I don't know. I have to purchase food today, I guess. Tomorrow I don't want to go out - it's supposed to be storming, it's graduation (which I am skipping for Reasons - still having knee pain and faculty parking is pretty far from the graduation site, and I don't fancy getting dumped on with rain while slow-walking there and back. But also, we had An Incident in my department this past week* and there's a slim chance the student involved may try something to make a splash. My two most-involved-with-it colleagues are skipping, I decided that since my ability to evacuate if that became necessary would be limited, it's best to stay home)
I have things to do (preparing a couple sermons for when I come back in June, cleaning my house, planning to pack to go visit my mom) but I am seized with the dunwannas so here it is 10 am and while I have dressed and eaten breakfast and put in a load of laundry, I've not done anything else.
(*nothing to do with the protests in many other colleges; this is someone with their own very personal demon that's coming out in unsettling ways; we've had police patrolling the building for the past several weeks and the student's been escorted off twice but then let back on campus)
It's been an entire month since I've been out of town. This might seem like a minor thing to some of you, but the town I live in is small. Grocery options are an unpleasant wal-mart and a small regional chain that is OK but has limited selection. And my town FEELS very small. Like, yeah, when it's pick up time from school it can take 20 minutes to get across town but the whole place is about 5 miles square.
So I am dying to get out and see some other spot. Want to go to the yarn shop (if they still exist; I suspect their move may doom them, because they're in a smaller, less affluent area). Want to have an option for better groceries. Maybe want to grab lunch out.
But it's supposed to be cold and rainy all day long. Womp womp. And the weird thing? In the before-times, this would have not stopped me: "Raining? Well, maybe some of the annoying crowds will stay home" but now, I find I hesitate - where will I be able to park? (my knee is still not fully healed, so I walk slowly, have to be VERY careful on slick surfaces).
And I've also found, since 2020, I often find reasons to shoot down plans I had that I never would have shot down before. It's like that 7 months of staying almost totally home killed the desire I had to experience even mild risk (I thought: "I could drive there in the rain but people drive like maniacs in good times, I could be killed")
I probably just need to woman up and go; this is the last Saturday I have free for quite a while. And sitting at home not talking to anyone and not seeing anything but the four walls is not good for me.
Similarly, when stores "redecorate" - especially if it's one I go to infrequently - and suddenly my mental map of where everything is is obsolete. I suspect some stores do the "move stuff around" regularly because they think by trapping shoppers in the store longer - while they figure out where stuff is - means they'll buy more stuff. Though that seems to be less frequent now given the prevalence of "order online, pick up at the curb" (because constantly moving stuff would slow down their shopping-elves).
We didn't get quite to totality here = 99.6% - and I was struck by how light it still was with only 0.4% of the sun unblocked. We got like a weird twilight (it was from the wrong angle) and then brightness again, slowly. The leaves did do their crescent thing, which I liked. And no, I didn't drive the hour or so east for totality and after talking to people who tried, I am OK with not having done so; they said the traffic was nuts and people were yelling at them for trying to set up lawn chairs places to watch (lighten up, homeowners, it's just a couple hours out of one day).
This weekend? I get a new washer and dryer (stacked unit) delivered tomorrow. The dryer motor burned itself out on Saturday last week. Granted, the unit WAS made in 1997 and was in the house when I moved in, but it's not exactly what I'd have chosen to spend my tax refund on. At least I did support a longtime local small business....
I have to run to the bank to get some $20s to tip the delivery guys, gotta remember to do that today. Not sure how many guys, I assume it will be more than 1 but fewer than 4....
Yeah, and also I have seen SO MANY broken-by-the-pandemic brains: I have had more near-miss accidents (of the sort of "person decides to run red light just as I am starting up to go through on my green" or "Four Way Stop? That means the person who wants to go the most goes") so I feel like....yeah....I'm not ready to be around 60,000 randos.
my misanthropy has dialed up to 11 in the past few years.
The 2017 eclipse, we weren't gonna be able to easily get to totality, so we all just stood out in the back parking lot and passed around eclipse glasses.
