Diary 10-20
Awake 7:30, first hint of light. Sleeping a bit longer because of late sunrise, no alarm.
Check email on phone. Usually do not do this, on purpose. A bad habit. Several work emails, which spurs me to get up. Chilly, fall, finally. Yesterday first wet day in a couple weeks.
Make tea, coffee for B. I hear a noise that perks me up. We had a squirrel infestation in our attic a couple weeks ago and I had to get rid of them. Now any random noise draws my attention. False alarm though, this time.
Dealt with a couple emails, over tea, one to move a meeting from this morning to later in week. Another on a headache-inducing policy issue for our department. Takes some time to write it. Don’t usually do email like this so early but wanted to get them off since they are time dependent.
Running late now, 8:45, grab cereal. Make another tea, clean up kitchen, shower, shave. Drive in. See as I’m leaving a message from J asking if he can call. I say yes, can talk while driving. He calls, discusses roadblocks on joint project. Argh. Frustrating.
Park, walk to office, answer several new email messages.
Busy day! Got away from diary writing til this evening. It’s now 8. I’ll reconstruct as best I can:
At my desk, 10-12. Responded to emails, reviewed upcoming presentation notes, worked on a website/database project, which needs to be updated. Spent time trying to track down a developer who worked on it years ago. Found an old email. We’ll see if he responds. Boring, felt ok to be getting stuff done, though.
Noon, headed to gym for run on track. Walking over the sun feels warm (it’s sunny now), debate running outside but decide not to. I’m returning from injuries (sore knee, Achilles tightness) so decide to stick to track in case I want to stop early.
Run is pretty good, if slow. I don’t time it but I’m sure it’s over ten mins per mile. Before stopping for injury it was 9:30-40 per mile. Still felt good, and it always feels really nice afterwards. Shower, chat with B, J in locker room. Head back, grab nuts and a drink. Feel my knees a bit, need to take some ibuprofen (I’ll forget to).
In office, 1:30, prep for meeting. Goes well. Prepping for presentation on Wednesday. It should be good, looking forward to it.
After meeting, around 2:45, I discover that the global Amazon Web Services outage has knocked off the learning management system, called Canvas, for the class I teach. A large assignment is due tomorrow and students are emailing with concerns. I send a group email (a headache without Canvas because I have to look up 22 emails, one by one), pushing the due date back 24 hours. I also spend a bunch of time assembling links and documents for other work in the class. This takes a while but I get it all off via group email. Phew. (Canvas comes back on in the evening). An interesting lesson on how dependent we are on internet technologies.
After this I rearrange the main office furniture a bit with H. We got a new printer that’s smaller so we can move things around to make a bit more meeting space.
Around 4 I pack up and head to my other office. There I do a bit of grading and take care of some other paperwork, then prep for class tomorrow. Head out around 5:30.
A basic, dull day with lots of different tasks, none too exciting. Just checking things off list, except for AWS mess.
Home a bit before six. B asks me to make bed after washing sheets (she has arm injury that makes that hard for her). Change into sweats, chill a beer in freezer and park on couch. Read, catch up on news, grab the beer. B puts on pbs newshour. I half follow, registering mild annoyance about Trump adding a ballroom on the White House, news about gerrymandering. This stuff is enraging at times, but right now it feels like just more nonsense. Starting to think (hope) these clowns are gonna crash and burn. Hope we don’t all go down with them. Pick up on partly completed Sunday crossword. B cooks tandoori seasoned chicken and cauliflower dish over rice. Excellent.
Lazy after dinner, surfing between football game and baseball, plus more crossword. Baseball good, Blue Jays with late home run to win. Preferred Seattle, since I lived there long ago. But not a strong feeling. Got up off the couch to wash dishes around 11, listening to soccer podcast. Then I added this paragraph and went to bed, just past 11:30 .