No, it’s not an emergency. Years ago I was in a small airport in Japan when my Kindle committed suicide – it jumped out of my hands, flipped over a couple times in midair, and landed face down on a hard floor, shattering the screen. That was well after I’d come to trust the Kindle as my only reading on travel, and I had no books with me (would have thought I’d have had an iPad, but I don’ know if I had any books loaded on it). This small airport had no reading material in English to be purchased. Luckily it was only a short flight to Seoul, where I was able to buy books – 1632, by Eric Flint, and something else I now forget, possibly a Discworld book I’d read before. I read the Discworld book, a comfort read, and never did get to 1632 on that flight.
But I carried it with me as backup on my travels for a while thereafter, though I never did need it again. I do really prefer reading on Kindle, and of paper books, mass market paperbacks are my least favorite form – you have to hold them open with both hands, print is small, pages are dingy. So I haven’t read it, and five months into the quarantine seemed as good a time as any to start. I’m bemused to find there are now over 30 in the series, but this first one, at least, seems good.
I have clearly failed miserably to document my life during the pandemic, almost as miserably as my country has failed to contain said pandemic. (Wish I felt confident that we will have a change in leadership in November, but after what happened in 2016 I can’t be that sure.) Anyway, we are still healthy and still working from home. We go food shopping every couple of weeks, though we do make occasional stops in farmers’ markets or other stores when needed, and Ted has to go into the fab once every couple of weeks – an Intel fab is probably one of the safest places to be, what with the bunny suits, masks, and forced air ventilation. Meanwhile, Intel has said that any employee who doesn’t actually have to be in the office to work, can work from home til at least June 2021. We’re alternating, spending about 2 weeks in Hillsboro and 2 at the lake, which is being one of the joys of this time. Such a much better place to be quarantined than in a city condo!
In other personal news, two weeks ago the gynecologist took out my birth control implant, so now I’m without any birth control for the first time in my adult life, We have no idea if I’ve hit menopause because I haven’t had a period since 2012 when I had my first implant put in, but she said that at 53, there’s less than a 1% chance I could get pregnant and even less that I’d stay that way – similar odds to being on the Pill. (And yet, I keep thinking of Little Sister in the book Laddie, who was born when her mother was in her fifties!) I’ve also switched dentists – I liked the one i was with but they have been canceling appointments a lot due to (non-corona-related) health issues on the dentist’s part, and now the hygienist I like is taking some unknown amount of time off. So I switched to the one that’s in a mobile office right next to work, and had a cleaning and exam there. It was very weird to be so close to another person I’m not married to, for the first time since March! And face shields are not well designed for the angle a dental hygienist works at – she was wearing a mask under it, though. Unfortunately I get to go through that again Monday, because I need three fillings! (Two are old ones being replaced.)