Where I live, we will be at 99.4% totality. I recently decided "I am NOT driving an hour to the east to get that extra 0.6%" after hearing that one of the towns (population 2500) is bracing for 60K people to come in and while seeing a 100% eclipse would be cool, I cannot overcome my discomfort of that level of Crowd (and people from Away, who will probably bitch about how "backwards" we are because this is a lower SES part of the country with a sparse population)
Also not sure I want to be in a place with a lot of people wanting to Party (because people are people) and then the main reason for their party isn't visible....
So I have my eclipse glasses, will go in to campus. Told my afternoon lab to find a place to go see the eclipse, but that I'm gonna do it from the patio at my workplace. (I do think I need to do a grocery run this afternoon; they've warned of potential shortages of things given that population in this corner of the state may more than double over a couple days)
there's enough of a "it won't get caught" mentality, or a "my campus won't care" mentality. Possibly some of the folks doing it are perceived as "superstars" on their campus and so they can do no wrong.
I don't know. I am at a teaching-heavy university (3 to 4 different classes per semester, and in the lab sciences, the profs teach their own labs - so this semester I'm in the classroom close to 20 hours a week on top of the prepwork, grading, trying to do my own research, committeework, and other assorted duties like advisement and keeping up with the "required safety trainings" and doing recruitment events. . Getting "enough" publications not to get dinged on post-tenure review is difficult (saints be praised, I got an R and R on a paper this week I thought had been desk rejected).
I can see the temptation to try to sneak something through. Not that I would, because I couldn't live with myself and I KNOW I am not a superstar so I'd be fired if I tried it and was caught
But some days I feel like "We need to shut down most academic publishing for a while and figure some stuff out" given the reproducibility crisis, and the whole issue with unpaid reviewers (who apparently now outsource a lot of their work to either students or AI) and also the sheer cost in grant money or to campuses to get a paper out.
Apparently dispatchers (?) or some other employee received a mayday signal from the boat not long before they hit the bridge. And those individuals got in touch with the guys working on the bridge and told them to close it and get people off of it.
Apparently they did that, successfully, and some outlets are now saying the only dead are the six construction workers who fell when the bridge collapsed (two others hospitalized, though I think one was released already).
If that is true - well, honor upon everyone who moved fast to prevent this tragedy being even worse. I don't know how busy the bridge would be in the middle of the night like that but some of the sources I've read recently are claiming the only people who wound up in the river were the eight construction workers, and while it's terrible for them and their families, this could have been so much worse.
Not too far from where I live, barges hit the I-40 bridge (this was over 20 years ago) early in the day and a number of people (I think about 15?) and a horse and a couple dogs were killed when they all fell off the bridge. About a dozen people were injured.
At the best of times I dislike driving over river bridges, and this kind of news just makes it a little worse.
also if you order 2-3 things along with the hanky they will very likely (a) be shipped from different locations, (b) in different shipping containers, and (c) arrive on different days.
I actually thought Amazon had shorted me on something recently because it actually came shipped in the same package with something else, and i didn't open the package immediately because I didn't need that thing immediately.
I remember back in 1989, on the way to my grandmother's funeral in northern Michigan (so: a 14 hour drive for us), we were most of the way there and my dad realized that the suitcase with his clothes and my brother's had gotten left back home. So they had to make an emergency trip - to the JC Penney's in a mall in, IIRC Escanaba (might have been Gladstone), and they managed to find the required suitcoat, shirt, and tie (and other things they needed). Luckily the suitcase with my mom's and my clothes made it into the car.
This would have been before the large-scale penetration of Target and even Wal-mart into smaller markets like Escanaba, Michigan....
But yeah, Penney's is gone, Sears' is gone, for those of us in what used to be considered the middle class we either wind up having to shop "above our station" (if a "fancy" store is available), or we have to default to Target or Wal-mart.
I admit I prefer Target; the store I frequent here is a lot cleaner than the wal-mart is here (that's important) and if I need to buy clothes I am more likely to find what I like at Target (though for many things I prefer to mail order from Vermont Country Store.)
I suspect more and more, American's choices will be bifurcated into the super high-end for those who have the money and live in a major metro area, and Target/wal-mart/some variety of dollar store for those who don't, or who don't have the dough, and it feels like we've lost something in losing those middle-range clothing chains. (Back in the day, most of my school clothes came from JC Penney's or Sears; my "church clothes" were from O'Neil's, a regional OH chain that Macys bought and then closed down)
You guys get the snow there? I hope that didn't boondoggle any of the medical stuff.
