The kids are getting older and older and while I’m enjoying getting more adult questions, I do miss the little kids I used to have.
This past morning, Diane and I woke up at 5am to a bang. We don’t have thunderstorms in the Bay Area (strange, right?) so we were shocked to get rocked by some good thunder. So was the rest of the house. The dogs started barking and then suddenly Hunter was in our room with a “did you guys see the lightning!?” and then a few minutes later Sasha jumped in our bed and asked, “Is this an earthquake?” The dogs then both jumped on the bed and all of the sudden we had 4 people and 2 massive dogs sharing our bed as we listened to the storm rage above us.
During the days, it’s often that both kids would rather escape to their room to call friends or watch their own movies on their iPads than hang out with Diane and I. So, it made my day to have a brief moment of snuggle time with the entire family. I know that lightning like this won’t strike that many times more as these kids get older and older.
Sasha had a soccer tournament all weekend. Two games on Saturday and a game on Sunday. I remember laying in bed before the weekend began, talking to God and saying, “Wouldn’t it be cool if she actually won this tournament?” I knew it was sort of impossible because the team hadn’t been doing that well as a team and the last tournament we went to they lost all three games. That said, they had been getting better.
Bright and early Saturday morning in Sunnyvale they played a team they’ve lost to twice already (the Mustangs). It was a well-fought game. Our team scored a goal to go up 1-0 in the first half, then the other team was charging and charging and charging the entire game, but they couldn’t score and the game ended. So we won 1-0. Wow, that was nice.
The second game, the same thing happened. We scored a goal early and then we held on to the very end to win 1-0.
That was the end of Sasha’s first two games. Then I went to go coach Hunter’s game in the afternoon. Hunter’s team is the worst team in the league, and the team we’re playing is one of the best teams in the league. Last time we played them, they scored four goals in the first five minutes, and then they had to start taking players off and stop trying to keep from running up the score. So, I was not excited for a shellacking.
On the car ride to the game, I had a conversation with Hunter, and we agreed that as long as he tried hard and stayed positive, no matter what the score, we’d both have a good game. When I got to the field, I conveyed that to the rest of the team saying “Hey, this is a good team, but if we try hard and stay positive, we’ll have a good game.” And as luck would have it, the other team ended up scoring two goals in the first half, but we were battling and we were fighting and we weren’t getting our asses kicked like we had before. At the end of the game, it was 4-0, but our team was happy. We all left the field thinking “Wow, that was the best game we’ve ever played and we’re really getting better.”
Then Sunday came around (my birthday). I was distracted because we didn’t know what to do with Hunter and Diane for the day. We were up in Marin and Sasha’s game was down in Sunnyvale. We didn’t know whether we should drag them 2 hours down south to watch Sasha’s game, just to turn around and drive back. Seems like a waste of time for a 13-year-old who’d rather be doing anything else. But ultimately I decided, “You know what, this is my birthday and I’ll be really bummed if I’m sitting in an office park in Sunnyvale talking to random parents for hours and not with my family on my birthday.” So I got the full team into the car. We’re all going. We may be in Sunnyvale but at least we’ll be together.
Sasha had her game at 1pm and we got off to a good start. In fact, Sasha scored the first goal to put us up 1-0. And we fought hard but the other team was a good team and really put the pressure on us. They scored another goal towards the end of the game and were about to score at least one more when the game thankfully ended and so we escaped with a tie, 1-1.
Because we had won two games and tied one, we made it to the finals to play the best team of the tournament, Marin FC, who are really good. We’ve played twice already this season and they’ve beaten us each time. So again, we had the attitude, “As long as Sasha plays hard and stays positive, we’ll have a good time.” Sasha had already anchored on how fun it would be to get a second-place medal. She’d never gotten a single medal before (in her life) and even getting the second-place one would be really fun. She was excited.
The game started and they were indeed really good but we were scrappy. We were scrappy in a way we hadn’t been scrappy before and we battled as they were bigger and more physical. The other team was good and they scored a goal to have us down 1-0 at halftime. But we fought back in the second half. We had a chance here and there and we actually scored one goal towards the end of the half to make it tied 1-1. CeCe scored the goal – it was kind of a long shot that dipped right inside the inside post.
And then with the game winding down, probably two minutes left, we got a corner kick. It came straight to Skoog who one-timed volleyed it right into the goal for us to go up 2-1. We were all sort of amazed at what happened and then before we knew it the game was over.
I had forgotten about my small request to the man above from the beginning of the weekend. But it’s amazing that we won the tournament. It seemed so impossible. The joy on Sasha’s face was really something.
It was a great experience for her and for us as a family. Hanging together rooting for each kid at each game and for each to compete hard and to emerge with big smiles on their faces.
