I watched (almost) 40 Hallmark Holiday Movies in 2022

Let's get this confession out of the way: I like predictable entertainment. 

For one thing, it's comfortable, especially at the end of a long day. I also enjoy watching artists and writers work within constraints: the sonnet, the three-act play, the Perry Mason one-hour telecast. When you know the genre and where you're going, you can relax and enjoy the ride. We all know that Godzilla is going to stomp Tokyo and waddle back into the sea. But how intricate are the buildings he will destroy? And do we make some new friends along the way?

Given that, it should be no surprise that I have a soft spot for Hallmark Holiday Movies, which are among the most predictable of television productions. Billions of bytes have been spilled detailing the dozen or more repeated plot points in these cozy holiday semi-classics, so you don't need me to do that for you. In any case, after a long, long, long year, I decided that I would fire up my trusty DVR and catch as many of the this year's crop as I could and enjoy some nice, comfy Christmas watching.

Along the way I discovered a few problems:

1. I naively assumed there would be maybe 15 or 20 of them to sort through. Between the regular Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Mysteries & Movies, they put out a mind-boggling forty new Hallmark holiday movies this year. That's a lot of Hallmarking, especially since I didn't intend to start watching until after Thanksgiving.

2. It seems that most of North America's hometown Christmas tree lots / Christmas cookie bakeries / holiday hotels / Christmas ornament factories have already been saved by plucky heroines with dull boyfriends in the big city. With 40 holiday movies to crank out this year, Hallmark has been pushing their plots and settings further afield. Sometimes this works well. Sometimes it does not. The ultimate effect is that the general quality feels all over the place, probably more so than in prior years. (Or maybe my memory of the efforts of prior years are covered in a gauzy holiday haze, and they've always been uneven. That seems entirely likely)

3. Hallmark's efforts to bring a lot more diversity to these productions remains a work in progress. For the most part, this is much improved from the first few years of their efforts, which mostly seemed to consist of making a black guy the mayor of every 99%-white small town in America. A few of the better movies this year were set in black or Asian American families. And this year's Hanukkah entry was also one of the strongest entries.

On the other hand, some of the more inclusive entries were among the weaker efforts. There's a certain bit of representation there, too, since several of the other weak movies this year had big-city white girls going home for Christmas. These movies are proving that they succeed or not based on their merits, not based on the ethnicity of the cast. I applaud the fact that Hallmark is trying to make movies that look more like America. They still have a ways to go, but at least they're trying. 

However, there was one particularly irritating fail in Hallmark's move towards racial inclusiveness in these films, and it came in one of their biggest, most hyped movies of the year, A Holiday Spectacular, which revolved around the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes in 1958. In that movie one of the main characters is an African American dancer in the Rockettes in 1958 who apparently started with the Rockettes in the late 1940s. In fact, the Rockettes didn't permit their first black dancer until 1987. (No, I didn't know the date that until I looked it up afterwards, but I had a vague memory of it, and this nagged at me as I watched.)

That character and subplot felt like whitewashing genuine history, instead of representation. I like seeing diversity on screen and in surprising places -- Denzel Washington as MacBeth? Yes! -- but with the emphasis of this production on seeming historic authenticity, this felt dishonest about what America was really like in the 1950s -- misrepresentation instead of representation. 

So, kudos to Hallmark for continuing to work on inclusiveness. I get what they were trying to do there. But there's more work to be done. There's also a lot more to be said and written on the topic. It's a continuing microcosm of America's "three steps forward, two steps back" progress on racial equality.

As for the movies themselves?  My reviews are below in alphabetical order. My favorite by far was Ghosts of Christmas Always, an entirely surprising and fun mash-up of "A Christmas Carol" and a Hallmark Holiday movie plot. Several of the other best movies of the year also involved mash-ups or remakes or winks at the well-worn Hallmark movie trope. My runner up for the best is probably Three Wise Men and a Baby, a Christmas remake of Three Men and a Baby that wrung a lot of laughs out of classic men-and-baby comedy.

The worst by far was We Wish You a Married Christmas, which consisted of two hours spent with an unpleasant squabbling married couple. I only mention it here as extra warning. Spare yourself. It was awful. 

Everything else lay somewhere between. Some good. Some very good. Some bad. Some very bad. Some eh. I don't provide any real plot summaries or other information below, so here's a good listing from the TV Guide channel with plot summaries and stars if you want to know more: Hallmark Christmas Movie Calendar 2022: The Full Schedule.