I spent last evening nervously watching the weather radar; first there was a tornadic storm to the west of me (but that tracked north and then fizzled out), then there was an enormous one to the south of me that looked like it would clip our area. As it turns out, it didn't, but it was a tense evening for a while.
Next week is my spring break so tomorrow I'll do Zoom knitting and probably get some groceries and maybe try to clean the house a bit given that I'm now marginally more mobile. (I was able to climb the stairs today to get to my office the "normal" way, and not by leaving my right leg on the lower step and then stepping first with my left leg and pulling the right one up after it)
yeah, I think is is a combination of "path of least resistance" and sometimes "better the devil you know" (except in this case? One of the two candidates that I know, I already lived through four chaotic and upsetting years with him at the helm and very much hope he doesn't get another bite of the apple, though it sometimes eels like a lot of my fellow citizens are up for another round of "watching it all burn")
that said, there seem to be precious few up-and-coming folks that I could enthusiastically vote for
we jumped ahead one hour, but it feels a full 2 hours later to me. This change is always the one that messes with me; the fall one, not so much.
Normally this is our spring break week coming up, but TPTB somehow decided to do it a week later, so I gotta drive in in the got-dang dark to work tomorrow.
I know them mainly for "I Believe in a Thing Called Love," the official video of which I have a really weird affection for, because it takes a big pair to make an almost-picture-perfect hair-rock 80s video in the early 2000s.
I was in high school in the 80s. I hated hair-rock. (If I liked anything, it was the New Wave stuff, though I was that weird nerd who listened to classical and Big Band). But now I look back at it and it was just, you know, kind of ridiculous and I don't hate it now.
also the Postmodern Jukebox remake of it - in New Orleans style with a big-voiced woman singer - is FANTASTIC though very different to the original.
Where I live, we will be in 99.4% totality. I have decided that, absent someone offering to drive with me the hour or so east to get FULL totality, that is good enough for me. (the university really should have done a caravan of vans and buses, and just let people sign up to go. They should have made it an event)
Practically every state park cabin and hotel room has been rented for over a year. Local police are warning people that the roads (which are not good at the best of times) will be super-congested (and with people who aren't familiar with our crummy roads and driving conventions). They are acting like it's an impending disaster, even telling people to stock up on food! It's bizarre. So I assume there are gonna be freaked out people and I can happily view it from my parking lot at work just like I did in 2017
So yeah: 99.4% will be good enough. I'll experience the darkness-at-noon and seeing the sun go away and then come back, I just won't see the corona. That's OK.
I've already told my students we are NOT having class that day, experiencing a total or near-total eclipse is more important and meaningful.
I remember the 2017 one. We only got partiality here but we all went and stood in the back parking lot and people passed around the special glasses (there was a shortage of them) and welders helmets' that people had that were rated high enough for safe viewing and I had a little pinhole apparatus I had made by taping Mylar into a card. And I pointed out how when we got as far as it was going to get, you could see the leaves projecting crescent-suns on the ground and several people had never even heard of that, so I got to impress a few people with my knowledge. (I think I learned that in the 1992 or '94 one)
I just really hope it's not cloudy; April is often our rainy month.
STILL trying to heal up from this bone bruise :(
I feel good when I first get up, or when I sit for a while. I walk or stand on the floors here (teaching) which are vinyl tile over concrete and I hurt again. Still afraid I'll have to have my meniscus operated on sooner or later, there's a definite
"pinch" sometimes when I take a step
I also have a dental checkup this afternoon, an idea I greatly loathe. I was just saying Tuesday "thank goodness I am done with medical stuff for a while and I get my two free afternoons back" but nope, I got the reminder right after that.
I do need to get my tax stuff out to my "guy," I printed out all the 1099s I need. Maybe if I'm out of the dentist early enough and not too traumatized I do it then....
Tuesday is my birthday (I hit double-nickels) so my plans, provided my injured leg seems amenable in the morning Saturday, is to drive to the small city 1/2 hour south of me - the yarn shop I used to go to in another city has moved up there, and they are having their grand opening sale/celebration (I've been assured there's close parking; I messaged the owner with a comment that "I am currently using a cane, how far will I have to walk?")
