Day 20

 

The condo-life phase of my great social deprivation experiment continues.  Each phase of the experiment consists of even more austere deprivations that the phase before.

The first phase of the experiment started in June 2019 with my retirement, as I adapted to life without going to the office, working, or interacting with colleagues and clients. I live alone, so my work life was a large part of my social life.  But at least I still had live-music shows to which I could go post-retirement, and sports bars, and restaurants.

The second phase of the experiment was adjusting, on top of retirement, to life with all of the bars and music venues and restaurants all closing down in March 2020 for the covids pandemic.  Face masks were required in public, and social distancing was the rule.  That phase lasted another year and in fact is still on-going, but at least I had Netflix, video games, and the internet to get me through the day.

During that second-phase year, a tree fell on my house and required substantial repairs.  For the interior work, I had to relocate here to the Unsellable Condo in Vinings with only a modicum of furniture - a bed, one sofa, and a dining room table and chairs.  That was the start of the third phase.  I couldn't get anyone to provide cable service and wifi for what I originally thought was going to be only a week or two, so there's no television and only the spottiest of  internet connections.  No work, no social outlets, and now not even a tv to watch or reliable internet to browse.  

I'd like to say "at least I still have video games," but every time I make a statement like that, I lose that resource, so I don't want to jinx myself.  But beside, you can't play games all day.  Man cannot get by on Cyberpunk 2077 alone - believe me, I tried.

I can create a wifi hot spot using my iPhone (that's how I'm posting this), but it's a slow connection and doesn't support streaming content very well.  My first Saturday night here, I watched the remake of King Kong vs. Godzilla (titled Godzilla vs. Kong) on HBO Max, and it played flawlessly, without interruption or buffering.  Sure, the movie sucked, but I wasn't expecting much of a direct-to-cable reboot of a campy classic to start with.  You get what you expect - two hours or so of fairly mindless diversion.  Just what the doctor ordered for Saturday night at the UCV.

HBO on Sunday night was also fairly accessible.  I've been in the habit of watching HBO on Sunday nights ever since The Sopranos in the early 2000s, and now it's the steam-punk, sci-fi series The Nevers and John Oliver's satirical news show.

But the connection has only gotten worse as time here progressed.  I don't know why - no clue at all.  I wish I knew because then I could fix it.  Xfinity won't let me stream local network content (e.g., ABC, NBC, CBS) away from my home modem because of some licensing arrangement, but I can access basic and premium cable content.  At least I can in theory.  But basic cable (e.g., Comedy Central, MSNBC, ESPN) keeps breaking up and buffering, especially as approaching or coming away from commercial breaks (which are not infrequent on those channels).  Premium cable and Netflix streams fairly consistently, but only if I can even get on in the first place, a 50-50 proposition as of late.

Today, the good folks at the Bang on a Can contemporary chamber-music collective put on another one of their free on-line music marathons.  They've been streaming the marathons about once every three months or so, and in the absence of live music, those marathons have been the highlights of my musical experience.  But even without going through the Xfinity interface, I couldn't stream today's marathon on my laptop without buffering every ten seconds or so - always annoying, but doubly so when trying to enjoy music. I wound up watching the entire four-hour marathon on the relatively tiny iPhone screen.  The music quality was tinny, but not as bad as one might think.  It was better than nothing, and nothing was Plan B if I couldn't watch the marathon.

It's anyone's guess if I'll be able to stream HBO tonight to my laptop, or if I'll have to watch on my iPhone screen. 

Current, reasonable-worst-case estimates have me here until the end of the month, with the possibility of some rooms in the house being habitable even sooner.  Alas, the bedroom is the critical-path item that will finish last, so I can't move the bed back until near the very end.  And with contractors constantly coming and going and leaving doors and windows open, I can't move my two indoor cats back in until the work is done, and it seems cruel to leave them here alone.

This too shall pass.  This too shall be but a memory someday.  Impermanence is swift, and always gets the last laugh.