totm aug 2023 What funny/interesting thing happened in your life today?

[Hyperspace Industries]

We went to the boeremark, translation, farmers market.

We bought:

25 rolled up super thin cinnamon sugar pancakes, the South African, originally Swiss style.

A pack of caramel popcorn.

And, out of my own money, copies of:

Race to Mars, the ITN Mars flight atlas and The soviet manned space programme, An illustrated history of the men, the missions and the spacecraft.  They were cheap too, they cost just 70 South African rand. Which is roughly off the top of my head: 7 dollars Australian, 3.5 pounds British, or 5 dollars American.

[TheSaint]

18 hours ago, Hyperspace Industries said:

They were cheap too, they cost just 70 South African rand. Which is roughly off the top of my head: 7 dollars Australian, 3.5 pounds British, or 5 dollars American.

Man. When I was living down there, it was about 4-1/2 rand to the dollar. And everyone was moping because they could all remember when it was 1 rand to the dollar.

[kerbiloid]

22 hours ago, Hyperspace Industries said:

pounds British

22 hours ago, Hyperspace Industries said:

South African rand

Sounds like the British count money by weight, while the South Africans don't bother and use the rand() function to generate them.

[Hyperspace Industries]

5 hours ago, TheSaint said:

Man. When I was living down there, it was about 4-1/2 rand to the dollar. And everyone was moping because they could all remember when it was 1 rand to the dollar.

Yeah, this place has gone backwards fast.

Back when I was born load shedding was unusual and uncommon, now it happens every few weeks. And don’t get me started on the potholes.

In other news, I found a newspaper piece about spirit and opportunity with a picture of an old mirage jet on the other side in one of those books.

[CatastrophicFailure]

I’ve been awake for 21 & a half hours. 
 

Nineteen & a half of which were on the road. 
 

And something went very, very nineteen. But not for me. 
 

film at 11.  When I can no longer taste sounds & smell colors. 
 

[StrandedonEarth]

6 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

And something went very, very nineteen. But not for me. 
 

Looking forward to the update. Sorta hoping it involves disembodied doors on that beach...

[CatastrophicFailure]

So this is how my yesterday started...

WARNING: long, rambling, pic-heavy post ahead, enter at own risk

Spoiler

...red sky in the morning, something something take warning. Anyways...

Wife I set off on a road trip around the Olympic Peninsula in western Washington, starting out at an un-Kerm-ly early hour to sneak onto the ferry. Stopped for breakfast at a kitchy little hotel diner in Sequim (the E is silent)... my meal alone was a ridiculous 2500 calories.  I find that both amusing and terrifying. But figured I'd need it for...

Beach #1:

Random pull-off along the highway on the northern coast, packed with surfers and campers. At least in the parking lot. And an ancient, massive one-eyed dog who followed us around for a while and made this guy so confused he didn't even bark.

That stream led back under the highway to this beautiful pool that somehow managed to be all sorts of different shades of green and pale blue and also crystal clear all at the same time.

Stopped in Forks to charge, saw no vampires. Which is not surprising, as no self-respecting vampire would be caught dead (or undead) in a place like Forks. Or sparkle, for that matter.

Beach #2, near Klaloch in a strip of the Olympic National Park. Now this is my kinda beach weather:

Spoiler

Took a two-mile beach walk (to work off that breakfast) while snagging some free electrons to go see this:

They call it the Tree of Life, though I was unable to find either trefoil leaves or any head-sucking appendages (pokes @KSK with a stick). Looks more like the Tree of Stubbornness to me. Checkmate, erosion! Hard to get a sense of scale here, but you could fit a good sized mystical creature or eldritch abomination back in there.

Then it was off for a quick hike through Rivendell the Quinalt rain forest (since the Hoh doesn't allow dogs ):

Hard to get the scale again, but that big tree with all the little trees popping out around the base is easily 12 feet across, or about the diameter of a Falcon 9.  And probably taller than one. And it's not even a big tree around here, the "world's largest" Sitka spruce was on the other side of the lake, according to the map. Getting tired by this point so we didn't go quite that far, in the spirit of KSP on the way back I had to resort to MOAR BOOSTERS! 

Very high specific impulse and thrust-to-weight but a little dicey on the guidance and control. Runs on GOX and liquified protein, exhaust is mostly methane. Recommend a very strong decoupler and check yo staging.