I am leaving the rest of the plans open. If I feel up to it, I might go to the new Michael's store that I've never been to yet and the Ulta, with a "stretch goal" of getting to the natural foods store to get some of the specialty items (canned sweet potato puree) that are otherwise hard to find.
if I don't feel up to it, I might just hit the yarn store and go out for lunch somewhere, and then back home.
It's been almost six weeks, but I've been warned that bone bruises (and I have a "large" one according to the MRI interpretation) are incredibly slow to heal. I've learned a lot about accessibility (and lack of it) and how you have to sometimes shepherd your energy (I paid the $5 fee to the good local grocery to do a pick-up-at-the-curb order. I know, walmart does it for free but I like my local grocery, and it feels more "fair" to the mostly-teens who pick and pack the orders to pay a little bit to cover their labor). I've gotten better at accepting help from colleagues when it's offered, and for demanding accommodations when I need them.
I just hope I don't need all that for much longer. I see improvement but it's *incredibly* slow.
On my birthday itself? Probably all I will do is a pick up order of carryout food from the good local bbq place (kind of a tradition now with me, started during the pandemic). I also am going to be part of a Zoom interview for someone who will hopefully become a new colleague in the fall.
I struggle with this every year because I often feel like I have enough challenges in my life that, like, giving up chocolate would simply make me cranky with little benefit. I prefer the "try to take on some other good practice" mode of doing it. This year I am trying to take more moments during the day to pray or even just be still. I am prone to that restless monkeybrain (can't meditate) so maybe that will help? I am also an impatient person. And I know I don't pray often enough outside of church.
I am in a more "progressive" denomination so we're pretty loosey-goosey on what to do for Lent; some people I know give up sweets or meat or substitute devotional reading or volunteer work for some other leisure time activity. One person I knew gave up swearing.
yeah not gonna do the tea until after the MRI, they said it could take up to 90 minutes for them to complete it and I have a nearly-55-year-old set of kidneys and bladder....
LOL we get one federal holiday off per semester; in the spring it's MLK Jr. day (though they do try to push it as a Day of Service rather than a day off. This year I had JUST sprained my knee and spent the entire morning in the ER getting it dxed).
For me, federal holidays are mainly "oh dang there's no mail today, is there." I mean yes I do get a couple weeks off at Christmas so I guess that's my payback for it but sometimes it's just nice to get a three-day weekend.
This weekend: still recuperating. Much better, and the knee pain now feels more arthritic than "oh no I tore a ligament.' And the orthopedic doctor, after pressing all over my knee and not having me squawk in pain (and not finding inflammation anywhere) says he doesn't think ligaments are permanently damaged. I have an MRI today to confirm that there's no permanent damage (I really hope there is not but I'm a pessimist).
I still hurt though, and it's supposed to briefly be wicked cold this weekend, so I guess (sigh) rather than getting out to the newly-moved-to-only-a-half-hour-away yarn shop and the new Michael's franchise I've not even been to yet, I'll stay home instead.
well, stay home after I put away the herbarium specimens from this week's lab, if I'm not feeling up to it after the MRI. I've received conflicting advice; some people say it'll be a walk in the park, others are like "yeah count on having a migraine from the noise" so I don't know.
I dragged my still-paining (but getting better) knee to Wal-mart at 8 this morning, it was not crowded. But I know well enough not to go there around noon on ANY Saturday.
I am not a football fan so I won't make predictions, I just hope both teams have fun and no one gets hurt.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Weekend Plans Post: The Best Bagel Sandwich”
I don't know. I have to purchase food today, I guess. Tomorrow I don't want to go out - it's supposed to be storming, it's graduation (which I am skipping for Reasons - still having knee pain and faculty parking is pretty far from the graduation site, and I don't fancy getting dumped on with rain while slow-walking there and back. But also, we had An Incident in my department this past week* and there's a slim chance the student involved may try something to make a splash. My two most-involved-with-it colleagues are skipping, I decided that since my ability to evacuate if that became necessary would be limited, it's best to stay home)
I have things to do (preparing a couple sermons for when I come back in June, cleaning my house, planning to pack to go visit my mom) but I am seized with the dunwannas so here it is 10 am and while I have dressed and eaten breakfast and put in a load of laundry, I've not done anything else.
