Slow Progress

I've got all the pieces of my book ready to put together, but I got sick last week and got absolutely nothing done over the weekend. Ambrose, however, was finally feeling well enough to finish his last edit read-through. He'll be doing a final pass once I put everything together, but that's more about catching typos than making major changes. 

I'll also be sending the final draft to Bill, since he is in the book. I think it's important that folks heavily featured in my books are allowed to read through and have veto power over what I write about them. Also, his wife used to edit for a living, and I really appreciate her remarks when it comes to usage and consistency. 

I think, as long as I can stay healthy-ish, I can have that copy ready before this Sunday. I just need to set aside some time and energy for it. Unfortunately, work is really sucking my thinking energy right now, because it's evaluation season and I'm training up a new employee for a position that is so far from rote and regular that it's tricky to organize training. It's a lot of hands-on and live training on problems as they come up. But even 30 minutes a day on weekdays should set me up to really push through on Saturday and drag it across the finish line on Sunday. 

Sometimes getting started is the hardest part. And I can feel myself procrastinating a bit, because once this book is done, I'm determined to write my self care book and get that out. Even if part of me feels like that book is just stupid and people will hate it and I have no standing to write it. Screw those attitudes. I have an idea, and I want to write about it, and maybe some people will find it useful. 

Bits and Pieces

There's going to be a preseason hockey game in Boise for the first time in many years. There was supposed to be one a few years ago, but that was the 2014-2015 season, aka the lockout shortened season. That game never got played. But I thought, just maybe, we could get tickets and go see NHL players, even if the big names probably wouldn't take the ice. 

However, I was not the only person in Boise with this idea. Tickets sold out so fast, I never even got past the waiting room before they were gone. I guess I'll just have to travel if I want to see an NHL game. Maybe someday I'll get to see one of Boise's "local" teams (at least according to regional sports networks), like Seattle, Colorado or Las Vegas. 

I've been playing the game Dead Cells a lot lately. It's a roguelike game, which means that if you die, you start all over. The game doesn't take that long to complete, even with my style of "must kill everything" which takes longer. It's got an interesting, new-to-me, system of difficulty. Essentially, you can't really finish the game until you play it on the hardest (of 6) levels. 

For a while, I thought I wouldn't ever make it past the 3rd level (called 2 boss stem cell), but then I did. And then I wanted to complete a puzzle that required taking a specific route through the game and finding hidden areas in specific dungeons. I got through that, and now I'm thinking, well, maybe I can beat the final boss with 3 boss stem cells activated. 

But the last time I tried, on what was otherwise a very good run, I just couldn't get the final boss. Yeah, I'll probably keep playing the game until it leaves Xbox Game Pass. 

When this blog goes live, I'll be out in the wilderness. If the trip goes to plan, I should be at the Moose Creek Air Strip, or getting real close. As I write this, I'm so looking forward to being out there. I've got a headache from letting things at work stress me out a bit too much. I need to do some hiring and there's an awful project I'm involved in because I'm the only one with the expertise to get it done. Or that's how it feels. 

Being out in the woods should let me re-center myself. To remember that nothing at my work is actually life and death. To remember that I am not my work. 

Travel Craziness

Last week, I went on a business trip. It was my first business trip since the pandemic started, and I was a bit nervous at the start. I knew that I was going to wear my mask on the plane and in the airport and just as much as possible. Maybe the COVID risks aren't that high, but "conference crud" has been a thing since before the pandemic, and I had things to do this week that I wanted to be well for. 

The travel started off well enough. The flight from Boise to Salt Lake was short and uneventful. The next flight to the destination was delayed, but not too long. It actually made the layover better, because there was time to get food without worrying about missing the connection. Again, an uneventful flight, though quite a bit longer all the way through to Nashville. 

Easy enough to check in to the hotel, and I then walked over to a nearby Whole Foods to get some snacks and a dinner. I could have gone to a restaurant for dinner, but it's a lot harder to know exactly what ingredients are in foods at a restaurant. It's just easier to buy a frozen meal. Plus, I got a popsicle for the walk back to the hotel, which was a fabulous idea if I do say so myself. 

The conference itself was good, and I learned a bunch. Departure was early Saturday morning, and it taught me something else entirely. 

