Christmas Cookies and COVID Cooties

2021, you really didn't need to take Betty White from us, too. That was just adding injury to insult (and injury).

My year wasn't all bad, by any means. It did have some bad moments early on: namely, the debacle with getting the right kind of COVID-19 test within 72 hours of flying to Brazil with my mom in January, and then having the Lyft we were taking to the airport get T-boned and totalled ten minutes after we'd been picked up. On the other hand, a sushi-filled Valentine's dinner with my love, and then a spa day with a couples massage at SoJo Spa Club two weeks later, were both awesome. My employer, Microwize Technology, moved its Paramus headquarters to a smaller but sexier suite in the same office building. We attended our first (and only, thus far) pandemic wedding together in the spring, and were relieved to do some outdoor dining and drinking down the shore in the summer. I fed many, many squirrels, both on my own and with my mom. I've invested a wee little bit in cryptocurrency, Ether to be precise. My girlfriend and I had a weekend stay in Cape May, taking in an amazing meal and a fun railbiking experience. I managed to get to the New York Renaissance Faire and see some friends. Writing/editing/proofreading for a healthcare-oriented quarterly magazine? Check. She gave me a ukulele for my birthday, and as I'm learning to play it, I've started incorporating it into a new song I'm writing (having written and recorded another new one earlier in the year). She and I watched "Squid Game" and were fascinated in spite of ourselves. Finally took in my first in-person concert (the Indigo Girls) since - gasp! - February 2020 with a friend, and did some hiking on Pyramid Mountain with another. A second spa day? Yeah, we had to. In fact, I think this is going to become a regular thing for us. I got to see some old grammar/high school friends for the first time in over a decade, attended another friend's pandemic 50th birthday party, got Christmas cookies from yet another friend, and got to see my honey on Christmas Eve before heading to my mom's. The company is doing well, and the rest of the management team and I may be visiting our affiliated company in Egypt together next year. I even got around to starting "Black Mirror," and you were right, Ahmed, I do enjoy it, a lot.

But yeah, there was pain and nuisance and death in 2021, too. I lost family in Brazil, on both my mom's and my dad's sides, some I hadn't gotten to know well (or at all) and some I knew very well indeed and miss dearly. My girlfriend and I suffered a wasp sting each (from the same wasp, I'm certain) within ten seconds of each other. That attractive new office space is also louder, which sometimes grates on me. The Web hosting service I'd been with for two decades lost my trust and my business by not delivering prompt and honest updates when a planned server migration turned into two days of down time for my sites, and longer for some others; the sticking point wasn't the down time, however, it was the lack of communication and transparency on the part of MacHighway, and so I pulled my sites and started over with someone else. The old friends I saw late in the year for the first time in forever? It was unfortunately because we'd scrambled to get to Florida to visit the deathbed of another of our friends we hadn't even known was battling (and succumbing to) cancer, though at least we did get to see him one last time. Cancer sucks, losing friends and family members sucks, and though it's been six and a half years since the first loss I really felt, it just does not get any easier. The list of people I miss grows longer... time to try reconnecting with those I can still reach.

What's that? Oh, yeah, the COVID cooties. Well, after three doses of the Pfizer vaccine with nothing but a sore arm each time, and making my way through over 20 months of the pandemic unscathed... I got scathed on Christmas Eve. 😳 Though neither of us knew it at the time, my honey was infected when we saw each other that evening. She started feeling sick the next day and tested positive soon thereafter, by which time my throat had started feeling scratchy.

So I've been quaralating (quarantining/isolating) this week and will continue to do so for the next few days, though I'm happy to report that we're both starting to feel better. I actually had a flu experience once that was much more intense but over a shorter period of time; nonetheless, this was bad enough, and I don't doubt that it would've been worse had I not been vaccinated. I still don't like trap music, though, so I never lost my sense of taste. (Also, I'm certain that those Christmas cookies helped me survive, so thank you, Rhonda!)

