Chris Ullrich @ micro dot blog

I didn’t mean to leave you hanging this long. My apologies. In my last post I said I’d come down with “something” that may or may not have been COVID.

Long story short, I don’t know if it was COVID but it only lasted a week or so and I feel fine now. I did end up finding a way to get tested, though. The kid’s school has a deal with some testing sites and he and I went to one, waited three hours, and got a swab shoved into our nostrils so far it came out our ears.

No, not really. It just felt like it. Of course, I went first to show him it was no big deal. He was very brave, especially after the first nostril. We got ice cream after, as you do.

We both tested negative, so who knows? He did end up up getting sick too and lost his sense of taste and smell for a couple days, which seemed like COVID to me. But again, he tested negative so we’ll never really know I guess.

We’re both fully vaxxed, by the way. If we did have COVID, I’ll assume that’s why we didn’t have more serious symptoms. I’m must glad it wasn’t more serious no matter the reason.

Since then, we’ve avoided any more sickness at the house and Summer is a month away. Fingers crossed we make it without further incident. The kid continues to wear a mask at school, even though it’s not “mandatory” anymore.

Removing the mask mandate was yet another fucking stupid decision on the part of our government, but I’lll try to keep my rants to a minimum this week. No promises, though.

Let’s just say I’m still not impressed with the way our governments, Federal, State and local, have handled the pandemic. We’re just lucky it wasn’t much worse. Of course, tell that to the families and friends of all the people who’ve died from COVID. They’re probably not too impressed either.

And as if we didn’t have enough problems, it looks like man-child Elon Musk is buying Twitter. I’m sure he’ll make it a much better place to socialize. Yeah, no doubt in my mind whatsoever. Yeah . . .

In unrelated news I’ve started to explore alternatives to Twitter. So far, I’ve landed at Micro.blog. I’m @ChrisU on there, just like on Twitter, so I should be easy to find. You may want to check it out.

I’m also making The Flickcast podcast every week with my pal Joe Dilworth. It’s going great and still fun, so I plan to continue doing it until people tell me to fuck off. So far, so good.

Finally, I’ve started drawing and painting again. I was inspired by my friend Dave Caolo, some books I saw on Urban Sketching and the Urban Sketching World website. Basically, you go to a place (city street, cool building, wherever) and sketch/draw it with pen and ink and then add some color with watercolor paint.

It’s really been fun, even though I’m not very good at it (and that’s being kind). Still, art of any kind is wonderful. It’s also great therapy and allows you to free your mind and not think about horrible shit all the time. Not that I do that.

I only think about horrible shit the appropriate amount of time.

Okay. I’ll try not to make the time between posts so long from now on. I know you all miss me when I’m gone too long.

Oh, that’s one of my drawings at the top of this post. It’s a photo of it from my sketchbook. Yes, I have a sketchbook. I’m an artist now, don’t you know.

It’s not the worst I’ve done and I don’t hate it, so that’s something. I’ll keep at it.

Okay. Gotta go. Until next time, be kind to each other.