My Rankings

Grinch - Avoid at all costs.

* Ugh. Not good.

** Eh, what did you expect? It's a Hallmark holiday movie

*** Genuinely entertaining

**** Wow! Go out of your way to watch this next year!

#Xmas **

Another classic Hallmark trope: totally botching how social media works in real life. Better than I expected, especially after a weak start and setup. But still dubious.

All Saints Christmas ***

Pop singer and a fake engagement. The plot summary made me think it would be terrible, but the whole movie was fun. Well worth a watch. Special kudos for the ridiculous computer-generated snowflakes falling at the end in Louisiana.

A Big Fat Family Christmas ***

Reluctant daughter and a big family party in San Francisco. Another one that beat my expectations, mostly due to likeable turns by the lead actors, as well as Tia Carrera chewing up scenery as the Mom and a lot of very good location shots of SF.

Christmas at the Golden Dragon ***

Family Chinese restaurant closing. This one grew on me as it went along. The cast was good and the whole thing had a lot of heart, plus yummy Chinese food.

Christmas Bedtime Stories *

Widowed mother. This one probably deserves an "Incomplete" from me because I turned it off after 15 minutes or so. On the other hand, the dismal 5.0/10 IMDB rating and the terrible plot twist at the end mentioned as a spoiler in several user reviews tell me that my instincts were 100% correct here.

Christmas Class Reunion **

Disastrous reunion 15 years after graduation. Pretty likeable. Pretty fun to watch. Pretty predictable. Might've deserved a third star from  me, but didn't quite make it.

A Christmas Cookie Catastrophe **

I wanted to like this one more than I did. I like Rachel Boston. I like a good Christmas mystery. And I love rescuing the family Christmas cookie biz. But it just never really developed a spark. Sigh.

A Cozy Christmas Inn ***

Another one right in the old-school Hallmark tradition. Small-town girl goes home for the holidays.

A Fabled Holiday **

Unlikely couple stuck in a possibly mythical village. I expected more out of this one. I like Brooke D'Orsay as a lead actress and I like when they work some genuine mythological angle into these movies. But it never quite flew.

Five More Minutes: Moments Like These **

Five minutes later you're going to have to look it up on IMDB to remember what it was about or who was in it. Totally forgettable.

Ghosts of Christmas Always ****

Amazing. They took the two most overused holiday clichés -- "A Christmas Carol" and the Hallmark Christmas movie -- and made something that felt new and unpredictable. Special kudos for fresh performances from the leads and the supporting cast. Absolutely the best of these that I saw this year and totally rewatchable. Just perfect as it is.

The Gift of Peace ***

There are so many widows and widowers wandering around these movies that a genuine look at mourning and resulting loss of faith felt like a breath of fresh air. I liked this one much more than I expected to.

Hanukkah on Rye ***

"The Shop Around the Corner" aka "You've Got Mail" but with Jewish delis and a Hanukkah theme. We all know where this one is going, but the leads are so likeable in the roles that it's fun to take the ride with them.

Haul Out the Holly ***

Lacey Chabert makes fun of the movie she's in. I liked this one more than it probably deserved, mostly because it was so goofy. It's basically one big wink at the entire format, and manages to have a lot of fun along the way.

Holiday Heritage (Didn't see)

I was pretty burned out on all of these by the time this one came up in my watching. I let the predictable-sounding plot and the weak 5.9/10 IMDB rating make the call. Maybe I'll give it a try if it comes up in the Christmas in July Hallmark marathon. Maybe not.

The Holiday Sitter **

On the one hand, kudos to Hallmark for including a movie with a romance between two gay men. On the other hand, they made them the blandest characters in the blandest movie imaginable, an uninvolving two hours you will entirely forget afterwards.

A Holiday Spectacular **

An unusual history spectacle for Hallmark with a substantial production budget featuring the Rockettes. This one was generally a lot of fun and worth a watch. But to do that you also need to set aside the disappointing whitewashing of Rockette history that I mention up in the introduction.

The Holiday Stocking (Incomplete)

I wasn't feeling the new-angel plot, so I stopped watching after about 10 or 15 minutes. The 6.9/10 IMDB rating says that it deserved better from me. So be it. Watch it yourself and tell me if I was wrong.

In Merry Measure ***

Battling Christmas singing groups in a high-school contest. Another one that was better than I expected from the plot summary, probably because I expected a lot more squabbling but they got past that part of the plot quickly. Bonus points for fun Christmas music performances.