(*nothing to do with the protests in many other colleges; this is someone with their own very personal demon that's coming out in unsettling ways; we've had police patrolling the building for the past several weeks and the student's been escorted off twice but then let back on campus)
On “Weekend Plans Post: The Aftermath of Catching Up”
It's been an entire month since I've been out of town. This might seem like a minor thing to some of you, but the town I live in is small. Grocery options are an unpleasant wal-mart and a small regional chain that is OK but has limited selection. And my town FEELS very small. Like, yeah, when it's pick up time from school it can take 20 minutes to get across town but the whole place is about 5 miles square.
So I am dying to get out and see some other spot. Want to go to the yarn shop (if they still exist; I suspect their move may doom them, because they're in a smaller, less affluent area). Want to have an option for better groceries. Maybe want to grab lunch out.
But it's supposed to be cold and rainy all day long. Womp womp. And the weird thing? In the before-times, this would have not stopped me: "Raining? Well, maybe some of the annoying crowds will stay home" but now, I find I hesitate - where will I be able to park? (my knee is still not fully healed, so I walk slowly, have to be VERY careful on slick surfaces).
And I've also found, since 2020, I often find reasons to shoot down plans I had that I never would have shot down before. It's like that 7 months of staying almost totally home killed the desire I had to experience even mild risk (I thought: "I could drive there in the rain but people drive like maniacs in good times, I could be killed")
I probably just need to woman up and go; this is the last Saturday I have free for quite a while. And sitting at home not talking to anyone and not seeing anything but the four walls is not good for me.
On “Fear and Loathing in Aisle Eight”
Similarly, when stores "redecorate" - especially if it's one I go to infrequently - and suddenly my mental map of where everything is is obsolete. I suspect some stores do the "move stuff around" regularly because they think by trapping shoppers in the store longer - while they figure out where stuff is - means they'll buy more stuff. Though that seems to be less frequent now given the prevalence of "order online, pick up at the curb" (because constantly moving stuff would slow down their shopping-elves).
On “Weekend Plans Post: A Little Cloud Cover is Not the End of the World”
We didn't get quite to totality here = 99.6% - and I was struck by how light it still was with only 0.4% of the sun unblocked. We got like a weird twilight (it was from the wrong angle) and then brightness again, slowly. The leaves did do their crescent thing, which I liked. And no, I didn't drive the hour or so east for totality and after talking to people who tried, I am OK with not having done so; they said the traffic was nuts and people were yelling at them for trying to set up lawn chairs places to watch (lighten up, homeowners, it's just a couple hours out of one day).
This weekend? I get a new washer and dryer (stacked unit) delivered tomorrow. The dryer motor burned itself out on Saturday last week. Granted, the unit WAS made in 1997 and was in the house when I moved in, but it's not exactly what I'd have chosen to spend my tax refund on. At least I did support a longtime local small business....
I have to run to the bank to get some $20s to tip the delivery guys, gotta remember to do that today. Not sure how many guys, I assume it will be more than 1 but fewer than 4....
On “Weekend Plans Post: Road Trip To The Eclipse”
Yeah, and also I have seen SO MANY broken-by-the-pandemic brains: I have had more near-miss accidents (of the sort of "person decides to run red light just as I am starting up to go through on my green" or "Four Way Stop? That means the person who wants to go the most goes") so I feel like....yeah....I'm not ready to be around 60,000 randos.
my misanthropy has dialed up to 11 in the past few years.
The 2017 eclipse, we weren't gonna be able to easily get to totality, so we all just stood out in the back parking lot and passed around eclipse glasses.
"
Where I live, we will be at 99.4% totality. I recently decided "I am NOT driving an hour to the east to get that extra 0.6%" after hearing that one of the towns (population 2500) is bracing for 60K people to come in and while seeing a 100% eclipse would be cool, I cannot overcome my discomfort of that level of Crowd (and people from Away, who will probably bitch about how "backwards" we are because this is a lower SES part of the country with a sparse population)
Also not sure I want to be in a place with a lot of people wanting to Party (because people are people) and then the main reason for their party isn't visible....
