(Not a reference to The Good Place. Instead: it is a sister condition to the spoon theory in the sense that we have a limit to the annoyances we can stand in a day)
* I hyperextended my knee the other day and it still hurts. I don't think it's damaged; just strained. I've been slacking a bit on exercise as a result
* Got up this morning, zero internet. Had to use "minutes" on my cell plan to stream Pandora for even the pathetically short workout I could do (I cannot bear to use the cross country ski exerciser in silence). Did the whole power cycle of everything, nothing worked. Then I remembered my ISP had said they were doing "overnight maintenance" that was supposed to be done by 5 am. Around 6:30 I "opted in" to their text message program so I knew when it would be back - had plans to facetime with my mom tonight but was thinking that wasn't gonna happen.
Finally did get the text but I'm at work, here's hoping everything's good when I get home at 3
* Got irritated and almost lost my temper at the smartboard in class today; there are too many "twitchy" things on it where if you hit a spot wrong it sends you into some menu you don't want to deal with. Also the software is set to expire in a week and there's been no word of it being renewed so I don't know what I do then - open a blank Powerpoint slide, I guess, and write on that? Every solution is a bad solution these days, everything is just slightly worse than it might be.
* Finding my sense of humor is not what it should be; someone made a joke based on the HIPAA violation thing on Twitter and while in normal times (or even last week) I would have chuckled at it, I sighed instead. (Part of it was it has to do with HEPA filtration, and....well, I could see us being called upon to go out and buy filters and kludge stuff up for our classrooms ourselves, and I am just so tired of the make-do-and-mend spirit where a lot of the burden falls on people who have been doing this for 18 months and are just frazzled and done)
* I finally just posted the Zoom links for all of my classes and just told the students "attend online if you're not feeling well" because having to mail the link out to each person for whatever reason every morning was burning me out. I may regret this when the weather turns cold or rainy and people all stay home and I'm back to teaching a series of blank squares on the screen, but now life is merely about deciding which discomfort is more tolerable, not what is best.
* Postal mail here seems to be failing again. I had two packages slated to arrive today and tomorrow, now both are "no date available" and I have no mailpieces for today and frankly? Getting the mail at the end of the day is one thing that makes my days different from one another, because some days there's a magazine, and some a card, and some even a bill I must pay, but still.....it breaks the awful eternal sameness of Lockdown 2, Delta Boogaloo.
* Also, I read this article on grief this morning before class and it made me cry a little. And one of the lines from it: "Sitting deep inside of suffering terrifies most people because they do not understand that it’s the only way through." made me admit to myself that one thing I feel bad about? When my dad was dying? I secretly hoped I WOULDN'T get up there "in time" because i didn't know how sitting beside someone I was so close to as they passed from this life would change me, and that thought scared me, the idea that I might become some new and different creature.
And, well.
I am definitely a new and different creature now, two years on, though much of that change has been from other things, and I am not sure I LIKE the creature I have become, and I do not know how or if I can go back to the more innocent one I was before.
This really is like being thrown out of the Garden - everything is bleaker and harder, and I long to go back to that old harmony and the comfort I didn't realize I had.
***
Done for the day. It was hard - five hours standing on my tweaked knee on concrete floors, dealing with technical issues, dealing with students having problems. (I like being able to help students, but they need so much help now, it can get tiring)
I realized that I didn't have anything prepared at home, and I was exhausted, so I just ordered online from the good local barbecue place.
Pulled pork, smoked turkey breast, and sides. I ate all of the sides (because they don't heat up again as well) and half the meat and put the other half away for lunch tomorrow. I must be going through Something because I cried a few tears of gratitude on the way home for how easy getting dinner was - able to order just what I wanted online, pay online, there was no line at the pick up window, they had my food ready, even the lights were with me.
I guess I needed one thing to be easy.
***
I also heard that yesterday - the first day it was possible to upload your vaccine credentials for the "free" money- 850 people on my campus uploaded theirs. We have 250ish faculty, maybe about the same number of staff and admins, and about 3500 in-person on-campus students, so.....850 seems like a pretty good number for the first day (I was one of them). Honestly if I knew my campus was 90 or 95% vaccinated? I'd just ditch the mask for teaching but since I don't know that for sure, I'm going to keep it for now....but if we get to a really high level of demonstrable vaccination I won't mask unless I have a student who specifically says "I'm immune compromised, would you mind masking near me"
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