Got two worthy causes before I sign off, in case you've somehow gotten through the holidays with a little cash and charity to spare. One is to help South African students finish high school (the organizer, Nicol, is a friend who grew up in South Africa herself): https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-south-african-students-finish-school. Movin' right along, the other seeks to restore the car from "The Muppet Movie" (see what I did there?): https://www.gofundme.com/f/restore-the-muppet-car. If you can donate to and/or share either of these GoFundMe campaigns, it would be most appreciated.

I hope everyone is safe, healthy, and happy, or will be so soon if you're not right now, and I wish us all a better New Year in 2022. 🎉

Miss You, Dad / Saudades de Pai

My father would have been 75 today. (And what would have been his 51st wedding anniversary was two weeks ago, and he and my mom first came to the US 49 years ago last month.) While he was already in the final stages of his fight against lymphoma, which had metastasized, by the time my parents traveled to Brazil at the end of last year, catching pneumonia there proved to be too much for his weakened immune system to handle. He fought it, but in the end, he lost the battle in early February.

Meu pai teria 75 anos hoje. (E o que teria sido seu 51º aniversário de casamento foi há duas semanas, e ele e minha mãe vieram pela primeira vez aos EUA há 49 anos no mês passado.) Embora ele já estivesse nos estágios finais de sua luta contra o linfoma, que havia metastizado, quando meus pais viajaram para o Brasil no final do ano passado, contrair pneumonia provou ser demais para o enfraquecimento do sistema imunológico. Ele lutou, mas no final, ele perdeu a batalha no início de fevereiro.

I am glad he got to Brazil one last time, and got to see some family and friends, and be entombed there with his parents, my grandparents. I am sorry I'll never get to have another beer with him, discuss politics (American, Brazilian, and other) with him, enjoy a hot summer day with him, try to take a picture of him (the man did not like to be photographed). But I'm happy for the time we did have together, and the things he taught me, and the things I taught him.

É bom que ele foi ao Brasil uma última vez, e tenha visto a família e os amigos, e seja sepultado lá com seus pais, meus avós. Eu lamento que eu nunca mais vou ter outra cerveja com ele, discutir política (americana, brasileira e outras) com ele, curtir um dia quente de verão com ele, tentar tirar uma foto dele (o homem não gostou de ser fotografado). Mas estou feliz pelo tempo que tivemos juntos, pelas coisas que ele me ensinou e pelas coisas que ensinei a ele.

I've started working on a few musical ideas which I think are going to gel into a New Age-y kind of song, the sort my dad loved. It's a little out of my comfort zone, but I think it would make a fitting tribute, and I'm looking forward to getting it all worked out.

Eu comecei a trabalhar em algumas idéias musicais que eu acho que vão se transformar em um tipo de música "New Age," o tipo que meu pai amava. É um pouco fora da minha "zona de conforto," mas acho que seria um tributo adequado, e estou ansioso para fazer tudo funcionar.

41 Today...

It's my birthday again. Seems to happen around this time every year... but I'm not tired of it. Not yet.

In fact, aside from the annoyance of being on-site in midtown east Manhattan for a frakked SQL database, rather than in my new office in Paramus, I'm feeling pretty good about this birthday. After having been diagnosed with a rare lymphocyte cancer in June, my dad is looking and feeling so much better, and his recent sixth chemotherapy session may turn out to be the last. I completed moving into a bigger office, with my own window to the outside, yesterday, though I need some art and photos to make it a bit homier. I finally dropped the MacBook Pro off at the Apple Store yesterday, and while it will be rough to be without it for a few days, it will be nice to again have a laptop that is completely operational, with all its circuits functioning perfectly.

Pam and I are together no longer, and the distance between us played a part in that. I have since found my world turned upside-down by a young woman named Laura from Staten Island, however, and we are dating quite happily. I'm even planning on putting a bit of her artwork and a photo or two of us into my new office (you can see said photos in the Gallery... of Death!), and we're celebrating my birthday tonight with some sushi. She likes to see and hear me play and is supportive of my music, and is inspiring me to create more. Laura makes me feel happier than I have in years, and that's just one of the reasons I love her.