Inventing the Christmas Prince **

Starts terribly, gets watchable for a while in the middle, ends with a dubious deux ex machina. Ultimately the whole thing felt like a two-hour HR training session highlighting what not to do in the workplace. I wanted to like this one more than I did, especially because lead actress Tamera Mowry-Housley was good in her role as a rocket scientist.

Jolly Good Christmas **

Romance finds a personal gift-buyer in London. This would've been just fine if they'd let the lead actor use his own accent. Instead he does a terrible American accent that is awful to the point of distraction. Would've been three stars if they just let the British actor be British.

A Kismet Christmas **

Magic cookies and a nice girl comes home. Good, but forgettable.

Lights, Camera, Christmas! ***

A Hallmark movie about making a Hallmark movie. This one had fun by being a bit meta about the whole Hallmark holiday movie phenomenon.

Long Lost Christmas ***

Looking for long-lost family. Predictable, but everybody in it is so likeable that I gave it a third star, which it probably doesn't deserve.

A Magical Christmas Village **

A pleasant two hours of predictability as every classic plot point plays out in a toy village first.

A Maple Valley Christmas **

Our heroine tries to save the family maple syrup biz. Likeable leads, reliable plot … there might've been a good movie buried in here somewhere, but it all felt a bit tired.

The Most Colorful Time of the Year *

Crazy stalker eye doctor forces experimental cure for color blindness on teacher in denial about his color blindness. Likeable enough on the surface, but there are so many doctor-patient boundaries being crossed here that the whole thing gets a creepy vibe.

My Southern Family Christmas **

Heroine investigates her long lost family in the bayou under false pretenses. Likeable, good performances, classic Hallmark plot. So why didn't I give it a third star? I'm not sure. Maybe it's ultimately the needless deception that fuels the plot. In any case I don't feel compelled to watch it again or recommend that you go out of your way to watch it. So two stars it is.

Noel Next Door ***

Single Mom renews the spirit of Christmas in the neighborhood grouch and finds romance. The first new one of the 2022 season, this was a nice kickoff right in the old Hallmark cliché slot.

Our Italian Christmas Memories **

A commendable effort to bring in a genuine real-world problem, eldercare and dementia. And it had some pretty good performances. But not great, either. A lesser critic would now call the ultimate result as forgettable as grandma's pasta sauce recipe. Fortunately for us all, I'm not that critic.

A Royal Corgi Christmas **

The Corgis are cuter than the rest of the movie, which involves a dog trainer and a dissolute prince. More Corgis would have helped this one. Like, a lot more Corgis. Really, just re-run the Corgi race towards the end for two hours. Alas, that this was the one I saved to watch with my niece Stella, purely based on the Corgi-ness of it all. I should've inflicted a better movie on her.

The Royal Nanny ***

An MI5 agent goes undercover as a nanny. Completely ridiculous, but inexplicably fun. The fun factor makes it an easy watch, probably because nobody involved in this thing takes the mash-up of Hallmark Christmas "royal" movie with an action flick very seriously. Instead they're all just having fun with the tropes.

A Tale of Two Christmases (Didn't See)

I somehow missed this one. The 5.6/10 IMDB ranking says that may have been for the best.

Three Wise Men and a Baby ****

I was pretty skeptical, but this ludicrous remix of "Three Men and a Baby" was so likeable and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny that it was genuinely one of the best ones this year.

Time for Him to Come Home for Christmas **

On the one hand, a pretty entertaining entry. On the other hand, I got "creepy stalker" vibes off the phone message that serves as the McGuffin. Maybe I'm just being too cynical about it, but I guess it's sort of one star if you get creeped out by the message, but three stars if you're fine with the heroine dropping everything to track down the intended recipient. All of that averages out to two stars, so here we are.

'Twas the Night Before Christmas ***

Who really wrote the famous Christmas poem? This one was genuinely good fun and again a place where Hallmark injected a surprising lift into their formula by bringing in another overused Christmas staple.

Undercover Holiday (Didn't see)

Eh, I dunno. The plot looks terrible and the low 5.4/10 rating on IMDB seems to concur. This one is still on my DVR. Will I take the plunge? Seems unlikely.

We Need a Little Christmas **

Widowed single mother finds friendship and romance. Another one I wanted to like more than I ultimately did.