So I have my eclipse glasses, will go in to campus. Told my afternoon lab to find a place to go see the eclipse, but that I'm gonna do it from the patio at my workplace. (I do think I need to do a grocery run this afternoon; they've warned of potential shortages of things given that population in this corner of the state may more than double over a couple days)
On “The Circus Comes To Town”
"Evers," of the famous poem "Baseball's Sad Lexicon," written from the perspective of a Giants fan seeing them fall to the Cubs in, I think, 1910.
I only know it because of the phrase "Tinker, to Evers, To Chance" and because my dad (who was born 25 years after the poem) was a lifelong Cubs fan
On “Open Mic for the week of 4/1/2024”
there's enough of a "it won't get caught" mentality, or a "my campus won't care" mentality. Possibly some of the folks doing it are perceived as "superstars" on their campus and so they can do no wrong.
I don't know. I am at a teaching-heavy university (3 to 4 different classes per semester, and in the lab sciences, the profs teach their own labs - so this semester I'm in the classroom close to 20 hours a week on top of the prepwork, grading, trying to do my own research, committeework, and other assorted duties like advisement and keeping up with the "required safety trainings" and doing recruitment events. . Getting "enough" publications not to get dinged on post-tenure review is difficult (saints be praised, I got an R and R on a paper this week I thought had been desk rejected).
I can see the temptation to try to sneak something through. Not that I would, because I couldn't live with myself and I KNOW I am not a superstar so I'd be fired if I tried it and was caught
But some days I feel like "We need to shut down most academic publishing for a while and figure some stuff out" given the reproducibility crisis, and the whole issue with unpaid reviewers (who apparently now outsource a lot of their work to either students or AI) and also the sheer cost in grant money or to campuses to get a paper out.
On “Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore Struck By Container Ship, Collapses”
Apparently dispatchers (?) or some other employee received a mayday signal from the boat not long before they hit the bridge. And those individuals got in touch with the guys working on the bridge and told them to close it and get people off of it.
Apparently they did that, successfully, and some outlets are now saying the only dead are the six construction workers who fell when the bridge collapsed (two others hospitalized, though I think one was released already).
If that is true - well, honor upon everyone who moved fast to prevent this tragedy being even worse. I don't know how busy the bridge would be in the middle of the night like that but some of the sources I've read recently are claiming the only people who wound up in the river were the eight construction workers, and while it's terrible for them and their families, this could have been so much worse.
Not too far from where I live, barges hit the I-40 bridge (this was over 20 years ago) early in the day and a number of people (I think about 15?) and a horse and a couple dogs were killed when they all fell off the bridge. About a dozen people were injured.
At the best of times I dislike driving over river bridges, and this kind of news just makes it a little worse.
On “Shopping For What You Forgot: Blue Box Store v Red Box Store”
*laughs in user of feminine-hygiene products*
"
also if you order 2-3 things along with the hanky they will very likely (a) be shipped from different locations, (b) in different shipping containers, and (c) arrive on different days.
I actually thought Amazon had shorted me on something recently because it actually came shipped in the same package with something else, and i didn't open the package immediately because I didn't need that thing immediately.
"
I remember back in 1989, on the way to my grandmother's funeral in northern Michigan (so: a 14 hour drive for us), we were most of the way there and my dad realized that the suitcase with his clothes and my brother's had gotten left back home. So they had to make an emergency trip - to the JC Penney's in a mall in, IIRC Escanaba (might have been Gladstone), and they managed to find the required suitcoat, shirt, and tie (and other things they needed). Luckily the suitcase with my mom's and my clothes made it into the car.
This would have been before the large-scale penetration of Target and even Wal-mart into smaller markets like Escanaba, Michigan....
But yeah, Penney's is gone, Sears' is gone, for those of us in what used to be considered the middle class we either wind up having to shop "above our station" (if a "fancy" store is available), or we have to default to Target or Wal-mart.
I admit I prefer Target; the store I frequent here is a lot cleaner than the wal-mart is here (that's important) and if I need to buy clothes I am more likely to find what I like at Target (though for many things I prefer to mail order from Vermont Country Store.)
