Another Pandemic Birthday

Last year I wrote about celebrating my birthday during a pandemic.  A year later it’s the same story.  I got another ice cream cake from Dairy Queen like last year, but at least now I can occasionally enjoy sitting on a patio with friends. 

I took my birthday week off as vacation from work.  In terms of employment I am much better off than many of the people I know.  I’ve been working full time remotely, so I haven’t had any interruption to my income.  Due to business needs during the pandemic I have had to switch departments a couple of times, which has proved enjoyable.  Never-the-less lately I’ve felt myself hitting a wall where I just didn’t have any energy left.  Work was becoming tedious and I just needed a break.  So, I took one.

It is one of the more low-key vacations I have ever had.  It mostly consisted of lying in a hammock and binge watching every episode of The Mandalorian. 

For my birthday, as is tradition I purchased an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen.  Now that I am decidedly in my mid-30s I didn’t each very much of it, and I long for the day when the gyms open up and I can work off some of the weight I’ve put on by stress eating during the past year and a half. 

I also look forward to finally getting a haircut.  Before the pandemic started, I was trying to grow out my hair to have long hair at least once before it goes grey or bald, and now it is longer than it has ever been in my life.

There are more signs of life in London. Not only are patio’s open but London Major’s baseball is starting up for an abbreviated season.  If all goes well, I will get to attend on Friday.

I don’t know if life and travel will ever return to normal, but for now I just hope I won’t be writing a similar post one year from now.

Jordan without a haircut during the pandemic

Website and Podcast update

I’ve been lazy, and since building my placeholder website a couple of weeks ago and hadn’t bothered to connect the site to the jordandrew.ca domain.  I sat down and did it today.  It took less than five minutes. Wix informed me that the setup would happen by Monday but it was done in less than an hour.  www.jordandrew.ca is now live.  The website isn’t perfect, but its more professional looking than directing people to this poorly maintained WordPress blog. 

The site needs more content. Currently we have penciled in recording our first interview on the weekend, assuming our subject is available.  We are hoping to record by zoom rather than by phone so we can record multiple channels. 

Tim who does all the editing on two and change is too busy to edit this show, so I will have to teach myself how to edit audio once we have the interview to work with.  I started playing around with audacity this afternoon and it doesn’t seem like rocket science.

After all these pandemic induced delays it looks like this will be up and running soon.

After all these pandemic induced delays it looks like this will be up and running soon.

Lezlie Dalton – Drea in “Star Trek : By Any Other Name”

Here in Ontario the Pandemic is continuing to rage on.  At this point two of my extended family members have contracted the virus.  One of them never had more than a mild sniffle, but the other who has chronic health conditions has been suffering terribly.  A friend of mine in England evidently contracted the UK mutation from his wife and says he has never felt worse. 

At this point we are forbidden from leaving our houses for anything other than food, work, or medical appointments and anyone who can work from home must work from home.

So obviously I don’t leave the house much.  However, I do check the mailbox every day and today I got another response to my pandemic hobby of sending Star Trek fanmail.

Today the response was from Lezlie Dalton who played Drea in the season three episode “By Any Other Name”.  This was a strange episode about a group of shapeshifting and teleporting aliens who take over the Enterprise and turn most of the crew into Styrofoam cubes before Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy and Scotty teach them about emotions by giving them drugs, kissing them, and plying them with whisky. 

Like I said, it’s a weird episode. 

Lezlie was originally from Massachusetts and Star Trek appears to have been one of her first television acting jobs.  After Trek she appeared regularly with Dean Martin on a show called “Golddiggers” in the 1960s and early 70s.  During the mid-70s she did occasional guest work before landing a long term role as Elizabeth Grainville Spaulding on the soap opera “Guiding Light”, appearing between 1977 and 1981. 

I have casual familiarity with that show as a watched it intermittently before its cancellation.  From what I can see online her character was married to the villain Alan Spaulding and adopted his son Philip, and was evidently the namesake for his daughter Lizzie.  She did a guest spot on the long running soap “Search for Tomorrow” in 1983 and then appears to have retired from television acting.

While I am not certain what she has been up to over the past few decades it has evidently kept her busy. 

The letter I received from her explains that she has been travelling in and out of her home in New York and has recently returned to find an enormous pile of mail from Trekkies.  As you can see from the letter she was clearly aware that the pile has become jumbled.  The first photo I received is one that I sent her.  It is a behind the scene image rescued from a piece of discarded film by the archivist Gerald Gurian.  The second one, a smaller image, is not one that I sent her, so hopefully another Trekkie doesn’t end up disappointed.    

It’s nice that even after 50 years she is receptive to fan letters, especially when they pile up on her desk in her absence.  Whatever she is up to now, I hope she is happy and knows that her performance and career is still appreciated. 

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Pandemic fatigue

I could have sworn that I did my most recent post in December, but when I looked at the blog today, I discovered I haven’t uploaded any content since September.  I am finding that the days blend into each other more and more and I lose track of how much time has passed.  I’ve been working at home for months, so unless I am getting groceries, I never leave the house.

There appears to be a light at the end of the tunnel.  The COVID-19 vaccines are rolling out.  My friend who works as a PSW in a nursing home tells me she is scheduled to get her first dose next week. 

Never-the-less people are getting stir crazy and are generally unwilling to voluntarily stay home any longer. My friend who lives in a Toronto grey zone, came to London Ontario in order to be in the slightly less restrictive red zone for the Christmas holidays.

She certainly wasn’t the only one, and Ontario has declared that as of Boxing Day the entire province is on grey-zone lockdown for the next two weeks to prevent the pandemic from overwhelming our health care system. 

The autograph collecting hobby has been a nice excuse to take a walk around the block at lunch to check the mailbox, but I miss gathering with people.  I had no idea how extroverted I was until I was stuck in a basement. 

Hopefully life returns to normal someday.  Until then stay safe everyone.