We Wish You a Married Christmas [Grinch]

Just terrible. Two unpleasant hours with a squabbling married couple. This was the 2nd of these I watched this season and it almost put me off the project altogether. People need to be warned. I am warning you.

When I Think of Christmas **

Big city lawyer comes home to sing Christmas carols with her ex-boyfriend. For some reason she's supposed to feel bad about being a successful lawyer. Pleasant, but forgettable. How forgettable? I had to look over the IMDB entry a couple of times to remind myself that I really did watch this one. And now that I'm looking back at this list one more time, I still can't remember what this one was about.

Everything you need to know about what happened in Michigan this week.

 Gallons of (virtual) ink are being spilled by the Michigan political punditry this week to try to explain how the Democratic Party gained control of the governorship, attorney general, secretary of state, and the legislature for the first time in decades, and why they didn't see it coming.

It's not nearly as complicated as they're trying to make it seem.

For the statewide offices, here's what happened:

1.People want to control their own bodies. People like the nice lady who helped them do that over the last six months. They also like her friends who did the same.

2. People like the nice lady who tried to keep them safe from Covid. They also like her friends who did the same.

3. Promise made, promise kept. The damn roads are getting fixed. Michigan was awash in orange barrels and road construction projects this summer. Everybody I talked to about it said essentially the same thing, "It's a pain in the ass, but isn't it great that the roads are getting fixed?"

A ton of work and money went into getting out the message on these points. but a ton of work and money doesn't matter if the message doesn't resonate with people. That message resonated. The only surprise is that political pundits were surprised by that.

As for the legislature, establishing a nonpartisan commission to draw legislative districts worked. After decades of GOP gerrymandering, the partisan results reflected the actual votes that people cast.

Kudos to all my friends in politics who have worked so hard over the years to get us to this point. (A few kudos to me, too, even though I wasn't directly involved in this election that finally put us over the top.)

What do I expect next? More roads getting fixed and more policies that help actual people. If the Democrats now in office deliver on that, they'll have another good year four years from now.

I watched 13 terrible movies in October

I watched 13 terrible movies in the run up to Halloween. Usually I try to mix in at least a few genuinely good horror classics while they're scattered about the movie channels in October. But I've seen just about all the genuinely good horror and sci-fi classics. And so what's left? The anti-classics.

It was fun. One of the great thing about watching terrible movies is that you go into them with low expectations. If the movie turns out to be terrible, well then, what did you expect?

I guess what you should expect is a little review from me, so here we go.

Here's the list, in the order that I watched them:

• It Came From Outer Space (1953)
• Slither (1973)
• The Beast Must Die (1974)
• The Beast of Hollow Mountain (1956)
• Yongary, Monster from the Deep (1967)
• The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) 
• Queen of Blood (1966)
• The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964)
• Creature with the Atom Brain (1955)
• The Thing with Two Heads (1972)
• "My Son the Vampire" originally titled "Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire" aka "Vampire over London" (1952)
• The Return of the Vampire (1943)
• Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957)

Here are my reviews:

It Came From Outer Space (1953) *** Spaceship crashes in the desert and aliens begin taking over the local townfolk. Pretty entertaining, plus young Russell Johnson (the Professor from "Gilligan's Island") in a small role. 

Slither (1973) *** Doesn't at all belong on this list. I assumed it must be some weird thing with snakes, but it turned out to be an oddball 1970s action-comedy movie James Caan, Sally Kellerman, Peter Boyle, and a terrible title. It's good, tho'. Worth a watch.

The Beast Must Die (1974) ** "World's Greatest Hunter" gathers werewolf suspects at his remote English estate for the world's greatest hunt, if only they can figure out which guest is the werewolf. Bonus cheese points for the "Can you guess the werewolf?" break at the end.

The Beast of Hollow Mountain (1956) ** Just the usual Tyranosaurus Rex eating cattle in a Mexican canyon 1950s Western. Kinda fun, especially once T.Rex shows up.

Yongary, Monster from the Deep (1967) ** A Korean ripoff of Godzilla, but without the expensive special effects and production values. Mostly for kaiju completists, but sort of fun if you've seen a lot of Godzilla.

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) ***1/2 Vincent Price at the top of his game as a Spanish Don going mad. Directed by Roger Corman, also at the top of his game here. This is a good one.

Queen of Blood (1966) ** Green vampire woman from Mars set loose on a spaceship. Best for the amazing cast, which includes John Saxon, Basil Rathbone, and young Dennis Hopper, plus a great otherworldly turn by Florence Marly as the Queen of Blood herself. Not great, but more entertaining than it should be.

