As mentioned briefly in my last post, I am now using a CGM. Specifically, the Dexcom G6. It is a device that attaches to your body, sort of as a patch, which constantly checks your blood sugar. It’s a 3-component system consisting of a sensor, a transmitter and a receiver. Since I can use my smartphone as the receiver, this saves me the cost of one of those components. This system allows me to stop sticking my fingertips several times a day in an attempt to try to monitor and control my blood sugar levels. This is quite a relief for me, even though it costs a bit more than the regular glucose testing equipment. I was up to sticking myself about 6-10 times per day, and my fingertips are all very numb and calloused at this point, having tested the “old-fashioned” way for many years up until now. Hopefully I can reverse those effects a bit now and get some normal feeling back into my fingertips.

Anyway, now I’m working on the live details and stats I get from my Dexcom to adjust my diet accordingly and find out exactly what effect each food and meal has on my numbers and what effect my activities have on me as well, related to blood sugar levels. So far I’ve learned quite a bit, including just how much walking and physical activity effects my blood sugar level, especially right after eating.

Regarding the ongoing Star Wars series marathon, yesterday I finished Episode 3 and it was awesome. Darth Vader emerged, his mother (Padme) died in childbirth after giving birth to Luke and Leia and the two children were split up – Leia was adopted by Organa and Luke was delivered to his Uncle Owen on Tatooine, setting the scene for Episode IV – A New Hope. I’m heading off to watch that one right now – the old classic that was actually the first Star Wars film released – in 1977. But not the original – the “remastered” version that includes all of the things George Lucas was unable to include in the 1977 release due to the state of technology back then. Some say he totally ruined it, others are very happy with it. I’m not that picky, I’ve seen both versions several times over the years and I enjoy the enhanced version more. I think it makes the original trilogy (Episodes 4, 5, and 6) fit perfectly between the other two trilogies to round out the huge 9-movie saga nicely, even though it was the first trilogy that came out. Now I’m off to the movies… Later!

I just started a 1-week vacation from work today. My next workday is next Monday, 4/5/2021. I last worked on Friday, but I was on-call until this morning at 7:00 AM, so my vacation “officially” just started. But I consider it “9 days off” anyway. So what to do? We rarely go places on vacation, I just needed a break and had a bunch of other things that I needed to get done, so I figured why not, as long as I have plenty of vacation time saved up?

So, while thinking about having exactly 9 days off, and what to do with them, what great collection of movies includes nine features? Only one that I could think of – Star Wars. There are actually a lot more than nine movies in the series, but 9 sequentially numbered “Episodes” with other movies within and around those. So I decided to watch one a day for the entire 9 days. That’s only a few hours a day, so I still have the rest of each day for whatever else I want to do.

I’m watching them in “Episode #” order, so I watched Episode 1 and 2 on Saturday and Sunday already. Got interrupted once or twice with pages from the hospital, but that was bound to happen. So far, we’re off to a good start. Anakin’s all grown up already and getting very angry, soon to turn to the dark side, and I learned that Jengo Fett was the model used for all of the clones in the clone war and his son Boba was just a little kid in Episode 2. Things I totally forgot or missed when I watched these movies years ago.

More to come and maybe some other details of other things as the week goes on, including some cool new tech I’m now wearing which shows me this stuff:

Sandy and I watched The Father last night. It’s the story of a man suffering from dimentia. The movie was made to try to convey what the old man (Anthony Hopkins) is actually experiencing, and I think it was done pretty effectively. Sandy and I were both questioning many things throughout the movie, just as the character was in the movie. By the end, when things become just a little clearer, we thought we had it pretty much figured out, as did Anthony Hopkins. We thought it was really well done and very effective. Oddly, they used Anthony Hopkins’ actual name and birth date in the movie, but the actor himself is not actually suffering from this illness. Wow, what a great actor!

I finished Stephen King’s latest book, “Later” on my way home from work tonight. It was great! I hated that it was much shorter than most of his other novels, but that was the only thing I didn’t like about it. Here’s a great review that says pretty much what I would have said about it:

Wait, did he really just say “M. Night Shamalamadingdong”? LOL

This is an awesome movie. I was concerned at first, before seeing it, that it might be a bit predictable, once I saw the trailer, but it definitely wasn’t. There was very little about this movie I saw coming, except for a surprise at the very end. THAT I saw coming, but only moments before it happened. Does that count?

