Hi! Sorry for the radio silence. Here’s a Rant. More Ranting to Come.

Nothing bad has happened, except I did go back to work on Wednesday, and by Friday I was already grateful for a holiday weekend. But enough about that –

I don’t know where to begin about the shitshow we are all living through this year. I’m in Florida, so, yeah, but we don’t just have homegrown stupid, y’all.

I was in a virtual meeting this week that discussed the company’s plans for return to the office (maybe the first of the year, it keeps getting pushed out) and then a discussion of maybe, possibly, asking people to disclose their vaccination status. Approached so delicately, like, you won’t be fired if you don’t want to get vaccinated, but we want to know so we can make accommodations for you.

One of the guys spoke up. He’s working from home. He thinks he probably had COVID earlier this year, but he didn’t get tested, and now he’s sick again, and his doctor is pretty sure it’s COVID, and he’s gonna get a COVID test and no, he’s not vaccinated, because he doesn’t trust the government and believes the vaccine changes your DNA.

And wait, back the fuck up?! He saw his doctor, who thinks he has it, but the doctor he allegedly saw didn’t test for it, and he’s going to get a test “tomorrow”? Yeah, I will call bullshit right here. If he saw a doctor, the doctor would have tested for it.

This. Man. Is. An. Engineer. He is not from Florida, or the South.

[A separate rant about Florida and The South being the butt of all jokes when this absolutely is a national issue needs to follow.]

[And also for the last time: We can’t recall DeShithead, the FL Constitution doesn’t have a mechanism for recall, so STOP FUCKING ASKING US ON TWITTER.]

[Also Also: This is not the guy who was wondering out loud to me about taking that deworming medication months ago and “just didn’t trust” Dr. Fauci for some reason he couldn’t articulate. This is different guy.]

We have a real problem in this country. A substantial chunk of this country lives in a separate reality fed by disinformation. They are not all uneducated toothless cousin-marryin’ rubes, and are not all in the South. I don’t know this”Government changing my DNA” guy, but I know he’s respected for the quality of his work and I never expected him to launch a “I won’t take a vaccine that will change our DNA, I don’t trust the government,” thing on a routine team call.

I didn’t say a word, neither did anybody else on the call. He eventually wound himself down with, “I don’t know, maybe I’m paranoid….”

Because you told your coworkers and your manager on a meeting that you probably have COVID right now, may get tested tomorrow, maybe, and are scared of getting vaccinated because you believe this is a government plot to change human DNA? You think that might have been a bit over the top?

Nobody was sure what to say, so nobody said anything. Our manager paused a bit, said something bland and corporate, and moved on. The subject was changed.

So, I’m back at work, it’s as crazy as I left it, but apparently nothing went too off the rails. I did have to pull a rabbit out of my hat in the first two days back to schedule a thing nobody had discussed before I left, and it had a happy ending, and I owe a local counterpart lunch, if I can do it without getting the place I work in trouble. There are rules. But seriously, I cringed even asking her if we could do this thing on really really short notice, and she made it happen, and I feel like I at least owe her coffee at a new trendy coffee venue between our two work locations. It has shady outdoor seating.

The refinance is moving along, I got the appraisal back. Remember when I said that when I’d been asked for the property value I’d pulled a number out of my ass that was probably $40K below reality? I was off by $2k. It appraised $42k higher than my asstimate. I knew it wasn’t relevant because the loan to value is still less than 50%, but I’m kind of proud that I called it that closely.

Tomorrow we have plans to do fireworks at Magic Kingdom. I haven’t been there in many months, and haven’t seen fireworks in years.

More to come. I’ve been back in the crazy for three days and already welcome a three day weekend.