* Well, I got the exams I had graded. Several students were out for athletic reasons or other reasons (I do not currently have anyone isolating, at least) and they'll have to come in tomorrow or Thursday and take the exam. I'm not in love with that, especially that games get scheduled midweek and there's just nothing a prof can do. It means I have extra grading dragging over and I have to be careful not to hand back exams before they're all taken. I don't LIKE doing BlackBoard exams (they are a real pain to write, because there are more steps than just word-processing an exam takes, and also they're EASY to cheat on, not like when I'm standing right there in class watching people).
* I did get a bunch more on the pretty-much-all-stockinette cardigan ("A Sweater for John" from the Sherlock Knits book). Eventually I will be starting the sleeves on this - I think I have four more inches on the body before I hold for the sleeves.
* Tomorrow I have three meetings in addition to teaching, Thursday I have the most classes of any day of the week plus a meeting during what would normally be my lunch break. Friday afternoon I'm going to TRY to start on a little data analysis or at least planning out the introduction of the next paper. But Saturday I am taking the day off and either going to Denison for fun, or doing the rounds of shopping in Sherman at places I've not gotten to since I've been back from break - that's partly being busy, partly being sick part of the time (I was actually sick and didn't realize it when I went to Denison in January - the next day I realized I had the UTI), partly concern about omicron, which finally seems to be fading.
* And this is how the pandemic has ABSOLUTELY broken me - everyone's talking about "oh omicron's going away, we're almost out of this" and I am like UNTIL PI SHOWS UP and I'm really only counting on a couple weeks of things being good until we get the next bad variant - maybe this one will be even more immune escape? Who even knows?
I still can't wrap my head over how much my life and the world has changed. Yes, I know, the 1918 flu became the flu some of us take a vaccine to help prevent every year (and that the "some years you just get the flu, but it's not that bad" probably ISN'T "the flu vaccine was a bad match for the strain circulating" but rather "it's a breakthrough infection"). But the thing is - I don't think this current virus is going to stop circulating the way the 1918 flu apparently did (when did the first real flu shots appear for citizen? The 1950s?) but I think with the higher mobility people have now, this current thing is just here forever - and so our lives have changed forever, and those of us cautious for health reasons (asthma, in my case), just have to accept a slightly-reduced life from what we once had. And I'm STILL angry about that on some level. And yeah, even if the "Stages of Mourning" aren't a thing (as some commenters over there are happy to point out and expound on), this week's First Dog on the Moon seems to hit a lot of what I was feeling - especially the "IF I DO ALL THE NPI THINGS AND DO THEM *PERFECTLY* THINGS WILL BE OKAY, RIGHT?" and I think a LOT of people who grew up in simplified Sunday-schools where things like unfairness and theodicy weren't really addressed are dealing with that: "Hey, I didn't sin here, why am I being punished? This is bogus!"
But also, I admit, the depression: I have absolutely felt that some days, the "there's nothing I can do that will make anything better, and any new thing that comes out to maybe try to bridge the gap of "working while being isolated" I will reflexively hate" and also the "what does it matter, it's all dust and ashes anyway"
And I don't know what the answer is, still. I have a lot of bad evenings - evening, night, is the worst, when I'm tired and maybe the day didn't go that well, and I realize how little there really is to look forward to in the next days, and....it is kind of "why did I even get out of bed this morning?"
I'm also back to ordering more stuff online.
* But I'm losing one place - Loopy Ewe, one of my favorite online shops, is closing, I guess the owners wanted to retire and didn't find a buyer. That's too bad - they had really wonderful customer service and a good selection of things. And I've heard of other sellers/dyers shutting down, and while I probably have more yarn now than I will knit up in what remains of my life, I do worry about a yarnpocalypse, where we can no longer get good yarn, and it's back to the 1970s scratchy acrylics in very limited color choices and the like.
I also hear the used-book store in Denison is closing down - apparently either their lease got cancelled or was too expensive, and they couldn't find an alternative. So there will be zero used-book stores within an hour of me, now. (And yet: we have 30-odd MMJ dispensaries. I wish my town had something more than the tiny quilt shop that catered to *my* interests)
Oh, I know: the pandemic probably killed a lot of businesses (one of the local restaurants has gone to carry-out ONLY, they now call it grab-and-go, which both saves on labor and doesn't congregate people in it's admittedly-small indoor space). But I do worry on a low level that there will...just....be no reason to come back out into the world if the virus ever ebbs.
* At least today I managed to get all the groceries I needed at just one store. Oh, there were shortages on the shelves I saw - almost no frozen bread products, no canned cat food, no dough-in-a-can, but those are not things I use regularly. But I do worry about shortages and supply chain issues - we really are at the end of the chain in my little town, and if it gets bad we're really going to take it in the shorts, and I'm not sure what you do when most of the food you normally buy is not available - I guess you switch, but if you have allergies or sensory issues or have to limit something like salt that becomes a problem fairly fast.
* Still contemplating the issue of "should I just move when I retire?" A big con on that is that I own my house here (like: own it outright) and even though it's small and broken, it's still good. And the housing market is scary right now - I read stories about people basically having to write "please please please choose me" letters on top of paying above market price, and since I always lose in life's popularity contests, I would not want to find myself homeless after making plans to move to Eureka Springs or somewhere - so I wonder if I could find/afford a house in a town with more things that would interest me, or if I just have to accept driving long distances or not having a lot of options. I don't know. I suspect that the general "this is impossible" feeling is part and parcel of the general impossibility of many things right now.
* It really would be nice to have someone to just bounce ideas off of but the people I used to do that with are either gone or have moved away or aren't really in contact any more, so I'm kind of stuck with trying to figure stuff out myself, and I know my tendency is to catastrophize or to see the disadvantages of things.
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