See, the flight left at 5:25 am Saturday morning. Two hours before that would be 3:25, but the security line in Nashville doesn't open until 4 am, so the planned departure from the hotel was set for 3:15 in the AM. I tried to go to bed a little after 9, hoping I would get some 4 to 5 hours of sleep. Instead, I woke up just before midnight and couldn't get back to sleep. 

I tried, I really did. But I ended up being wakeful until after 2 am. I did doze off enough to miss my 2:35 am alarm, but the 2:45 am alarm got me up. I ate some cut watermelon I'd gotten from Whole Foods and got dressed. I didn't bother with a shower, just double checked everything was packed and left a tip for housekeeping. 

I was done before 3:15, but I was still second to last to arrive of my group. We got in an Uber, made it to the airport where I then had to wait in line to check my bag. Then security - where I had to go through twice because I forgot to drink the last of the water in my bottle. I blame that on the Uber - it was a tight fit for 5 passengers plus luggage, and instead of drinking my water, I had to use my elbows to keep other people's luggage from braining me. 

But we made it through and got on the short flight to Atlanta. Yes, Atlanta. Because why not go south and east when your destination is north and west? That's where things started to fall apart. Our flight's departure was delayed 50 minutes, and then 10 more. Then we sat on the tarmac after boarding for another 10 to 20 minutes. Our layover at Salt Lake was already going to be tight, but the pilot assured us that they would make up time in the air. 

Ha!

They may have made up time in the air, but it wasn't enough for us. When we neared Salt Lake, one of the flight attendants tried to help folks with tight connections by announcing said connections and having people raise their hands, something they don't typically do. Several destinations were announced, but not Boise. No, we had already missed our flight. 

Two of my party got rebooked on a flight later that day to Boise. Two got booked over to San Francisco to spend the night and then get to Boise in the morning. I got rebooked to fly into Seattle the next day and then Boise that afternoon. This was not acceptable. 

After a very long wait in the customer service line, I got onto standby for the same day flight to Boise, as did my fellow travelers who had not been automatically rebooked for it. We ate lunch and then went to stand by and see if there would be any room on the flight for us. I saw my name up on the board as being on standby - a first for me. But my fellow travelers were not on the board and were starting to be resigned to a night in Salt Lake or a return trip to the customer service line. 

But in the end, there was room for all of us. I even got to sit next to one of my party in the row right behind first class with more leg room than I could possibly use. The seat felt like how I remember airplane seats being in my youth, much wider than the economy seats are nowadays. It was tolerable, and I even managed to doze on the flight. 

Even with my toes pointed, I couldn't touch the seat in front of me.

It was an absolutely draining, incredibly long day. It's one thing if you've got a flight and it just has a lot of layovers or will take a long time. It's a different thing if you're running on less than 3 hours sleep and don't know when or whether you'll get home. I'm really hoping my next flight has nowhere near this level of insanity - at the very least, I'll be protesting any attempt to book me on a flight before 6 in the morning... 

Presenting

I was recently tasked with a short presentation at my workplace. The deal would be informing three groups, in succession, on a topic that I am the most well-versed in of those in our office. I would not, yet, call myself well-versed in the topic, because we are early in the stages of this particular project. But I believe I will get there, and I did feel confident that I could do this task. 

And yet. 

I don't like presenting in groups, even small ones. It's not something that I seek out or particularly enjoy. I've done it enough by this point in my life that I am accustomed to doing it, and I can do it. I even consider that I can do it at a minimum level of competence. But it's still a bit of a stress, and an unknown. 

So I was glad to be able to fall asleep the night before without any issues. I had prepared remarks, and a handout, and I was as ready as I was going to be. And it ended up going just fine. It was strange to have to turn my head to establish eye contact with each audience member. The room was a little loud, because there were three other groups doing the same thing (some of them quite a bit louder than others). But I managed to get through the whole thing without swearing, and I rolled with the questions that I got, and took notes when points were brought up that I didn't know the answer to so I could follow up. 

I was surprised by the quality of questions that I got; I might have to volunteer myself to do this more often so I can get ideas from all around the office instead of just in my subsection. And I was pleased that I didn't have any nervous blushes strike. I managed to keep my emotional investment casual and I'm happy at that. 

I wonder if the months of conducting business over Zoom has influenced how I feel about presenting. It seems like Zoom is more like presenting than conversing, so you have to always be ready to be the center of attention. One person at a time. And the other piece is that I have practiced "presenting" on Zoom so much in the last 14 months. I've become inured to the whole process. Vaccinated, one might say. 