I suspect more and more, American's choices will be bifurcated into the super high-end for those who have the money and live in a major metro area, and Target/wal-mart/some variety of dollar store for those who don't, or who don't have the dough, and it feels like we've lost something in losing those middle-range clothing chains. (Back in the day, most of my school clothes came from JC Penney's or Sears; my "church clothes" were from O'Neil's, a regional OH chain that Macys bought and then closed down)
On “Weekend Plans Post: Molasses Baked Beans and Laparoscopy”
You guys get the snow there? I hope that didn't boondoggle any of the medical stuff.
I spent last evening nervously watching the weather radar; first there was a tornadic storm to the west of me (but that tracked north and then fizzled out), then there was an enormous one to the south of me that looked like it would clip our area. As it turns out, it didn't, but it was a tense evening for a while.
Next week is my spring break so tomorrow I'll do Zoom knitting and probably get some groceries and maybe try to clean the house a bit given that I'm now marginally more mobile. (I was able to climb the stairs today to get to my office the "normal" way, and not by leaving my right leg on the lower step and then stepping first with my left leg and pulling the right one up after it)
On “Hail to the Champs”
yeah, I think is is a combination of "path of least resistance" and sometimes "better the devil you know" (except in this case? One of the two candidates that I know, I already lived through four chaotic and upsetting years with him at the helm and very much hope he doesn't get another bite of the apple, though it sometimes eels like a lot of my fellow citizens are up for another round of "watching it all burn")
that said, there seem to be precious few up-and-coming folks that I could enthusiastically vote for
"
Americans love sequels and "reboots" too dang much.
On “Weekend Plans Post: Prep (Maybe) For The Eclipse”
we jumped ahead one hour, but it feels a full 2 hours later to me. This change is always the one that messes with me; the fall one, not so much.
Normally this is our spring break week coming up, but TPTB somehow decided to do it a week later, so I gotta drive in in the got-dang dark to work tomorrow.
"
I know them mainly for "I Believe in a Thing Called Love," the official video of which I have a really weird affection for, because it takes a big pair to make an almost-picture-perfect hair-rock 80s video in the early 2000s.
I was in high school in the 80s. I hated hair-rock. (If I liked anything, it was the New Wave stuff, though I was that weird nerd who listened to classical and Big Band). But now I look back at it and it was just, you know, kind of ridiculous and I don't hate it now.
also the Postmodern Jukebox remake of it - in New Orleans style with a big-voiced woman singer - is FANTASTIC though very different to the original.
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Where I live, we will be in 99.4% totality. I have decided that, absent someone offering to drive with me the hour or so east to get FULL totality, that is good enough for me. (the university really should have done a caravan of vans and buses, and just let people sign up to go. They should have made it an event)
Practically every state park cabin and hotel room has been rented for over a year. Local police are warning people that the roads (which are not good at the best of times) will be super-congested (and with people who aren't familiar with our crummy roads and driving conventions). They are acting like it's an impending disaster, even telling people to stock up on food! It's bizarre. So I assume there are gonna be freaked out people and I can happily view it from my parking lot at work just like I did in 2017
So yeah: 99.4% will be good enough. I'll experience the darkness-at-noon and seeing the sun go away and then come back, I just won't see the corona. That's OK.
I've already told my students we are NOT having class that day, experiencing a total or near-total eclipse is more important and meaningful.
I remember the 2017 one. We only got partiality here but we all went and stood in the back parking lot and people passed around the special glasses (there was a shortage of them) and welders helmets' that people had that were rated high enough for safe viewing and I had a little pinhole apparatus I had made by taping Mylar into a card. And I pointed out how when we got as far as it was going to get, you could see the leaves projecting crescent-suns on the ground and several people had never even heard of that, so I got to impress a few people with my knowledge. (I think I learned that in the 1992 or '94 one)
I just really hope it's not cloudy; April is often our rainy month.
On “Weekend Plans Post: One of Two Things You Can Be Sure Of”
STILL trying to heal up from this bone bruise :(
I feel good when I first get up, or when I sit for a while. I walk or stand on the floors here (teaching) which are vinyl tile over concrete and I hurt again. Still afraid I'll have to have my meniscus operated on sooner or later, there's a definite
"pinch" sometimes when I take a step
I also have a dental checkup this afternoon, an idea I greatly loathe. I was just saying Tuesday "thank goodness I am done with medical stuff for a while and I get my two free afternoons back" but nope, I got the reminder right after that.
