I’m still shielding, as someone in the top 2% highest risk category. Even after the lockdown starts to ease it’s likely I’ll still be confined to the house for my own safety. Very probably until there is a viable vaccination programme. Which could be a year away …
I am so relieved I completed my SpringThing game in time. Mega phew! I had hoped to work on a new IF Comp game, but I’m sleeping masses (up to 18 hours a day, day after day) and extremely sedated even when awake. All thanks to a reduced experimental lower immunosuppression dose, which is causing other unpleasant neurological symptoms, but may give me more of a chance if I catch Covid.
So yup, still tricky and likely to be so for me for a long time to come. I really miss leaving the house! Though I did get out two weeks ago for an emergency admission to hospital. Erm! Luckily released the next day, and have been recovering, and two weeks on there’s no sign I picked up Covid in the hospital.
In happier news we got a new GoPro today to help me experience the outside world via my husband’s wanders. Now if only I could be more awake …
Hello from sunny and perfectly-normal-in-every-way-nothing-interesting-is-happening here Minneapolis.
It’s been an unusual last few days to say the least. Very little of this is occurring in the downtown core, where I’m located: a few broken windows, nothing more. Its an indication of the generally peaceful nature of the protests that an enormous wave of them went right past my house a few days ago and I didn’t even hear it.
I won’t say anything more on the general situation except that you should all watch it, because the world needs to see what’s happening here. Are there any other minneapolitans in this community? (I’m not even sure that’s how we refer to ourselves)
I had the same experience a few years ago during the Ferguson incidents in St. Louis. My dad called me up in somewhat of a panic after seeing what appeared to be Armageddon on CNN and implored me to be careful driving and I had to explain that A: The protests were contained to a few blocks on like two streets nowhere near where my usual activities took me, and B: By the first day, the city had roadblocks up and police-cars parked in a several-block radius and weren’t going to let someone blithely drive unawares down a street where peaceful or the rougher nightly protests were occurring, and C: Even the peaceful protesters knew to stay away at night. The police’s primary task was to keep people out of the area in question.
I’m a consummate pedestrian, and I traverse many miles of the city every day. I have seen exactly 1 broken window. The biggest change to my visual field on an ordinary walk is that the downtown stores are all boarded up, making the place look a little like a western town in a gunslingter movie. Now, I live well north of where the damage has mostly been concentrated.
Sad to read this. And, because I’m a “man of service of order” (that is, I have a 30-year experience in handling demos/strikes of varying grade of “direct acting”) I’m watching the incidents with a professional eye.
I think that, barring nasty & unpredictable developments, the rioting peak is just over, and thing will cool down this week. In the meantime, please stay very, very safe.
Best regards, and the Divine bless America,
dott. Piergiorgio from Italy.
Just checking in to say shielding against Covid in parts of the UK is being extended. Scotland (till July 31st) and Wales (till August 16th) have announced extension dates, which may be extended even further beyond those. England and Northern Ireland still have to confirm extension plans. Shielding is for the 2 or 3% of the population at extremely high risk from Covid. Generally those with reduced immune systems (eg from auto immune disease treatment like me or cancer patients or transplant patients) or those with very severe lung conditions.
So that’s me in Scotland stuck in the house until at least the end of July. I’ve been in these four walls constantly since mid March, apart from an emergency hospital admission in April, and a GP blood test last week. I don’t have a suitable garden space to go into safely. I’m going rather stir crazy. But I know it’s to protect me.
On plus my neurological disease is improving a little, and I’ve started to be able to look at my new IF writing projects. I’m now thinking of aiming one game at Spring Thing 2021, and another maybe at IF Comp 2021 if I can finish it in time. One is about 60% finished, at least in the core through line, and I’ve drawn up a list of what needs doing, so I can start working through that. The other game, which is incredibly ambitious for me, is only in the early stages.
I’m also taking the chance now I’m doing a bit better neurologically to catch up with the NarraScope talks. I found the Twitch catchup not great because they weren’t identified by name enough. Luckily the YouTube info is more detailed, and I now have a huge playlist of them to work through when awake.
In the beginning, I had a really difficult time. My life did a bit of a 180 when this all started back in March. I have gotten better and more adjusted to the situation, and I’ve done a good job of following the Finnish government’s guidelines, but I’m still quite…sad, I guess.
Minnesota’s two-step on the bar exam has now precluded my competition in IFCOMP this year. I graduated law school and began studying ultra-hard, then they postponed the date of my test to mid-september.
I was half-expecting to sit this year out but its still sad.