Shutdown Diary
Tom Woods had a recent podcast on recession-proof businesses. I miss the days my apartment came with a washer and dryer. Most apartments at least had a dedicated laundromat. I may have mentioned this in the past: my current complex had a weird tiny room where you had to buy an initial card with a $10 bill, and of course the apartment complex didn't have any. Their suggestion: open a local bank account. I'm not going to do that simply because they have a stupid vending machine that only accepts $10. (It's weird; it will accept $20 for refills.) I think I tried to get one from a nearby Exxon for a small purchase; no luck; even my local Walmart couldn't help. I finally gave up and started going with a local commercial laundromat. Dozens of machines, and it even accepted credit cards for refills, except for a couple of months while it awaited repair. Generally speaking, it's decent; it's always open, although generally I won't drive at 2 AM to wash my clothes. I have enough clothes that I can make do with a monthly trip. But people always need to launder clothes as well as eat.I don't have a current RDO schedule (biweekly workday off, 8 9-hour workdays); I used to do laundry or shopping (e.g., Sam's Club) on my RDO's. So I decided to try like 8 AM this morning; I figured maybe people would be sleeping in or going to church. Nope. Maybe people can't go to church because of COVID-19 restrictions? It wasn't packed with people, but the entire left wall of dryers were in use. And I had to use non-contiguous washers because at least a half-dozen units in my normal row were offline for repair. (Are they having repair issues during the pandemic?) I noticed the TV news while I was listening to my excellent music library via Youtube Music and my Bluetooth wireless earbuds I bought from Amazon on special: they were talking about positivity rates, with the moving average in Maryland down to about 4.5%; because of family, I checked into Texas and it's down to about 12.8%. (See this Hopkins' page for COVID testing rates by state.); heuristics are difficulty to justify, but you want to see the positivity rate in the low single digits and trending downward.
There are some signs of improvement in Texas; for instance, my middle brother and his wife today took Mom to local Sunday Mass in person and afterwards took her to eat at a seafood restaurant. The last time I checked, you couldn't attend Mass in person and eating out was generally not an option.
CDC has recently changed its output format, which I found annoying, because I wanted to check the latest daily count of cases and deaths. I have a digital subscription to Washpo, and they have a decent moving average/daily cases/deaths toggle switch downpage in their COVID-19 stat page.
WWE
I did want to publish these comments before today's Payback PPV, just a week after Summerslam. The biggest news was Roman Reigns' surprise return and turning heel by spearing new champion The Fiend (Bray Wyatt) and former champ Braun Strowman. WWE is featuring Reigns' challenge in a Triple Threat match match tonight where it's expected that Wyatt will job his newly won title to Reigns, unless somehow Strowman joins the Fiend in derailing Reigns. What was another swerve was Reigns' apparent new adviser, Paul Heyman, formerly Brock Lesnar's exclusive advocate. That is puzzling, since I didn't think Reigns had promo issues--unless perhaps we see Lesnar returning to even the odds against Strowman.
I'm now seeing how Bayley and Sasha will start their long-anticipated feud. Apparently Sasha had intervened to save Bayley's title from Asuka, but Bayley failed to do the same for Sasha. They have a tag title defense against the unlikely feuding tag team of Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler. Everyone expects the champs to lose, leaving Sasha "no belts". It's just a question of how they'll do it. Will Bayley bail out on Sasha, leaving her to fight Jax and Baszler on her own?
The other thing I appreciated was Sami Zahn's surprising return to confront the "new" champion Jeff Hardy. (Zahn in his COVID-19 sitout had his title vacated by WWE).
The other thing of note is that the Orlando Thunderdome fans are virtual ones. Apparently one showed a photo of dead wrestler Chris Benoit on his screen and got banned. (The murder-suicide madman Benoit has been banned from WWE since his crimes.)