Then it was off to Ocean Shores and Beach #3:

Again, this is my kinda beach weather. 

Managed to get here at just the perfect time for a sunset drive.

Found that Autopilot/Full Self Driving will not, however work here. Although it does manage to see the "lane".

The beaches in this part of the state are considered state highways and perfectly legal to drive on, with various restrictions. And always at your own risk. 

aaaaand this is about when things went all nineteen. 

Wife and I were standing out on the beach, enjoying the sunset, when we heard a noise behind us.

Never, ever trust a beach puddle.

Some poor guy behind us did, and got his truck stuck in a couple feet of water. With the tide rapidly coming in. And very shortly thereafter we got to witness both the very best and worst of humanity. Right away some dude with a big jacked-up diesel truck jumped into action with a tow strap and got himself completely soaked trying to pull the other guy out. Other people offered towels and dry clothes, or just a heated cab to warm up in for his wife & kid who were understandably freaked out.

Then a local "tow service" showed up (the kind you'd expect to find selling suspicious meat pies out of a dirty cooler in the off season) doing basically nothing useful while trying to extort money from a guy in a bad spot who didn't speak much English. A big crowd of onlookers gathered doing nothing but taking videos and getting in the way, while just up the beach still another tool was doing donuts in the dark with all sorts of people milling about.

We watched from a good distance away for a while, it was painful to see. They'd make a little progress, then the tide would slowly catch up and erase it all and the "puddle" just kept getting bigger and deeper. Eventually a more "official" looking tow service showed up, and I think they finally got the guy's truck out before the tide swallowed it, but I shudder to think at how much water damage was done already.

So, @StrandedonEarth no random doors on the beach, though this poor guy's ride nearly did disappear into another world for a while, whether it would have been met by lobstrosities or just Calypso-singing crabs.

We hung around to watch the rocket launch from the opposite coast (I love technology!) with this one in the background before the long schlog back home in the middle of the night.

And here I thought this was just gonna be a mild day trip, only eight & a half hours driving time after all.  Not detailed: world's sketchiest Supercharger that led to random 24-hour donut shop binge.

Also, here's random "beach at sunset" pictures:

aaaand once again I've stayed up way too late. Gotta get up for that 5:30am launch scrub. 

 

[GuessingEveryDay]

Aww man... After waking up with a splitting headache, I thought it was allergies at first, but it never got better throughout the day. Later that evening, I got this:

Even worse, is that I'm part of a dance class, and we'll be doing the first performance, the day after I leave isolation.

Frick...

[TheSaint]

Watching It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World with the family. What a classic, absolutely hilarious. As a complete aside, the world needs more movies with intermissions.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

On 8/31/2022 at 8:28 PM, GuessingEveryDay said:

I got this

Hope your run is better than mine (which I sorta blogged here in Feb 21)! 

My totally non-scientific belief / observation is that people who have been inoculated generally fare better and have fewer lasting symptoms.  Losing smell for a year was weird. Headaches were not fun, either. 

Here's hoping you have the minor and short lived run my neice and neighbor had last month! 

[tater]

3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

My totally non-scientific belief / observation is that people who have been inoculated generally fare better and have fewer lasting symptoms.  Losing smell for a year was weird. Headaches were not fun, either. 

I've personally seen no difference between people in terms of outcomes. Everyone who had it early was alpha, no vaccine. I know many who had alpha, some like bad flu—but a bad flu that you deal with at home. Zero sought care (to be fair most were docs or families of docs, and they knew there was nothing to do but take some daquil).  Zero hospitalized. Zero dead. I personally got it with just my own immune system as response at the cusp of alpha/delta. If anything mine was milder than my wife, tbh (they got their shots in January at the hospital, I had not—and then didn't bother as I was inoculated with the whole virus). It was nothing more than a cold to us, plus anosmia. Anosmia got better for everything except red wine—that lasted much longer (same for my wife). Almost everyone else we know got delta (virtually averyone has had COVID by now ( https://covidestim.org/  )). Delta seemed pretty similar in terms of what friends have described to mine (mine might have been delta, it was right at the cusp). Flu-like or even just a mild cold. Daquil, etc. Only stayed home because COVID, any other year they would have taken daquil and sucked it up.