I do need to get my tax stuff out to my "guy," I printed out all the 1099s I need. Maybe if I'm out of the dentist early enough and not too traumatized I do it then....
On “Weekend Plans Post: The Week From Heck (and Rhubarb Sauce)”
Oh they have cookies. And they also have the excellent (and expensive) Chocolonely bars.
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Tuesday is my birthday (I hit double-nickels) so my plans, provided my injured leg seems amenable in the morning Saturday, is to drive to the small city 1/2 hour south of me - the yarn shop I used to go to in another city has moved up there, and they are having their grand opening sale/celebration (I've been assured there's close parking; I messaged the owner with a comment that "I am currently using a cane, how far will I have to walk?")
I am leaving the rest of the plans open. If I feel up to it, I might go to the new Michael's store that I've never been to yet and the Ulta, with a "stretch goal" of getting to the natural foods store to get some of the specialty items (canned sweet potato puree) that are otherwise hard to find.
if I don't feel up to it, I might just hit the yarn store and go out for lunch somewhere, and then back home.
It's been almost six weeks, but I've been warned that bone bruises (and I have a "large" one according to the MRI interpretation) are incredibly slow to heal. I've learned a lot about accessibility (and lack of it) and how you have to sometimes shepherd your energy (I paid the $5 fee to the good local grocery to do a pick-up-at-the-curb order. I know, walmart does it for free but I like my local grocery, and it feels more "fair" to the mostly-teens who pick and pack the orders to pay a little bit to cover their labor). I've gotten better at accepting help from colleagues when it's offered, and for demanding accommodations when I need them.
I just hope I don't need all that for much longer. I see improvement but it's *incredibly* slow.
On my birthday itself? Probably all I will do is a pick up order of carryout food from the good local bbq place (kind of a tradition now with me, started during the pandemic). I also am going to be part of a Zoom interview for someone who will hopefully become a new colleague in the fall.
On “Lent!”
I struggle with this every year because I often feel like I have enough challenges in my life that, like, giving up chocolate would simply make me cranky with little benefit. I prefer the "try to take on some other good practice" mode of doing it. This year I am trying to take more moments during the day to pray or even just be still. I am prone to that restless monkeybrain (can't meditate) so maybe that will help? I am also an impatient person. And I know I don't pray often enough outside of church.
I am in a more "progressive" denomination so we're pretty loosey-goosey on what to do for Lent; some people I know give up sweets or meat or substitute devotional reading or volunteer work for some other leisure time activity. One person I knew gave up swearing.
On “Weekend Plans Post: A Sneaky Three-Day Weekend”
yeah not gonna do the tea until after the MRI, they said it could take up to 90 minutes for them to complete it and I have a nearly-55-year-old set of kidneys and bladder....
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LOL we get one federal holiday off per semester; in the spring it's MLK Jr. day (though they do try to push it as a Day of Service rather than a day off. This year I had JUST sprained my knee and spent the entire morning in the ER getting it dxed).
For me, federal holidays are mainly "oh dang there's no mail today, is there." I mean yes I do get a couple weeks off at Christmas so I guess that's my payback for it but sometimes it's just nice to get a three-day weekend.
This weekend: still recuperating. Much better, and the knee pain now feels more arthritic than "oh no I tore a ligament.' And the orthopedic doctor, after pressing all over my knee and not having me squawk in pain (and not finding inflammation anywhere) says he doesn't think ligaments are permanently damaged. I have an MRI today to confirm that there's no permanent damage (I really hope there is not but I'm a pessimist).
I still hurt though, and it's supposed to briefly be wicked cold this weekend, so I guess (sigh) rather than getting out to the newly-moved-to-only-a-half-hour-away yarn shop and the new Michael's franchise I've not even been to yet, I'll stay home instead.
well, stay home after I put away the herbarium specimens from this week's lab, if I'm not feeling up to it after the MRI. I've received conflicting advice; some people say it'll be a walk in the park, others are like "yeah count on having a migraine from the noise" so I don't know.
On “Weekend Plans Post: The Big Game”
I dragged my still-paining (but getting better) knee to Wal-mart at 8 this morning, it was not crowded. But I know well enough not to go there around noon on ANY Saturday.
I am not a football fan so I won't make predictions, I just hope both teams have fun and no one gets hurt.
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