Anyway, it was really good. You have to see it. It really makes me wonder if these kinds of big scams happen with the elderly, in combination with nursing homes and lawyers, all working together to put “cherry” elders into nursing homes against their will, become their POA and sell and/or auction off their assets to pay for their care (and to pay for their own fees). They make it look pretty horrible. This movie took it to the extreme, but I’m just wondering if this really happens.

I don’t want to say much more than that or I might spoil too much for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, but I enjoyed it a lot. Peter Dinklage was especially great in this movie, playing a role that seems like it was made for him–dark, brooding, mysterious. Rosamund Pike was also outstanding in the lead. Hot, but I quickly came to hate her, then she managed to turn that around…almost completely…by the end of the movie.

Here’s the trailer:

Since watching Palmer…hmmm… Let’s see… Well, big changes at work have resulted in a bit of overtime, but I didn’t mind that much. The stress, however, isn’t fun. Being short-staffed, especially during several major transitions and upgrades–all of which are occurring pretty much simultaneously–has resulted in quite a “backlog” of tickets and issues for our department. But fortunately, our director is pretty understanding, and approaches it as calmly as possible, and lets me just keep working through it as normal. I try to be as calm and understanding with every user as possible, explaining the process and helping them through the changes.

The overtime, at least for now, was voluntary, but I’ve already gone back to regular hours when the biggest surge had passed, because there is limit to how much I can take of all of this in a day, and 8 hours is it. By the end of the day I’m fully exhausted, even though many days I don’t even get out of my office or the department for some physical exercise. Which brings me to my next topic…

With so much less physical activity due to work changes and the pandemic these days, my weight has gone up. This isn’t good. At all. And I promised myself I’d never let my weight get to the point it is now. I even have a treadmill, and I haven’t been motivated enough to get on it. I know this has to change, and change NOW. It’s time to ramp up my physical activity, watching my steps and calorie intake, and start dropping the weight again, one way or another.

Another recent development is my left hand. It started going numb and tingling when driving to and from work several months ago, and it’s been getting worse more recently. My hand gets painful now, several times a day, and I woke up a couple weeks ago to extreme pain in my left wrist with any slight twist of my wrist left or right. So much so, that I setup an appointment with my doctor to get it checked out. With all of the symptoms, he suspects it’s Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. I have a test scheduled for this coming Tuesday–a EMG, I think it’s called–which should tell us more. He said there’s a minor surgery that might be able to fix it. I’ll find out more soon.

Other than all that, I’ve been pretty addicted to VR these days. My boss says maybe I’ve been doing too much Beat Saber… That came is pretty awesome and requires a LOT of quick wrist movement! I have it, but haven’t actually played it much. I think it’d be pretty painful for me to play that one at the moment. Right now I’m sticking to fairly casual stuff, and even a little bit of social. In fact, I just got my invitation to Facebook Horizon – a new social VR game / environment for Oculus. Don’t let the name startle you–just call it “Horizon” if it makes you feel better about it. Relax, it’s just owned by Facebook. Try to keep an open mind. It’s looking like it has real potential. It’s just starting out, and it’s in an invite-only Beta stage at this point.

When I got my invitation to join Horizon yesterday, I installed it right away and jumped in to check it out. I setup a basic Avatar first, trying to make it resemble me a little, with a thin layer of grey hair, blue eyes, and the largest body frame available (still normal-sized–I’m offended). Then I entered “The Plaza”. There were about 6 other people in the instance of The Plaza I entered. One of them–Austin_J_Tin– introduced himself and showed me around. He’s a guide for Horizon, and I’m 100% sure he was an actual human, based on his actions, speech and movement. He spent about 15-20 minutes showing me around and showing me the basics I need to know to get started out. That was awesome. I hope, as the game gets bigger and more popular and fully-released, that there’s always guides like this to help everyone the way Austin helped me. He even offered me the option to friend him so I can ask him any questions I might have in the future and he’ll answer them as he can.

