Version 2.241

My best friend and her youngest daughter both have Covid-19. They got it when they were visiting a friend in Florida with whom they stayed. It is hard to believe, but thankfully the symptoms have been mild. Still, it's like living with a knife on your throat for a while, as things can change and some people have serious side-effect that linger after they recover. She has been having video calls with her doctor in Maryland, so if things turn sour, I am certain she'll be advised to go to a hospital.

The last time we had spoken on the phone, I had told her about all my appointments at the dentist and she had replied that she was too scared to go, it seemed like a very risky thing to do. I have the opposite opinion: at this point, dental medical facilities are some of the safest places because there is a very tight safety protocol, much tighter than at the regular doctor's office, much tighter than at any place where you might go and meet other people. Plus, I am careful about putting my mask on as much as possible, not that that is 100% virus-proof.

On Sunday, the new members of Congress will be sworn in, but today Congress is in mourning: Republican Representative-Elect Luke Letlow, from Louisiana, has died of Covid-19; he was only 41 years old and is the first Congressman or Congressman-Elect to die. He leaves behind a wife and two small children. As far as anyone knew he was healthy, so all the complications that led to his death were virus-related, according to the doctor cited by Politico.

Two of my friends who are nurses have already been vaccinated. One is in NYC and the other one is here in Memphis; they both got the Moderna vaccine. The husband of the one in Memphis seems very happy, he jokes that she is a Moderna girl now. I hope it keeps them safe.

Version 2.240

Always having to look for a silver lining, a glimmer of hope, is an American thing. In the aftermath of having spent close to two hours in the cold, waiting to get into the building to get my driver's license renewed, I was informed that I had to do the written and driving exams again because it had been more than six months since my previous license had expired. To say that I was stunned is the understatement of the year, for I felt a kind of cloud falling all around me, a mix of disbelief and onset of depression. I did not understand my reaction; it felt too overblown considering the circumstances of 2020.

When I got home, I texted a friend to tell her what had happened and I finished my text with "2020 blows." Besides comiseration, I got the silver lining from my friend regarding our current calendar time: we hung out more, worked on the garden, and acquired yard birds. All true and very fulfilling, thus it hs not been total loss or, as some people say, chin up.

Sometime in my afternoon, I finally decided to browse the manual to study for the Driver's License exam that I was given at the Department of Motor Vehicles. It turns out that, if my previous driver's license expired more than 6 months ago but no more than 5 years have passed, I have to pay a $10 late fee, which is double what I would have to pay if it had expired less than 6 months ago. Lest you think that it is a ridiculous amount, it is for me; but for countless other people, this money is a meal or more for their themselves and their family.

The same mistake can be devastating for a poor person and a minor nuisanse to someone who makes a comfortable living. How does one go about fixing that inequality?..

Version 2.239

Maybe I am growing soft with age, but I do not feel like commenting on how ridiculous the news have been out of Portugal. I was reading Alain de Botton today and he mentioned how historians tend to fall on the side of history, as if things could not have been any other way. That is partially because historians have access to records of what happened, as the records of the things that did not happen either were not kept or did not even exist. But now, with the Internet, more evidence of could have happened but did not happen remains and it is digitized and easy to search.

There is a less positive point: because publishing is now so easy, i.e. marginal cost close to zero, many things that are not newsworthy become newsworthy, like a Fact Check of a Facebook user statement, when the user remains anonymous, as if anyone on Facebook were a public figure or a jornalist, for example. I don't know, maybe it's just me going soft with age or the fact that I'd rather stare at the birds. But silly pretty pictures I can handle those for endless hours.

Version 2.238

The Nashville bomb was the work of a suicide bomber, whose remains were found in the explosion. I do mean to sound calous, but isn't there a better way of killing oneself than to perpetrate a bombing of a public space? We should not complain, as nobody else seems to have died, but there was an element of luck. Clearly, the person was mentally impaired.

In the evening we got word that President Trump signed the stimulus bill, hence much ado about nothing. God knows what went on in the background to make him sign it, but we will see the extent of the negotiation: if there is leverage being used against him, he will not try any other stunts.

During the day, I mostly gardened and I think I made progress, although it feels like very little was done. Besides finishing planting the bulbs, I continued to build the rock border and trimmed the jasmine, which had spread too much. I had not realized how invasive it is, but I did not plant it, so I never researched it.

