pfizer shot, so to celebrate, I visited Shear Designs in Morris and had Solange shear me.

Yes, I’m wearing a mask, and so did she, the whole time she was lopping off all that shagginess. As our local paper reported this week:

In the past week, Stevens County more than doubled its number of COVID-19 cases for April from 22 April 11 to 48 as of the Minnesota Department of Health’s report Sunday. [Whew, that’s an inelegant sentence.]

Those quickly rising numbers reflect what is happening in much of western Minnesota this early spring as people begin to let down their guard. They are gathering again in crowded bars and restaurants, and other places, with few wearing masks.

…

[Health Commissioner Jan] Malcolm said new COVID-19 infections are up 60 percent in just the last two weeks and are hitting levels not seen in Minnesota since late last year.

It’s not over yet. I at least got my haircut, but now I’m retreating back into the hermitage and won’t be coming out again for a while.

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Yikes. Speaking of the continuing pandemic, our local buffet/pizza joint is closed.

We have been notified today of a positive case in one of our employees. While this employee has not been around our full staff while working, we are going to be Closing today , and going through this Friday to clean and sanitize the store and equipment. We will re-evaluate our staffing situation as we get test results in. We plan to re-open on Saturday, but will make that decision more towards Friday when we know more from our staff.
We thank you all for your business and understanding! Each day I am finding more truth to the meme…
When Covid ends is sounding more and more like, “When the Vikings win the Super Bowl.”

I had no idea it was open! The thought of going in that place at any time in the past year gives me the heebie-jeebies.

On top of everything else, today I have to make a trek to the hardware store to pick up some mouse traps. “Why?” you might ask, “Don’t you have a vicious evil cat?” Yes, I do, one with a temper and long needle-sharp claws and fangs she will bite me with if I have the temerity to pet her too familiarly. But we currently have a little mouse problem, and she’s not doing the job. We had a cold snap after a week of warm weather, and whenever that happens the outdoor mice scurry into the nice warm house for a while, and then decide they like it and want to stay a while.

So last night I found the cat posed sphinx-like on the floor, it’s paws before it, and between them…a very fat roly-poly little mouse. “Well, stop torturing it and end its misery,” I said, “so I can clean it up.” But then I noticed that the cat was purring, and the mouse was softly ch-ch-chittering, and the cat was nuzzling it with her nose. They were having a conversation. And the cat had her claws fully retracted.

That’s what rankled. She doesn’t even grant me that little favor.

So now…mouse traps. I don’t think the cat has ever killed a mouse in her life, and now I understand why: they’re her little friends, and she likes them better than me. Well, I’ll take care of that.

Yesterday dawned bright and beautiful; skies were clear, the sun was shining, it was warm, it felt like the start of a fine spring day. Then Mary drove away to help take care of our little granddaughter for a few weeks to a few months, and immediately the gray skies rolled in, the temperature dropped, the winds were howling, and the rain drizzled in. It got cold again. The mice have moved back into the house (the cat is a totally useless mouser, I’m afraid.) And now it’s Monday.

I think I’m going to have to be really mad at Iliana. It’s all her fault.

Oh no! The cuteness defense! I am helpless!

I was talking to a student from the Middle East yesterday — we are eyeballs deep in academic advising, I’m already booked up solid today with more student meetings — and she said she was very excited to be moving to the Midwest in the fall, and getting to experience seasons. Yeah, she’ll get that here. She’ll also get to experience that “oh my god will it never end” feeling.

Now to crawl back into my zoom-hole, from which I will not emerge until 6pm this evening.

“oh my god will it never end,” again.

I do not have any tattoos. I’ve admired many, and have thought of some it would be nice to have, but I always overthink them. The classic “Mary + PZ” on a heart-shaped background appealed to me, once upon a time, but it was a little trite, and I feared that once I put it in indelible words on my skin, that’s when she would leave me. And now, after 40+ years, it’s both trite and redundant.

I also love the art of the Coast Salish peoples, and have a particular salmon design in mind that I wouldn’t mind making permanent, but…I’m white as they come, belonging to the ethnic group that displaced and killed those people. It would be appropriation in the truest sense, so no, I have held off.

So I don’t think it’s going to happen now.

I can console myself with the thought that at least I’m not one of those people who gets stupid drunk and has something ridiculous inked on. Or worse, someone who puts deep thought into a tattoo that is supremely idiotic, like this one.

(Warning: below the fold in case you’re a sensitive classics teacher who cries at abuse of your discipline.)

[Read more…]

Facebook is probably worse than YouTube, since that’s where people gather to overthrow the government and tell each other racist things, but at least it does have the Red Skull Core. That’s a Facebook group where they make memes by putting Jordan Peterson’s actual words into word balloons coming out of the mouth of that Nazi arch-villain, the Red Skull. It’s amazing how well they work when put into that context. Those guys are always complaining about being taken out of context, right?

Second vaccine injection…received. Now I wait a few weeks before I can start grabbing passers-by and kissing them.

(Yuck, you know I’d never do that. Never did it before there was a pandemic, either.)