Entry 577: Learning the Ropes

The G & G family is back! Quarantine is over; nobody is currently sick; and we are ready to celebrate!

S and I took the day off work yesterday, and, along with the boys and S's sister Sw, we went to this ropes course that has zip-lining and stuff like that. Lil' S1 went there with his summer camp class a few times and really liked it, so we decided to go there for his birthday. It was super fun.

I've been zip-linging before, once in Queenstown, New Zealand, but it was a bit different. When I did it in NZ, you zip-lined from station to station, and each station was a large platform that could fit dozens of people, and everybody would take their time between stations, unhook, look at the views and chat. It was very cool but not too physically demanding. The place we went yesterday was not like that. The stations were small, individual platforms, and you had to stay locked in to a cable at all times. There was also an obstacle course element to it that, depending on how intense you wanted your experience to be, could greatly vary in difficulty.

Sw wanted to do the easiest course possible, so she and S took Lil' S2 through the kiddie course, which left me with Lil' S1. The first course we did was not too hard, but it was still freaky at first. I mean, you climb way up in the trees, and at times there is nothing to prevent you from falling other than a carabiner clipped to a half-inch cable. I don't know how high we actually got, but once you get above 30 feet or so, it doesn't really matter -- it's all death high past that.

I'm a tiny bit scared of heights (I think most people are), but I acclimate to them pretty quickly, especially when I'm working on a task. I used to have to climb up scaffolding when I worked construction for a summer and initially I'd be freaked out, but then I'd start working and kinda forget about how high up I was. It was the same way yesterday. I was so focused on just moving my clips through the course that after a while, I didn't even really think about the heights.

Except when I did -- like on the final thing we did: a free fall from an automated belay. That was hella scary. The belay prevents you from falling too fast, but before you go, you're looking at this little contraption thinking, "Am I really going to trust this thing and jump from the top of this giant tree?" When Lil' S1 did it he said, "Here I go, I'm going to plunge to my death," and then he kinda scooted off from a sitting position. I did a 3-2-1 you-have-to-go don't-be-a-coward step-off. Neither of us died. The only bad part is that I held onto the line as I was falling, and when the belay kicked in, it yanked my already hurting shoulder. Also, it kept lowering me, even after I had already hit the ground, causing me to fall down. But that seemed to happening to everybody who used it.

Lil' S1 and I did a second course that was legit hard. S was going to do it with us, but she couldn't climb up the first part of it, so she did the one Lil' S1 and I did before.  (Sw and Lil' S2 got lunch.) This course was a total workout. I was dripping sweat by the end of it. (The fact that it was 93 degrees didn't help.) There was almost no zip-lining. It was almost entirely an obstacle course, like an episode of Fear Factor -- tons of climbing and reaching and pulling and balancing. Like I said, it was legit hard. Lil' S1 wasn't even supposed to do it -- it's 12 and up (he just turned 9). But he just went and got too far along before the course employee noticed. I overhead the employee -- who's like an 18-year-old kid -- talking to S about it as I started the course. Although, I wish he wouldn't have said anything, because then S is shouting at me to make make sure I take care of Lil' S1, and it's like, Uh... there's a massive cargo net between us that he just climbed and I'm still trying to figure out how to navigate, so I don't really know what you want me to do. 

He did great though.  It was really impressive, honestly. He's always been an excellent climber. It's funny, in some ways, he's so soft and sedentary, but then in something like this he's tough and active. I guess we just have to encourage him to do physical things he likes. He might be one of those guys who doesn't care much for organized sports but likes things like rock climbing and surfing. During our ill-fated trip to the Outer Banks, he got a body board and was kinda learning how to ride the waves. It was a similar thing to the ropes course in that he wasn't scared, even though the waves were tossing him around. (I was scared for him. I constantly had to prevent him from going out too far, and I made him take breaks so he didn't get too tired.)

I still might get one kid who's into sports sports, however. Lil' S2 has been asking me to do things like play volleyball (i.e., hit his stuffed whale back-and-forth over a blanket) and play catch with the football and sometimes he'll just dribble the basketball on his own for a few minutes. He starts soccer in few weeks, so we shall see how that goes.

Anyway, after the ropes course, we came home and ate District Taco and Baskin-Robbins ice cream cake. As desserts go, you really can't beat ice cream cake. I think it's my favorite. The cake said Lil' S1's name on it because it was originally planned for his birthday, but since Lil' S2 had his birthday when I was in quarantine, we made it for him too. And since it's my birthday in few days, and there is no point in getting another ice cream cake (we have plenty of leftovers), I guess it's for me as well.

