Mud of Spring
Today I had the day off of work. My company has this policy where teams get one day off per month, which they call a "recharge day", just to give people a free day to recuperate during this whole pandemic debacle. I personally find that the day off interferes with the flow of my week when it occurs on a Wednesday, and the workaholic in me feels that I don't really need a freebie day, but there's something to be said for not looking a gift horse in the mouth.
I'm still in the Detroit area for now, so I went over to my brother's house to hang out with his wife and my one-year-old nephew. I'm currently in the window of time in Michigan where people I know are vaccinated, so life can be somewhat normal, but I haven't quite packed up my things and left town. So, I'm trying to make the most of it and see the people here as much as I can with my free time.
I haven't been vaccinated yet, and that's something I'm still trying to sort out. I've been in Michigan for over 6 months now, but I haven't established any kind of residency. My car registration, driver's license, my physicians, and so on, are still in California. So I'm not sure I can get on any kind of list to get vaccinated here, especially since I plan to be gone by the time that I would come up in the queue. I plan to return to California, but I haven't heard great things about how vaccine distribution has been going out there. I have heard stories about drug stores ending up with extra doses they can't get rid of before they'll spoil, and so they just give them to people randomly, just so they won't go to waste. But I'm not sure I can count on that sort of serendipity to get myself innoculated.
When my brother got home from work this evening, we went for a walk in a nearby park, which was quite muddy. Shortly after New York and much of the eastern seaboard was buried in several feet of snow in a day or two, we had two or three feet of snow pile up in Detroit. This put my (outdoor) exercise routine on hold, and I was planning to use my bonus day off of work to try going cross-country skiing for the first time, but an unseasonable warm spell (upwards of 50 degrees!) has afflicted us the past few days, so most of the snow has disappeared and left swathes of mud in its place.
Spring hasn't quite sprung--spring around here has a particular smell and feel to it, and one that I'm looking forward to--but it's clearly right around the corner, and so I'm making plans to ramble on. I woke up yesterday morning, extremely early, with a fire in my belly about getting out of Detroit and doing some traveling by car. I pulled my daily Tarot cards yesterday afternoon, and the first card to fall was Major Arcana: the Tower. This symbolizes, roughly speaking, circumstances forcing you out of your comfort zone. It's suggestive of having outgrown where you are, and a need to force yourself to shed your skin and broaden your horizons. The second cards was the Nine of Cups, which can suggest that while you've accomplished and acquired a lot for yourself, it can be threatened by complacency. The fact that this fell after I woke up with a particularly strong and passionate readiness to move on from living with my parents is a nice little synchronicity.
I'm currently planning to aim for Tahoe, where I hope to stay for at least a few months, but I'm going to take a very long, very scenic route to get there. I may stop in Chicago for a couple of weeks, possibly spend a month exploring New Orleans, but I'm not entirely sure. It's times like these I wish I had bought myself a VW Crafter, or some vehicle which I could easily pull into a campground and comfortably sleep in, even when the back of it is packed full of my stuff. We'll see; I haven't given much thought to which places would be most advantageous to visit under these unusual circumstances.
I'm still in the Detroit area for now, so I went over to my brother's house to hang out with his wife and my one-year-old nephew. I'm currently in the window of time in Michigan where people I know are vaccinated, so life can be somewhat normal, but I haven't quite packed up my things and left town. So, I'm trying to make the most of it and see the people here as much as I can with my free time.
I haven't been vaccinated yet, and that's something I'm still trying to sort out. I've been in Michigan for over 6 months now, but I haven't established any kind of residency. My car registration, driver's license, my physicians, and so on, are still in California. So I'm not sure I can get on any kind of list to get vaccinated here, especially since I plan to be gone by the time that I would come up in the queue. I plan to return to California, but I haven't heard great things about how vaccine distribution has been going out there. I have heard stories about drug stores ending up with extra doses they can't get rid of before they'll spoil, and so they just give them to people randomly, just so they won't go to waste. But I'm not sure I can count on that sort of serendipity to get myself innoculated.
When my brother got home from work this evening, we went for a walk in a nearby park, which was quite muddy. Shortly after New York and much of the eastern seaboard was buried in several feet of snow in a day or two, we had two or three feet of snow pile up in Detroit. This put my (outdoor) exercise routine on hold, and I was planning to use my bonus day off of work to try going cross-country skiing for the first time, but an unseasonable warm spell (upwards of 50 degrees!) has afflicted us the past few days, so most of the snow has disappeared and left swathes of mud in its place.
Spring hasn't quite sprung--spring around here has a particular smell and feel to it, and one that I'm looking forward to--but it's clearly right around the corner, and so I'm making plans to ramble on. I woke up yesterday morning, extremely early, with a fire in my belly about getting out of Detroit and doing some traveling by car. I pulled my daily Tarot cards yesterday afternoon, and the first card to fall was Major Arcana: the Tower. This symbolizes, roughly speaking, circumstances forcing you out of your comfort zone. It's suggestive of having outgrown where you are, and a need to force yourself to shed your skin and broaden your horizons. The second cards was the Nine of Cups, which can suggest that while you've accomplished and acquired a lot for yourself, it can be threatened by complacency. The fact that this fell after I woke up with a particularly strong and passionate readiness to move on from living with my parents is a nice little synchronicity.
I'm currently planning to aim for Tahoe, where I hope to stay for at least a few months, but I'm going to take a very long, very scenic route to get there. I may stop in Chicago for a couple of weeks, possibly spend a month exploring New Orleans, but I'm not entirely sure. It's times like these I wish I had bought myself a VW Crafter, or some vehicle which I could easily pull into a campground and comfortably sleep in, even when the back of it is packed full of my stuff. We'll see; I haven't given much thought to which places would be most advantageous to visit under these unusual circumstances.