The birds have emptied the white house bird feeder again, which makes me happy. It is not uncommon to see 12 or more birds around the garden. One time, I counted 9 mourning doves pecking at the ground. In the branches of the Japanese maple, more that 10 birds jumped and flew around. Common visitors include cardinals, house finches, tufted titmice, Carolina wrens, yellow-rumped warbler, Carolina chickadees, and the mourning doves, of course.

Version 2.237

Since President Trump did not sign the relief bill, some people's unemployment benefits might run out today. Hopefully, benefits will be retroactively restored and nobody will have to suffer for this. In the meantime, we found out that Steve Mnuchin negotiated with Congress without informing the President of the details of the deal. Of course, since the President does not read his daily briefing, it is entirely possible that he was informed, but failed to consume the information.

Larry Summers thinks that Trump will disappear into the fog after he leaves office, which, in my view, is the American way. Once Americans get what they want, they move on. There is no point in dwelling upon something that has become a moot issue. We will see the true strength of Trump when the details of his Presidential library become known, although I would say there is a high likelihood that it will not be built.

Despite everything, the election of Donald Trump and his defeat shows that any country can end up with a bad President and it takes a lot of work to get rid of said person, but it is not impossible. The will of the people does matter in the end.

Version 2.236

A couple of minutes before 1 PM, I got a message from a friend of mine in Oklahoma asking me if I lived in Nashville. I only read it after 3 PM, but I was a bit annoyed that he would ask, since I had told him where I had moved to; but I do move very frequently. I told him that I was in Memphis. He replied that there had been a bomb set off in Nashville and that he wanted me to be safe. He and I met in school in 1995, a few months after the Oklahoma City bombing. Events like this always have a bitter taste for people with connections to Oklahoma.

This bomb in Nashville, on Second St., was very strange. The location is a tourist hotspot, which I have been to. There are bars, restaurants, quaint little shops, concert halls, etc. It is a really great place to visit when there is no pandemic, but it was mostly empty at 6:30 AM on Christmas Day, when the bomb went off. Plus, the RV where the bomb was placed had a loud speaker system that first payed an audio recording of gunshots, then issued warnings that a bomb was to go off and it even had a countdown to the explosion.

The police had evacuated most people by the time it went off, but it seems that that had been the plan all along. The damage to property was very great and the front of one of the buidings collapsed. Then the power went out, even the natural gas supply was affected, which precluded the generator in an AT&T business from functioning, so communications were down up to 180 miles away. On my neighborhood Nextdoor, people are still complaining about the lapse in cell phone service.

The authorities are investigating the case and have no idea who could have done such a thing, but I guess it was someone who wanted to damage property while not hurting people. Maybe a desperate business owner who wanted to make a claim on his/her insurance. Hopefully, the FBI and the police will get a lead soon.

Version 2.235

A merry Christmas Eve was had by all, despite the blistering cold. We are expecting the temperatures to drop to -7C tonight and I just realized that I did not cover the faucets outside, but there is no freeze warning, so I guess we will be OK. Let us hope Santa does not develop frost bite on his way over.

My Christmas present was an antique Spanish Santos cage doll -- I was unaware such a thing even existed, but am very much intrigued by it. I shall spend some time tomorrow researching it.

For the first time in my life, I attempted to make a bolo rei and I made a gluten-free 5-minute version, which turned out pretty good, considering that I had no idea if the flour would be up to the task.I had some friends try it and they also liked it.

I am taking time off from work until January 4 and the plan is to try to read a book, walk more, and perhaps organize the house a little bit. I still have some bulbs to plant, but it is so cold now, that I don't really feel like getting my hands dirty. Perhaps I should store them in the refrigerator and plant them once it warms up.

Version 2.234

It is hard to imagine that tomorrow is Christmas Eve. We could ask ourselves where did time go, but we all know that it's not a great question this year. A better one is what happened today. Well, today, President Trump vetoed a defense spending bill and everyone is still trying to figure out what he wants to do regarding the stimulus bill, which did pass with veto-proof majorities, but rules do not apply to this President.

