Day 34 of rollback-California Covid-19 spike - Governor shuts us down
School starts in two days…
Saturday. 8/15/20.
Class enrollment is at 20…if two students move to another class, I’m finished.
9:00- 10:30 - The dog was barking earlier, but I refused to go downstairs. She can wait. When I come down at 9:00, she pooped in front of the door. I take her out to pee and give her cheese. Then, I make my coffee, clean the kitchen, and read Seal Team 6 on my patio. This is outside of my genre, BUT B.’s grandson lent it to B. to read, B. liked it and lent it to ME to read, and I like B.’s grandson alot, so thought I’d give it a try, although I’m not really interested in testosterone and male posturing. I set a goal of 100 pages. It’s a fast read and I easily hit the goal.
10:30-12:00 - I make a avocado, strawberry, and almond butter smoothie, then prepare two salads with the leftover avocado - one salad for dinner tonight and one salad for my lunch bag tomorrow. I start a load of laundry. I listen to The Book Review.
12:00-1:00 - Shower. Covid-19 uniform. It’s 109 degrees today. Just awful.
L. leaves for Starbucks.
2:00-5:00 - L. returns from Starbucks and I use her phone to record my first lecture of the semester for Specialty Class No. 1. I don’t have the equipment to record my “poli sci podcasts” (lectures) and have used L.’s phone thus far, BUT, L. has devised a way where I can record my lectures on MY Ipad. Then, I won’t have to continuously borrow L.’s phone and work around her schedule. For now, I record the first lecture the old way, using L.’s phone.
The recording goes well except, unfortunately, the dog barks a few times throughout lecture. Even though my office door is closed, I know the barking will appear on the audio and when I play it back later, I can hear it. BC I might have been embarrassed, but now that EVERYONE is working from home, pet and kid noise is commonplace and happens all the time.
5:00-6:30 - We have a wasp’s nest under the eaves outside, so I schedule an exterminator through my Home Warranty program, along with appliance repair for my refrigerator. I order a few non-perishables from Amazon.com. My door is still broken and I research where I can purchase new doors. Home Depot does not sell a “swing French patio door” with my specifications (sigh) so I’m looking for another vendor. I may have found one. I listen to What a Day.
6:30-7:30 - I go to Whole Foods to pick up a few things to include sushi.
7:30-9:30 - I put everything away and have my sushi and a salad for dinner. I finish The Heart and Other Monsters. This is a memoir from one sister about another sister, describing the horror of having a sibling addicted to opiates and, eventually, heroin. Extremely relevant, since the country was in the throes of an opioid crisis before our attention was diverted by Covid-19, her sister careens through life, constantly shooting up, before finally committing suicide. Or does she? In a surprise twist (I won’t spoil it for you), it appears she may have been murdered!!!…
9:30 p.m. - 2:30 a.m. - I go to work (by that I mean I enter my home office) and create/load 16-weeks of course content for my Core Class that I’ll be delivering to my high schoolers at their elite private Catholic school. This class was harder to design because the material for my standard 3-hour weekly class has to be divided into TWO 1 1/2-hour classes per week, as I teach there on Mondays and Wednesdays from 8:00-9:25 a.m. I listen to Southern Fried Crime then Radio Rental episodes again, for ‘comfort food’ and background noise, as I recently binge-listened to all of them a couple days ago.
2:30 a.m. - I go online and try to find out how Dr. G. died. Her high school published her obituary stating that she died “peacefully, of natural causes” ??? Natural causes?? At age 53??