Schreiber

I 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 (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.

Wow, I have been really bad about posting recently. Partly because a lot of stuff has been going on; partly because I keep wanting to write something eloquent and in-depth about various topics. Sp instead, you're getting the executive summary, so that I actually get this onto pixels...

- Work's been busy. I feel like it shouldn't be kicking my ass this much - despite last week, where I screwed up in various different directions, and Monday, where all of that came home to roost, in some cases for the second time, this job is objectively better than my last full time job, and takes up less of my day. Somehow, it still manages to leave me with less energy or spare time.

- Naturally, after disappearing for most of a year when I was usually underemployed and broke, my client from Germany reappeared. So I've been copy-editing his latest website, snatching an hour of this evening, an hour and a half of that Saturday: slow going, and not many hours, but it means I have like no down time, at least after you factor in all the parenting and fun stuff, e.g.:

- Ringing; which has been good, despite having to spend two successive practices doing emergency repairs on a rope. (It held, though! After my third time to try to get it spliced!)

- I've been dealing with some health stuff, where by health stuff I mean springtime allergies plus suddenly developing acid reflux. Badly enough (the first time) that I took myself to the hospital to make sure I wasn't having the world's weirdest heart attack. (Hint: No.) And the heartburn's better now, although "better" in this case means "less bad" rather than "cured". This is probably gonna be permanent, or at least really long-term. I'm keeping baking soda everywhere I go, and I'm working on weaning myself off coffee, since that's the only really clear trigger.

- G's schedule means I've been seeing a lot more of Peter than I usually have been (but see below): she's been taking some sort of class in Lexington, so I've been giving him dinner and entertainment every Sunday that I'm actually in town (see below), plus having him stay for a couple extra weekends when G. is in Seattle/northern New Hampshire/wheretheheckeverIcan'tkeeptrack.

- Practically every OTHER weekend for the last month, and for about a month after this, I've been out of town, or had some similar commitment that ate the weekend. Last weekend, was up in Maine to see Squig. and partner. Partner was off at a friend's birthday LAN party for a chunk of the time. Squig and I went on adventures, which mostly turned out to involve osprey/castle hunting (on the Maine coast as a sort of late birthday present to her.

(These factors combined mean that trying to do any extra socializing/house-type projects, or even cook anything elaborate, has been HAHAHA NO.)

- And the big announcement: G. and Peter are moving to Montreal. EXACTLY what this is gonna mean for the whole seeing Peter business is unclear. I have a lot of feels about it, but I'm going to save that for a separate post.