The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964) *1/2 This was a pretty forgettable mummy movie from Hammer studios. Picks up a bit of momentum in the second half, but not much.

Creature with the Atom Brain (1955) */**1/2 This sci-fi/gangster flick steps into "so bad it's good" territory, which makes it watchable and kind of entertaining. But it's not so bad that it's truly great. It did, however, lead to this great eponymous 1981 song by Roky Erickson and the Aliens:

Creature with the Atom Brain (Roky Erickson and the Aliens)

... which led to this dandy 2018 cover by Quintron & Miss Pussycat that landed on the Dr. Demento Covered in Punk album, which is how both the song and the movie came to my attention.

Creature with the Atom Brain (Quintron & Miss Pussycat)

The Thing with Two Heads (1972) */**** A classic of the genre, that genre being "terrible sci-fi movies in which the head of a racist doctor played by an Academy Award winning actor is transplanted onto Rosie Grier's shoulder." Also features a crazy-ass motocross chase that is firmly rooted in the early 1970s. Monique called it "the strangest movie I've ever watched" and we've watched Jodorowsky's "Holy Mountain" (1973).

"My Son the Vampire" originally titled "Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire" aka "Vampire over London" (1952) Zero stars - Just terrible. Do not recommend. For masochistic Bela Lugosi completists only. I suspect, however, that a good movie might be made about the making of this unwatchable thing, a statement I feel compelled to explain, since I dug around a bit to see how this awful thing came to be.

This is the final installment of 14 British "Old Mother Riley" comedies. The Old Mother Riley character was played by a guy named Arthur Lucan in drag. He had developed a vaudeville team act around the character with his wife of 30+ years, Kitty McShane, whom he met and married when she was a 15-year-old singer. To make things even a bit weirder, Kitty played Mother Riley's "indiscreet" daughter, an item that undoubtedly demands Freudian analysis. The previous 13 installments of the Mother Riley movies included Kitty, but #13 was a bit of a train wreck because they were in the midst of a bitter divorce and had to film their scenes separately. That left Arthur Lucan without half his act for the next movie in the series. 

Meanwhile, aging and alcoholic Bela Lugosi had come to London to star in a theater production of "Dracula" that fell apart when the producers went bankrupt, leaving Lugosi unpaid and without enough money to get back to America. A friend of Lugosi's somehow managed to put him together with Arthur Lucan and the sinking Old Mother Riley franchise so that Lugosi could earn enough money to pay for a ticket back to America. There is also a robot involved in this script for reasons that I don't understand but that probably amount to, "We had an extra robot costume in the studio." 

I think the producers were hoping to create something along the lines of the infinitely better "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948) but instead they created this unwatchable mess. This movie is just terrible and unfun, perhaps because somehow through the terribleness on screen you can feel the vibe of various lives falling apart behind the screen. There's a good drama about the making of this mess by B-List entertainers whose best days were behind them -- an elegy to the fading fortunes of the vaudeville and theater performers who had a good run onscreen in the 1930s and 40s. But this movie isn't worth your time.

The kicker: This terrible disaster of a movie would have sunk into total oblivion if singer-comedian Allan Sherman hadn't had a hit record with his 1962 album "My Son the Folksinger." For some reason this inspired an American distributor to rename this mess of a movie "My Son the Vampire" and ask Allan Sherman to create a song called "My Son the Vampire" that they could use for the title track in hopes that it could combine with some marketing as "Bela Lugosi's final movie" to give it enough traction to work the back-end of some double features. And so, nine years after it sank to the bottom of the British movie market this movie sank again to the bottom of the American movie market. From there it oozed onto late-night TV in the 1960s and gained a bit of notoriety for its general terribleness.

Allan Sherman's song is a pretty good Halloween novelty tune. This movie is terrible.

"My Son, the Vampire" (Allan Sherman)

P.S. Does it seem like I used the word "terrible" a lot of times in this review? That's because this movie is terrible, and not in a good way. 

Terrible.

The Return of the Vampire (1943) *** This is a surprisingly good effort by Columbia Pictures to grab some of the Universal Pictures horror audience. It was intended to be a direct sequel to the original Dracula (1934) but after a copyright squabble they had to change the name of the vampire and shift the plot around a bit. However, after the clunky introduction with backstory, it turns out to be one of Bela Lugosi's better turns as a vampire and a surprisingly good watch.

