*It's funny how the days seem very long. I had a flash of thinking, driving home, that today was Thursday. I say "it's funny" because I don't seem to do much in a day - I've just been working through samples and I guess it's a little bit like what they call "fugue state" because I sit there and work and three hours go by without my really noticing.
* also, it's kind of lonely. There are almost no students around (and I don't have any "direct" students - there are a few people working with a colleague and once in a while they'll poke their head in to ask for verification on a plant identification or something, but that's it. Most of my colleagues aren't even around, and it does seem awfully quiet.
* I think that is one thing I really realized after 2020; how important the small daily interactions are to me, and how empty everything things when they're absent. I think maybe I'm glad I was never offered (and been tempted to take) one of those remote research posts where you're basically alone in something like a cabin or a fire-watch station for a season - and a lot of those, they don't even have reliable cell service, so calling people isn't much of a reality, and for me, the phone is less good than either video calls or face to face because I need to see people's faces.
*Tomorrow is another fieldwork day, I think it's going to be doing plots rather than just trying to generate a species list. I agreed to help with the caveat that if it was very humid and I started feeling bad I might need to leave. I do not do well in high humidity, especially since I've been on the beta blocker. (Last night at CWF, when I came in after having rushed around in the heat - it was a heat index of like 109 - someone commented that I looked flushed, and yeah, I could tell I wasn't feeling great. I got better once I had a chance to cool down).
* I am debating doing something either Friday or Saturday, like going to a museum or something. Part of me says no, I've got enough research work to do, and also, the price of gas (up to a bit over $3.50 here last I looked). Then again - gas can only get more expensive the way things are going, and I fear if they go badly enough we may see some kind of actual or de facto gas rationing (de facto if there are shortages). And ANOTHER thing I still carry with me from the pandemic is "If you have the chance at something that makes you happy, take it now, because you might lose the chance in the future"
The Sherman museum is doing "dinosaur days" again, and if i KNEW the exhibits were different to last year I'd go, but if they're going to be the same ones, I'm not sure I'd want to see the same things over again. But I'm not sure what else to do; it's a little hot for going out and walking around at like Hagerman or something. I'll have to think more about it, I guess. There is the Frank Buck zoo in Gainesville, but that's a lot farther away even though I've never been.
*Everything here does seem smaller, or farther away, than it once did.
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