Someone asked me what I got for my birthday, and I had to reply: I got everything I could ever wish for, and maybe a little bit more.
Sasha just started her first day of school today (5th grade) and is growing up. She’s confident and social and loves her friends (Astrid and Malin). She loves our dogs (more than anyone else in the family). She’s still a kid but I can see her getting more and more mature.
She made this video this summer and it cracks me up. Anyone who’s seen The Croods should recognize it.
We all have things in our past that we frequently remember, good and bad.Some bad memories in my past are events where I’m really embarrassed about my behavior: women I treated poorly, friends I didn’t respect as much as a should, and situations that I let get out of hand to a place where I was uncomfortable.I would do all of them differently now but it’s obviously too late to fix.These events pop up all the time in my head. I relive them, briefly, but regularly.
Imagine a river flowing.This river is my energy as a person. Now imagine a rock in that river.The water moves to go around the rock. It still flows and isn’t blocked much but the flow is somewhat disrupted.Each one of these memories is one of those rocks. These are memories that get me charged up and that charge takes away from me doing other positive things and having positive thoughts.
I’m really interested in the privacy implications and the technology behind how we track people who have recovered and keep track of those are infected as we will need to do to get back to our lives. Without doing this, this shelter-in-place will just continue until a vaccine arrives – which is just too damn long.
Google/Apple have formed an alliance that will help track people that are infected. The way it works is:
An app on your phone will pass a random and anonymous code to all other phones within a few yards of you, wherever you are (and vice versa). If you test positive, you tell the app, and every other phone in the region checks the codes they’ve seen in the last 14 days, and if there’s a match they can say ‘you’ve been exposed’. This is anonymous and automatic.
This is very cool, but am skeptical that it’ll ever happen because it really only works if governments mandate it and I just don’t see that happening.
On a related note, there’s a new San Francisco company called Onfido that is working with European governments to develop phone-based “immunity passports” for those who have already recovered from COVID-19. This is happening in Europe and is similar to what’s in China. Oh, and just yesterday they raised an additional $100 million.
At My House
We’re digging into the remote learning more deeply this week as our school is starting to get more involved and attentive to what’s happening at home.
That only takes half the day. The other part is spent enjoying the great weather we’ve been sent
Fitness
One of my friends sent me this today. I’ll be joining him:
I do one plank a day during the pandemic, holding it for as long as I can. Have made it to three minutes the last three days. Join me.
… and then I make myself a cocktail almost immediately afterward.
Other Stuff
Now this is a great use of modern technology. Here we have a Twitter account that is judging people’s video call background. Just what the world needed (thx Lizzie)
ok, so one observation i had today: everyone is turning into hobbits during quar — we’re baking breads & listening to little melodies & getting hairier & our neighborhoods are the shire & we go on our little walks through the shire & head home to our breads & plumpen our bellies
We’re four people in a 1100 sq. ft house with one bathroom so things are getting tight. But, we’re getting creative. We did a group workout yesterday, and today, we did a team bike ride at a local church parking lot, which was fun for everyone.
Hunter loves riding his bike and Sasha is starting to come around.
Social Distancing
While at the church, we encountered a police officer. Super nice guy. He wanted to hand us some stickers and asked if the kids wanted to join him in the car and play with the dashboard buttons and turn on the lights. Really nice request, but WTF!!!??
Here’s my issue with that: we can get rid of Coronavirus. It’s actually pretty easy to do. All we have to do is, as a nation, take 14 days and not come in contact with anyone. That’s all. If we do that, this virus will disappear. It’ll be gone. Everyone just needs to take 14 days.
But if our police officers, who are on the front lines helping people, think it’s a good idea to invite others into their cars to touch all the knobs they’ve been touching, then this whole little plan just isn’t going to work. Oh man, we’re effed.
New York!
I was reading a lot about the scene in NYC yesterday. The NYTime has a good behind the scenes story and a video with the doctor.
The scene in Queens NY is crazy, an excerpt:
New York has become the epicenter of the entire world of the virus and they need not just thousands of additional beds but tens of thousands.
Finally, a Very Important Thread
In lighter news, this thread on Twitter was one of the best things I’ve read in months. A guy goes DEEP on
Triscuits
Yesterday was the first day where people in my inner circle – people I talk to every day – started testing postive for COVID. It’s makes the disease much more real and, let me tell you, it’s scary. It’s very contagious and seems to be coming for us. This recounting of the day-in-the-life from a doctor is very interesting and really shows how this disease is taking over:
Thank you everyone for your incredible messages of support and encouragement.♥️
Many of you asked what it was like in the ER right now. I want to share a bit with you. Please RT:
A Day in the Life of an ER Doc – A Brief Dispatch from the #COVID19 Frontline:
— Craig Spencer MD MPH (@Craig_A_Spencer) March 24, 2020
On a more positive note, my kids seem to be having fun at home. Sasha did a FaceTime call with another 5 year old. They two of them took the phones into their respective bedrooms and talked like teenagers. Sasha climbed up to her top bunk and turned to me and said, “Dad, can you go away. I’m talking with my friend.” Five going on fifteen.
