Day 3 - Governor Newsom imposes new restrictions
‘The Landmark’ at the Huntington…
Wednesday. 11/18/20
7:30 – 8:15 - My alarm goes off and I’m up, but I stay in bed until 8:00 a.m. I have three classes this morning. I finally get up and go downstairs to greet the dog. She’s awake but rolls over so I can rub her tummy and say good morning. We go outside, but she refuses to do her business so I give up. Inside and pieces of bacon for her, coffee for me. I go to work.
8:15-10:30 – The classes are at different points in the semester. My highschoolers and the college students in my Core Class for College No. 2 are taking a chapter review quiz, watching a documentary, then completing a video quiz. My accelerated 8-week class is watching a video. I posted the Discussion Boards and checked course content last night.
All students are fairly busy so I don’t hear much from them via email. I catch up on my paper attendance. A student emails me and complains that she misunderstood yesterday’s Discussion Board prompt and did not realize the chapter review quiz was due by 10:05 yesterday. I’m so over all of these people. I email back, “See syllabus.” I listen to What a Day.
Another student emails me a question about the Extra Credit assignment that is due tomorrow. What format should she use? I explain that she should start with a “topic sentence”, followed by two or three supporting paragraphs, followed by a conclusion. This is the formula for a standard essay. She says question 5 is giving her trouble. Since the assignment asks the students to answer ONE question, I say, “If Question 5 is giving you difficulty, please select a different question for your assignment.” She then asks how many questions she is supposed to answer, complaining that this is not addressed in the Syllabus. I deliberately fail to answer her questions and reply: “This assignment has been posted on Canvas since the first week of school. Please see my directions/instructions on Canvas. For your convenience, I have copied and pasted said directions in the body of this email.” I never hear from her again.
I work on my Intersectionality script for my 2:30 class on Thursday and have the last of my yoghurt with diced apples and walnuts. I add some cucumbers to my packed lunch.
11:30-12:15 – Shower. Covid-19 uniform. I grab my lunch bag and leave for the Huntington.
I say good-bye to L. She and R. have Melting Pot reservations in Thousand Oaks, followed by a reservation at the Hyatt in the same city. I need L. to reformat my slides and airdrop my lecture tomorrow, before 2:30, but nothing is done on my end. L. says she is going straight to work from Thousand Oaks tomorrow…I don’t know how we’re going to work this out. Tomorrow is my last lecture for this class… L. says she can format the slides tonight, from the Hyatt, but I’m skeptical.
12:30-1:15 – Driving. I listen to Fresh Air.
1:15 – 4:30 - …and I am finally here!!! After being forced to cancel my original trip that I personally scheduled a couple weeks ago due to technical difficulties involving lecture, and then being unable to book tickets on two occasions, I made it. I go through the 3-checkpoints, then spend the next two hours walking through the botanical gardens. The Huntington is so huge it’s impossible to cover the grounds in one day. I’ve been coming for 13 years and still encountered some new things today: A sculpture of a head, as big as an office building, lying on it’s ear; a huge build-out of the Chinese garden; the Palm Garden [I’m sure I must have seen it but it looks new to me]; and a ‘secret’ sitting area near the Japanese Garden.
The weather is perfect, people are limited, and everyone is masked. At one point, I sit on a bench overlooking the entire Chinese garden. Beautiful. I really needed this as I spend so much time cooped up in my office, working on a computer.
Café 1919 is offering over-priced, ‘grab-and-go’ [that’s the new buzz word in Covid-19 time] lunches, so I pass, return to my car for my lunch bag, and eat in the outside picnic area around the side of the entrance. I read a Money Diary.
4:45-5:30 – I leave and drive home. Traffic is…bad. It’s almost as if the pandemic is over.
5:30 – 10:00 - I have a few bites of L.’s pineapple rice then go to work. I finish my script, prepare lecture, and design PP slides for tomorrow’s lecture. I select several podcasts to embed in lecture.
10:00 – I email the slides to L. and text her that I just sent them. I ask her about air dropping lecture again – should I meet her a few minutes early outside the art studio? She can airdrop lecture from any location. The only issue would be if I, somehow, have a corrupt audio file, but I’m not going to think about that. She says she’ll be home at 1:00 tomorrow and can air drop it then. Okay.
10:00-11:30 – I select audio clips to accompany the slides and line them up in sequential order with the podcasts I plan on embedding in lecture.
11:30-2:40 a.m. – I record lecture.
2:40-3:00 a.m. – I record a PSA – Public Service Announcement - for the class, giving them some information about the Final and reminding them that this is the last lecture.
3:00-3:45 – Nighttime routine. Bed.