Positively doing time

Don’t tell anyone, but I just took my trash out. The garbage room is maybe 50 steps outside my apartment door, down to the right. I also grabbed a couple of Vanity Fairs that were lying on the free table. But please keep it a secret.

I’m in jail and cannot leave my apartment until Tuesday. I tested positive. Crap! 

Somehow, this is my first go-round with COVID, and it hit me like a truck. I felt fine until Tuesday night, but I still didn’t think anything of it. I NyQuil’d myself to death and felt better Wednesday morning, so I went to spin class. Right now, the spin class consists of me and the instructor, who happens to be one of our nurses.

Came home, showered and ate breakfast. Business as usual. I was dressed for work and even had my bag over my shoulder when I got hit by a truck. It was mostly exhaustion. I took my temperature and was shocked that it was pretty high, but I figured it was a mistake. I gave it a few minutes and took it again, and it had gone up.

Since I figured it had to be COVID, I felt I owed it to the spin class instructor to warn her, because, although we were more than six feet apart and in a giant room, she would have been my closest contact. And since she was the nurse, she came over and tested me. At that point my fever had started to come down – it hit about 102.5 – but I was still exhausted. The nurse asked me why I still dressed for work, and it was simply because I was too tired to change. I couldn’t even pick up the remote.

I worked from home, which was a bummer because last night was my boss’s going-away party. The bigger boss is leaving and was giving all the big bosses send-offs, and last night was my boss’s turn. I was bummed to miss it. Although someone brought me take-out, we were giving him going-away gifts and I wanted to be a part of that.

Instead, I crawled into bed at 7 p.m., which was the same time the party started. I guess it went well; I haven’t heard, and I haven’t eaten the take-out. Really, I haven’t eaten much. I haven’t lost my taste but so far I have zero appetite, which seems strange because I am hungry.

Fortunately, I still have plenty of food in my apartment. I’ve found lots of pasta on the free table, plus some quinoa. The freezer also has a couple meals, so hopefully I’ll make it till Tuesday. If I change my mind, though, I can always ask someone to bring me something from the cafeteria.   

Mostly, though, it’s just going to be fighting boredom. I mean, I have work to do, but tomorrow is the weekend. I have no idea what I am going to do to stay busy. I guess it will probably be streaming, because there’s really nothing else to do. I can’t even go outside and walk around the compound.

This place is already like a minimum-security prison, and now I am in solitary confinement.

Yeah. It’s hot. It’s July. What did I expect, right?

 

Happy Independence Day!

Happy America’s birthday from The 100 Acre Sandbox. We had a congressional visitor, which is when someone who depends on being elected wants to come and take patriotic pictures with military people in uniform.  Even though the U.S. is in Iraq solely in an advisory capacity, we have some teams over here doing other work, like medical stuff and to support the Americans who live in the Sandbox. We gathered in our lovely dining facility, where our cafeteria employees went all-out and laid out a great menu, including mock Chick-Fil-A sandwiches. They were fantastic, as was the fruit carvings they’d done, like this fantastic watermelon. But our carvers’ talents are not limited to food.

We also had a giant Statue of Liberty, which had caused me to do a double-take earlier in the week. We have stuff stored all over the place in boxes like the back of a semi-truck and, while walking by the cafeteria, I noticed an employee digging through one. Since I figured it had to be food, it was quite surprising to see a big Styrofoam Lady Liberty among the boxes.

In a discussion with some colleagues about the amazingly carved fruit, someone mentioned they’d witnessed someone carving out an Easter bunny out of Styrofoam; we speculated that our cafeteria employees, who are contractors, must have one heck of a weird job description. There are some crazy talented people here – carving up watermelons and giant holiday decorations.

It's hot!

We have a new ambassador over here, which means we said goodbye to our old one. We all loved him, and he was quite active in our monthly 5ks, so, in coming up with the theme of the May one, they named it after him. We get T-shirts for every one we run (or walk – that’s 3k) and in the end, I’m going to wind up making a quilt or something out of them because I’ll have so many, but in the meantime, I am using them for my daily walks or runs. And, as you can see, it’s flippin’ hot here. We’re easily topping 105, but, unlike Florida, it is not humid. The goofy hat I bought in Kazakhstan has served me well thus far and it’s almost impossible to walk outside without shades on. I wake up early to walk the compound 2-3 mornings a week (the others I go to the gym) and it’s gotten to the point where, even though it’s only 40 minutes or so, I have to not only take a water bottle but change shirts when I am done. It’s a leisurely stroll but it’s still brutal.

So there’s a lot of hanging out indoors. This week, I bit the bullet and subscribed to Disney+ for a year, and even with my crappy internet I’ve managed to watch a few things, such as the retro Escape to Witch Mountain and the trendy Hamilton. I’m all over the place.

The retro stuff is a lot of fun; I’ve also tossed The Cat From Outer Space in my queue. I really don’t remember much about it, but once it comes in, it all comes back. It sure did for Witch Mountain.

I’ve also rediscovered MasterMind. With all the discussion of Wordle recently, I started thinking it sounded familiar and remembered that we used to have the little hands-in MM and that I really liked it. Of course, it’s online now, and I’ve taken to playing a game a night. For the most part, I figure them out, but getting started is a lot of luck. Imagine my surprised when I landed on this one evening:

 

Wish I could claim skill.

I’m sure someone can calculate the odds (there are eight colors and four spaces; I don’t repeat any colors, so it’s a finite number, I know) but for me it was like wow, I’ll never see that again.

But a couple weeks later, I won this one:

 

I didn't calculate the odds,
but they're dang long.

Again, I wonder these odds, because I first was 0-for-4. I knew for the second try, I’d be 4-for-4 in colors, but somehow had them in the right order but one spot over from where they should have been. Had I shifted in the other direction, I would have solved it in three, but I’ll take it.