Almost my whole morning was spent at the doctor, as I went to see a second allergist regarding all the reactions that I have been having to food. He thinks that we will not know what is wrong with me because there are lots of things that we don't understand and the reactions that I have to all the different foods do not fit a known disease. So I should just file it under food intolerances and count my blessings because, in his opinion, I am heathier than 99% of the people he sees, as I do not have to take any medicine at my age to function.

In any case, he did do some bloodwork, so maybe something will come up. If not, we shall resign ourselves to not knowing. And I suppose the fact that I was able to identify the problem was food-related is what keeps me healthy. I feel sorry for all the people who suffer, but do not know that the food that they are eating is what is making them unwell. I felt pretty debilitated and in pain before, but the solution was fairly straigh forward: do not eat the foods that make me sick.

Maybe due to the pandemic, medicine will change and become better more quickly. I think there are lots of innovations and potential changes that could happen. For starters, it will be a lot more difficult to go back to waiting years for developing a vaccine, so we will likely see more vaccines for lots of things more quickly.

Speaking of vaccines and pandemic, while talking to a coworker from another country, I learned that he had had Covid-19 earlier in the year. I was pretty much speechless. I still catch myself thinking we must be in a bad dream every once in a while.

Version 2.233

Mr. Trump is throwing a tantrum regarding the stimulus bill: he thinks it is a "disaster" and people should be getting checks for $2000, rather than the $600 that is in the bill, so he is threatening to not sign it into law. As if we did not see it coming that the lame-duck President would be going out with a bang. I got a feeling that my taxes are about to go through the roof and I do not qualify to get any stimulus, other than my alarm clock waking me up to go to work. We will be lucky if the stock market doesn't crash and takes the economy along with it.

According to a machine learning model developed by Youyang Gu, the U.S. will reach herd immunity around July 2021. By then, it is expected that 30% of the population will have had the virus and 30% will have been vaccinated, thus reaching the 60% needed to reach herd immunity. I expect to be in the 40% group that will still be waiting to get a vaccine.

The virus is getting closer, though. One of my friend's is a nurse at a school and she had to self-isolate because one of the children in her school got coronavirus and the two had been close in the same office. Her daughter also had to quarentine herself because she was in close contact with a victim. Poor children and parents...

Version 2.232

"Can you all see the convergence?" That is how one of my friends texted to remind us to look at the sky to see Jupiter and Saturn in the great conjuction. From the balcony I saw something, but it was so odd that I thought it was some sort of airplane, so we headed out to the lake to see it. It was the same thing that had been visible from my balcony: two dots, one bright and one faint, very close together. It is said that this was the "Christmas star" when Jesus was born and it was also present at the time that Newton discovered gravity.

As I write this, the news outlets are sending notifications that the Senate has signed into bill the $900 billion coronavirus relief bill, which had already passed the House earlier today. Talk about another great covergence. I am not surprised that the Democrats passed it in the House, as the President-Elect is a Democrat, but I am surprised that Republicans voted for it before the run-off election in Georgia. I don't think Republicans care that much anymore about keeping control of the Senate. They will strengthen if they are in the minority and they have a way of not being responsible for what is about to happen.

But there were more things in the bill: the Smithsonian is to create two more museums, one for women and one for Latinos, and the U.S. affirms that the choice of the successor of the Dalai Lama should not be subject to political interference, a clear jab at China. I wonder whose idea it was to put that in the text.

Version 2.231

I received an email from the Brooks Museum announcing that they are shutting down until January 6 in anticipation of what they expect will be decided by the local authorities in Memphis. Tennessee is one of the states with the highest progression of cases and, in Memphis, we have a positivity rate in excess of 28%.

Our early success has become our downfall, as peope met their families over Thanksgiving and the number of cases started to take off. What this feels like is being in one of those domino chains and seeing the pieces before us falling off in sequence until at some point it gets to us. I hope it stops soon.

According to the news, Congress reached an agreement to implement another $900 billion stimulus bill. The euro is at $1.22, while before the pancemic it hovered around $1.10, so that tells you which side has pumped more money in the economy since the beginning of the pandemic. It's the right thing to do, as there are a lot of people struggling. During the first round of stimulus, poverty in the U.S. declined a bit, but then as the money ran out, it started to climb up.

The silver lining of this pandemic is that we have never learned so much so quickly about how the U.S. economy works and what is effective and what isn't. We are entering a new age of economic analysis, in which there is decentralization of data collection. We will see how long it takes to spill over to Europe, if it ever does.