Traveling

I've been very focused at work the last few work days. I am taking some time off, and I wanted to make sure a couple of projects that I'd started last week got finished before I left. Sure, I'll only be gone a week, but I can't go live with a new process the literal day before I leave. That would be totally rude to my team, because if I forgot some step, then they will have to deal with the fallout without me there to let them know I just forgot to cross the t or something simple like that. 

My team is capable of handling the normal day to day when I'm out. I mean, I take vacations every summer, so I know they've got it. I might be freaking out a bit because I'm nervous about taking a flight. It was almost this time last year exactly that I was going to be headed to a conference for work, and then swinging by my childhood hometown to visit family. 

Covid, of course, changed all that. There was no conference, and I certainly wasn't going to fly anywhere. 

I don't really like flying in general, because of the people. Give me an open wilderness over an enclosed metal tube any day. Most people are fine, I'm sure, but there are many who wear strong perfumes and that irritates me. Or they want to talk to me when I've got my headphones on in a clear signal of "introvert trying to pretend they are not stuck in a metal tube with strangers." Or they are crying babies. 

Actually, no, I'm okay with crying babies. They are irritating, but they can't help it. Not like those bros who douse themselves in Ax body spray before getting into an enclosed metal tube! Though, to be fair, at least they showered? I once had to sit next to a guy who clearly had NOT showered for quite some time, and it was pretty unpleasant. I know that I stink after a backpacking trip, and I would never get on a commercial flight without some attempt at washing first. 

In fact, that fits in with my plan to backpack Hawai'i someday - fly in, stay a night at a hostel, backpack a week, then another night at a hostel for showering before flying home. I've heard there are no mosquitos there, and I like that! 

Usually, when I go on a trip, I have a plan. An itinerary. Goals for the day and events to attend. This time, I have no plan. Except for staying with my brother, that was planned. But other than that, and a dance recital on Friday night, I have no idea what I'll be doing with myself for a whole week. It's a little unnerving for me. After all, I did get the trail name Task Master for a reason - I am all about the plan! 

It will be good for me to just go with the flow. I managed to avoid overthinking about what-ifs for the trip - most likely because I was so focused on wrapping up those few things at work. It's a good thing my job keeps me from getting bored.

Spitting in the Right Tube

I had expected to get another nasal swab test when I went in for mandatory Covid testing at work. Surprise, surprise, we have switched things up! 

This time, we got to do a self-administered spit test instead of the nasal swabbing. It makes total sense to me, because the nasal swabbing requires the use of health care workers who could be doing something more useful than swabbing nasal cavities all day, and rather than 2 at a time, they can go 10 at a time. But it was still a pretty surreal experience, more so than the swabbing because it lasted so much longer. The swab was step up, pull down mask, get swabbed for 10 seconds, done, out the door. The spit test is different. 

The classroom's normal desks had been cleared out to make room for stations set up at folding tables. There was a set in the center of the room and then tables all around the walls. The windows, those leaning ones that seem to be found in most any school building, were cracked open despite the chill in the air and the rain pouring down outside. I was directed to the far table by the windows by the room's sole attendant, dressed in blue PPE of some sort and, like everyone else, wearing a mask. At my table (and every other table), a placard was taped to the wall, providing instructions. 

I read them through once, to make sure I knew all my steps before I got started. Not that I expected there to be any gotchas on this particular test, but you never know when you might run into your own incorrect assumptions. First, sanitize, easy enough with the provided sanitizer, sitting on the window sill next to a box of tissues, leaving the table itself absolutely clear for easy cleaning between testers. 

Next, caps off both the tubes, and then, the first fun part. Forcefully push the ribbed end of the collector straw into the little tube. No, a little more forcefully, almost got it, whatever you do don't let it pop out of your hands and fly around the room... got it. 

Then, just make yourself salivate. Standing there, in a repurposed classroom, with no food smells to be found, with 6 to 10 other people, all but one of whom are also trying to jumpstart their salivary glands, yes, you'll find it easy as pie to get those juices flowing. I mean, I didn't. And at least one other guy was vocal about issues. And one guy thought he was done, but the attendant said it was too foamy and he needed to collect more non-foam. It's just not as easy as it sounds. 

I kept putting my mask back on between collection attempts, though I saw others keeping theirs off for the duration of the testing. There wasn't a specific protocol about that, and I figured they are probably just letting people do whatever since we have all averred that we are not currently symptomatic just to get into that room. 

