Ugh. This was a busy day - much of the afternoon was prepping the next round of "scripts" (because I am extra distractable, with all the "extras" of having to deal with Zooms and police masking and disinfection and everything).
Also today was not great, at least it didn't start out well - achy, so I decided to bail on working out (I did it later, at the end of the day, after my office-hours-by-Zoom). Then a colleague handed me a bunch of stuff I needed for an Unwanted Service Project I wound up in charge of, and they did not do things the way I asked for and the seemed to think that wasn't a problem and so I had to do extra work with it MYSELF.
And just lots of bad, sad, mad news in the world - some guy out there trumpeting about the "reinfection" case in Hong Kong as evidence of how we're all doomed, so we might as well just drop ALL the precautions and brace for a big wave of deaths, and maybe some of the strong and lucky will survive to repopulate the earth - until the next wave. And I admit, I get in these moods of "if this is going to be how my life is from now on, I'm going to pray for a quick painless end" because.....I can't live another 30 years locked in my house and never hugging anyone and never feeling secure going to an antique shop or anything like that ever again.
Of course, the day ended with potentially positive news about the Oxford vaccine and I have SUCH mental whiplash from the extremes of stories. I know the truth is somewhere in the middle, but I have the pandemic blues BAD. The last time I really hugged someone* was back in MARCH, and that was the last time I had an actual non-screen-mediated conversation with someone
(*Okay, yes, I hugged Dana after her wedding but that was VERY quick and it was just a token side-hug)
One thing this has taught me: I am more of an extrovert than I thought. Other people make me crazy with the things they do but when I'm away from them I don't do well either.
And of course, the usual round of powerful people abusing their power and using it to treat people like things, and that just gets me down. I don't even know. As I've said before: it's a good thing I'm not God because I'd really have been tempted to "shake the Etch-a-Sketch" after today and start over with a fresh set of species. (God may not play dice with the universe but I'm beginning to suspect he does run a sims-type game.)
But one good thing did happen. Back in late July, I took a couple days and did Zoom building tours and q-and-a sessions with several prospective students who wanted to major in biology and were being recruited for our women's volleyball team. I've had a few volleyball and women's b-ball students through the years, they are generally pretty good students and work hard.
Anyway, I did it, and I figured, "Well, that's my service for the summer" and didn't think any more of it because very, very typically on college campuses you do some little extra over-and-above thing and you never hear about it again and don't get thanked, and while, yes, I know, you shouldn't DO it to be thanked, it's still awfully nice some times.
Well, I was sitting at my desk, trying to prep for my second class, a student came to my office door. This surprised me; all my office hours are over Zoom and I explicitly told people my office is not big enough for distancing so they had to do them over Zoom.
But it wasn't one of my students: it was someone from the Volleyball team. She had a t-shirt and a card for me. (The t-shirt is advertising the women's volleyball team and it has our bison mascot on it). It was an extra-large, a bit big on me, but it is also very long so I might use it as a sleep shirt. And the card was very nice - the coach signed it, and everyone on the team (including a couple people I'd had as students) and it just...it almost made me cry because it was so unexpected and it was a nice thing on an otherwise crummy day.
And yes, I stuck the t-shirt in the wash this afternoon - it is drying right now - so I can wear it (I need to wash the sizing out of things, sensitive skin)
And it looks like what are probably some of my missing Japan Crate things (probably: August's doki doki crate and the gachapon crate, though I also still hold out hope the missing June crate shows up; the July crates have come). Or one of them could POSSIBLY be Apogee, but I think she has to go to the company's main office in Wisconsin first.
One other thing. 2020 is terrible in a lot of ways but here is a video I love, Curbside Larry is great and hilarious and is one of the best advertisements for a library I've ever seen (he has a second version, en Espanol)
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