I’m sure there was some way he could tell I was a first-timer right off, but I was still surprised to immediately get assistance–sort of a simple “tutorial” in VR with a real person. I know some users would just want to jump in and play around, learning everything on their own or with their friends, and that’s fine too, but this was nice and I enjoyed the first-time chat and learned a lot from it.

After my little “lesson” I was off to explore. Austin said there are about 150 worlds to explore at this time, but users are building more all the time. Every user has a “Personal Space” where they can build many unique and custom worlds or “environments”. You can start out with a completely blank space (kind of like “The Construct” in The Matrix) or start by choosing one of many pre-built environments and build on that. You can build actual games and puzzles too, once you master all of the building tools and options. Scripting is even available, from what I’ve seen, so actual games are very much possible, and I can’t wait to see what users do with this.

You can bring your friends into your worlds to play and hang out, assist with the building, etc., and it sounds awesome. There’s a tutorial for building your first environment, which I barely completed yesterday, but it taught me a lot. Right now, building things seems pretty difficult. There’s definitely a learning curve, but I’ll try my best to master it. Since it’s still Beta, I’m sure things will change a bit–hopefully making building easier for noobs like me–so this is just the beginning.

I played a little of a Bowling game in there that was pretty neat too. That’d be nice to play with friends. Right now, I’m the only one in there on my friends list. Matt and Kevin submitted their forms right after mine, but haven’t gotten their invitation yet.

All in all, this is pretty cool. When it is finally released, if there’s a price, I’m in and would definitely but it. My guess, however, is that it will be free, like Facebook, and will be monetized with advertising (agh) or in-game add-ons that users can purchase (much better, in my opinion, than ads). But that’s only a guess.

Now back to RR (Real Reality). Tonight Sandy and I are going to watch “I Care a Lot”. It’s about a elderly caregiver who runs a scam on her clients. It looks really good based on the trailer. Maybe I’ll post a little review this evening after the movie or tomorrow.

Sandy and I watched the new movie “Palmer” last night. We both liked it, it was pretty good. It stars Justin Timberlake. It’s about a guy who was a former star college football player who was just released from prison after serving 12 years for attempted murder and other charges. He comes home to restart his life and meets a little boy who lives in a nearby trailer home with his mother. The little boy identifies as a girl, so he has a lot of issues with schoolmates and adults who don’t accept “that sort of thing”. Palmer seems a bit troubled by it as well, but accepts the child for who he is and understands him. Palmer ends up protecting the little boy like his father. It’s a good movie, definitely worth a watch.

Wikipedia Page IMDb Page

I watched an old classic from my teens last night – a movie called “Breaking Away”.  It was a favorite of ours when it came out in 1979, when I was in high school.  I remember watching it with my friends.  It features Dennis Quaid as a teenager as well as Dennis Christopher, Daniel Stern and Jackie Earle Haley.  Then I heard Cloris Leachman had passed away yesterday, and I swear I thought she was in this movie as well, but it turned out it was Barbara Barrie, not Cloris Leachman.  I got them mixed up.  Watching this movie brought back a lot of good memories of my teens and I thoroughly enjoyed it all over again.  

Jay recently sent me a video containing a compilation of VR Fails – people’s experiences in VR that went bad. I can totally relate, although our VR experiences haven’t been anywhere near as costly or painful as these. I wasn’t able to find that same exact video to post here, but I was just as satisfied when I search YouTube for “VR Fails” and found that there are literally thousands of them. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. This one’s pretty good if you’re curious.

It seems to me, the ideal VR setup would be a dedicated, padded, EMPTY room with well-defined in-game indicators for room boundaries. I don’t know if all VR systems have these, but SteamVR seems to handle it pretty well, but still gives the user the option to turn all of these off, in case the user wants an experience that’s as immersive as possible. I think that’s where things go very bad in a lot of these videos. You put an inexperienced user in VR, turn off these safety features, and let them go to see what happens. It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen. And having a big-screen TV in your VR room is a HUGE no-no, but most people can’t afford to dedicate a whole room as a VR environment, and just set up their VR in their game room or rec room (where the big-screen TV is).