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) */**** The King of the All-Time So Bad They're Good Movies. I won't replicate all that has been written about this debacle of a movie. It was famously created by Ed Wood to fit a test clips of Bela Lugosi filmed shortly before Lugosi's death. Its making was immortalized by the infinitely better Academy Award winning movie "Ed Wood" (1994). So here's the thing you need to know: in 2020 Turner Classic Movies gave it a high-end digital transfer in its original 1.85:1 image ratio. This terrible movie has never looked so good. I hadn't seen it in ages, so I was wondering if it would still be fun. It is! Check it out. No, really. Check it out. Everybody should see this terrible movie at least once.

Does it seem like a lot of people you know have caught Covid recently?

 Does it seem like a lot of people you know have caught Covid recently? This seems like a good time for an explanation of why the current Covid situation is probably worse than you think. You should be wearing a good mask whenever you go indoors and probably whenever you're in an outdoors crowd.

The basic problem is that Omicron BA.5 is becoming the dominant variant. It is extremely contagious and also has shifted enough genetically that vaccinations and previous infection provide a good deal less protection that was the case with earlier variants.

Here are three images that show where things stand. Here's a link to the CDC web site:

COVID-19 Integrated County View

The first image is the CDC's "Community Level" map. In many ways it is a measure of how likely you are to get a hospital bed or an ICU unit if you come down with severe Covid. About ten days ago this map was mostly green. It has gotten much worse since then. 

The second image is the CDC's "Community Transmission" map. It functions as a measure of how much Covid transmission is in your community. This is a very important measure if you are trying to avoid a breakthrough case for yourself or a family member who is elderly or immunocompromised.

This map has been mostly red since the Omicron BA.2 spike started this spring. The CDC site defaults to the first map, which is generally used for policy decisions. You have to go into the dropdown menu to select "Community Transmission" to see this map.

The final image is a couple of graphs of testing and testing numbers for my home county of Oakland County, Michigan, over the last year. 

One of the major changes in testing from this winter's initial Omicron spike is the much greater availability of home testing kits. So actual total-case rates are believed to be significantly higher than the officially reported rate. (I've seen a lot of different estimates as to how much more, so I won't speculate here. Let's just say "much more".) As you can see, the number of reported tests are way down, but the current positivity rate is approaching the levels of this winter's initial Omicron spike. The rate increased 3.23% to 17.55% in just the last week.

So, yeah, Covid is bad out there right now. It's almost certainly going to get worse before it gets better.

Do yourself and your friends and your family a favor. Mask up. 

Two Years of Survival, One Week at a Time

March 15 marks two years since Monique and I entered our own Covid lockdown, a few days after I reckon the wave of the approaching disaster officially arrived in the United States on March 11, the day that Tom Hanks announced he and his wife had contracted Covid, and the NBA shut down their season due to Covid. Before that day most everybody thought of this pandemic as something happening elsewhere that might pass us by. After that day, it was HERE.

Monique and I were in St. Lucia with my folks on a week's vacation, a funny sort of place to watch the world go to Hell. We almost hadn't gone, nervous at the prospect of the approaching pandemic. But there had been few positive tests in the U.S. at that point, so we thought we could zip down to the Caribbean for a week of sun, zip back, and then wait for what might come. 

St. Lucia was glorious.

It's fair to say that I had a better sense of what was coming than most. The company I work for sells quite a bit in China, so it certainly caught my eye when we found that China was almost entirely shut down in January. By mid-February I was nervous enough that I amassed our quarantine stockpile, a large stack of rice, beans, pasta, coffee, and a wide variety of canned goods including a case of Spam and at least a half-dozen cans of evaporated milk for the coffee in case we couldn't get fresh milk. 

I had no idea that toilet paper would turn out to be the great shortage. It hit the news while we were still in St. Lucia. We tried to paper over that gap by bringing a four-pack back from St. Lucia, which has its own toilet-paper mill. Eventually, the home supply got low enough that we used them.

In late February I told my boss that I thought this was going to be "Spanish Flu bad" and that I was going to go to work-from-home once Covid got to Michigan. Little did I know it was already in Michigan. I have a particularly bad history with respiratory diseases, so I reckoned I had better than average reason to try to avoid this one. 

As Monique reminded me today, just two years ago I told her that I thought this pandemic was more likely to last a couple of years than a few months. I am sorry that I was right.