On the other call, Sasha just set up her piano and played it for her friend. It was loud and annoying for her friend but cute for me.
Cases
392,780 — Total deaths: 17,159 (up 1,831 from yesterday – daily increase of 5.4%)
USA: 46,481 — Total deaths: 593 (up 122 from yesterday – daily decrease of 7%)
Quick note for the Weekend post: The new album from The Weeknd is good. I particularly like this song:
Our first weekend while under quarantine. It was pretty fun. We went bike riding with the kids, and I went for a run. Upon my return Sasha helped me stretch out and then both H & S did a little workout with me.
I’ve been worried about eating foods at restaurants and ordering food for takeout or delivery. This read about Food Safety gave me some much-needed facts and is making me less worried. A good read.
In the “I’m not at all surprised department,” the kids in Florida partying are coming down with cases of COVID
The Never-ending Bottle Episode
In the TV business, a bottle episode is the industry term for an episode that is severely constrained in order to be produced as cheaply as possible; usually, it refers to an episode shot entirely in one location, primarily with cast regulars. Without having to move the crew around and relight multiple locations, and without having to pay non-regular cast members, you can shoot the episode on the cheap.
Some shows have organic bottle episodes (for example, some serial killer show may plan for an episode where our lead profiler interviews the serial killer in his maximum-security prison), but more often it’s because a show has gone off-pattern (TV lingo for off-budget). When that happens, the showrunner announces that episode so-and-so will be a bottle episode, and the writer of said episode nods and then wanders to the bathroom to sob in a stall.
Writers usually hate to be assigned to a bottle episode; it’s like having your birthday on Christmas. You just feel swindled compared to other writers who have the budget to use multiple locations and high-profile guest stars. However, as in many creative endeavors, the constraints can summon untapped reserves of creativity. Such episodes often consist of a lot of people just sitting around and talking to each other. The one I remember most, because of what prompted it, was the “Isaac and Ishmael” episode of West Wing, its season three premiere. It was written and shot quickly and aired several weeks after 9/11, a stand-alone episode outside show continuity, consisting of a series of Socratic dialogues on terrorism and how to deal with it.
We’re living through a version of a real-life bottle episode now, many of us isolated at home because of the Covid-19 pandemic. This is that emergency episode that falls outside the overarching narrative continuity of our lives. I find it challenging to process how life might be forever changed, that while we were going about our daily lives, we missed the transition to a new season, the dark turn in the plot. Even as I bunkered down and haven’t left my condo for 11 days now, I’m not sure I’ve fully accepted that life might be changed quite drastically for the foreseeable future, if not forever. This isn’t a stand-alone episode, from which we’ll return to the core plot branch next week. This novel coronavirus is woven into the ongoing narrative now, forever.
Cases:
World: 316,187 — Total deaths: 13,592 (up 1,671 – daily increase is down 12% from yesterday)
USA: 26,747 Total deaths: 340 (up 65 – daily increase is down 7% from yesterday)
We’re worried about Diane’s medicine. She has bad asthma and needs her inhaler. She has only 1-2 weeks left and she’s worried there will be a run on that medicine as people get sick and she’ll be left without. It’s quite stressful. We’re looking to score some more. Stay tuned.
We are finding our groove a bit in home schooling. Hunter is dining great although he’s telling us that school at home is “way harder” than regular school, which I’m excited to hear
The standing “quaran-time” happy hour is pretty great to have every day. While we don’t talk about much, it’s been great to see old faces and see how everyone is stressed out, the same as me.
Where we’re at:
The main thing on my mind is that this is going to last a LONG time and that it’s really going to impact a lot oF people. This is confluence of 3 things:
(1) The cases are going up. We’re on a higher trajectory than any other country
— Nationalize the Action Economy (@thepoeticgopher) March 20, 2020
(3) There are still many areas that are not taking this seriously and not isolating themselves. This all but ensures this is going to spread and that we’re going to be inside for a lot longer than we thought. We needed to get EVERYONE inside and that is just not happening. Yesterday the California governor predicted that 56% of all Californias will get infected.
Friend who lives in Fort Green, Brooklyn told me he walked by three house parties tonight so we are all definitely fucked.
