First, the good: the plumber that Lowe's contracts with called me, I have an appointment tomorrow afternoon for him to come out and measure for the sink. If I am REALLY lucky, he might say "okay, you know what you want, I'll go pick it up and put it in today." What's more likely is that either Friday this week or next (Next Tuesday I have my annual checkup) I'll have a new sink. But at least that's in process. It will be good to have a fully functional sink again.
I may also have a lead on a contractor but a few things have to fall into place first. But maybe by the summer I will have most things inside the house fixed? I hope. I'm still sorting and packing - I am simply sorting books into "definitely will keep" and "????" (which are ones I am not absolutely positively "no I would be sad if I got rid of this one"). So far they're running about neck and neck and my hope is maybe I can just dump most of the "????" books and have more space and breathing room. (there are a couple places that might take them as donations).
I also might give away some of my extra quilting fabric and yarn, I have too much of too many things and not enough storage space and the choices are to move (not possible), to rent storage space (not desirable), to build a shed in the backyard (expensive, not climate controlled, not bug controlled), or have less stuff....well the last option is the only really workable one, so I need to get more minimalistic.
The not so good? The start of this semester is a bit of a cluster. I have, I think, three people (of maybe 45 total students) who are "allowed back but only if they mask" (were vaccinated and exposed and had symptoms that resolved, but are waiting on a negative test), three or four "these people must isolate" and a couple of brand-new (maybe 3?) "this person has been exposed." Including one person who was in lab this afternoon and then AFTER lab got a call from their workplace that they were exposed over the weekend. So I freaked out a little - I had made a seating chart (oh thank goodness I bothered) but as people were circulating around the class AND I was the only one masked, that could mean the whole class would have to isolate, but when I e-mailed the information to the campus nurse she said that was only the case if the index student becomes symptomatic or tests positive.
But I anticipate more of this, and it's back to doing Zoom alongside of in person classes for a while and I REALLY wanted to give that up this semester.
I also suspect that we're ALL going to get exposed, and given the vaccines are apparently good-but-leaky, I'm expecting I will get a breakthrough case and just have to teach from home and I'm giving myself permission to do kind of a crappy job of it if it comes to that because I refuse to drag my 25 plus pounds of textbooks home every single day just in case. And if I am genuinely sick, even with just a "heavy cold," I am giving myself permission to just take a day or two (or more if I need) and refuse to teach and say I'm too sick and lie on the couch and watch old movies. And order in pizza if it comes to that.
But yeah. We PROBABLY should have done like my graduate school up in Illinois did and did two weeks of online instruction to let the current variant burn through the populations. Or, what would have been preferable? Just delay the start of classes by 2 weeks, maybe dump spring break this year, and then go a little later into the summer.
But whatever, I guess you play it as it lies like in golf. I'm not happy and I feel like I am teaching immeasurably worse than I used to because of the added worries and duties, but that's just life now.
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