It CAN be played safely though, and more often than not, the things in that video don’t happen. After a few months with VR, we’ve only had two minor issues: Kevin punched a lightning ball and it exploded (I wish I had a video) and Connor punched the wall pretty hard. Ironically, he punched my Ready Player One poster, but no damage was done. Nothing so pricey as a big-screen TV being destroyed or any physical injuries. Then again, maybe we’re not playing the really intensely-immersive games that can cause these issues. But I think Richies Plank Experience is possibly one of the most intense ones I have. And I haven’t even set it up with a real plank like this guy did:

I recorded this short video today of me in my VR Home. My VR home can really be anything–one of thousands of VR spaces created by other VR users, professionals, or teams of video game designers as a setting ripped out of a video game they designed. I could even design my own home, from scratch, using any materials or “assets” that I want to. Some day, I’d like to do that, but the time involved to do it probably means I’ll have to wait until I retire.

For now I’ll play around with, and customize, other people’s places. At this time I am using the Supervillian Lair from the class game Team Fortress II. It includes a ton of detail and interactive items and lost of really old 50’s and 60’s vintage mainframe computer hardware. Right up my alley!

Sorry about my chair blocking part of my inset camera, I missed that until I was done recording and didn’t feel like doing it all over again. It only blocks my legs and my Ninja VR pad, so it doesn’t effect the video at all.

Most of the jitters and glitches you see are just limitations in the recording I think. My VR home actually looks quite smooth when I’m actually in it, and things run pretty smoothly overall. I see it at 144hz, so it’s even much clearer than watching most video screens, and it’s very easy on the eyes. I can spend hours in VR with no ill effects at all–and I often do. I think there might actually be some slight long-term effects though–sometimes I tend to wonder if we’re ALL just in one big virtual experiment–like the Matrix–and we just don’t know it.

I may have posted this here before, but it’s so awesome I gotta do it again. Enjoy.

Lesson Learned: Don’t ride a roller coaster right after supper. Seriously. I got ill twice now. VR roller coasters are intense, even if not done right after a meal. I ride them in my comfy desk chair, which swivels. I don’t know how much that contributes to the experience, but obviously it’s enough for my body or mind to be convinced enough to become physically ill.

And yet I continue. I’m fascinated with all of the new experiences. I have dozens more roller coasters to play, tons more to experience. Then there’s Richie’s Plank Experience… You walk a plank on about the 80th story of a huge skyscraper in a busy metropolis… The detail is so stunning it really brings everything to life. They even recommend standing on an actual plank (just set on the floor in your VR space with sponges under it) to greatly enhance the experience. It’s truly frightening even without the actual plank.

Meanwhile back in my lair… just playing with my “Steam VR Home” can consume hours at a time. To begin with, there are just so many homes and options, I could spend all my time just looking at them all for weeks or months before I feel comfortable settling with one I really like. But I don’t have to – I can download as many or as few as I want and make any of them my “home” whenever I want. I can even customize just about anything in any of them and save my custom setup for each of them, host them to friends or even to the public at any time. Vandals? No problem, as I can save or restore any home at any time. I’ve been playing around with the interior decorating options and they are quite detailed. It’s amazing what you can do. I’ll talk some more later. Time to get back to work, lunch is over.

Christmas went about as well possible for 2020 and our current state of affairs.  We’re still isolating as the second wave of COVID-19 blows through.  Now there’s a 3rd issue – a new, supposedly much-stronger strain coming.  Oh joy, could it get much worse?  According to the movie “Songbird”, yes, it could.  That movie is about COVID-23, and you don’t even want to know how things go with that one.  For now, it’s just fiction.  I pray it stays that way.

Our Christmas was quiet.  We had our own private Christmas, just Sandy, Kevin, and I, then had a nice dinner on the 26th with Matt and the grandkids over to visit for the day.  Sandy prepared an awesome dinner, with ham, corn, potato casserole, cole slaw, rolls… everything was just amazing.  We played some VR for awhile, just hung out, and swapped a few presents.