I did, after a couple of attempts, manage to get it about halfway filled. And then I stood, with my eyes closed, and tried to think of appetizing food smells. Pizza, hot and fresh, with stretchy cheese and too much grease. French fries, golden and glistening, salt crystals catching the light like little diamonds, fresh out of the fryer, crinkle cut so they have a crispness to the outside and pure molten potato on the inside. Strawberry ice cream on a hot summer's day, looking so soft and gooey as it melts and begins to drip dribble down the cone to your hand... 

The meditation on food didn't really work for me, but I did eventually fill the collection tube sufficiently to pass muster. I had to tap it a lot to clear the bubbles, but I got that spit. 

I'm not really looking forward to the next one, but I'll be better prepared.

Maybe I'll wear some eau de bacon

The Hybrid Way

Back in March, we went remote from work pretty quickly, rather all at once. There were hesitations in the administration, but they did eventually cave to the push. Throughout the summer, I worked remotely because I had to. I wanted to be at the office, in large part because my living space is a studio apartment and my husband is home all day. 

In August, I got my wish. I was allowed to return since there was space enough for me to be socially distanced without impacting anyone who needed to be there for business purposes. While my work is more efficiently done in the office due to better internet and desk accommodations, it can be done remotely, business-wise. 

Another reason to be in office was so that I could use the Rec Center during the workday, but I quickly learned that when I went there, I'd come home with a cold. And it was probably in small part due to the fact that the showers were unable to provide hot water. Yeah, I'm not into cold showers post-workout. I balk at cool showers, heck, I balk at lukewarm showers. That wasn't cutting it. 

So, I requested and received permission to shift to a hybrid schedule that sees me in office 3 days a week and working from home 2. I'm liking the variety this schedule presents. And I really like being able to use my exercise release time from home, where I know the showers will be hot. Especially since that exercise is running outside in 30 degree weather... 

I find myself trying to imagine what it's going to be like after Covid. Will we actually all go back to the office? Will people shake hands again? Or will we never have an after Covid because not enough people take the vaccine? I could never have imagined a year ago that the changes that Covid has wrought would happen. So how can I possibly imagine what will happen in the future now? Before, I kind of expected that things would continue to be how they were, in general. Now, I'm not so sure. 

If you had told me a year ago that my entire department would go remote, I wouldn't have been able to guess why. This hybrid schedule is working well for me now. 

But who knows what the future will bring? 

State of the 2020 Solo Book

 I'm a bit late in writing up my solo trip this year. I've started later than this once before, and it just ends up delaying publication overall, because I use the winter break to write instead of to publish. I have started, and made some progress, but not nearly as much as I'd like. 

I know it's all about getting my butt in the chair and typing it out. And yet, somehow, I'm just not choosing that, again and again. I think part of it is that I'm pretty stressed at work. There is so much work to be done and more and more seems to pile up each day. I'm so far from being bored that I've forgotten what that feels like. 

I need to let that stress go. I need to just accept that things are going to be busy as all get out, and people are going to get impatient and think that they should be at the head of the line. I will make my assessment, do what I can in the time that I have, and go home and get my butt in the chair. 

If I can get in a good, full weekend of writing, I should be able to wrap this up before the end of the month, setting me up for a 2020 publication year if I keep the discipline of butt in chair up for the picture plates and publication tasks. 

The Little Victories - or - Not Today, Satan

The other night, I was lying down to sleep. I was all set. My night time routine had been completed, and I was ready to drift off. My mind slid through the trivia of the day and caught on an email that I'd reviewed just before the end of the work day. Caught and fastened on with a sudden, sharp spike of panic. 

See, I had read that email at the time, and sent a reassuring reply, but something was percolating through my mind. That something was the realization that if I didn't take care of a particular clean up task, I would be setting up our processing team for a WHOLE lot of work they shouldn't need to do. 

I'm not going to go into excruciating detail on what I had to do or why. That's not important. What's important is how I dealt with it. 

In the past, I might have leapt out of bed and headed to the computer to try to do damage control RIGHT NOW. Or I might have stayed in bed, but been unable to fall asleep, haunted by the error and afraid that I wouldn't remember to fix it in time when I woke up. 

Instead, I took a few minutes to embrace the panic. I asked myself how I could fix it. The first plan that came into my head was completely unworkable (editing a few hundred records one by one). The second plan would still leave some clean up to be done, but definitely reduce the immediate impact on the processors. 