Version 2.230

All day it rained. Julian refused to go out, but insisted on running some errands with me in the afternoon. He stayed in the car while I returned an item to Banana Republic, but then started to get restless so we stopped at the Regalia Shopping Center. I unbuckled him and he hopped on my lap, ready to exit, only to remain frozen as soon as he realized it was raining and everything was wet.

I carried him to the shopping center and we walked around under the walkway. That was his only outting for the day and he got frustrated because I did not take him inside the stores. Oh well, it's still 2020--you should be used to it, buddy...

At Williams Sonoma, I did not find another bouchon pan, which was most unfortunate, since that means I will have to half the recipe for popovers, since they don't turnout as good when baked in muffin pans. Half is better than none, so chin up. Plus that would be an excuse to stop by Sur La Table, except I did not realize that they had permanently closed the store in September and something else had already replaced it.

To be honest, the last thing I bought there, a French crêpe pan, is still in the cupboard unused. I haven't even seasoned it. I was going to make crêpe complète with it, emphasis on was going...

At the liquor store, I managed to find Portuguese wine, so I bought 8 bottles. That's what I'm giving some friends for Christmas. I must be showing my age, because I did not get carded at the store. I had even taken my American passport because my driver's license is expired and I only realized it the other day. My Portuguese driver's license says that it's valid until 2037, but that's a lie. I am not allowed to have a Portuguese driver's license because I do not live in Portugal, which is such bullshit.

Well, I have been so enthused about Portugal lately that even my passport is expired. Not that I could renew it, as the consulate has not been answering calls or replying to emails. The only thing I get, actually, are emails telling me to pay my taxes and emails asking me to invest in Portugal, but I'm more leaning toward divesting before it crashes again. In the meantime, I'll settle on enjoying my outcast status.

Version 2.229

Friday, one week before Christmas. And then we wait to do it again on New Years'. In three weeks we will see how we will have fared. Sometimes it feels that all we do is wait. Not that it would be different otherwise.

During the day, when I come downstairs to grab coffee, I look out the windows to see the birds in the garden. Sometimes there are none; others it feels like a huge party, with quarreling and flying from branch to branch. I could stare at them for hours, even though they only stay a few minutes. But while they are here, they fly with such eagerness as they search for the juiciest morsels of food. They are free, while we are not.

My neighbor and I ran some errands this evening, including picking up two parakeets that she is planning on offering to her Mother. At the pet store, standing in front of the cage full of animals waiting to be bought, I felt sheer horror, even though these are not animals that would survive in the wild. It felt more humane to only look at the wild birds, rather than keeping captive ones. But it is actually the other way around: capitivity is what humans do.

Version 2.228

It appears that Mike Pence will be going out of the country after the Presidential inauguration. I wonder where he will be going. Maybe a Middle Eastern country where men have the same respect for women that he does. But maybe this is all testing the waters, as they usually like to do.

Christmas will be a week from tomorrow and my ability to track time has flown out the window. This year, I am looking forward to Spring, so that I can see the garden in bloom. And maybe we will start seeing green shoots early, as this year we have La Niña.

One of the first things I heard this morning is that Mr. Macron has Covid-19. I am looking forward to the Portuguese President getting sick with it. It will be a rather comical situation, as the Presidency has been reduced to the whims of a self-centered man.

Version 2.227

Congress, it appears, is pretty close to reaching an agreement on another stimulus package. I wonder if a final version gets announced before the run off elections in Georgia or if we'll stay in a low simmer until after. There is lots of chatter about what a President Biden should do: some want him to forgive student loans, others are talking about changing the tax structure of 401k accounts and switching them to post-tax accounts, similar to Roth accounts.

In a traditional 401k, people are allowed to set aside income for retirement pre-tax and they pay taxes on this income and any appreciation when they withdraw the money, thus the payment of taxes is deferred until retirement. If the money is withdrawn before a certain age, then besides the tax, the person must pay a 10% penalty. In a Roth IRA or Roth 401k, people have already paid taxes on thr income they save, so no other taxes are owed, not even on the money generated in the account.

Such a switch would give the current administration a big boost in tax revenue, but it would also have tremendous implications for savers, so I am really curious to see what will come out of it, as tax-deferred accounts are rather popular.