* Plumber has been. He had no explanation other than "maybe it was just old PVC" and I am wondering if maybe it was brittle and something shifted under there and hit it, and cracked out a bit. At least he said it was a simple fix, and it was less than $200, so I feel a bit better about that.
* Need to put laundry in. This has been a sort of lazy afternoon with waiting at home for the plumber (came an hour and a half after the time I was quoted) but at least I got some grading done and the next few things I need to upload, I managed to upload).
* I am going to run through the class material for two of my classes (my T, Th classes) early - I will probably be done next week. My intro class I promised them "drop in" review sessions before the last two exams and in the policy and law class they have readings to write about and court cases to prepare but I admit I feel a little guilty. Then again - normally in a semester we take a class period with each reading and do discussions and I just didn't feel up to doing that this fall (also hard with lots of people over Zoom but some in class) and also the exams are done outside of class time - so that means a few class periods that would be devoted to testing wound up being used for lecture material.
I'm telling myself not to feel guilty, that I got the material covered for the semester (and then some in Policy and Law: wrote a whole new series of lectures on resource use) and I managed to get people through it in a pandemic, and if I'm done a couple weeks early and I tell them to work independently on stuff, no big deal.
* Talked to my mom, she got the Medicare thing straightened out so I don't have to sit with her on the phone while I type stuff into the website (this was State of Illinois, I was misunderstanding what she needed to do). So that means I'm free tomorrow afternoon; I think I'll go back and work on research for a while.
And maybe, if the weather is OK, after that I go for a walk to get my exercise for that day. (It might be raining, however. If that's the case maybe I go out Saturday morning early and do it - I don't need to do "big shopping" this week so as long as I can get more of the "right" kind of milk at Pruett's, I'm good. (I am still not going INTO the Wal-mart after hearing about some of the bad interactions people had there). Alternatively: I go and walk and THEN go get groceries; I could even drive to Hagerman and then go to Brookshire's, hmm.
* Yeah, that's kind of what my life has shrunk to these days: getting excited over having an excuse to go to a *different* grocery.(In town, we have Green Spray, Pruett's, and Wal-mart. so my world gets a little small and constrained without driving any distance).
* I got back into reading "In a Dark Wood Wandering" even if the fact that practically everyone in there is an amoral schemer. (I'm hoping maybe one of the child-characters grows up to be someone I can root for). I've been swapping it out with the book I bought last weekend (Was it that recently? Last weekend feels like an age ago). It's a kid's "chapter" book called "Skunk and Badger," but like a lot of these, it's perfectly palatable for a jangled adult - it's similar in a sense to The Odd Couple, except Badger isn't really as neat as Felix and Skunk is more considerate and self-aware than Oscar was.
And sometimes I do think those "talking animal" stories (which really, go back to Æsop) teach us something about ourselves as humans. And it is just a nice escape, which is valuable, especially this year.
* I also got a bit farther on the fluffy sweater from that yarn I impulse bought the last time I was at JoAnn's. I am hopeful it will fit well because it's very light but warm. I did try the collar on to be sure I could pull the cast-on edge over my slightly bigger than average adult head
Not the most flattering photo, but proof of concept. It's a top-down raglan style sweater and will have minimal seaming, which is nice. If it comes out a bit too small for me I think my sister-in-law is a bit slimmer than I am, and I could pass it on to her.
* I'm still just tired though. This year has been a LOT.
* I am trying to start a new piece on the piano, an older piece by a composer I don't know at all (Margis) that is called Valse Bleue. I know my piano teacher once told me not to look up pieces on YouTube first (so I'm not "prejudiced" by the style of the performer) but I wanted to hear this one to see if it was "worth" continuing on and I like it - it's a simple "little" waltz, sort of in the style of what used to be called "parlor music" - not something virtuosi play at concerts but something a reasonably accomplished amateur might play to amuse themselves or entertain friends. And I kind of like that; I think one thing we have lost in all our busy-ness and our tendency to "let the pros do it" is a loss of the comfort and pleasure and companionship (in some cases) of making your own music at home.
Last week the Bell Choir director at church, asked me (as sort of the "token biologist," I get asked a lot of epidemiology related questions these days) if she thought there was any way we could safely start up Bell Choir again and you know? I had just been thinking a few days before that that "We could totally do Bell Choir; we could set the tables up so we are all 6' apart and we could all wear masks and we are not singing or even really talking while we play, it would be reasonably safe" so I told her yes, we probably could.
And I miss that. Having that back again will go a long way toward my quality of life.
*Maybe, as much as anything in this, if there's any lesson for me to learn? It's to appreciate the small things that enhance quality of life - getting to a different grocery store with different choices once in a while, the tiny companionship of Bell Choir? I know one of my flaws is that I tend to look at every bad thing that happens and goes "what am I being taught here?" and sometimes I interpret a "meaner" or harsher lesson when there might actually be none, it may just be one of those random things that happens in life.
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