I Shaved. Sat, Wrote, Thought, and Wrote for 14-Hours, Took One Walk, Showered, and Yes, Shaved.

This is a fake beard. Mine is almost all white now, and I covered it while I walked Glamis. I love my bearded knit caps, especially during arctic temperature dips in the northeast. Nice to have a warm face on cold days (thought I'd lose my fingers when I took off my gloves to untangle Glamis's leash. Painful cold).

And I hit send on two items. Actually, three. One a series of revisions. I needed them off my radar so I can concentrate on the professional development, summer planning, recommendations, grants, and writing workshops being hosted over the next several weeks.

By 10 p.m. I said, enough. I showered, shaved, and came downstairs to find mindless television to distract me as I played games and rolled through social media (How come no one told me how good This is Us was this week?). The other big news of the day was Covid-19 test # 5, this one a home-swabbing sent by the University, as we need two negative tests before we can return to our offices. We also were told we have to be tested once a week, or our Stag cards will be deactivated and we can't enter buildings. Apparently colleges and Universities are taking a huge hit. Hmmm. I wonder why. Of course, the University lost its server all day yesterday, so after that message was sent, there was no way to do Fairfield work at all. Had to wait until this morning.

I am thinking, too, of my K-12 collaborators who are doing their education-thing in schools - teaching, with some in the room and a majority online. It is psychologically maddening. As my friend Paul Hankin wrote, "It's like writing sub plans for another space, but also having to be the teacher, subbing for yourself as you're teaching the in-class kids, in that other space, too."

I feel this. I always said it isn't worth calling in sick, because writing up the plans was horrendous. Easier to be in the space than to guide another to do the work. 

The funniest part of the day, however, was navigating the home testing kit with Dr. Kris Sealey, philosophy, who happened to be administrating her own test down the street. She texted me with questions at the very moment I was pilfering through the directions, too. Two Ph.Ds stressed out about doing it right. She caused a sneezing festival and I just gave myself a blood nose. 

The testing was not difficult. It was the piles of directions given, located in spontaneous places that didn't "talk" to one another that was hilarious. Of course we wanted to do it right, but there were so many spaces to totally screw up (Melissa Quan wins the day with spilling the tube liquid all over her floor). If you can't laugh, you cry. So I laughed a lot thinking about the insanity of it all right now. 

Hello, Saturday. Hello, Desk. Time to catch up on all work avoided as you worked on publication projects. Meanwhile, work REALLY needing to be done couldn't, because the University's server was down. We were paralyzed. I have to get to that, too.

Happy Birthday, Kelly Chandler-Olcott!