Many Happy(ish) Returns?

[captainsblog]

Not so fast, Evil Cat: Wegmans still isn't taking stuff back. Not even you.



But it has been announced that much of New York is now cleared to begin the slow march back to something resembling normalcy.  As of yesterday, courts in the Rochester and Southern Tier regions were allowed to resume accepting new filings, and I fired off my first new case in almost three months to a court in Elmira.  Then, word came that our own region has been cleared for Phase One of reopening as of today.  None of it is fast enough for some people, or for many stupid people. Eleanor noticed a decided uptick in the COVIDiocy department when she went in to work yesterday, and our local Usual Suspects are still parading around here demanding that we go All Back right away.  Here's just part of one such blast I got from Crazy Carl, our local mouthpiece for all such things: part of his latest airing of grievances, along with my responses to them.  First, OF COURSE we can go full steam ahead right now, because,....
 

"Trump announced today we will have a vaccine by Fall."
Hooray! Ring the bells! Inform the press! (Yes, sir! Announcement or leak?) It shall be done because the King SAYS it shall be done!

 

"An ICU nurse with the Catholic hospitals says that they were ordered to admit virtually all patients as COVIDs, regardless of testing or the real cause of their malady."
Do they have a name? Or is this one of those unsubstantiated whistleblowers who keep getting fired when Trump finds out who they are?

"ECMC says their hospital is nearly empty and they are laying off staff. "
Elective surgeries have been back on for weeks. If patients aren't comfortable walking into a death trap to have them, can you blame them? And per one friend who posted today, Roswell (our local cancer hospital) is packed.

"At Kaleida an admissions officer has confirmed that the majoirty of COVID admissions last week were from nursing homes and not from the general population. The spike was caused by Cuomo’s order that nursing homes had to hold on to their COVID patients and not send them to hospitals. He reversed the order last week. Statistical metrics do not in fact justify the continued lockdown of the general population."
Except that everywhere there's been a reopening, there's been a spike.

"Certainly, a phase in of business activity should have begun weeks ago. People are not stupid. They understand the need for masks, gloves and social distancing."
Don't know where you live, CC, but I am not seeing masks or social distancing anywhere except where mandated.

"Many small businesses are choking and need relief. The economy is circling the drain. Opening car washes, gyms, dance studios, hair salons, museums, and even restaurants, etc., all with safeguards would be appropriate."
Dance studios? Really?!? I guess to perform ballets of appreciation to the King for promising a vaccine this fall?

And ending with my favorite:
"Remember, it is in the genetic makeup of insecure and cowardly liberals and progressives to desire power over others. They want to micromanage the lives of the people."
Says the spokesmouth for the movement which passed the PATRIOT Act and invented the mandatory transvaginal probe. 

Hopefully you didn't click that. I'm certainly not planning on reliving it:P

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Federal courts have remained open, without in-person appearances for some time now. I've yet to appear by phone in any courtroom-based matters with judges, but all trustee examinations of debtor clients are also done this way now.  This morning was my first of the four I now have scheduled between today and late next month, and they're not too different from the in-person drill, but they take some getting used to.  You have to upload a bunch of documents before the hearing that were previously brought to it, you swear in your own client, and then file a declaration that confirms you did so.  Today's trustee is a good guy, and he sent out helpful instructions ahead of time for the logistics of the call. Among them: not calling in until right at the start time, and keeping the call live but muted the whole time until your case was reached on the calendar.

This quickly presented an issue: best as I can tell, our office phones do not have a mute button. So we just did our level best to keep things quiet during the three previous cases and then got through ours without any obvious technical glitches.  Afterward, of course, it did occur to me how we could have done it:




I did two more BK intakes yesterday, both masked and in the office, so I'm likely going to have to rig something more effective than that before these all start hitting the fan calendar.

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Entertainment updates:

- We finished our views of Upload and Dead to Me, both well done.

- Over the weekend, Youtube brought back a video of a full concert done by Prince and the Revolution in Syracuse in 1985, mostly 1999 material.  The picture quality isn't great, especially on a big screen, and the material veered a little into Spinal Tap Stonehenge territory toward the end, but it was a reminder of just how much talent and energy he had then and we've lost now.

- And thanks to a recommendation from sturgeonslawyer and an ebook loan from the library, I've begun reading Pete Townshend's novel The Age of Anxiety. It's beautifully written and occasionally meta (references to the real Who and homages to lyrics showing up, but not often enough to annoy).

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I've been getting feedback about some older pandemics that I'd been wondering about, but I think I will save that for next time.

 

Comments

[angledge]

You wouldn't return Evil Kitty!

[captainsblog]

Hey. SHE's the one who climbed in the damn bag.