mattie g

I used to walk over the bridge on Columbia Road from Woodley Park to Adams Morgan late at night (I was a bartender as a grad student) and absolutely zigzagged. That was partly due to the post-shift drinks I partook in, but I also did it somewhat consciously.

AO is positive. No cold. Next. Unless...the storm creates its own cold! I'm in!

Sweet kegerator artwork! And the beer sounds good, too! I kegged my imperial stout last Saturday. It's a 16%-ish beast aged on Knob Creek-soaked oak spirals and dosed with a tincture made of 6oz of cacao nibs and 5 vanilla beans soaked in vodka and bourbon. I'm naturally carbonating this one, so I'm patiently waiting for another week or so before hooking it up.

I’ve forgotten what I used to look like.

TL;DR

Brasileira lounging in the sand.

I honestly haven't bothered looking. Does it really matter any more?

I understand that it's fun to analyze and prognosticate, so I'm not sh*tting on anything anyone comes up with in regards to their personal forecasts, but... I feel like the last few winters have really frustrated the long-rangers. Blame it on whatever you want to blame it on, but I simply can't trust analogs and/or long-range modeling any more. Nina, Nino, Nada, blocking, no blocking, solar, PNA, EPO, AO, whatever...winter is completely up in the air. We won't know sh*t until it's pretty much on top of us.

Come on man...the occasional McNugget is delicious!

Not reading back, but saw fly fishing mentioned. Picked it up while in college (Bucknell) and absolutely fell in love with it. Sparked me to even get a 9-wt setup that I’ve used in the salt. I don’t do it nearly enough these days, but I would love to be near a place that made fly fishing worthwhile. Also, I’d fish in a mud puddle.

The one year I didn’t reseed and it won’t stop raining. And the fungus in my lawn is thriving. Hi, everyone...

I realize that. I don’t think it changes what I said though. I think you see an increased ratio of deaths attributed to COVID as more tests are being done. Again, I’m not saying things would change dramatically in that graph, but I do think it would change somewhat (probably more deaths earlier on) had you had similar availability of testing from the beginning of the crisis to now.

Aside from the occasional day or two, the weather thee last few weeks has sucked arse.

You also have to take into account the increased testing as you look to the right in the graph. I’m not saying that this would mitigate totally the difficulty in coming off the plateau as shown in the graph, but it is something to take into account.

Uh oh! I suppose I’m kind of fortunate because I loaded up on really quality beers in preparation for my birthday, for which my wife organized a big bash yesterday. But since we cancelled it I’m neck-deep in beers right now!

One thing we have going for us is that we have seen what both action and inaction have led to in other places. We were slow to react, but it looks like we’re finally taking this seriously, so hopefully we take those lessons learned and flatten that curve as much as possible.

They should. I mentioned yesterday(?) that I really feel for the employees of these places, but what’s right is right. I hope we, as a country, help affected people (both medically and financially) get through this.

Yup - got the e-mail earlier today. FCPS has been playing catch up, but perhaps the elementary school teacher whose husband tested positive and her “assumed positive” test has forced their hand. Of course, they may have just been making decisions based on the fluidity of reports as they said they would.

Glad to hear others are taking the same approach. My parents and my wife’s parents aren’t local, so we don’t have that concern from a personal interaction perspective, though my wife just told her mom that she’s cancelling their flight to HHI in early April as a precaution. Next-door neighbors’ parents live a few miles away and are really involved in their lives. That’s awesome, though the grandmother is...ummm...over-involved. They got invited to their house for dinner tonight, and from what they told us yesterday, declining the invitation won’t go over well!

My family and five other neighborhood families have agreed that we will allow our kids to play together outside and that we will “socially distance” ourselves from one another until and if one of us gets sick. This is because we can’t honestly allow ourselves to think that our kids will be able to handle being cooped up inside and not being able to play together. We have all agreed that we will limit ourselves to this and not socially interact with other families until we’re at the end of this situation. Two of the parents need to go into the office - the rest can be at home. One family just told us that two of their boys had low-grade fevers yesterday, so they’re staying put now. What a tough situation to be in. We realize that our approach isn’t ideal, but I do think we’re being responsible and realistic while allowing our kids to have some sort of normalcy in their daily lives.

I think others have hit on this, but I feel the need to chime in that this logic doesn’t really work. If kids give it to kids, those kids then are vectors to give it to their parents, and from there to other people as those parents possibly interact while being asymptomatic. This is going to be hard on families who aren’t prepared to work on one (or less) income - almost impossibly hard in some cases. However, the answer is not to send kids to school as a form of childcare - that defeats the purpose of trying to “flatten the curve.” I feel lucky that my wife stays at home and works freelance in her spare time, so we don’t have childcare concerns (other than my wife’s sanity). For families who are able to work remotely, it will be tough to handle the logistics but they’re in a much better position than many others. Hopefully the rest of the people who have no choice but to try to work until/unless they get show symptoms will be able to ride things out. Aside from those who will suffer greatly from being ill (and their families), these are the people to whom my heart goes out.

My wife isn’t 100% looking forward to having both our girls at home all day for a month (it’s not easy on the weekends for a few hours!), but she did tell my 1st grader that there will be lots of arts and crafts, with interspersed math and reading, while she’s home!

Nasal vaccines are generally less effective than shots.

It’s insane that they won’t/can’t test. Absolutely f’ing insane. Sorry that you’re down for the count, but I hope you get through it soon!

I've gotten the flu a couple times as an adult, though only once since I started getting the flu shot (no quotes) every year for at least the last ten years. The last time was this year, after a long work trip during which I was shaking hands with everyone and their mother and getting very little (drunken) sleep each night. I credit the flu shot (no quotes) for helping me recover from it much more quickly (2.5 days or so) than I likely would have otherwise - but the worst of it really sucked. I've gotten plenty of bad colds and sinus infections and such, but only got the flu this one time despite it being a very contagious illness and my having kids. I wonder why...