Husband working at poll. Last week of early voting. Cobb County which is pretty Republican. Says it’s total madness. 1000 people since 7 am and steady line out the door. Much heavier traffic than general election early voting. We heard that Saturday early voting was insane. The apathy we experienced in January 2021 when we got Warnock because so many stayed home after the steal is not apparent this time. Interestingly he says cheating at precinct level is impossible. Too many safeguards. If cheating happens it will be much higher up the chain.

The firm has finally decided to let non-vaccinated people come back to work but we have to have weekly testing. Thanks for any input.

Recently, my boss went to meet Biden at the White House. He finally got around to telling me about it. Up until the day before, the invitation always said Location TBD. The day before, it changed to Location: West Wing. It wasn't in the Oval Office, though. It was in the Ward Room, next to the Situation Room. Chief of Staff, Deputy COS and a couple of others were present. "Biden" spent 45 minutes with them. He knew Biden well in the past so I quizzed him as casually as I could about whether Biden recognized him or if he had changed. Said he was extremely warm - as were all of them. Of course I couldn't outright ask him, "Did he recognize you? Has he changed?" But I could tell he didn't detect anything wrong or questionable. He's pretty astute. That's all I could glean without being way too nosy.

Finally got my first Covid test on Friday. I was super hesitant because of what I'd read. Husband did it Tuesday and said it was easy. So I went. I booked online at CVS Pharmacy for a test at a CVS near me. Had to wait three days for a spot. They gave me a cotton swab and told me to put it one inch up one nostril, and move it all around while she counted to 10. Same for the second nostril. I detected a kind of alcohol-like odor which disappeared after about five minutes. Got results three hours later in a pdf sent by text. That was it. My brother in New York said Good Samaritan Hospital in Babylon does super easy walk-ups so that may be the case where you are. On a scale of 1-10, discomfort was zero. They called it a Rapid Antigen test. I could not find a saliva test anywhere. She said that the old PCR tests where they stick it all the way up your nose and it hurts like hell aren't done anymore.

My grandson is turning two next weekend and my daughter says we have to take a Covid test. Is there such a thing as a safe test that doesn’t do damage?

This will be interesting. My boss was asked to facilitate a meeting between Biden and one of his contacts. It has finally been set for a date in October. The invite says "White House/location TBD." I know the guy said it had to be Biden - he would not be satisfied with just underlings, although several underlings will be present. Since many people are under the impression that the White House is not being used by the current administration, I'll be very interested to hear where it takes place. Luckily I have access to all my boss's emails so I'll be able to check what the guy says about the meeting. I'll report back.

I work for a large multi-national Big Law firm as an executive assistant. I am the only person in my office of 150 who is not going back to work in the office in September because I told them categorically I will not get vaxxed. So they are "making" me stay virtual! Up until now, I believed people when they said Covid was no worse than a cold or flu. But that has changed. My son got it last Saturday. He is 37. He said he was in so much pain from his toes to his head that he wished he could die. Said it was by far the most sick he has ever been in his life. He absolutely begged me to get the vaccine, which of course I won't do. Today, our pest control guy stopped by and said he had it so bad a month ago he almost went to the hospital. Had really horrendous pain and 102 fever for four days. Age 40. Still has no sense of smell or taste one month later. My daughter has a friend who is an ER doctor. He says Atlanta hospitals are full of Covid patients. He doesn't strike me as the type of person who would lie. This is my anecdotal evidence that Covid is far from over, and it's also very far from nothing. Just my two cents for people who are downplaying it, as I did up until this week.

My son works for a small company that puts on all of Schwab’s events. He does them himself and they were his main client. I’ll never forget him telling me in Sept 2019 that Schwab had no events planned anywhere in the country in 2020. He attributed it to them making a guess there would be a severe recession after many months of a good economy. At the time people were saying we were due for a downturn. But now we know they knew the pandemic was coming. It was planned and Schwab was in on it.