Dreams
I don't really dream about meeting Presidents or nominees for the Oval Office. I do recall one where Trump made a cameo appearance about a job opportunity. But one-on-one encounters, no. Until now.
For context the setting was the Newman Center at UH, at least then across the street from the east perimeter of campus. This was staffed by the Roman Catholic Dominican order. I had started on my MBA part-time and had switched from my home parish in southwest Houston to masses on campus. There were lots of reasons: going to church with people more my age, and one was the hope of dating nice Catholic women, maybe getting married one day. My original parish did have a young adults group, but it was a joke: mostly bachelors like me. The women preferred to go with the more professionally populated 30-and-up group; I just remember one lady coming once to the group, and it took her maybe 5 minutes to pick out (another) guy and leave with him. I've seen drive-through lanes at McDonald's take more time than that. The rest of us just shook our heads. Yes, I did date a few women while at Newman but nothing serious; I had one particularly bad relationship where she didn't react well to my decision to break up, and I ended up leaving Newman to avoid uncomfortable encounters.
I really joined Newman about 6 weeks into my first semester when I attended the first of a string of many once-a-semester retreats. It's where I first met my accounting PhD student friend Tim, who would later go on to become a professor at the University of San Diego. (Years later, I would make my own campus visit to USD, no offer.) Next to office mate Bruce, Tim was probably my closest friend at UH, even though he was pretty much a "progressive" politically. (I don't think Bruce and I ever talked politics, but he was a conservative, devout Protestant.) I also remember the first retreat vividly because my first nephew was born on the opening night of the retreat. Within a few months, I became part of what I call the core dozen or so members of Newman. As I eventually transitioned into full-time student status around year 2/3, the Newman Center became my refuge from the stresses of academic life. (The rumor was that the troublesome coed saw me as her gateway into the inner circle; I had caught her eye because I was one of the few men to wear suits to mass.)
A long context to explain the dream where I met Joe Biden at Newman. Now, of course, that might not seem to be that unusual in the sense Biden's nomination this week, the pinnacle moment of his political career, has dominated the headlines. But the fact is I haven't watched a Democratic Convention for over 20 years and for the most part sidestepped the media, including relevant Twitter trends. Also, note that Biden is a fellow Catholic; I have repeatedly pointed out that I despise his politically opportunistic pro-abort stand along with other Catholics in Name Only, like Pelosi, Cuomo and others, a point in a recent post on why I'll never support Biden. The encounter wasn't long; I was like in an empty room at Newman, Biden popped in wearing a two-piece powder blue suit and tie and did some retail meet 'n greet politics of the sort, "Hi, I'm Joe Biden, and I'm running for President. I would appreciate your vote next Tuesday." I respond civilly, but I'm thinking, "Dude, you're barking up the wrong tree." A bit later I run into Hunter Biden (I've never seen his picture, but it was clear from context). He quickly realizes I'm not a Biden supporter, and he can't leave the room fast enough.
As an aside, I've almost never met a politician in person, attended rallies, etc.. Well, way back when I was in my teens, I attended a San Antonio rally for President Nixon at the airport. That's about as close (a few yards) as I ever got to a celebrity. A few months later I was cheering on his inevitable impeachment, which he ended by resigning from office.
COVID-19 Shutdown Diary
Cars
My new(er) car's first birthday was over the past week. I've never been a car enthusiast; in fact, 2 of my first 3 cars were used, and I ran almost all of them years after paying them off, more or less running 100K or more miles on each.. As I mentioned, I probably would still be running my old GM car except GM dropped the brand shortly after I bought the car and in recent years every repair became a car life or death decision. The worst was when my brake line snapped in South Carolina, and it took a dealership a week to decide they didn't want to take the work (re: parts). I had never seen a dealer leave money on the table before. I found a brake shop which fabricated its own lines and demanded about $2300. (I did look at buying a new car, but I was between jobs (my government contractor employer had lost their recompete bid) and couldn't get financing--from the same lender who financed the original car).) Still, I got 3 more years out of the car, so it was probably worth it vs. new car payments for 3 years. But more recently I had an incident I think I wrote about a couple of years back when my transmission shift cable broke and my mechanic finally found a replacement part from a salvage yard.
The death blow was the stupid biannual Maryland vehicle emissions test. I've lived in Maryland twice since 2004, all in the same car, never had a problem--until last summer. I took it to my trusted mechanic who said basically it could be any of 2000 things and I could burn through thousands of dollars getting to the bottom of it: why put that kind of money on a car with almost no market value? He said there might be a way to work the system to get grace periods for repairs and defer my day of reckoning. Luckily this time I had a job and could arrange financing for a new car.
I really never put a lot of miles on the car in recent work; I lived maybe 5 miles from work, a couple of miles from the grocery store or my doctor's office. MVA and the local hospital is about 15 miles away. The longest trips I've taken in prior years were for funerals in New England. Occasional trips to Baltimore or BWI are maybe a 40-minute drive away.
