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Apr. 4th, 2020 09:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
choco_froshI owe Sovay (and perhaps the rest of you) some more explanations on Spare Oom, various friends more directly affected by the pandemic, and my AH Germany of 1920, but I thought I'd better begin with a general update.
It's been pretty quiet here. The roommates and I have more or less settled into our working from home routines. For me, as I think I may have said, this isn't actually THAT big a change, since 95% of my job is dealing with email and online databases, and EDC was ALREADY set up to have a chunk of its personnel working remotely--it's just that that percentage has now gone up to 100. Biggest challenges are (a) productivity (although I'm getting better at that, though that leads to (b) obsessing about whether you're working enough, with the result that the workday tends to expand,* and (c) most importantly, the fact that the non-ergonomic chairs are killing my back AND my knee.**
The roommates (andsorcyress) are trying to adapt to online teaching. I don't envy them. Online teaching isn't fun even if you're well prepared, have had lots of time to GET prepared, have good support from people who manage online learning all the time, and have students who specifically signed up for it. Obviously, pretty much none of these things is true for public high school.
Anyway, aside from that, things have been pretty dull. We've livened things up a bit by doing weekly singing evenings, by roommate M. getting out a "build it yourself Connect Four only with catapults" game, but mostly it's like...
...it's like one of those public holidays where schools are out and EDC treats as a "floating holiday", but I've decided to work a full day anyway (so that I can bank the vacation time for later), AND both of them are in, like, grading/grad. school hell so they're spending basically the whole day working too, except that (a) they're not nearly as stressed (very little grading!), (b) we're all doing a HELL of a lot more videoconferencing, and of course
(c) this is not one random Monday, this is EVERY DAMN DAY.
Without grading, visiting nieces, or ringing, though, weekends have opened up quite a bit. We've been going on a lot of long walks and baking a lot.
...I really miss ringing. And church, and seeing people face-to-face generally. Ringing's coming to mind, though, because one SLIGHT ray of light is that we've been doing virtual practices. Bryn and Leland cooked up a completely new online ringing program, and we had our first practice on it on Wednesday. So my skills may not completely rust, and it was great to be able to talk to everyone.
But it's not the same as being in the same room.
Hugs to you all, and be well.
* Fortunately--and despite the fact that he himself does this even when there ISN'T a pandemic on--our VP realizes that this is bullshit, and has told us to not obsess about working exactly to the clock.
** Pretty bad flair-up yesterday PM, seems to be better today. The four-mile walk this morning probably helped.
It's been pretty quiet here. The roommates and I have more or less settled into our working from home routines. For me, as I think I may have said, this isn't actually THAT big a change, since 95% of my job is dealing with email and online databases, and EDC was ALREADY set up to have a chunk of its personnel working remotely--it's just that that percentage has now gone up to 100. Biggest challenges are (a) productivity (although I'm getting better at that, though that leads to (b) obsessing about whether you're working enough, with the result that the workday tends to expand,* and (c) most importantly, the fact that the non-ergonomic chairs are killing my back AND my knee.**
The roommates (and
sorcyress) are trying to adapt to online teaching. I don't envy them. Online teaching isn't fun even if you're well prepared, have had lots of time to GET prepared, have good support from people who manage online learning all the time, and have students who specifically signed up for it. Obviously, pretty much none of these things is true for public high school.Anyway, aside from that, things have been pretty dull. We've livened things up a bit by doing weekly singing evenings, by roommate M. getting out a "build it yourself Connect Four only with catapults" game, but mostly it's like...
...it's like one of those public holidays where schools are out and EDC treats as a "floating holiday", but I've decided to work a full day anyway (so that I can bank the vacation time for later), AND both of them are in, like, grading/grad. school hell so they're spending basically the whole day working too, except that (a) they're not nearly as stressed (very little grading!), (b) we're all doing a HELL of a lot more videoconferencing, and of course
(c) this is not one random Monday, this is EVERY DAMN DAY.
Without grading, visiting nieces, or ringing, though, weekends have opened up quite a bit. We've been going on a lot of long walks and baking a lot.
...I really miss ringing. And church, and seeing people face-to-face generally. Ringing's coming to mind, though, because one SLIGHT ray of light is that we've been doing virtual practices. Bryn and Leland cooked up a completely new online ringing program, and we had our first practice on it on Wednesday. So my skills may not completely rust, and it was great to be able to talk to everyone.
But it's not the same as being in the same room.
Hugs to you all, and be well.
* Fortunately--and despite the fact that he himself does this even when there ISN'T a pandemic on--our VP realizes that this is bullshit, and has told us to not obsess about working exactly to the clock.
** Pretty bad flair-up yesterday PM, seems to be better today. The four-mile walk this morning probably helped.
