December 9, 2021
A02
Awaken up early—not sure what time because I didn’t look. It’s dark but that doesn’t mean much at this point in the year, when it doesn’t get light until after 7. I was awakened because the covers had drifted over to B, far from an uncommon experience. We keep the house cool at night, so the chill woke me. I am especially annoyed because awakening interrupted a bizarre dream about M’s college graduation. The commencement speech was incomprehensible and I was surrounded by strange array of people, none of whom were part of our family. I would like to have learned what happened. I did drift off again and re-awoke when it was light, a little before 8. So I went from awakening too early to oversleeping. Oops. Still felt groggy.
I have an open morning, with nothing on my work calendar until the afternoon so I take my time. First a lay in bed for a few minutes going over my plan for the day and the things I need to get done. Shower, shave, make tea and a bagel, make my lunch, put the trash barrels down at the curb for pick up. B is up and on the phone with a friend, so I don’t talk to her much.
Hop in the car and get to the office just before 9:30. Still late, but not a ton going on so not too worried about it. It turns out I have dressed for yesterday, as if it was a normal, cold December day. Not so much, and I feel warm walking from car to office in a winter coat. Heat up another mug of tea and settle in to work.
The morning is taken up on a mix of things. First, I wrap up a proposal I was working on, until about 10:45. Go over some notes and plans for a statewide group I help lead, albeit unenthusiastically, mainly out of a sense of obligation (to about 11:30). Read through the draft of a student paper—better than I expected, which makes it easier and more satisfying (until roughly 12:15). Send out a few emails. Busy, though not terribly notable or consequential, through the morning.
Walk over to the gym at 12:30, changed and did a short workout—stretching, some weights, extra shoulder exercises to help with an injury from a few weeks before. I listen to a pod on Covid—trying to keep up but not obsessing. I find the whole experience of the pandemic—the science, the politics—interesting.
Back to the office and meet with a grad student around 1:40. We review their work and have a good conversation about what should come next. Around 2:15 I eat the lunch I brought from home—sandwich and crackers. I run downstairs to grab a drink and a brownie. The brownie is an unnecessary extra, and it’s a bad idea, as I feel full when finishing lunch. While eating, and after, I review interview transcripts for one of our projects. I have more editing to do on them than I would like, which is frustrating, and I contemplate returning them to the transcriber for further work. This is probably my own fault because I didn’t provide clear enough instructions on this (even though I thought I did). In the end, I decide that I want to wrap this up, so I plow through and clean them up. I’m glad to have them done as this project has been on hold since early fall and now we can wrap it up. It takes until a bit past 5 to finish.
A colleague texts at 5 to see if I want a beer–$3 specials! Agree to do a quick one and head over to the village at 5:15. We have an amiable chat for about 45 mins—work, politics, etc.—and I head home. I needed to keep it short since I had a couple of household tasks to deal with.
Arrive home about 6:20. Chat with B for a few minutes about Xmas entertainment plans—I’m looking forward to having S and M home with us for a few days. First time in a year it’s just the four of us. Change into sweats and start working on fixing the leaking dryer vent. This involves moving the washing machine (heavy) and then the dryer and squeezing behind the dryer to apply a new layer of duct tape. I’ve done this before and probably need to redo the whole ventilation system, including the part that runs beneath the flooring in our crawl space, but that’s a much longer task and tonight I just need to seal the duct off so the laundry room doesn’t steam up and the dryer works efficiently. I get it done in a few minutes. The only bad part is I knock my shoulder a few times while squeezing behind the appliances—ouch.
Next up is setting up a new modem. Our Xfinity internet has experienced regular outages for a couple months and I’ve been trying to work with the company to solve the problem. This has been an ongoing headache, especially since M started a new job and is working full time from home for the time being. A couple of months ago, I called customer service and the support person did a remote reset that she assured me would solve the issue. It seemed to work for about a week then the problems resurfaced. So I set up an appointment for a visit from a technician. He came out and supposedly cleared out the line and said everything should be good from that point on. Nope. Within a couple days the outages cropped back up again. Annoying. Now I’m trying a new modem, which I had shipped and which arrived yesterday. So I unhook the old one, plug in the new one and go through the process with an app on my phone. At first it doesn’t work and I suspect I will need to call the customer service line. The second time it does and after about 20 minutes things are up and running. Here’s hoping this works. It’s amazing how dependent we are on a reliable internet service these days—for work, entertainment, etc. The fact that Xfinity has a monopoly on truly fast service around here is a source of irritation.
Now it’s past 8 and I’m hungry. B and M had cooked up a quiche, but that doesn’t appeal to me. So I cook up a pot of pasta and sauté some chopped veggies, throwing it all in a bowl with some spices. Tastes good. I surf the internet and catch up with the news while eating. Nothing terribly new or interesting, just the usual pandemic conditions, descent into authoritarianism, and economic decline, plus some sports. After eating, I clean the kitchen while listening to a podcast, this one on American politics.
Around 9:15 I stretch out on the living room couch and read, a spy novel—The Runaround, by Brian Feemantle, part of the Charlie Muffin series. I’ve been slowly working through this series, which is amusing as end-of-day entertainment. After a few chapters I peek in on the evening’s NFL game, but it’s not competitive (Vikings crushing Steelers) so I stream an episode of Money Heist, a Spanish show that’s been a big hit. It’s a bit nutty and has an engaging way of telling its story via flashbacks. I’ve really enjoyed it. I finish it around 11 and read a bit more then head to bed.
My shoulder hurts in bed—from the workout or the dryer repair. Probably both. Drift off, slowly….