So, while my birth certificate (which says that I was born in Paterson, NJ, and not Brazil or Kenya or anything like that) might show that I'm 41 today, inside I'm still much the giddy, goofy, and geeky 18-year old I've been for much of my life. Much as I did ten years ago, I rode the 32 bus into Manhattan today (though I got on in Lyndhurst today, not Nutley, and Alex, my Bus Buddy, no longer rides the DeCamp bus regularly, either), but my world is quite different than it was then. For my birthday, be happy for me. I am.

7 + 4 = 11

Happy Independence Day!  I didn't do too much of anything today, and it felt rather good.  I even started the day off by sleeping late, and since I didn't get in 'til around 3 AM from the party Jon and Karin threw yesterday, I felt mostly justified.

It's been a busy several weeks.  I've attended a music festival with Jenn and Rhonda, done a bit of catsitting for Barbara, gone to Sally and Matt's party (where Matt learned enough of "That's Just What I Am" to accompany me on guitar - thanks!), filmed some scenes for Rick Ford's latest venture, "Hassel Unbound" (would you believe I have an entry at IMDB?), played some of my songs in Duane Park for Make Music New York 2011, with Barbara as my roadie, visited New York's Central Park and Greenwich Village with Laura before going back to the park the next day for rollerblading with Dawn (followed by Rosa Mexicano's outstanding guacamole and pomegranate margaritas), had Peruvian ceviche with Yesika's family and Rhonda, attended a managers' meeting at Shadow Lake in Franklin Lakes which eventually turned into a company-wide barbecue/party, and visited Jon and the very-pregnant Karin for the above-mentioned party yesterday.  And of course I had that job thing going on the whole time, too.

I've also visited my parents more often than usual during the past five weeks, understandable under the circumstances.  After my dad finally agreed to see a doctor, he was hospitalized for nearly a week with renal failure and anemia (as well as high calcium and blood pressure readings).  Those symptoms have been addressed, but the cause was eventually determined to be Waldenström's macroglobulinemia, a rare form of cancer in the white blood cells known as lymphocytes.  This, too, is being addressed, with chemotherapy, and while the prognosis is good and my dad is in better spirits than he was a month ago, it's still been stressful on him and the rest of us, and there are several chemo sessions ahead.  He's already losing his hair, and as he and I have both managed to hang on to our full heads of hair with minimal greying, I can relate to the trauma; still, he's mostly holding up pretty well, although of course he has better days (when he can eat and sleep) and worse ones.

With all that's been going on, I've been pretty good about playing guitar every day.  I'm determined not to lose these calluses again!  In addition to performing at MMNY, I dragged my guitar along to Sally and Matt's party (because they wanted people to bring instruments), to Microwize's barbecue last Friday (because my colleague and fellow southpaw guitarist Nicole was bringing hers and asked me to bring mine, too), and to Jon and Karin's party yesterday (because Jon figured he and I could jam a bit if people left early).  I'm still learning to play, and sing, "Burning in the Sun," but I'll get it soon enough.  I'm also planning to write another new song or two in the very near future.

Pam is coming back to see me next month, and one of the events we have planned is a New York outing with my parents to see the new Cirque du Soleil show "Zarkana" and then have dinner at the Hallo Berlin beer hall.  We're all looking forward to it!  A trip to the Jersey shore, a performance of Zach Braff's off-Broadway play "All New People," and dinner at the amazing Cafe Matisse are also on tap for Pam's visit.  :-)

So, yes, there's been a lot going on, and this month will see a get-together or two with some old classmates, more romping around in NYC, and possibly a venture shoreward... and who knows what else?  Can you blame me for parking it on the couch for a few hours this evening to watch "Hearts in Atlantis" and "Flatliners?"  Well, it's back to work tomorrow, and it's just about midnight now, so I should probably park it in bed.  Good night, all...