Emchap's Shit from the Internet 03/18/20 🍠
Whelp, I got back from Europe, thanks to an incredibly generous work policy on covering travel changes. (Thanks, work!) I have an intermittent, weak dry cough and no fever and honestly the cough has been happening for six weeks at this point after some sort of upper respiratory Thing, so who even knows. At some point I should get tested for asthma. Everything is on fire.
This week was supposed to be my company retreat in Ireland, and though I'm sad for a variety of reasons (I miss seeing my coworkers in person, I wanted to have sex in a castle, I was going to do some sort of falconry activity with all the other indoor kids) I am so lucky to be back at home and mostly healthy and young and with a job whose income stream will be uninterrupted as far as I know. Work is doing a remote retreat, which has been legitimately fun (today we had a contest to build hats out of whatever shit you could find in your house and one of my coworkers made a crown of his antidepressant containers) but of course has the lingering vision of What Was Supposed To Be Happening. It could be so, so, so much worse, of course; I'm lucky to work at a company that will be okay. I'm trying to assuage guilt by funneling as much as I can to mutual aid funds.
I am very lucky, and I am suffused with an overwhelming sense of dread, and I am wearing soft pants and periodically calling my city council member to call him a piece of shit because he deserves it and it feels like doing something, at least.
I walked with a friend (standing staggered and on opposite side of the sidewalks) to the grocery store today, where we had to wait in line to go in, which is a precaution that is of course completely reasonable but also feels just deeply, incredibly unsettling. They did have eggs, so that was nice, and I got my antidepressant refilled, which seemed prudent, given the entire, y'know, Thing.
I don't have a joke, really! My optimistic one-day-I-might-own-a-place fund has been decimated and I was lucky to have it in the first place, and everyone I know is scared and sad and worried about their parents, and my house still has all of the paint scraped off of it because my landlord is a terrible project manager. I would like to leave the state and I can't and so I'm just stress-eating burritos and drinking Pacifico spaghetts.
I hope everyone is staying as safe as they can and their knuckles aren't too torn up from hand washing.
Shit to read
It could be worse. (I donated here.)
I am both a member of the Wing and deeply cynical about the Wing and this sounds about right.
Work has threads of people having this exact conversation.
If you wanted to be sad about something other than, y'know, this.
This, about Mensa, was depressing but not surprising.
Same with this, about (white) barbers.
For those who haven't read it yet.
I thought this, about finding new parents when your own have failed you, was really lovely.
Shit to eat
Try to purchase 6 shallots.
The store will be out of shallots, somehow.
Purchase 2 weird glass jars of shallots.
When you get home, heat some olive oil.
Strain the weird jar shallots and put some salt water on to boil.
Chop up one real shallot you'd forgotten you had in your house, and four cloves of garlic.
Marvel at how nice it is to have nice knives. (It's so nice.)
Sauté everything in some oil until it's jammy. Add salt and pepper and red pepper.
Add a tin of anchovies, but not the oil. Stir them in for another few minutes, until they're melted and your house smells good.
Add a tube of tomato paste. Roll it up like a tube of toothpaste. It's very satisfying.
Stir everything together for another few minutes.
Add red pepper and salt, again.
Take half and put it in the fridge to use later.
Add some off-brand former Soviet state pasta into the salt water. Cook 3 minutes shy of package direction.
Into the jam it goes. Pour some pasta water in with it.
Stir everything up over heat until it looks, y'know, like pasta.
Top it with chopped parsley and a chopped clove of garlic.
Feel better, for a minute.
Shit to listen to
Dropkick Murphys livestream or bust.
Shit to buy
No more groceries than you need.