It didn't work out exactly as planned, but it was a pretty good celebration, all things considered.

Until next time...

Entry 576: A Week Later

I'm feeling much better now than when I wrote my previous post. I'm not quite 100%, but I'm close. Plus, what even is 100%? Have you ever felt 100% a day in your life? It's like, if I feel tired and sore and a bit of congested is that the lingering effects of Covid, or is that just how I am most the time? It's impossible to say.

Whatever the case, I'm glad to be mostly out of the woods. It was awful. It didn't feel like being vaccinated even helped. Maybe it did -- I dunno. I'm still alive and never even considered going to the hospital, which are the two most important things. It's not unheard of for Covid to kill a seemingly healthy man about my age. But it's also not unheard of -- in fact, it's the majority case -- for vaccinated people to not contract the disease even if they've been exposed to it, or to not get sick if they do contract it. I'm a first-hand witness to this. S actually came up positive in a retest, but other than feeling a little crummy one night, she was completely asymptomatic. So, I seem to have gotten a raw deal, if not the rawest of deals.

Amazingly, the kids tested negative two times, and they never show any prolonged symptoms. Lil' S1 got sick and was bedridden, but just for one day, and Lil' S2 had a bit of a cough, but that was all. As weird as it sounds, I really think they caught a different bug at the same time we got Covid. It's the only theory that really makes sense to me. There were too many people exposed to one another to get sick and test negative for it to be anything else -- our friend's youngest child, both the boys, and also S's sister, who's staying with us, tested negative but got knocked out of commission for a day. That's four people and seven total negative tests (everybody but S's sister got tested twice). There is just no way there were that many false negatives.

S, however, is convinced that Lil' S1 (and possibly Lil' S2) had Covid and somehow eluded a positive test. It led to the following conversation.

Me: I can't believe the kids got through this without getting Covid. They were locked in a car with me for seven hours while I was positive.
Her: Well, I think Lil' S1 got it.
Me: But he tested negative, twice, and it wasn't the rapid testing.
Her: Dr. C said that those tests can still be wrong.
Me: Yeah, but even if they're not totally accurate, it would be pretty unlikely, probablistically, to get it wrong twice. Plus, he only got sick for a day, and a bunch of other people got sick and tested negative. You think those tests would be wrong for everybody?
Her: I dunno. I'm just telling you my opinion. That's how I feel. You can't argue with how I feel.
Me: It's not your opinion! It's medical testing! 

This gives a good glimpse into how totally normal people can be anti-vaxxers. S is not an anti-vaxxer and she is usually much more rational than the average person, but even she can get locked into a position that is probably not true. It's usually a combination of a few factors. One is that you see something bad and weird happen first-hand, maybe to somebody you love. You know what happened to your son, because he's your son and you were there, not the doctor or the government bureaucrat. It's like the dad in the documentary Bigger, Stronger, Faster* who is convinced steroids made his son commit suicide because he saw it with his own eyes. (Never mind that, say, untreated depression is a much more likely cause of suicide among teens.) Personal narrative, especially among parents, is a huge anti-science driver.

Another factor is that the science is often legitimately unknown or confusing. How many different things have we been told about Covid since the start of the pandemic? Don't wear a mask, wear a mask, wash your hands, hand-washing isn't that important, don't be around people outside, it's okay to be around people outside, vaccinated people aren't likely to spread the disease, vaccinated people can easily spread the disease, etc., etc. It's not illogical for people to be skeptical of the latest thing they are hearing. (But skepticism does not mean blanket distrust.)

Also, most people are terrible at assessing and evaluating things in terms of probabilities. It's totally possible Lil' S1 got Covid and the tests were wrong. It's just unlikely, so far as we will ever know. But most people don't think in terms of unlikely or likely. They have three modes -- is, is not, might be. Something either is true, it's not true, or it might be true or not true with roughly 50-50 chance, so both sides are equally valid.

Lastly, the "dig-in factor" is huge. People just don't like being told what to do or told they're wrong, even when they are (and maybe deep down inside they know it). If I caught S in a different mood maybe she would have just agreed with me, but for whatever reason, she pushed back, and once you push back you often find yourself really pushing back, even if it's something you don't even have strong feelings about. I see this all the time online in stupid comment wars. I have even done it before myself. I've gotten caught up and made silly arguments I didn't even believe in, because I couldn't "let the other side win." Nobody is beyond this, and it's one reason I quit Facebook and almost never go on Twitter. We all know a huge reason right-wing conservatives are less apt to get the Covid vaccine is because left-wing liberals are almost uniformly in favor of it. That's the power of the "dig-in factor." Many would rather get Covid than give in to "liberal tyranny" (i.e., a pandemic-free society).