Edited September 6, 2022 by tater

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

3 hours ago, tater said:

Zero hospitalized

Mixed here; I know quite a few who were hospitalized, put on ventilators, had rough runs.  I know many, many who were not; but my experience early on was that caution was (esp. with at-risk people) warranted.  I know a very, very few for whom Covid was just one straw too many... but know (personally) no-one who was otherwise healthy and got it and died directly from it.

[GuessingEveryDay]

12 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Hope your run is better than mine (which I sorta blogged here in Feb 21)! 

My totally non-scientific belief / observation is that people who have been inoculated generally fare better and have fewer lasting symptoms.  Losing smell for a year was weird. Headaches were not fun, either. 

Here's hoping you have the minor and short lived run my neice and neighbor had last month! 

I already have three shots and was waiting for them to confirm my fourth. The good news is that I'm the only one with Covid, so I can start testing daily.

Plus no symptoms, except a runny nose in the mornings.

[kerbiloid]

The only hospitalized man whom I know personally was originally hospitalized with a stroke, then got covid in the hospital, and he's 67.

Edited September 6, 2022 by kerbiloid

[TheSaint]

11 hours ago, tater said:

I've personally seen no difference between people in terms of outcomes. Everyone who had it early was alpha, no vaccine. I know many who had alpha, some like bad flu—but a bad flu that you deal with at home. Zero sought care (to be fair most were docs or families of docs, and they knew there was nothing to do but take some daquil).  Zero hospitalized. Zero dead. I personally got it with just my own immune system as response at the cusp of alpha/delta. If anything mine was milder than my wife, tbh (they got their shots in January at the hospital, I had not—and then didn't bother as I was inoculated with the whole virus). It was nothing more than a cold to us, plus anosmia. Anosmia got better for everything except red wine—that lasted much longer (same for my wife). Almost everyone else we know got delta (virtually averyone has had COVID by now ( https://covidestim.org/  )). Delta seemed pretty similar in terms of what friends have described to mine (mine might have been delta, it was right at the cusp). Flu-like or even just a mild cold. Daquil, etc. Only stayed home because COVID, any other year they would have taken daquil and sucked it up.

Our whole family got COVID back in November 2020, before the vaccines were available. The kids, all three of them, were over it in about a day-and-a-half. Mild fever, runny nose, body aches. Wife was over it in about three days, symptoms were about the same as the kids, but she also got anosmia, which is getting gradually better but is still not completely gone almost two years later. I was down pretty hard for about 10 days. 101+ fever, cough, congestion, headaches, back ache, GI issues, the whole enchilada. Amusingly, I didn't call in sick, since I was working from home. (Have I mentioned before that I never call in sick?) But I would be lying if I said I got a lot done. Lots of Nyquil/Dayquil, lots of Gatoraid, lots of ibuprofen. I had anosmia, but mine got better about a week after the whole thing cleared up. But the worst part has been the brain fog. Almost two years later and I still can't keep three things straight anymore. Frustrating as hell. My wife bought a seven-day whiteboard calendar that we keep on the fridge. At the beginning of the week she updates it with everything I need to do that week, and on Monday morning I take a picture of it with my phone. That's the only way I can keep my week straight. And I still screw things up every once in a while. I feel like an Alzheimer's patient.

We only know one person who was hospitalized, one of the senpais at the dojo where my kids take karate. But he has some extenuating circumstances. He was in a motorcycle accident in his 20s, nearly cut in half, wasn't expected to live. Major internal and spinal injuries, dozen or so surgeries, had to rejigger his intestinal tract, lost part of his liver, etc. His doctor told him he would never walk again, so he walked, then they told him he would never be athletic again, so he took up karate. One of those guys. Anyway, he got COVID, wound up in ICU on a vent for a couple days, which given his medical history isn't too surprising. He pulled through, though. That's the closest we've come to knowing someone who died of COVID. 

My mom has had it twice, and she's 89 years old. Just sat at home and moaned a lot. But she did get one round of vaccination. So, I'm not sure what that's an endorsement of: Vaccination, natural immunity, or being a tough old buzzard.

[tater]

10 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Mixed here; I know quite a few who were hospitalized, put on ventilators, had rough runs.  I know many, many who were not; but my experience early on was that caution was (esp. with at-risk people) warranted.  I know a very, very few for whom Covid was just one straw too many... but know (personally) no-one who was otherwise healthy and got it and died directly from it.