We had our first positive test in Michigan at the start of that week in St. Lucia. I told my boss that I was going to start working from home when I got back. I felt like I might've been alarmist or jumping the gun.

By the end of that week, almost everybody in my entire company had been sent to work from home.

We had flown out of Toronto to save money. Our flight back was getting in late at night and we had originally planned to stay there overnight, brunch in Toronto, then drive back to Wolverine Lake, Michigan, the next afternoon. Instead we grabbed a couple of burgers at a McDonalds and drove through the night. 

The U.S./Canada border was closed the next day.

The afternoon we got back Monique headed out into the panic-buying to shore up our quarantine stockpile and to make sure her parents, who live across the street from us, also had a reasonably good supply. And then, like turtles retreating into a den in a mudbank, we hunkered down, pulled our heads into our shells...

... and waited.

All things considered I realize how incredibly fortunate Monique and I are in the way we spent the last two years. Nobody tells you when you get married to make sure you marry somebody that you get along with well enough to enjoy being locked down together for a couple of years. But I'm glad we found each other. And if you're going to be hunkered down for a couple of years, a little house on a nice lake is an excellent place to do that -- even if the "little" in little house makes it a bit claustrophobic in the wintertime.

As it turned out the instead of being reckless, leaving Detroit for a week to frolic in the Caribbean sun was the best thing we could have possibly done. St. Lucia had no Coronavirus. Detroit was already in the midst of one of the worst outbreaks in the world by the time we returned. 

I've spent a fair amount of the last two years furious at how Trump and his Administration politicized  and mishandled this epidemic. Even after they were justly booted from office they had so poisoned the water that a large number of their supporters continued to refuse a safe, proven vaccine -- making the subsequent waves much worse than they would have been otherwise. This pandemic was always going to be bad. But it took disastrous public health policy at the outset to make it as bad as it was.

I've also spent a fair amount of time furious at people who wouldn't take simple basic steps to make things better, whether it was wearing masks or getting vaccinated. A lot of individuals made a lot of bad, selfish decisions that made this pandemic worse than it would have been otherwise. I have a darker view of many of my fellow humans than I did two years ago. I wish it was otherwise.

Two years later a million or more of my fellow Americans are dead from this disease. Millions upon millions more suffer with symptoms of "Long Covid." Their conditions might improve. Or they might not. Covid was from the start a notoriously fickle and unpredictable disease. 

So, other than sit and fume what have I done with my last two years? Mostly just work, watch sunsets and comfort TV, and make fancy-shmancy cocktails on Friday evenings to close out the workweek. Life quickly settled into a pattern of workweeks and weekends. Each week I'd start up on Monday morning, fire up the computer, and start working. Then on Friday evening -- or Thursday quite often, I blew a lot of vacation time on three-day weekends over the last two years -- I'd wrap up at five or six, make myself a nice cocktail or pour a good beer, and congratulate myself and Monique on having survived another week. On Saturdays I'd run an errand or two, mostly as an excuse to get out of the house. I began buying things from local online estate auctions, mostly to have an excuse to go drive somewhere and fetch those things.

This is *not* a good habit for a man who lives in a small house. But here we are.

Surprisingly, the most normal thing about all of this was my job. Most of the people I work with already worked remotely before the pandemic. I was already spending hours a day on Zoom before everybody else joined us. "Zoom fatigue" is real and I had it long before the pandemic. But thanks to the pandemic, at least I now knew what to call it. I missed seeing my colleagues in the same office in person, but other than staying in bed and doomscrolling Twitter for another half-hour instead of getting in the car and driving to the office, my average workday has felt astonishingly normal.

It's all been a grind and an extra grind and an extra-long grind that's been more wearing over time than I would have imagined. But at least it's been a familiar grind.

When I worked in the office, at the end of the work day I would shut down and/or abandon my computer. I used to close down my work day in an orderly fashion, scanning the email pile to make sure it had all been dealt with, then shutting down the computer for its overnight sleep. Now I usually just work until my brain is exhausted and quits, then stagger away from the desk leaving whatever's there for the morning. Neither way is inherently better than the other in terms of getting work done, but the discipline of the daily commute did force me to make a more conscious and complete decision to call it a day.