So I bought a new car a year ago. They gave me almost nothing on a perfectly functional car other than that stupid emissions test (and it wasn't exactly blowing out smoke). I think my last trip to Jiffy Lube cost more than they gave me on a trade-in, never mind my last two near-new tires. Not even the equivalent of one of my monthly payments over the coming 5 years.
I do wince a bit over my monthly payment. I love the car though; the sensors are outstanding: it detected a pedestrian walking in the middle of the street as I was starting to pull out. I'm averaging over 50 mpg. I play the fantastic music library on my cellphone via Bluetooth.
So I had my first annual maintenance inspection. And the service guy of color said, "Dude, have you even driven the car?" It had maybe 1600 miles on it. Well, under the COVID-19 shutdown, I've done almost no driving, other than maybe a weekly grocery run. Probably the longest drive to date was an in-person job interview in the Harrisburg, PA area; the interview went well but the job offer fell through for paperwork reasons. Occasionally I'll go to my worksite for laptop or security stuff but my worksite has still most people working remotely. So for the most part, it ended up being like a glorified oil change, rotation of tires, topping off my fluids. Oh, I got maybe a $10-20 COVID rebate on my car insurance. Wow, that'll buy me lunch at a McDonald's drive-through.
Work
I think I mentioned in my last journal post while I was at the dealer, local TV hosts were talking Maryland downward COVID-19 trends like maybe a 5% positive test rate. At work, they noticed a 2-week long trend of declining statistics necessary to get to phase 2; they had almost gotten to phase 2 a few weeks back when we had a local resurgence, and this time we've gotten back to a downward trend and gotten to the heuristic milestone.
Niece Teacher
I have 2 nieces and 2 nephews who are or have been full-time teachers (the two nephews rarely keep in touch and the younger niece I hear from occasionally). I know Trump has been trying to intimidate public schools and colleges into opening up in-person instruction this fall. I'm not going to get into the politics here; I have issues with both sides. I loathe the fear-mongers portraying schools as death traps, and Trump doesn't understand the principle of federalism (i.e., the states have responsibility for health security and public education).
I recently mentioned how my older niece, who has struggled finding full-time teaching opportunities in Colorado, Missouri, and Ohio after leaving her Kansas public school job for marital reasons, had recently gotten a private school job offer for this fall. For the most part, private schools are shielded from the politicized world of public education; I really haven't seen much press on how schools that are opening for in-person instruction over the next few weeks are handling the COVID-19 health risks.
So I asked my niece, out of curiosity, whether she was doing in-person instruction and what kinds of measures were they implementing if so: e.g., temperature checks, face masks, etc. NOTE: this is anecdotal information, so don't try to generalize beyond this school. It's just one approach, and other schools may employ alternative policy nixes.
She answered in the affirmative. (I'm going to paraphrase here because I didn't ask for permission to quote.) (Part of the reason I asked about the face mask thing is I do know in the lower grades she teaches, there're more encounters at the child's desk.) So she said yes, they'll be doing temperature checks in the morning, maybe a second around lunch period. Children will wear face masks, and I believe there will be some barriers among desks. She has the option of wearing a face shield and/or masks near the kids; she doesn't have to wear a mask when she's at the front of the class.
Article of the Day
This
WebMD article is a decent read. It specifically points out mixed evidence on masks. This caught my eye, but note that the evidence has little statistical power:
A small study in South Korea found neither surgical nor cotton masks effectively filtered the virus when an infected patient coughs. While the study has gained attention, it was only conducted on four patients, which is too small a study to apply to the world at large.
The context is that the primary purpose of the mask is to prevent YOU from spreading your virus to others. There are other insights that caught my attention relative to the context like this:
Researchers also found higher amounts of the virus on the outside of masks than on the inside.
Entertainment
Wrestling
Well, the second major WWE PPV, Summerslam, is tomorrow, and to be honest, there's little compelling stuff. Dominik Mysterio, 8 inches taller than his wrestler dad Rey Mysterio, is booked into a revenge match against Seth Rollins in an absurd storyline where Rey "lost" an eye in the recent PPV. I've seen no wrestling moves from Dominik; he's mostly engaged in ambush attacks, especially with illegal objects (kendo sticks). He lacks his dad's speed and agility. I have no idea what qualifies him to debut in a match against a former WWE champion. I suspect Rey will attempt to intervene in the match and perhaps set the stage for a father-son tag team to battle Rollins/Murphy.
The storylines seem to suggest Randy Orton going over McIntyre for the WWE title and The Fiend going over a heel-turning Strowman, the latter seeming to involve Alexa Bliss, possibly in connection to the Bray Wyatt legendary Sister Abigail story. The women's titles, held by buddies Bayley and Sasha, are in danger of being lost to Asuka on the same PPV, and it's seeming like we're heading to an eventual Asuka/Baszler feud. The way I see this playing out is Asuka beats Sasha, but Bayley retains--and is confronted by an angry Sasha. That prediction and $5 will get you a coffee at Starbucks.
In other news, there is a Rebribution/invasion gimmick by masked heels, not sure if it'll play out in the championship matches. It also seems like WWE is transitioning from its Performance Center to the Thunderdome in Orlando.
