Exercising

Later today, the state government is supposed to announce what our path out of lockdown might look like. Five weeks ago, we went into a six-week, hard lockdown, with a curfew and limits on outdoor time and shopping distance. Our daily rate of cases of covid-19 has come down from nearly 1000 per day to under 100 per day, but on the other side of this curve we're on, it didn't take long for under 100 to become nearly 1000. So the lockdown is working, but doesn't seem to be working as fast as everyone would like. I feel bad for the state government. Whatever they say at today's press conference, there will be people very upset. Continue the lockdown a few more weeks? Nooo! Remove restrictions? Nooo! 

From a personal perspective, the only variable in our lives is the high schooler. He studies from school or from home depending on what the government tells him, and he makes it work either way. Tim and I are just home, full time, online. 

Anyway, to change the topic somewhat, for the last four years, I've participated in a step-counting wellness event at work every spring. That first year, they gave us all a step counter, and challenged us to achieve 10,000 steps daily. So for about four years, I've kept that little counter in my pocket, and I've been counting my daily steps. Even when the challenge isn't on I've done a pretty good job of keeping my daily count near 10,000 on average, aside from travel days and sick days and lazy days (mostly Sundays). 

When we went into stage-four hard-core lockdown five weeks ago, that changed. With only an hour of allocated outdoor time, I found that I could only cram in about 8000 steps, and that was if I power-walked for the whole hour. 

So when work sent the email about this year's step challenge, I jokingly forwarded it along to the folks on my team last year, commenting that we'd all have to take up Olympic race walking to meet the step challenge goal this year: 

To my surprise, they all wrote back and said, yeah -- we'd better sign up this year because we're not getting exercise otherwise. So my joke email turned into a commitment to take 10,000 steps per day. In lockdown. 

How is it done?

Most days, Tim and Jonathan and I take our one hour of outdoor time together. Since we can only be out in public with one other person, we switch walking partners. I walk for 20 minutes with Tim, then we meet at the back gate and switch, and Jonathan and Tim walk together while I'm on my own, and then we switch again 20 minutes later, and Jonathan and I finish up the walk for the last 20 minutes. Tim and Jonathan are not into running, but I tried running for my 20 minutes alone, and speed walk with them, I get 9000 steps. Not quite there.

So early last week, I actually tried the racewalking thing for a whole hour. It was a serious workout! My legs were sore! Not to mention my abs, from twisting the hips around like on that video. You start out by trying to keep the pace of your steps as fast as possible. You realise quickly that you can walk faster if you reach out with your hips for every step. And so super-speed walking naturally turns into that freakazoid walking on the video. 

Anyway, I did that for a whole hour. A whole hour! By the end, my legs were burning, I was breathing hard, and sweat was dripping from my body. 

And then I checked my step counter. It had recorded a measly 7000 steps. 7000! There was no way that workout was only 7000 steps! Not when I get 8000 from a fast walk. What was going on?

The step counter counts steps by counting bounces. Each step bounces the counter a bit and it ticks up. Guys, freakazoidal race-walking is too smooth! It doesn't bounce the step counter appropriately! So I didn't get ... maybe 1/4 or maybe 1/2 the credit? I have no idea! 

I counted it as 9000 steps. 

Season of wildflowers

 I was going to write and say "happy spring", because it is now September, which is spring in Australia by decree. Then Twitter reminded me that at least Perth, on the other side of the country, was not Europe and should not be trying to follow European seasons. 

So I looked up the actual seasons on this side of the country, as they were watched by the aboriginal people for thousands of years, and found that there are seven annual seasons that match the changes in the land and weather here, and two seasons (flood and fire) that happen less regularly. You can read all about it here: https://www.visitvictoria.com/Things-to-do/Aboriginal-Victoria/Aboriginal-seasons-of-Victoria

Anyway, happy Petyan, or season of wildflowers. The native wattle trees are all in bloom now. Of course, while our local park does have many native trees (figs and eucalyptus mostly), for some reason it does not have wattle trees. 

During our one hour allowed outdoor time, still in the midst of stage four lockdown, Jonathan and I walked to a neighbouring park, keeping an eye out for wattle trees. 

And we found one! Only one. 

The flowers on the wattle tree we found were white. Often they are golden yellow. I have pictures of other wattle trees from my time, long long ago last year, on campus:

 Or in the far distant two-years-ago past, in regional Victoria:

You can see that they are spectacular.

Happy season of wildflowers, world. 

In which I post pictures of bare naked trees

The first week of the semester has come and gone, and I think it went well, all things considered. I ran two lectures, online. I managed to switch between the meeting software, the online whiteboard, the polling software, the electronic textbook, and the classroom management software, in real time. Even if it wasn't always smooth. I managed to record the lectures. And then I managed to edit the recordings to cut out the dead space when the students were in breakout rooms. And then I managed to upload the edited videos to the online learning suite. Magic! I still feel an apple-sized lump of fear in my chest when I think about the fact that I have to repeat it all and teach again this week. On a new topic. But at least that lump isn't melon-sized anymore. With spikes on the outside.In other news, stage four lockdown in Melbourne, to me, looks a lot like stage three lockdown. Back in March, in our first lockdown, I shared lots of pictures of trees in autumn. Now I find myself taking lots of pictures of trees in winter.

In the photo above, the trees are conversing. See how they gesticulate? Elbows bent and fingers splayed? A whole row of gossiping old ladies.

In the photo below, the trees are dancing, arms raised to the sky, swaying with the music in the sunset.

Yeah. There isn't much for entertainment around here, besides trees.

If you look really closely, you can see buds on the trees. Winter only has three weeks left to do its worst, and then we'll be back into spring. Later sunsets. