"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."

We’re COVID free! (Except we’re not)

Greetings, my darlings. Things have been CRAZY.

During the last month, we officially came out of quarantine and went back to what is being called “the new normal” (see my previous post), which means that lots of projects came out of hibernation and there has been lots of training to be delivered. I recently did the math and in the latest 4 months, while all hell broke loose, I and my boys delivered 285 hours of training, plus 128 hours of pair modelling and remote assistance. We’ve developed around a couple of Gb of Revit models, both as datasets for training and as deliverables in themselves, and around three dozens Dynamo script and other Python mambojambo. I myself have produced 1239 Prezi slides and 712 traditional slides of original content, alongside finishing my 300 pages book on the Agile BIM Execution Plan. I am fucking tired.

But things are good, now, right? We’re coming out of quarantine and we’re COVID-19 free!

Except we’re not.

If you remember from my previous posts and/or if you know me, I live in Milan, pretty much at the center of the supreme shit that went down since February. Other smaller cities around my region had it worst, like Bergamo and Brescia, but we’re catching up fast. We have 1.4 million citizens. We were bound to catch up, sooner or later.

And while all Italy reopened, masks are still mandatory in my region. I tried to make the best out of this and bought a bunch of weird stuff. Because we won’t go down without a fight.

In Lombardy, we’ve had 93.111 cases, since this all started, on a grand total of 238.720. It’s a lot. 24.184 of those were in my city. Yesterday alone we’ve had 224 more cases, and 128 are here in my region. Korea is closing up for much less.

But we can’t close down. We can’t afford it. So here we are. Masks but, since today, no gloves. It’s sunny, 31° (87,8 F) and we’ll all have the weirdest tan ever.

It’s the look of this summer! Try it.

When this all started, some people fleed back to the shitholes they were coming from. Now they’re back. And they complain. My neighbours have been complaining because the children have built their linen strongholds on the balconies and my neighbor put plants in the courtyard. And it drives me crazy because they think they know what was like to be quarantined but the thing is if you were not at the center of the shitstorm, trust me, you have no idea. They came back still convinced it’s all some sort of hoax and we’re paranoid to wear masks in the street. We’re not paranoid, darling, it’s the law. And rightly so. But they’re so convinced, and they act so much against what would be sensible, that you find yourself talking to friends in order to seek the confort of others who were here, just like you, and to hear them saying the very same things you’ve been saying.

Ok, maybe I’m not crazy.

Some things left a mark.
I have never bothered with buying food, except the occasional gourmand shopping. And although it’s not a problem anymore, sometimes I find myself going online and placing an order. Maybe we’re running out of tuna (we’re not). We could use some more meat to put in the freezer. We don’t have cotechino, anymore (it’s a typical new year’s eve dish, hot and fat, and it’s fucking 31° outside).

In another sense, I feel like we’re just catching a breath before it will be back in full force and we’ll be in deep shit all over again. And maybe I should make that breath count. Maybe I should go out more. I should resume real-life classes. I should lick some lamp posts.

Maybe.

Or maybe I’ll just watch a cartoon, to cheer me up.

books and literature

Werewolves Wednesday: The Wolf-Leader (13)

A werewolf story by Alexandre Dumas père. Chapter XIII: Where it is demonstrated that a Woman never speaks more eloquently than when she holds her tongue As Thibault was talking to himself he did not catch the few hurried words which Suzanne whispered to the Baron;

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