Last night I dreamed that I was watching "No Reservations," a scene in which Anthony Bourdain goes spearfishing. It was visually very dramatic: a throng of men holding spears over their heads and periodically throwing them down into the water, backlit by a brilliant orange-red sunset. All of a sudden, a spear flew from off-screen and hit one of the fisherman in the chest. He went down. And Anthony Bourdain intoned, "Sometimes, when you go spearfishing, you accidentally kill a guy." He'd killed the guy!
This is day 22 of self-isolation for me. I spent the first week -- before the official social distancing rules came into effect -- voluntarily staying home because of what seems to have been a light cold. Then everything shut down. Things got much easier once I no longer felt sick. The weather has been sunny for the most part and it's starting to get warm, so I've been running and going for walks. Short grocery shops are a near-daily event because we almost always need something that they didn't have in stock the last time one of us went. About a week ago Sainsbury's marked places to stand and wait on the sidewalk so they could keep it to 15 customers inside the store at any one time.
Schoolwork proceedeth apace. We were supposed to have an in-person exam last Monday, which was replaced by a take-home essay task. Much easier and less stressful! I also made a bunch of progress on one of my term papers last week, after finishing the exam faster than I thought I would. The other term paper is now creaking back into gear. It's hard to do them in parallel, partly because the topics and readings are so overlapping, and partly because momentum seems to matter for me when I'm working on something intellectually engaging. That was rarely a problem at work because most tasks are so collaborative, so I had no choice but to work in fits and starts while waiting for input or feedback. Anyway I have to keep myself on task with both: It would be bad to suddenly find myself without enough time to do a good enough job on the one on which I haven't made as much progress. Shared outline for the first one with the professor today, so I've been kind of able to switch my brain off about it.
As I think many people are discovering, it has been nice to reconnect remotely with some people whom I otherwise might not have called or might not have called me. I organized a game of Beyond Balderdash with some friends from Michigan/Chile/DC last weekend that was really fun. And SRB and I have both now organized little events within our apartment building: she gave a concert the Sunday before last, and yesterday I ran a pub quiz. It'll be interesting to see how much these new kinds of engagements stick after everything starts to return to normal.
Enough for now, back to work.
This is day 22 of self-isolation for me. I spent the first week -- before the official social distancing rules came into effect -- voluntarily staying home because of what seems to have been a light cold. Then everything shut down. Things got much easier once I no longer felt sick. The weather has been sunny for the most part and it's starting to get warm, so I've been running and going for walks. Short grocery shops are a near-daily event because we almost always need something that they didn't have in stock the last time one of us went. About a week ago Sainsbury's marked places to stand and wait on the sidewalk so they could keep it to 15 customers inside the store at any one time.
Schoolwork proceedeth apace. We were supposed to have an in-person exam last Monday, which was replaced by a take-home essay task. Much easier and less stressful! I also made a bunch of progress on one of my term papers last week, after finishing the exam faster than I thought I would. The other term paper is now creaking back into gear. It's hard to do them in parallel, partly because the topics and readings are so overlapping, and partly because momentum seems to matter for me when I'm working on something intellectually engaging. That was rarely a problem at work because most tasks are so collaborative, so I had no choice but to work in fits and starts while waiting for input or feedback. Anyway I have to keep myself on task with both: It would be bad to suddenly find myself without enough time to do a good enough job on the one on which I haven't made as much progress. Shared outline for the first one with the professor today, so I've been kind of able to switch my brain off about it.
As I think many people are discovering, it has been nice to reconnect remotely with some people whom I otherwise might not have called or might not have called me. I organized a game of Beyond Balderdash with some friends from Michigan/Chile/DC last weekend that was really fun. And SRB and I have both now organized little events within our apartment building: she gave a concert the Sunday before last, and yesterday I ran a pub quiz. It'll be interesting to see how much these new kinds of engagements stick after everything starts to return to normal.
Enough for now, back to work.
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