By the way, if you want a good life-hack here's one: Evaluate ideas based on their merits, not on the politics or identity of the people pushing them. Concerning Covid, I was an early adopter of being in public as long as you are outside. Some natural experiments (e.g., the BLM protests) convinced me that this was relatively safe. That's why when a bunch of people, primarily on the left, were scolding governors, primarily on the right, for keeping their beaches open, I was not among them. I figured beaches were some of the safest places to go. Just make sure if you do go that you aren't sharing a house with a kid who has Covid.

Until next time...

Entry 575: Fuuuuck... I Got Covid

Despite being fully vaccinated, I got Covid. I don't mean I asymptomatically tested positive for the virus, which is not that uncommon among the vaccinated; I mean, I got Covid. I have been quite sick the past few days, and I'm still not 100%. I'm apparently in the body-aches phase of the sickness. My back is killing me, and a friend who also got a breakthrough case told me the same thing happened to him. I do feel cheated, if I'm being honest, getting vaccinated and still getting sick, but maybe it would be worse if I didn't. I mean, I've had pretty much every symptom imaginable -- cough, headache, body aches, sore throat, running nose, sneezing, exhaustion -- with the notably exceptions of chest pain and shortness of breath. If I stay alive and out of the hospital, the vaccine worked? I guess so, but I would've preferred it worked better. I also was lamenting the fact I got the J&J vaccine instead of waiting to get one of the other ones, but my aforementioned friend got Pfizer and ended up in a similar boat. So, it's probably just a product of a vaccine -- any vaccine -- being good, but not perfect. Nine out of ten is great for society as a whole; it's awful for that tenth person.

It also goes to show how dangerous the delta variant is and how it changes (or should change) the safety heuristics we adopted in the spring when we were all getting vaccinated and it looked like we might be on our way out of this thing. I don't know for sure I got delta, but I strongly suspect that's the case. What happened is, we got a beach house on the Outer Banks with some (vaccinated) friends, and our second night there, they got a text saying one of the kids in their six-year-old's camp tested positive for Covid. Apparently, they live in a delta hot spot. In retrospect, we should have asked that their kids got tested before we shared a house with them. But this didn't occur to me because the safety protocols are so different in our DC neighborhood than they are in southern North Carolina where our friends live. Here it's just a given that kids have been recently tested because they test them every ten days at camp or school. It's not like that everywhere in the country (although it should be). I also didn't bother to check what the case rate was like near where they lived. So, it was mostly bad luck, but we were a little bit complacent

Anyway, after getting the email, our friends' other son, a toddler, started hacking and wheezing, so everybody got scared, and the families stayed apart for the rest of the night. They got rapid tests the next day and their older son came back positive (but weirdly not their younger son, who was the only one actually showing symptoms). They then left.

S and the boys and I all felt fine but figured we should play it safe, so we left the next day (Wednesday). That was a good move as during the drive home we all started feeling sick -- a lot of coughing and sneezing. We got tested Thursday and kept our distance/wore masks as we waited for the results. S and Lil' S2 seemed to be okay, but Lil' S1 and I were laid up in our rooms all day.

I was convinced the two of us had it at least, but then their results all came back negative. This made me think I didn't have it, as I probably just had whatever Lil' S1 had. But then I got my results and I was positive. I haven't really left my room since then. It's so strange that I would get it, being vaccinated, and Lil' S1 and Lil' S2, who aren't, didn't, especially considering they were in direct contact with this boy much more than me. Lil' S1 shared a bedroom with him, and Lil' S2 was grabbing and wrestling him every chance he got. But I would much rather have myself get it than my kids.

Thankfully, we have a house that can accommodate my quarantine. We actually have an entire basement that's like a separate apartment, but S's sister is staying there at the moment, so I can't use it. But it's a net positive overall, as she can help S with the kids, which is much more important than me having space. I mean, how much room do I need to nap and watch old football games on YouTube? (Plus, my bedroom is significantly bigger than a studio apartment I lived in for a year in Bellingham, WA.)

At the moment, I'm just focusing on getting better, but we are going to have to make some decisions very soon, because we have a trip planned to the PNW to visit my family. In theory, we could still do it within the stated safety guidelines. Thursday will be ten days since contracting the virus, so we could all get rapid tests on Thursday and, assuming we are all negative, fly out Friday. It would be just as safe as if I never got the disease -- safer even, because we would have gotten tested the day before.