VR has become quite the destination for me lately.  I find myself spending more and more time in there, just exploring and learning the controls for the environments, learning the games, and even taking virtual museum tours and exploring other worlds.  It’s a blast, and sure beats just sitting at home all the time.  Now I’m STANDING at home, walking in a circle, reaching and punching at imaginary things no one else can see.  Ah, much better.  Talk about immersive though… As I play Flying Hero – a very simple VR game – I find my legs cramping up once in awhile from tensing up too much as I try to balance atop skyscrapers and ledges, trying not to fall off.  For me, it can seem a bit too real at times.  I have to calm down and just stop and tell myself “I’m just standing in my basement, there’s no real risk of falling to my death”….then I trip over a chihuahua coming in the room for a visit and the possibility of falling FOR REAL comes rushing back and my worlds collide.

Then there’s this:  https://www.thegamer.com/broke-neck-population-one-facebook-oculus-deleted/.  How?  Just how?  Not the Facebook and Oculus account loss, but the broken neck?  It doesn’t even sound like he fell or slammed into something.  Was it just from tensing up too much in VR?  If so, hopefully that’s an extremely rare occurence.  Wow.

Right here in Kenosha prosecutors determined this week that no charges will be filed against the police officers involved in the Jacob Blake shooting.  Kenosha was again in fear of violence as protestors gathered.  But the authorities showed their numbers very quickly this time and kept things well in order this week with very little violence and destruction.

And last Wednesday hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the capitol building in Washington D.C. and attempted a “coup” of all things.  Shockingly, they were easily able to break in and take over many offices and the capitol building itself!  They apparently assumed, that with enough force, they could simply force the reversal of the certified presidential election results and keep Trump in office.  And Trump encouraged them.  Pipe bombs were later found planted around D.C., including at both party’s headquarters.  What has our country devolved into?  How much worse can Trump make things with two weeks left in office?  I guess we’ll find out soon enough.  Can they actually impeach him – AGAIN – before the official inauguration in less that two weeks?  And will it further divide the country?  I don’t think it should go unaddressed, but I worry about what more this president is capable of in his final few days.  I just want to crawl into my perfect little VR world and stay there until January 21st, then carefully crawl out and see what’s left.

I’ve been spending more time in VR lately since I got a new VR rig.  This technology is fascinating to me, even though I am fully aware that with one bad eye I can’t quite fully experience things exactly as intended, but I think, with the gear I have, I get about as close as I ever will.

On that note, last night Kevin and I were playing Beat Saber – a game where you hold two light sabers, one in each hand, play an awesome some song, and try to keep up with the beat by slicing “beat blocks” in the correct orientation that are flying at you while also avoiding huge slab walls also flying directly at you.  Well, my VR play space isn’t exactly huge and the room has furniture against the walls.  On one of those pieces of furniture was a really neat “Plasma Ball” on a stand that Kevin had gotten for Christmas one year when he was little.  This is one of those balls that displays lightnng bolts shooting out from the center, and you can touch the ball anywhere and your touch attracts the lightning to your hand as it strikes.  Very cool.  It was pretty old, and we had found it again when we cleaned out the garage.  That means it was tucked away in its box for about 7 years, unused.  When we dug it out, we were shocked it even worked.  So I cleaned it up and displayed it in our game room.

You can already pretty much see exactly where I’m going with this, right?  Yup, Kevin was getting pretty heavy into an intense section of a Linkin Park song, slamming through his beats in VR as I watched his progress on the computer monitor.  He was intent on breaking my score, which wasn’t very high anyway–I hadn’t even managed to finish the entire song–when I heard a loud BOOM and a crash of shattering glass.  For a second I thought it was just another effect in the game before realizing the sound didn’t come from the VR headset like the music was, it came from a different part of the room.  Kevin, still in VR and finishing the song, yelled “What was THAT?”  I turned to see the Plasma ball, completely shattered and large glass chunks along with tiny shards of glass, all over the furniture and carpet.  I only wish I had a video camera rolling or was at least looking in that direction to see the explosion (or implosion) to know just how far in radius I need to be looking for shards of glass… and just to be able to say I saw it.  No one actually saw the impact or the explosion, except maybe the puppies who may have been lounging on the couch in the game room, as they often do.  I have no doubt that if they were there at the time, the explosion would have instantly scared them into leaving in a big hurry anyway.  They weren’t in the room afterward, so who knows.  The power to the ball was off, completely disconnected from power by a smart switch I had setup, so when it exploded, at least there was no electricity to further exacerbate the situation.

