Well hey there, everyone! It’s been awhile since I’ve put anything up here, but given the shelter-in-place business, I figured this would be a good time to put a random jumble of words on here again. Honestly, it’s been so long, I’m not sure how to start a blog post anymore. Do I start out with a wave from an emoji? Do I make a pop culture reference about tiger kings and cool cats and kittens? Do I keep 6 feet between each word? Hell, I’ll just start typing and see what happens.
So, the COVID-19 pandemic is alive and well, and we are currently in week 7 of lockdown. I always thought of 7 as one of my lucky numbers, but all this week has brought me is a dropped/exploded Lone Star can in the kitchen, the discovery of a possible allergy to Slim Jims, and many bouts of insomnia. I remain optimistic that this week will get luckier by Friday…when I drink the rest of the unexploded beer and eat the reminder of my snack sized Slim Jims, allergy be damned.
The luck I have experienced during this 7 weeks though is that I have yet to walk in front of any work video chats without pants on. And with my track record of being bare-assed at home, this is an accomplishment in itself. I’ve been keeping a list of quarantine achievements, and this triumph is prominently listed.
Speaking of work, we’ve been pretty darn busy in the marketing world. Even with the world ending and all, people are still hurtin’ for a ‘gurtin – buying up a bunch of yogurt, milk, candy, and probiotic products. As for probiotics (the stuff that helps you stay “regular”), what a heck of a time it must be a marketing/advertising writer for a toilet paper company. Those folks must be making a killing. I can see the headlines now:
“One Mega Roll for every undercooked quarantine meal”
“2-ply to pair with microwaved fries!”
“A clean ass today keeps the Corona at bay”
“Hoard me or you will die.”
I think I smell a yogurt/TP partnership in the near future. Or at least that’s what I hope I’m smelling…
Overall, Liz and I have done a pretty good job of keeping our sanity and making sure to have a lot of fun. Which isn’t too hard, because Liz is the most fun person on the planet. We created our own mini golf course (I won. No big deal.), we opened the Quarantine Cantina on our patio, we took a time machine back to the 90’s and played Super Nintendo while eating feet’s-worth of fruit snacks (quite literally…Fruit by the Foot…get it?!), and we’ve just embraced out typical weirdness to keep ourselves laughing…and only occasionally crying. Heck, we even learned a new skill – iPhone video editing – and made super professional looking videos of these activities.
Actual, real time machine from science.
Not only have we enjoyed creating our own entertainment, but we’ve enjoyed some spirit-lifting from Netflix, Disney+, Shudder, and every other streaming service known to mankind. I mean we have watched a butt load of TV shows and movies. Naturally we watched Tiger King, and I am now inspired to sport a mullet on opening day of our baseball league this season. We watched Waco, which also served as an inspiration for a sweet mullet. By the way, did anyone else think that Rory Culkin in that show looked like some spare actor who would portray Emilio Estevez in a Lifetime biopic of his career? Also, I am an avid horror movie fan, and I’ve been spending many a insomnia spells watching all sorts of interesting stuff on Shudder. Through this horror streaming service, I FINALLY watched the Exorcist. It was pretty damn scary, but ironically, that was the best night’s sleep I’ve had all quarantine.
Obviously, there are more important things to worry about than grown men playing a game, but a selfish silver lining of this delay-all-the-sports-and-keep-your-ass-inside order is that I’ve had more time to rehab my throwing shoulder after surgery. I’ve turned our garage into a down and dirty baseball training facility, complete with a hitting/throwing net, resistance bands, and lots of Craig’s List purchased steroids. It’s been a very welcome distraction, and I’m happy to report my shoulder is feeling pretty darn good.
Our neighbor is a creep. He just keeps wandering into our garage. But he was a creep even before all this happened, so I guess that helps things feel more “old normal” when he goes about his typical creepy behavior – i.e. touching our Amazon packages, installing hidden cameras in our bathrooms, etc.
Though I haven’t been able to see my pals in-person, we’ve had a blast on video chats. We have guys from across the country who will join our weekly sessions where we talk about random nonsense, watch basketball games from when we were in high school on YouTube, and press play on a VCR wielding a different rated R VHS tape that we weren’t allowed to watch as kids (mostly thanks to boob scenes) each week – because we’re scandalous like that.
That’s all I have for now. I hope you all are staying safe, healthy, and at least partially sane!