In my last writeup, "cool" I mentioned spending a good 15 minutes to a half hour debating whether to jump in front of a train, after quitting my job, all because a British girl (she was maybe Scottish, maybe Ukrainian? something like that) used the word "cheeky" in a non-ironic sense. I mean, of course it was non-ironic, she was British.

So let me back up and explain why that might make sense. At the time, I was not working as an ESL teacher. So, a thing about the ESL business in Chile, and in much of the world: it can often be a scam, with many "institutes" being somewhat sketchy on both the morality and ethics of employment law. At that institute, like many others in Chile, I was theoretically an independent contractor. That meant I only worked for them when I wanted to, and had no other obligations. Except I did. Work had kind of dried up, and the institute wasn't very communicative about when it would come back. Did they not like me anymore? Was there no work available? Were they…

"Touching down in 60 seconds."

"I'm so excited," he said, "maybe I shouldn't be, but it still feels like the first time, every time."

He'd get used to it I thought. His honeymoon has lasted longer than expected.

"Where do you think we should hit first?"

"Well, I do like ice cream."

"So Serendipity 3 first? I can dig it."

We were landing, rolling down the runway. He seemed more wrapped up in plans for the coming days than caring about the…

Oof. That last year was rough.

So, I basically didn’t have a birthday last year. Not that I’m so obsessed with having something like cake or presents or anything like that; or even celebrating really, but it was weird. The Pandemic wasn’t a concern until it was, and it hit hard and fast, and by the 14th there wasn’t anything open and everybody was social distancing.

There’s no real point where I could say, “Uh oh, this thing is serious.” I vaguely recall being somewhere…