So I reached over to my nightstand and pulled out the notebook a friend gave me. I flipped to the back, because I planned to tear the page out, and I wrote out my 4 step plan to fix the issue as best as I could. Then I tore the page out and went to the bathroom, where I folded it so it wrapped my Kindle. No way I'd miss that in the morning! 

Then, like a freaking miracle, I went back to bed and actually slept. 

I derailed the panic train before it could derail the sleeping train. After all, I like the sleeping train a lot better than the panic train - who doesn't? 

I had an opportunity to create a monster that would ruin my night's sleep and negatively affect me the rest of the next day. And I turned it down. Not this time, no thank you, been there, done that, threw away the t-shirt. 

I'm still not as good at falling asleep as my husband. But maybe I can learn. 

Going Back to Work

When I get back from my vacation, I'm going to be actually going into work for my work day for the first time since March. I'm both looking forward to it and a bit anxious. On the one hand, it will be nice to get out of the house again, and I like riding my bike to and from work. I might even do some running home from work as it gets cooler outside and it makes sense to run at 5 in the evening instead of 5 in the morning. On the other hand, I'll be going to work... 

My work place has definitely been proactive about precautions. I'll be issued a couple of masks, and there are expectations that they will be worn indoors when out of a private office area, and outdoors whenever distance cannot be maintained. But no one is perfect, and whenever you have an environment with large numbers of people moving through it, risks of viral exposure increases. 

And I've been asked to retain some of my work equipment at home so that I can easily flex back if I feel a bit ill, but not ill enough to call in sick. Or if the workplace gets shut down in any way. Which could happen pretty easily; it is a school that intends to open in the fall after all. 

Everything feels a little bit crazy. A little bit off. I work without going to work, and I hardly leave the apartment except for proscribed shopping trips and neighborhood runs. Will riding my bike to work each day help me feel more normal? Or will wearing a mask at work make things feel different? Not to mention no socializing at lunch, and the fact that most of my co-workers will be working remotely. And those of us who will be in the office are not supposed to get too close. 

My meetings will still be virtual, but I might be isolated enough in my office to forgo the headphones for some meetings at least. And my ears will be very happy to get a break from wearing them - especially with some of these marathon 4 hour meetings that I've been in to prepare to implement a new software system. Based on the density of people who will be in my office, I'm anticipating that I'll be able to do some singing, or at least listen to music without headphones as well. 

I quite enjoy singing while I work, and my poor husband has had to endure quite a bit of that over the last few months. It's not that I'm a bad singer, but he prefers to listen to non-vocal music. And soon, he'll be able to listen to what he wants all day while I'm at work and I'll be able to listen to whatever I want while I'm at work - except during meetings!

Work from Home Poetry

My director at work gave us a challenge - come up with a haiku that's related to the fact that we're having to work from home. I played to win with one referencing a meeting that she had been on when a squirrel kept coming into my apartment behind me during the meeting. She had enjoyed the show quite a bit, so I started with the squirrel in mind. 

The one I submitted to the competition was my second attempt. I wanted to make sure that I cleaved to the haiku standard of referencing the season in some way, as well as keeping the syllable count. 

squirrels at the door

grown bolder with summer's heat

I work at their home

My scheme only worked so far; had I known my director has a penchant for rhyming verse, I would have used that technique, nontraditional though it would be for haiku. I came in second place to a rhyming haiku that was also pretty funny. No squirrels though, minus points. 

I used to very much prefer having my poetry rhyme, but as I grew older I came to appreciate the lack of rhyme as well. Though I still like a structure and a pattern. Haiku is nice for that, because the structure is provided. And, quite frankly, in America the syllable scheme is pretty much the only thing we pay attention to with haiku. 

Maybe I'll write a few more of these; they might be a good focus while hiking. I like trying to condense my intentions into such small spaces. 

Website?

For a while now, I've thought about having an author website on my own domain instead of essentially using Blogger as a substitute for one. Blogger is not very professional, in my opinion, for a serious writer. Then again, I'm not exactly a serious writer. I'm more of a snarky writer, but that's no reason not be professional.

My husband, for reasons of his own, recently decided that the domain we'd been talking about buying was getting bought. So now we have our own domain and I just need to figure out the fiddly details of transitioning from a Blogger blog to a homegrown blog. Or to plug this one in. Or something, I'm sure it will come to me.