After work I would head out to watch the sunset, as long as there was any hope at all of a sunset.  We can't quite see sunsets from our house, so I do have to head out if I want to watch it. Usually I would head out from our dock in my paddleboat, sometimes in our larger pontoon boat. If the lake was frozen I would walk out on the ice, or to a road ending down the street, or to the boardwalk at the end of the lake. Almost always I'd have my trusty 35mm digital Canon EOS along with me as I'd soak in the sunsets, taking pictures, changing lenses, watching the waterfowl. Sometimes I'd listen to a fantasy sports podcast or a Dr. Demento show. Sometimes I'd just listen to the lake. Mostly I've just been staring at the Sun until it was gone.

If you had asked me a few years ago what I'd do if I had to stay home for a couple of years, I would've thought, "Great. Sounds like I'll finally write a novel." Instead I've become a ludicrously prolific sunset photographer. In the last two years I've probably taken more than 75,000 sunset photos. I haven't written anything longer than a chatty email. 

I refer you again to, "work until my brain is exhausted and quits, then stagger away from the desk." Write a novel? I've barely been able to read a novel in the last two years. Stress and exhaustion and isolation. So it goes.

We got brave enough after being vaccinated last Spring to go out and start doing some things last summer and fall. Then the Delta and Omicron waves came and we crawled right back into our hidey hole until they passed. Now that Omicron has passed we're getting optimistic again. Is this really the end of the worst of it? We shall see.

But always there's been the weekly rhythm. Start my workweek on a Monday full of resolve to accomplish all on my to-do list. Stagger away from the desk on a Friday afternoon saying, "Good enough," then pouring a drink to kick off a couple of days of decompression. And on Monday morning, there we go again. Week after week. Month after month. Here we are 104 weeks later. Still surviving. 

A lot's happened along the way. We didn't watch Tiger King, but Monique sure has baked a lot of sourdough bread. I've mostly kept in touch with friends and family via Facebook and Twitter. They're helpful platforms if you use them to keep in touch with friends and family instead of using them to wallow in misinformation. 

And then on Monday morning, get up, go down to the desk, turn on the work computer and go to work. Pour yourself a drink on Friday evening. Be thankful you survived another week. Not everybody did.

Our beloved Katie the Beagle passed away in May 2020, a blow from which we're still recovering. She was just a little beagle, but she was also a pure, sweet soul and we miss her. 

And then on Monday morning, get up, go down to the desk, turn on the work computer and go to work. Pour yourself a drink on Friday evening. Be thankful you survived another week. Not everybody did.

I cleaned the garage and cluttered the garage back up. I did some MG and Jaguar repairs on my own since visits to the mechanic were scarce. Then I fixed them again when my mechanical skills once again proved inadequate. They're mostly still running.

And then on Monday morning, get up, go down to the desk, turn on the work computer and go to work. Open a tasty beer on Friday evening and head out to the garage again. Be thankful you survived another week. Not everybody did.

My father-in-law fell and broke his hip. My sister-in-law came from France and spent last summer with us all tending him and shouldering an awful lot of the load. She returned to France and fell and broke her hip. Like Covid, broken hips are contagious. Who knew? 

And then on Monday morning, get up, go down to the desk, turn on the work computer and go to work. Take a picture of your sister-in-law swimming with the ducks. Pour yourself a drink on Friday evening. Be thankful you survived another week. Not everybody did.

In late November of 2021 I ruptured the tendons that connect my biceps to my forearm in my left arm. It led to surgery a month later and a couple of months in a splint then a brace and a compression sleeve until I am finally just now three and a half months later starting to type at something approaching my pre-injury pace. So Monique got me to tend for a few months in addition to all else on her plate.

And then on Monday morning, get up, go down to the desk, turn on the work computer and go to work, typing one-fingered with your right hand. Use that same hand to mix yourself a pretty cocktail on Friday evening. Be thankful you survived another week. Not everybody did.

And so on. And so on. And so on.

In about a month or so my company will be opening a new office and we'll be able to go back into the office. Some of my non-work outside activities are picking up the pace. The Covid numbers in Metro Detroit continue to drop. At this point the vast majority of people have either been vaccinated or survived a bout of Covid. Or both. Have we reached herd immunity? Will things start to look more like the Beforetimes soon? Who knows. We shall see.

And now it's 2:48 pm EST on Friday, March 11, almost exactly two years after everything began falling apart in the U.S. In two hours and 12 minutes, I'll call it a work week, shut down the work computer, pour myself a beer on Friday evening and be thankful I survived another week.

To all of you who read to the end, I'm thankful you survived another week, too. Much love. Hang in there.