A day back

On Wednesday, I went to my office far far away at work, on campus, for the first time in months and months and months.

 

I wore my face mask on public transit and in the buildings. 

I picked up a new spare keyboard, mouse, and webcam for my computer, since I took all those home last year and I'm still planning to use them at home. Lucky for me the department had extras.

I wiped ten months of dust off the surface of my desk. 

I emptied the bottom desk drawer of the cookies that had been kept there for women in maths teas that never happened. All the packages were long expired. 

I turned on the computer that had been off since March. It needed to reboot itself. 

While it rebooted, I walked over to the Faculty building and got access to the new office that comes with my new position. I ordered a computer for that desk. I wore my face mask.

I wandered to the library to meet the librarian who works with people like me in my new position. We sat around a huge table in a huge meeting room, just two of us, in our face masks, talking about libraries.

I then walked back to my department office to check on my rebooting computer. After ninety minutes, it said it was only 86% finished. And don't turn it off!

I packed up the expired cookies and walked back to the bus stop, wearing my face mask.

I almost fell asleep on the train -- the adventure had been that exhausting!

I walked home, carrying my backpack full of cookies.  

The end.

Epilogue:

The cookies taste stale. We are eating them anyway.

Maybe in a couple of weeks, I'll go back to campus again.