I was pretty shocked afterward, since I could poke this ball a little and it would indent, so I had assumed all along that it was some type of plastic.  Nope, it was actually extremely thin glass, apparently, and since I had shined it up really good to make iut look nice, hundreds of invisible, tiny shards of it were all over the place.  And Kevin had been playing in bare feet.  

I spent the next couple of hours cleaning up chunks of glass from the floor and furniture and vacuuming up every piece too small to pick up by hand.  Every time I thought I was done, I’d move around while looking at the floor or a piece of furniture and see a sparkle–another tiny piece of glass–just waiting to cut someone.  It took quite awhile to even risk walking around a little in the game room before I didn’t think I’d slice my foot open if I were barefoot.  I always wear socks though, unlike Kevin, but that just means I’d probably track glass shards throughout the rest of the house, and we definitely don’t want the puppies to injure their feet at all, so I went over and over it again and again.  I think I went through the Dyson handvac’s full battery charge three times last night before I was done.  That’s not saying much, as the battery only lasts about 15 minutes at most, going from fully charged to fully empty.  That might seem to indicate a battery issue, but it’s completely normal, given the power it has for a hand vac.  I mean it REALLY SUCKS. Literally.  Dyson vacuums are awesome, and whenever possible, I always use them at maximum power.  I figure if you’re gonna vacuum, VACUUM.

Since I’m currently obsessed with VR, Next time I’ll post some more on my experiences in it.  And right on time too, as I’m finishing up the book Ready Player Two this week–another book about the future and VR’s possible disturbing role in it.  Stay tuned.

Joe Biden is President-Elect. Now we wait and see how messy Donald makes things up until January 20th. And beyond. According to his niece, Mary Trump, even after he’s out of the White House, Donald is going to do everything he can to muck up Joe Biden’s Presidency. Donald does not take losing well, as we all know. This could still get pretty messy. Enough politics.

We’ve watched a few good shows lately:

The Undoing – This is a HBO miniseries starring Hugh Grant and Nicole Kidman. It’s 6 episodes long, a total of about a 6-hour movie. It’s really good though, it kept Sandy and I riveted since the first episode, and we couldn’t wait to finish it and wrap up the story completely. I don’t want to spoil any details, so I’ll only say a little about the first episode. Hugh Grant plays a Oncologist working at a hospital in New York. He’s married to Nicole Kidman and they have one child in grade school. Nicole is also a doctor – a psychologist, so you can imagine that they are fairly well-to-do. We quickly learn that many things aren’t quite as they appear to be when someone turns up dead. That’s about all I can say. It’s really good though, worth watching for sure.

Seven Pounds – This is a Wil Smith movie released in 2008, but we never watched it before. As it turns out, it is an excellent movie. Very sad and tragic, but a great story and great acting. Besides Wil Smith, it stars Rosario Dawson and Woody Harrelson. I can’t really explain much about this one without spoiling anything, it seems like it’s best if you go in not knowing what it’s about at all, and just let it unfold over the course of it’s 2-hours-and-3-minute length. And it does just that–it keeps you guessing right up until the end too. I’ll just add this short description I found online: “An IRS agent with a fateful secret embarks on an extraordinary journey of redemption by forever changing the lives of seven strangers”. Another one well worth watching.

I’ve been reading the Ready Player Two audiobook during my commute this week. It’s another good one, but sure turns the tables on the potential future of VR technology showcased in Ready Player One. As you know, if you’ve visited my site more than once in the past, Ready Player One is one of my favorite books. I’m only halfway through the second book, but enjoying the heck out of it already. Whether it’s as good as the first one I don’t know, we’ll have to see, but so far it’s much the same but with many more twists and complications–many of which have already been completely different than what I would have expected for a sequel, which might be a good thing or a bad thing. It’s just a little annoying having to read through some of the detailed explanations of things that occured in the first book, which were added, I guess, to fill out the book for those who didn’t read the first book first or not at all. I listened to the first book over again, just before Ready Player Two released, just to be ready, but I guess that wasn’t necessary. We’ll have to see how it turns out. I’ll be sure to post a review after I finish it.