I used to have a website, when we were first dating actually, but I let it lapse and by now I've dumped just about everything I learned about building and maintaining a website down the memory hole. I'm relearning how to do the things that I want to do, as well as the things that my husband would like me to do.

So far, so good, but I am concerned about how much time I'll need to devote to it. Not as much once it's up and running, but implementation takes more time. And requires a lot more decision making and brainpower!

This blog will probably get redirected first, and then I'll do additional work to make it look all professional and non-Blogger-ish. And maybe I'll port it completely into Word Press, which I've used in the past.

I'm excited to be working on something new, but also a bit trepidatious about not only working on a website for my personal work, but also helping to implement a new system at work. Though, I'm not a lead on that project, I'm anticipating the entire thing being quite a time suck. And it will also suck at my limited brainpower.

But I'll get recharged on backpacking trips and find the time and space.

Emotional Rollercoaster

I think the earthquake was, in many ways, the last straw for me, emotionally speaking. Not only was I working from home in the midst of a pandemic, but the earth itself was shaking. Solid ground is supposed to be solid!

On Thursday, I started getting a headache, and I could feel that it was from tension being held in my body, especially neck and shoulders. I was trying to hold it together. To just keep working like things were normal. But they are not normal. No, not even "new" normal. I heard someone say "normal for now" recently and I like that concept. This is not how things are going to be - we don't know how things are going to be. But staying inside and working out via Zoom and working from home is the normal right now - the now normal.

And on Thursday, my normal was to have a crying fit. I went out looking for something and it wasn't there, because I was too late. And that upset me beyond all reason or rationality. I started crying while driving home and when I got home I pretty much strangled a pillow so I could cry into it and scream into it and just release all the pent up feelings that I've been trying to ignore since this whole situation got real.

It's weird to have this feeling of instability, but also not to feel that I, personally, am in immediate danger. Even during the earthquake, because it was so mild, I didn't feel endangered. But I don't know if my job will still be a job in a year. Probably it will, I have good odds on that, but I never expected I'd be working from home a year ago, so I can't really count on it. I know I'm lucky to have a job right now, and one that allows me to continue to work from home.

The headache hung around until Sunday. Saturday was especially bad; it seemed like nothing I did was having any effect on it. I spent the weekend trying to get myself to stop stressing out with mixed success. The headache did go away, but I can feel that my neck is tight. The kind of tight that really lends itself to headaches.

I am keeping up with exercise, which helps. Work is going well, even with the complications of holding all meetings virtually. And with internet getting wonky with all the people using it. I have a sneaking suspicion a lot of people in Boise are in virtual meetings on Monday mornings. . .

Working from Home

Yesterday marked one full week of working from home. It's been ... interesting. I live in a teeny tiny studio apartment with my husband, and, to his credit, he's been taking this very much in stride. Well, he was. Now he's come down with something and pretty miserable, though that does mean it's quieter for me while I'm working...

He had offered to leave the apartment while I'm in remote meetings, but yesterday he took naps instead. That also works. I haven't had trouble keeping busy, even though the regular work isn't very high volume right now. It's the perfect time to catch up on all those projects that we keep trying to put off to summer, and then, when summer arrives, it ends up turning out that we're actually pretty busy. But now, there's a good amount more time for those projects, so they're getting some time and attention.

I have managed to get my tower and monitors to fit in our spartan space. We have a big desk, but it was occupied by our topo maps, home computer and other assorted odds and ends. Once I moved all of that out of the way, there was room to setup a reasonable facsimile of my office space. I must say, I like the view here a bit better. A scoop of critter feed on the stoop really brings a lot of distractions.

First the ducks...

Then other birds and a squirrel...

And these two were on cleanup. 

I'm also eating pretty well at lunch, considering I have a full kitchen at my disposal. Ambrose might even be inclined to help out with lunch prep now and then when he's feeling better. It's much easier to get a quick shower after doing a workout during my regular exercise release time. The commute can't be beat.

Despite all those positives, I don't really like it. It's a symptom of a situation that will probably get scarier before it calms down. And it's weird to be in my home but at work. Hm, yeah, no, the first one is definitely the bigger problem of the two.

I'm glad that I'm able to temporarily transition to working from home. It is a handrail in this time of rapidly changing circumstances, as well as a way to support us. One day at a time, and I'll be back in the office before I know it.