Isolation Journal 24

This nearly didn't happen as I managed to fall asleep on the sofa in front of Dirk Gently.

Slept ok, woke up ok, although with massive anxiety about a job that I was matching at work today that I wasn't as far along with as I had hoped.  

Had some cornflakes for breakfast - the milkman had been.  I planned on making a quick coffee before work, but I managed to spill the drip tray everywhere whilst I was refilling the hopper with beans.  Took me 10 mins to clean up.

Today was a 3 coffee day and Alan made some rice and we had leftover bolognase from yesterday and ate in the garden whilst it was sunny.  Qubit got into the next door neighbours bush and meowed and then we picked some raspberries, I cut down some nettles and Alan cut down the elder that was growing in the wall at the back.

2 meetings on Teams today with clients/candidates that was quite productive and some good calls, but just need more candidates for this particular role, it's stressful sometimes when you know there must be another candidate out there, even when you have looked pretty hard.  I had some shortbread as a snack.

I finished later than I'd hoped at work, but managed to download a couple of songs and Alan and I djed for about 2 hours and got thrown off a few times when it detected matching music content.  He used his app a bit which seems to be working well.

It transpires that Katie Hopkins has been permanently banned from twitter today for inciting hatred, I'm not surprised and I'm a bit confused about people complaining about lack of free speech.  It's not that she can't speak and say the same things, but a service provider has chosen to no longer allow them to do it on their platform.  It's like if you were invited to a party, starting upsetting other guests and were asked to leave, it doesn't mean that she can't say these things anymore (although I wish she wouldn't!), but it means they don't have the AI and audience to spam it out to millions of people.

I'd had a rum punch whist DJing and finishing at 9pm neither of us really fancied cooking so we ordered our first takeaway curry since lockdown and our first ever from Saffron on the Just Eat app.  It was really good and it was supposed to take 45 mins so I headed out for a quick run.

I was just going to run up and down the driveway, but the sunset was so beautiful that I ran half a kilometre up to the start of Gorse Lane to take some photos.  The delivery driver arrived as I'd only run about 2 miles and for 20 mins so I took the delivery and went inside.  I left my watch running to tick off 5 vitality points as it only counts workouts if they are longer than 30 minutes.

We watched Dirk Gently and then I fell asleep.

Isolation Journal 4

We woke up late again this morning, mostly because we were so warm even with the fan on full blast, but mostly because I made the mistake of engaging with my Mum's friend on one of her posts on Facebook.  My error here is that she's retired, a staunch brexiteer and hits the return button so often that there are more comments pinging all over the place.  I wish there was a feature on Facebook to block certain people's comments appearing from a certain time in the evening... it has my heart palpitating and my mind racing!

We got up and I had some cornflakes and coffee for breakfast after I'd dealt with a couple of work matters.  

I got drawn back into the ongoing Facebook debate, I'd posted a video last night prompted by the (to me) inexplicable loyalty to some of the government actions during the discussion.  I remain convinced that you can still be loyal to a Government or political party or a country and yet disagree with a policy or action of an MP or special advisor.  Critique and opinion forms better ideas and policy, and in this situation as my Mum asks me "How would you do better?" I think my awareness that I know very little about virology would mean that I would collate as many scientists as possible to help me.  I'd look at the world and steal all the ideas that had worked well and I'd make sure messaging was clear - "Stay Alert" is not a clear message when it comes to a microscopic and invisble virus, if it was a war maybe, but it's not.  The wartime rhetoric that has been invoke is problematic for many reasons, not least that as a globe we are stronger to collaborate globally to contain the virus and develop a vaccine.  Anyway, this was the video - Jordan Klepper vs. Trump Supporters This particular person was clearly provoked by this (although I provided no commentary on it, just the link and some thinking emojis) and she went into an overloaded rant and a few comments later was talking about Brexit and calling it the "Chinese" virus.  I shared a quote that I'd found on a Psychology Today article  

"Our survival will not be enhanced by racism or denial of racism. On an individual level, our immune systems are enhanced by compassion and community, and damaged by contempt." and also the link from the WHO as to why it's not helpful to name diseases based on country of origin.

After we'd wasted far too much time on this I'd changed into my run kit to test my knee out on a gentle run with Alan.  Qubit brought in a baby bird that he'd caught and killed which still makes me sad even though he does it far more frequently than any other cat I've lived with.

We ran a different route today through the fields and over the railway and I was trying to find some street art for my photo challenge.  It was really warm and so there was lots of walking, I tried to top the run up to over an hour for a full 8 Vitality Points, but it only gave me 5.  Fortunately my step count took me up to over 12500 so I did end up with the full points.  My knee is still sore, but it seemed ok to do just over 7K so hopefully it's just a niggle that will go away easily.

We'd not had lunch and had not much time before our 6pm online DJ session so we had the remainder of a treacle tart and cream for lunch before showering, changing and getting a few more songs ready for our DJ set.  Alan had done some visuals and we'd created a playlist themed around the political events of the week - not too serious, just themed around Dominic Cumming's jaunt to the north and inspired by some dancing rumours.

In the midst of getting ready Qubit came running into the house with a baby rabbit.  We thought it was dead, but Alan prised it out of his mouth and he hopped off.   We had no spare boxes to hand and the rabbit managed to get upstairs and we had to empty the washing basket and catch it.  I took him out to the paddock in front of the house and slowly tipped him out and he hopped off into the field.  He was really cute and it still upsets me that Qubit is such a big hunter, at least he was ok.

We Djed for 2 hours, I made a few mistakes, the feed went a bit sketchy and I'm not sure I'm getting any better, but Alan enjoyed playing with his app that he's just finished coding.

Alan then made chicken stir fry for tea and we watched Have I got News for You and more Friends.  We noticed Qubit was limping a bit, although would let us look at his paw and ther wasn't an obvious injury so we are keeping an eye on him and hope that he'll be ok tomorrow.  He was also happy to eat his dinner and some treats, so hopefully will be fine.

And so to bed, late again...I need to get better at going at a proper time.