I'm in my mid 50s, and our friend group is that ±10 years, plus in-laws and my dad are 80s 90s (and we see their friends, too). Everyone had it. Don't know a single person hospitalized. A friend of a friend was, that's as close as I know anyone. Course our friend group tends towards outdoorsy/fit people.

15 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

but she also got anosmia, which is getting gradually better but is still not completely gone almost two years later. I was down pretty hard for about 10 days. 101+ fever, cough, congestion, headaches, back ache, GI issues, the whole enchilada.

Wife, daughter and I got anosmia. Total anosmia for a few days for wife and I, partial for daughter. None of us had a fever at all, son did the run of symptoms in maybe 18 hours, lol. I sent him to school the next day (no fever in 24 hours—followed the usual rules for every other year of school they ever had, saw no reason to play their BS game and keep him out of school for something I knew every human would get multiple times). Daughter was done with it in a few days, but wife and I longer, and the wine anosmia issue persisted for months, and honestly is maybe still there a little after 1yr+.

The anosmia is interesting because it is by far the most common long term effect from every paper I have read on long term effects. I have a friend who hates wine, and has since I have known him. He's a cocktail drinker. He described wine to me years ago... and in retrospect it reminds me of how it tasted with my wine palate screwed up. I was discussing the anosmia with my father-in-law (retired neurosurgeon), and he said he has had partial anosmia for many decades—after some viral illness he thinks. People are paying attention in a way they would have just blown off in the past. "Getting old and forgetful"—or had a cold, and left with brain fog? Not a fan of wine as much as I used to be—or that flu I had in 1990 messed with my ability to taste small differences that made wine interesting. I had never lost smell/taste before enough to notice (maybe metallic taste for wine when actually sick?), but my wife said it happens to her all the time. <shrug>

Edited September 6, 2022 by tater

[TheSaint]

37 minutes ago, tater said:

Wife, daughter and I got anosmia. Total anosmia for a few days for wife and I, partial for daughter. None of us had a fever at all, son did the run of symptoms in maybe 18 hours, lol. I sent him to school the next day (no fever in 24 hours—followed the usual rules for every other year of school they ever had, saw no reason to play their BS game and keep him out of school for something I knew every human would get multiple times). Daughter was done with it in a few days, but wife and I longer, and the wine anosmia issue persisted for months, and honestly is maybe still there a little after 1yr+.

The anosmia is interesting because it is by far the most common long term effect from every paper I have read on long term effects. I have a friend who hates wine, and has since I have known him. He's a cocktail drinker. He described wine to me years ago... and in retrospect it reminds me of how it tasted with my wine palate screwed up. I was discussing the anosmia with my father-in-law (retired neurosurgeon), and he said he has had partial anosmia for many decades—after some viral illness he thinks. People are paying attention in a way they would have just blown off in the past. "Getting old and forgetful"—or had a cold, and left with brain fog? Not a fan of wine as much as I used to be—or that flu I had in 1990 messed with my ability to taste small differences that made wine interesting. I had never lost smell/taste before enough to notice (maybe metallic taste for wine when actually sick?), but my wife said it happens to her all the time. <shrug>

it's funny how particular it is. My wife's flavor that still hasn't come back is chocolate. She says it tastes like rotten peppers to her now. And, it may sound silly, but it's been really hard for her. She used to love chocolate, and now she hasn't eaten chocolate anything in a year-and-a-half. It sucks.

As for the brain fog thing, I would be willing to rack it up to old age, except for how sudden and severe it has been. I mean, at work in one year I went from complete superstar to the boss calling me up asking, "What the hell is going on?" And I couldn't tell him because I didn't know. I was sitting there trying to just keep doing what I had always done, and suddenly it wasn't working anymore. And then I'm sitting there with my doc, and she brings up the brain fog thing, and out of nowhere she starts describing everything that's going wrong with me, and I'm all, "Oh, crap. Now this all makes sense." She did say that we can't completely rule out early-onset Alzheimer's or a number of other much less common neurological causes. As she said, "I work with a lot of Alzheimer's patients, and you don't give me that vibe. But, if you start forgetting your family members, or you keep finding your car keys in the refrigerator, we'll reevaluate."

But I would be perfectly willing to believe that COVID is not the only viral disease that has neurological side effects, we just haven't paid attention until now. That wouldn't shock me at all.

