My day today

- started the biostats stuff for next week and wrote an exam for one of my classes and posted it. Might do more reading after I eat, I want to finish the biostats stuff tomorrow.

- Had weekly faculty meeting. A bit of good news: because our previous president was a good shepherd of the money we had, we've got a cushion that will hopefully carry us through the coming fiscal year (with or without pay cuts); maybe the FOLLOWING fiscal year will be better. (My state depends far too heavily on oil and gas revenue and, well, you know what's going on with that).

- I feel more secure in my finances then, glad I sent some money earlier to my church (we don't do pledges, we probably should) and send some to the regional food bank; I probably should send them more, and maybe send some to the Disciples Week of Compassion, I know they are helping with the recovery after the bad tornadoes in the South and I'm pretty sure they are doing COVID relief.

- or maybe I also spend a little with one of the small businesses currently doing business online, I don't know. Maybe buy some books from Powell's?

- We *might* start fall online. Emotionally, I've made my peace with that. Decided I'm grateful I can stay home and be safe, at least. It gets tiresome but at least I'm safe.

- It also helps that I went out and mowed this afternoon - being out in the sun and fresh air helps. I also planted another raised bed with beans, and replaced a few of the plants that didn't make it in the first bed with fresh beans. (Growth has been slow, but it's been chilly here. Hopefully next week we see a sustained warming trend). I decided to give up on trying to get tomato plants - not sure I want to venture out to Lowe's and I've also heard many places, people have panic bought garden stuff, thinking they will need to grow their own food (I have some bad news for them....even when my mom was 100% stay-at-home when my brother and I were kids, and we had like an acre of garden land, and a Rototiller, she was only able to grow *most* of the vegetables we ate. And that was partly because my brother and I were picky little kids, not ravenous teens)

So instead, I grabbed a packet of "bee mix" I had bought and some more nasturtiums, and mixed them and just dumped them in there, I'll see what I get. If nothing else, the bees will be happy.

- I also ran out to the Green Spray and I am impressed with how well they, a small locally run place, are doing in this. Better than Wal-mart, based on my experiences with picking up from THEM. They had pretty much everything - not in huge quantities and were strictly limiting purchases of things like flour (one five-pound bag per trip, which, I suppose if a person were a determined hoarder you could just go every day, but at least people won't strip the shelves to profiteer). I admit, I did get a bag - they had lots of Gold Medal, it's my second-choice after King Arthur, and I'm considering maybe cracking open the jar of yeast I bought earlier last month and making some dinner rolls or maybe even cinnamon rolls this weekend. They also had organic milk, though only whole and 2% (I am learning to tolerate 2%, but when this is over? I will be happy to go back to skim, which is my choice).

And they had yogurt, and I bought a couple - haven't eaten yogurt in a while and even though I take a probiotic, I am wondering if some of my gut issues have been a lack of yogurt.

And some frozen cheesy garlic bread - a treat for me.

But it was heartening to see that they had FOOD. Even stuff like bacon and hotdogs and frozen dinners that I've heard are low in stock various places. I think part of it is it's a small operation, and the owner may have working relationships with suppliers that are better than the average large national chain has - some of the brands on the shelf were unfamiliar ones (there was some Gold Medal flour, but even more from a mill in Kansas, the brand name of which was unfamiliar (Hudson Cream, maybe?) and which I suspect is a small operation. This is also the place that carries Anasazi beans and has the roasted Hatch chilis when they are in season....)

At any rate: unless COVID-19 becomes so rampant here that it seems unsafe to shop "in person" even with mask and gloves, I think Green Spray will get most of my custom from here on out, they really seem to have stepped up to make this work. (Also, the family is a well known local family and they are good people)

- Also some apparently guarded good news in medical developments. Maybe I CAN outlast this after all, without totally losing who I am or even without losing my job because everything shuts down....

- Then again, I might also relax tonight. I have tomorrow and Saturday to work on class stuff and do the editing I'm being asked to do for the Native Plant Society - if I can work really hard tomorrow and knock out the schoolwork, I could do the editing Saturday, which would be a nice change.

- I did make contact with the counselor and HR to see about an EAP after a really bad night....what was it, Tuesday? I mean right now I am FINE and feel like I don't need it but maybe there will be a point when I am not fine again and will....

One thing I will say that I NEEEEEEEEED to do is strictly limit my news consumption. I can pick up again if things start turning towards good news; surely I'll hear on Twitter from some of the people I follow. But things look a lot less horrible and dire than they did after I read that "we might need to distance until 2022" which I "heard" as "you will need to hide in your house until 2022 and there will be no frivolous in-person shopping or seeing other people except from a very far distance until then, and anyway you will lose your job" and that seems.....less likely now.  I mean, we will probably still need to learn to mask up in crowds like they do in Japan or South Korea, and try to stay apart from one another, and not have BIG gatherings, but.....there's even a slim chance fall classes will be back in-person, or partially in-person.

And who knows? If we have a small-business mass-extinction, maybe after this then we'll have a small-business adaptive radiation? Kind of like what happens biologically - things are very bad for a while after an asteroid hit and a lot of species go extinct, but then the survivors diversify and spread into new niches and you get a repopulation....