Lastly, the puppies somehow managed to slay a rabbit last night in the backyard. We put Shadow and Tiger out in the backyard for a bathroom break and Tiger came back in without his sweater, so I was tasked with running out to find it before our resident squirrel, who lives in our backyard tree, decided to use it to it as insulation for his Winter next. Our yard is fenced in completely with a chain-link fence, so rabbits and squirrels tend to get in and then get caught off-guard when the dogs are let out and have a hard time working their way back to, or finding, their way back to where they came in so they can get back out.

The squirrel always escapes up our tree, and the dogs wait at the base of the tree, looking up and barking. But the bunny, sadly, either wasn’t able to outrun the puppies, or he just gave up running at some point and dropped dead of a heart attack or exhaustion. I didn’t see any blood anywhere, on the ground, the bunny, or either of the two puppies. Tiger’s sweater was lying a few feed from the bunny, intact, like he pulled it off in a hurry to join the fight, or continue the hot pursuit of the bunny when they were chasing him. He sometimes gets a front leg out of his sweater, so sometimes he’ll walk up to us on 3 legs with one stuck inside his sweater, or he’ll just pull his other front leg out so it slides down his torso and he works it the rest of the way off. So there was the dead bunny, as you see in the photo, along with dozens of tufts of very soft bunny fur scattered all over the backyard in places. I placed Mr. Bill, one of the puppies’ favorite squeaky toys (he used to cry “Oh noooooooo!” in Mr. Bill’s voice until I accidentally stepped on him on the living room floor rendering him mute for some time–Dr. Sandy later performed surgery on him and gave him a couple new squeakers so he wasn’t so quiet) next to the bunny for scale.

I brought Tiger’s sweater in the house and explained the crime scene to Sandy and Kevin. They were pretty shocked. We looked over the sweater and both dogs, but didn’t see any signs of a struggle at all. They just seemed really wound-up and anxious to go back outside.

So I gathered up a plastic bag and put on some rubber gloves, then headed out to clean up the crime scene. That went really smoothly, and as I mentioned, I didn’t find any signs of trauma on the bunny at all, he was just flat out on the ground, freshly dead, eyes not even glazed over yet.

The country is a mess.  COVID-19 runs rampant as the holidays fast approach, and it’ll get much worse.  It seems like people are putting too much faith in the upcoming promised vaccine(s), so they’re not taking the suggested precautions, no matter how much they are told to.  If we ALL just conformed for a few straight weeks we could kill this thing, once and for all, even without a vaccine yet.  But we can’t.  Half the country still believes masks don’t work, it’s all a hoax, and Trump has a chance at overturning the election results.  Because it doesn’t kill most people and some infected people have very mild to no symptoms, people are willing to take the chance of catching it.  COVID-19 is not political.  It’s a virus.  It doesn’t care if you’re left, right, or non-partisan.  It infects and kills indiscriminately.  Wearing a mask is not political.  It’s protection.  It protects you from catching the virus, and also protects others from catching the virus if you happen to have it.  If you think you may have been near someone who was infected, it is recommended that you isolate yourself for 3-5 days, then get tested yourself.  This prevents the possibility of false-negative results if you were to get tested immediately, since it takes a few days for the virus to show up in your system once you’re infected.

In other news, yeah, it’s been slow here.  We’ve been cleaning a lot this past week, working on the basement lately, and I’ve also been scanning more old photos so we can get rid of the many boxes we have stuffed with old photo albums.  After I disassemble and scan them, they then go into a “scanned” box, and when that’s full I give it to my sisters Beth or Penny, whoever wants it.  For me, after they’re digital and online, I don’t want them taking up any more physical space in our house, unless they’re mounted on the wall.  With how many I have left, I’m making slow progress.  I’ll need to take entire days and weeks off of work to speed things up a bit in this area.  Right now, my current pace is as much as I can handle without going crazy.  I’ve also found a lot of old home movies on DVDs, VHS tapes, and 8mm tapes.  I’m working on the DVDs at the moment–the easiest to convert to digital–so those you’ll find on my YouTube page, if your interested, as I rip them from the DVDs.