[tater]

9 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

But I would be perfectly willing to believe that COVID is not the only viral disease that has neurological side effects, we just haven't paid attention until now. That wouldn't shock me at all.

That was my point. I was saying that in the past we'd assign it to age—when in some (many?) cases it might have been some viral crud.

The chocolate thing is bad—like wine for us. We were big wine fans, it seems hit or miss now. Whites are 100% normal, reds often taste like tannic water for me (wife's is closer to normal). Not always, though, had wine Sunday and it was great. <shrug>

Neither of us got the thing where stuff tasted BAD though, that's gotta be awful.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Neither of us got the thing where stuff tasted BAD though, that's gotta be awful

Chips smell like chemicals.  Bunch of food smelled like rotting cucumber. 

OTOH - I couldn't smell the dog's farts, so... Bonus! 

[tater]

15 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

OTOH - I couldn't smell the dog's farts, so... Bonus! 

During total anosmia I made the mistake of eating a piece of prosciutto. No flavor, no salt... just the texture.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

8 minutes ago, tater said:

During total anosmia I made the mistake of eating a piece of prosciutto. No flavor, no salt... just the texture.

Chicken Pot Pie, for me.  Just texture and heat - it was weird! 

[TheSaint]

1 hour ago, tater said:

During total anosmia I made the mistake of eating a piece of prosciutto. No flavor, no salt... just the texture.

1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Chicken Pot Pie, for me.  Just texture and heat - it was weird! 

So, the whole time I was down with COVID I had no appetite at all. I ate hardly anything, I was mostly just drinking Gatorade. Lost twelve pounds in ten days, still haven't put eight of them back on. When it was finally over, I was ravenous. I had to drive in to work to replace a battery on a UPS, and on the way home I said, "I'm gonna get In-N-Out!" Drove through the drive-thru, got my Double-Double, parked in the parking lot, chomped right into it. And tasted nothing. It was just this gooey, pasty mass in my mouth. "NOOOOOOO!!!" Honestly, I think that was the low point of the entire ordeal.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

I'll add: I'm also in my 50s and have been inoculated against a whole host of diseases that the Average American is unlikely to ever hear of, much less be exposed to... And similarly I was largely unconcerned about any threat to myself.  But I also had elementary / middle school aged kids when Covid started and two very at risk in-laws,and a wife who works in health care.  So we took all the 'reasonable' precautions (I'm using the Midwest definition of reasonable, not the NY / SF virtue signaling definition.) 

The last guy who I would have thought would get Covid was one of the first - and he had a rough go... Medically induced coma, last rights - and then after a while, got better... But it was a long process for him.  Other guys my age who I served with had massive chest pains and breathing difficulties.  So my skepticism and belief in my own immortality were tested by personal observation. 

Still - we likely lost my MIL a year or two before she would have /should have died were it not for the Covid isolation and other stresses associated with the pandemic response. 

Even with us keeping the kids relatively insolated and zoom schooled for a year and knowing that it was bad for them - the irony was that as soon as we let them 'go back to normal'... The very first middle school BBall game... My kid caught Covid and gave it to me. 

He had fever and body aches for a couple of days and bounced back.  I never felt too bad, but the unique headaches, loss of smell and taste were weird and disturbing. 

I'm left with a very mixed feeling of how we did as a nation - and would have to violate forum rules to explain further. 

11 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

And tasted nothing. It was just this gooey, pasty mass in my mouth. "NOOOOOOO!!!" Honestly, I think that was the low point of the entire ordeal.

I remember similar - tragic sense of loss of something so simple and joyfilled as eating became a mechanical process. 

[tater]

My wife brought it home from the hospital, I got symptoms a couple days after she did, kids a day or so after me. We have had dinner every Sunday with my in laws (86-92) almost every weekend. We didn't go to dinner that first weekend when we all had COVID. Went the next weekend. I was never even mildly concerned about the kids, that was clear in March of 2020, wife talked to her parents about family dinners, they said that they could drop dead any random day of something, and what's the point of isolating and not seeing their kids and grandkids. My wife would sometimes show at dinner straight from the ER on call. We had a friend come to visit fall 2020 who they knew, they were asked what we should do about dinner—mother in law apparently said, "set another plate?"
 

[Kerb24]

I built my first model rocket: 

Spoiler

Got it, and another rocket, for free.