In practice, I don't know if it will work out that way. I don't even know if we will feel like traveling, and I don't want to spook my family. It's not totally rational, but not totally irrational either. If nothing else, this is a reminder that the delta variant is no joke and there is still reason to tread cautiously. Maybe it's better to wait until things calm down -- I've heard some epidemiologists posit that the delta variant is going to burn out in the next few months, as everybody either gets it or gets vaccinated (or both, as the case may be).  And the vaccine for children under 12 is coming soon... right?

On the other hand, what happened to me was a low probability event (and assuming I get better in a day or two, as expected, ultimately not that bad). How much do you want to base your life decisions on low probability events (that ultimately aren't that bad)? It's a confusing time, to say the least.

Until next time...

Entry 574: Warm-Up Vacation

In a few weeks we are leaving on a jet plane (my first one since Covid hit) to visit my family in UP. I consider that my "real" vacation. But before that, on Sunday, we are driving to the Outer Banks for a few days at the beach. It's our warm-up vacation. I've used hardly any personal leave the past few years (that'll happen when you're quarantined with nothing else to do but work from home), so I've got a decent amount accrued, and I could definitely use the R&R. It should be good. The beach is always nice, and we are meeting another family there, whom we get along with pretty well and haven't seen in a few years.

We actually have a house reserved starting Saturday night, but we are going to a wedding of a friend of mine that night, so we aren't going to the beach until the next morning. Not surprisingly, S didn't check the calendar carefully before booking our trip. It's just how she does things -- she charges ahead with abandon and so mistakes are not uncommon. Like when she buys garlic pretzels instead of regular pretzels (and still tries to make dessert with them). Or the one that really blew my mind. A few years ago, when she was looking for a new job, we were watching TV, and she was casually browsing listings on her laptop, and she said, "Ooh, this one looks perfect!" And then she just filled out the application on the spot, even the parts requiring you to write actual sentences, not just fill-in-the-blank, and attached her c.v. and submitted it, just like that -- between challenges on Project Runway or whatever. I couldn't believe it. If that was me, applying for a "perfect" job, I would have locked myself in a quiet room and spent a solid half-hour checking and double-checking every last thing.

But she's a pretty successful person, career-wise, so it seems to work for her. It drives me crazy sometimes (like when she, say, books a beach house for the same night as a wedding), but I just let it go now. You gotta take the bad with good with people, especially spouses. Also, if I complain, I'll get an earful about how she does all the planning, and that's basically true.*

*The big stipulating factor here is that she often plans things because she doesn't like the way I do it. So it sometimes becomes a game of "you plan this thing this time... but do it exactly the way I would."

Like I said, the beach will be a welcome get-away. My anxiety levels have been manageable, but they have definitely crept up over the past few weeks. Reading the news is basically just doom-scrolling these days. Delta variant! Global warming! Inflation! I'm still employing my "mullet strategy" -- news in the morning, entertainment at night -- to stay informed but also sane. But the latter takes a little more effort right now.

The Olympics are still a big part of my nightly routine. As I mentioned in my last post, it's surprising how much I've been enjoying them. Pure comfort-watching. I wish the USWNT (soccer) had won the gold, but anybody can slip up in a knockout tournament. They lost to Canada in the semis but took out Australia to salvage the bronze. Megan Rapinoe scored two goals, in what was possibly the last Olympics game she will ever play, and now she gets to kick back and cheer on her wife, Sue Bird, in the women's basketball gold-medal game. Not a bad consolation prize, huh?

There have been a lot of great moments, but I think my favorite so far is Gable Steveson, a 250-pound freestyle wrestler, scoring two take-downs in 13 seconds (!) to win the gold-medal match in buzzer-beating fashion, and then celebrating by doing a back-flip. Beautiful.

As I write this, the US men's basketball team is about to tip-off against France in the gold-medal game. France actually beat them in the group round, but I think the US will win. They're not really the "Dream Team" anymore -- the rest of the world has made up a lot of ground in the last 30 years and many of the top Americans sit international tournaments for one reason or another (LeBron James and Steph Curry are notable absences this Olympics) -- but they are still the heavy favorites to take gold when guys like Kevin Durant agree to play.

I'm going to watch the game, but before I do, I want to brag on Lil' S2's latest mathematical achievement. He won the bottle of snacks seen below in a "Guess How Many" competition at his camp. He guessed 600 and there are 610. Now, this could be total dumb luck. But I suspect it's not, I suspect he looked at it and sized it up and came up with a reasonable guess. I mean, I would think your typical five-year-old would be just as likely to guess 100 or 100 million as they would to get the correct answer. Getting within 10 takes some numerical acuity, I have to think.

Until next time...