Things are progressing

 I'm just, tired.

Didn't sleep well last night, went to bed too late I guess, and thrashed around for a while trying to make my brain shut up. And then this morning my stupid dream brain served up "hey what would you think about if you had a dream where your brother died" and that was definitely not cool.

Also had 8 am faculty meeting today, so I hauled myself out at the usual early time and did a workout and got over there. And maybe yeah, though I'm creakier and move worse early in the morning, maybe working out early again is the answer, because I felt some better, and was more alert for teaching classes.

The good news? One of my colleagues offered to swap sections with me this spring, so she gets the big (all online) section and I get the section capped at a small enough number that it could be in person (if we still are; there are currently 7 active reported cases on campus and I am really hoping that means the precautions are working and people are taking it seriously, and not that they're not telling us/students are not revealing they're infected). That was a big stressor - I dislike teaching to a blank screen, and with 38 people there's no way I can have people on the screen, even if most of them wanted their video on (I am not requiring it, for several reasons, "some people have limited bandwidth internet" being the nicest one)

Here's hoping we CAN be in-person this spring. For soils, I can do two labs with each group and split them into A and B teams (or maybe make up cute names like "Team Sandy Clay!" and "Team Silt Loam!") and have one team come in each week and do the two labs, and the the following week the other team does them.. AND I have a TA lined up, which will help. For ecology, we have to do a bigger lecture and I said I'd two two separate lab meetings back to back - so 1 pm to 5 pm labs on Wednesday, which is gonna stink on ice, but I can't think of any better way to do it, and it means the students get an in-person lab experience (again: provided we ARE in-person)

The online lecture went a *little* better today, and I had some helpful feedback from a couple of students. 

That said? If I could have gone back in time and told 2016 me "do the online-teaching training, just do it, you will see later why it will be helpful to have gone through it when it was available" I would have.

The ray for my friend is nearly done; if I can get the exam I have to type up for next week done this afternoon I might finish it and then run out and get a big shipping envelope to mail it to her....everything is a little more complicated now. (I should also go back to campus and to a little prep for what will HOPEFULLY be an outdoor lab tomorrow, one I've been trying to do for 2 weeks)

Also, I had the tree guys out. An old sugarberry came down on the fence between my yard and my neighbor's yard and I had kind of ignored it (out of sight, out of mind: I only see it when it's back there and it was not all the way down, it was just leaning). Well, she texted me the other day and asked me about it, and if it was OK for her boyfriend to cut off some of the limbs and I thought "yeah, I have to do this" so I called the good tree guys (expensive, but trustworthy, and at this point I'd rather just funnel some money out of savings and have it done right and safely) and they came today to evaluate it. I'm also going to have a standing-dead tree next to it (which I thought was also a sugarberry but might actually be a redbud) taken down at the same time; it should be cheaper to do both at once than each one separately. So that's taken care of.

I also got out to Pruett's again and this time they had the Fairlife skim milk I like - they were all out on Saturday and I bought a half-gallon of Hiland, and when I opened it later that evening it was SOUR. Like vinegar milk. So I took it back and they let me exchange it for a Fairlife, but they only had 2%, which is Not My Favorite. (I am still contemplating, however, even though I am well enough ahead on things to cook - I have cold chicken thighs in the fridge, and the makings for cheese enchiladas, and what it takes to make that mixed-bean soup I was talking about, running to Kroger this weekend because I can. I don't know. I might be better taking that time though and doing something here, like knitting or working on a quilt top....) So at least now I have the GOOD kind of milk ahead....

But yes, this is all still so very tiresome. I do have - I think I mentioned it - the tentative plan that if I can't travel to Illinois this December (because not safe, because second wave), my friend in Louisiana invited me to come down the week after Christmas and we could go visit some of the cemeteries and "roadside history" stuff and I could hang out with her cats and we could watch Red Dwarf together or something and so at least I would not be ALLLLOOOOONNNE the whole break, and that helps a little, too.