Self-Imposed Lockdown

Travel during a pandemic is weird

My favorite part of travel is the planning. The spreadsheets! The guides! The blogs! The insta posts! Is there anything more satisfying then researching amazing destinations and slowly filling in your spreadsheet with reservations, ticket numbers, and lots of lists of places to eat?

COVID travel, however, is a whole new world. You have to plan to get a test every 72 hours, hotels cancel last minute because it turns out they never reopened, restaurant recommendations are iffy because so many places have shut down, flights are cancelled every other week. It’s chaos out here.

The other big worry is GETTING COVID BEFORE YOU GO so I have put myself on a self-imposed lockdown and it’s honestly the best. I forgot how much I loved quarantine. No pants, no bras, no people. I’ve been watching the new season of The Circle and this is still the gameshow for me. You get to be alone in a cute apartment for two weeks and you just have to chat online with a few people a day. SIGN ME UP. Make it a year. Do I recommend this season? Meh. Nothing will compare to season 1. But all introverts should watch it and experience other people living our fantasy lives.

Speaking of living our fantasy lives, the new Bond is probably going to be terrible but I will watch and love it anyways but not until it’s streaming because I love James but I would only risk the Delta variant for Sean Connery. In the meantime I’ll just watch Skyfall and Goldfinger on a repeated loop (I know Skyfall isn’t Sean but it’s sooooo good).

In motorcycle news: there is none. My kickstand broke right before I left for Alaska and the one I ordered was of course the wrong one because I have no idea what I’m doing so there it sits, waiting to be ridden. I do own a battery charger now though which is exciting. I am well on my way to be able to open my own artisan motorcycle mechanic shoppe. But I did go to a motorcycle show this weekend and I am brimming over with moto building inspo. My winter plans include wearing lots of coveralls and learning how to clean rust off of nuts and bolts.

In other big news: I HAVE MY FIRST RECOMMENDATION RETRACTION!! Recently I recommended that you follow Bad Blood and The Dropout to keep up with the Elizabeth Holmes case. Well, those two podcasts are fudging it up about as much as they can. It’s ridiculous. So I am retracting my rec and instead recommending Law Junkies, which is the best I’ve found so far. It’s not totally dedicated to Holmes but they do interesting legal analysis. The judge- reasonably- is not allowing video or audio in the room which is fair but also makes it less sexy for podcasts apparently. The judge also- very unreasonably- asked a juror who said her job won’t pay her while she’s on jury duty if she could just be a juror during the day and work at night. Understandably, she was like… no. We really need to a) get better judges; b) stop paying jurors FIFTEEN DOLLARS A DAMN DAY; and c) completely reform the entire criminal justice system.

Watch:

On Becoming a God in Central Florida (Showtime): If you, like me, are still in an MLM hole it’s worth it to get the free month of Showtime on Apple TV so you can watch this. If you’re not obsessed with MLMs, you can skip it. It’s not as good as it could be.

Making The Cut (Prime): Season 2 of Heidi and Tim’s fashion designer reality show is really good. And if you haven’t watched season 1, ONE OF THE JUDGES IS NAOMI CAMPBELL WHICH MEANS YOU GET TO WATCH NAOMI CAMPBELL BE NAOMI CAMPBELL IN EVERY EPISODE. What did we do to deserve this glory?

CB Striker (HBO Max): This series adapted from JK Rowling’s excellent detective novels Cormoran Strike, which she wrote under the name Robert Gilbraith, is great if you just want a good fun modern private eye show.

Listen:

Blind Landing (podcast): I had no idea that there was a gymnastic scandal in the 2000 Olympics but there was! This short podcast series dishes on a terrible vault mistake, judges who were not prepared to handle an errant situation, and the lives and Olympic dreams that were ruined.

Exit Scam (podcast): Is this Canadian Ponzi schemer dead, or is he faking it? This podcast investigates.

Read:

FINALLY SOMEONE IS ADDRESSING THIS TRAVESTY.

Read and like Russ’s article. Yes it requires logging into LinkedIn. Do it anyways.