So it’s a toss-up what I’m working on on any specific evening or day off work – I could be scanning photos or ripping DVDs, or trying to find the cheapest way to convert our old VHS and 8mm tapes to digital, but that’s pretty much my life at the moment. Except for today.  And probably the rest of this week…Today is “Ready Player Two” day.  It’s the release of the sequel to Ready Player One – one of my favorite books – so I’ll be reading / listening to the book during my commute this week and any extra quiet time I can fit it in after work.

I guess we’re on our own.  For the next 60+ days, it seems the government will be broken.  Trump is blocking Biden’s attempt to start the normal transistion process.  This really sucks.  Trump can’t even consider what’s best for the entire country.  Since election day, he’s been completely silent, except for his incessant ranting and complaining on Twitter about election fraud.  Meanwhile, the counting continues in many states, and another state (Arizona) just went to Biden, solidifying his lead even more.  I guess once Biden crosses 300 electoral college votes, that’s some magic number that’s supposed to at least sway enough people of power (and hopefully Trump himself) that the results are legitimate and indicate we can clearly move forward.  Who knows what it’ll take though, this is all unprecedented.

I would say it’s an exciting time, to be experiencing something history-making like this, but it’s not.  This is scary.  Everyone’s just doing whatever they like, some following the mask and PPE recommendations, others not, and some even still believing it’s “not so bad”.  Meanwhile, the infection rate is increasing more and more every day in almost all areas of the country and flooding hospitals and ICUs with more patients than they can handle.  I work in a hospital.  I know it’s not a hoax.  I don’t work directly with patients though–I can’t imagine how our resident Heroes even manage to do it day-to-day without being terrified–but we have had to start using extra protection these days whenever we need to go to the patient floors, which is a total of three layers of masking:  an N95 Mask, covered by a blue & white standard face mask (to protect the N95 from soiling) and a full face shield in case anyone sneezes or coughs near us.  It’s not comfortable at all, makes it difficult to breathe normally, and for me, it’s also very itchy.  I have sinus problems as well, and it’s just very uncomfortable when anything or anyone touches my nose, so you can imagine my discomfort.  But it’s a requirement for my job and for my safety and the safety of our patients and co-workers.

Many people seem to “not quite get it” until someone close to them becomes infected.  Sure, many people only experience mild symptoms and others get the virus and don’t have any symptoms at all.  Others are quite the opposite and end up in the ICU, some on a ventilator, and some even die.  We even lost our first employee due to COVID-19 this week.  It’s real, people.  Wear a mask.  Please.

And let’s all get behind the President.  Whoever it is.  Or will be.  He’s Our President.  He represents all of us, as Americans.  We’re too divided.  Screw the “sides”.  Support what’s right, not what’s “right” or “left”.

We watched as Trump took the lead in most states…because he told his followers to Vote in-person because he doesn’t trust the mail-in absentee voting system. So, as a result, millions Republicans did just that, while millions of Democrats voted by mail. Then, after the polls closed on Tuesday, depending on how the ballots were read by each state, either Trump or Biden took the lead. So in the states where mail-in ballots are tallied last, Trump took the lead–sometimes by a huge margin–then when the mail-in ballots were tallied, Biden usually caught up, came close to, or exceeded Trump and the state flipped to Biden. This whole issue was orchestrated by trump when he publically announced that he distrusted the mail-in balloting system and told all of his supporters to vote at the polls on election day. Yet now he’s crying “FRAUD!” and “FAKE RESULTS!” all over the place. There was no problem with the 2016 election, when he won, but since he’s losing this one, he can’t accept it.

Believe me, I read Mary Trump’s book. She explained his issues in great detail, including how Donald can’t accept losing and what he thinks of “losers”. I only hope he doesn’t do something (or multiple things) stupid during his last two months in the White House. He wields the most power in the world. I shudder to think of what he’s capable of right now. Like other countries, we should really have an instant transfer of power right after an election. The next day at least. This two-and-a-half-month period “in limbo” is ridiculous.