Some Monday stuff

* I *finally* got the letter from the IRS indicating the issue with my 2017 taxes (this was the big Jackson-Hewett mess-up, where I had to hire a CPA to untangle it after J-H's person just made it worse) is all resolved and I owe no more money. That's a small relief.

* I ran over to my building today; I am going to get soil samples Wednesday and I wanted to be sure I had everything I needed. I also admit I had been feeling guilty for not going in - it's been a few weeks since we had a faculty meeting and I was imagining at least several of the other people over industriously writing in their offices and I felt like a total slacker. (Well, they could be writing at home, but I suspect several aren't).

It's so hard to know in these times - I'm not even sure about restarting the research, what if we get chased off campus again? Well, if it's to the point of "sample sorting and counting," I could drag a microscope home and either borrow or buy a card table and set up in my garage (messy) to do it. It would be hot and unpleasant and I'd probably have to haul a lamp and a multi-outlet strip out there to run off the one outlet I have, but I could do it.

I am hoping - but doubting - that they will suspend the annual "productivity reports" we're supposed to do this fall. I have done zero scholarship and except for a little editing work, zero service, since March.

We've never experienced this before, and 1918 was a very different time (I wonder what universities did then?) so there's no template to work off of. Part of me is afraid of "failing" my next post-tenure review and losing my job; another part of me shrugs and goes "we might all lose our jobs, if the 'meltdown' in higher ed that many pundits seem to be cheering for happens"

The uncertainty of all this is what I hate so much. I feel like if I strive to be extra safe (as in: not going in to campus to do research) I will pay for it later in the "productivity report" but if I were to get exposed and get really sick I couldn't do research either. And if all the regional universities close it won't matter (I will not try to get another job in academia if I lose this one: I am too old for anyone to want to hire me (and yes, I know there are anti-discrimination laws, but people find loopholes), I am not a "superstar," I don't want to compete with the thousands of other out of work profs for what would be largely low-paid contingent positions. I'd move back home with my mother first, and get a part time job doing whatever and figure she can cover the cost of the property taxes and most of the utilities, and maybe eventually I'll inherit enough from her to keep myself going....)

It's hard for me not to imagine the worst possible outcome in this - that I wind up unemployed, and unemployable, and we're in a moonscape of very few jobs/businesses left, and all pleasures and luxuries gone. And maybe me struggling to survive with no income.

I find it harder to imagine the best-possible: a relatively swift path to an effective vaccine, most people get vaccinated, the economy mostly comes back but maybe with a little more recognition that "fairness" (like: work from home being a thing, especially for people with disabilities if it makes their lives easier, or WFH for parents with enough time and space to actually PARENT) should be baked in to how we work.

I suppose the reality will be somewhere in between but it's hard for me not to see the worst possible - partly because I've "learned" that "if you plan for and prepare for the worst, then anything better than that will pleasantly surprise you."

* But everything I needed was there. The secretary - who is my check in person to be sure I don't get injured out in the field - won't be there tomorrow so I plan to go Wednesday. Might storm tomorrow anyway. I will have to go out early before it gets so deadly hot, but I prefer to get the "big work" of the day over with quickly anyway.

* I also drove out to the site to check on it - it would be terrible to suit up and get all my stuff together and get out there and find the site was flooded and I couldn't sample it - but it's fine. I contemplated stopping at Lulu and Hazel's on the way back in to town just to see what new stuff they have (and also to get myself into a store that's not just the bare-necessity grocery shopping) but I decided that tomorrow I need to get an oil and filter change on the car, and after I do that I could run by their shop; it's pretty close.

* Finally Fed Ex owned up: the box from Imperfect Foods was DAMAGED in transit and cannot be delivered. Nice if they had said that on FRIDAY instead of stringing me along with "oh, delivery exception!" which is an opaque thing that no customer can interpret.

I called Imperfect Foods - they do have a phone number - and the woman I reached was very nice, she arranged a full refund of the box. FedEx did say Imperfect Foods can petition them for a refund and I hope they do, I think Fed Ex  is at fault here and they should refund Imperfect for their product.

I hope next week's box fares better. Of course, I will still probably have to make an *extra* Pruett's run this week because of the lack of produce.

* Something I wasted time on today - I found an app (well, I saw someone else using it) called Portrait AI and after reading the details I figured it was not TOO likely to contribute to facial-recognition work or other privacy-stealing stuff, and I was frankly curious to see what I would look like as a "portrait" by an "Old Master."

Part of it is; I have a little bit of what you might call facial dysmorphia - the way I imagine myself as looking doesn't match up with how I feel like I look in photos. And I thought "Well, maybe I'll get some nice Pre-Raphaelite looking versions of me, and I will feel less unattractive"

Oh, reader.

The first few photos seemed to interpret me as *male.* I know, I know: I have a big nose and an angular face and a cleft in my chin, but, yikes.

Eventually, I found taking my glasses (the app edits them out anyway, I guess no one wore glasses in the 1600s and eventually I found something that looked okay to me:

I'm surprised at how much more subtle the expression is - you have to really smile broadly for it to even register. (And I had to fluff my hair back into something like bangs for it to even interpret me as a girl).

A few more - that one above is my favorite (the last portrait of the four being my favorite of all)

More of a pensive look. The first of those begins to approach Pre-Raphaeliteness. (That's the Halloween photo of me, with chalk in my hair)

Oddly, "goofy" expressions seem to even out into something much more pleasant - I rather like that lower left-hand side one. (But none of them really "look like" me, I think)

Also, I always said I thought I looked more like my dad than my mother, but with one photo I used, the AI begged to differ:

And then this last one - doesn't look like me, I can't tell if she's more a Regency-era bohemian or a 1930s minor character actress.

It is interesting, though. That first set of "portraits" to me looks the most flattering but I don't think any of them "look like" me. Maybe that one I said was my favorite is the closest to my imagined conception of how I look (except you have to slap some glasses on her; I've worn them so long that they're a part of me)

It's a fun thing to play with and as I said, I didn't see anything too very red-flaggy in the terms and conditions...

Added - I was able to get it to work with a photograph of a school picture of me (I think I was 7). I like this one: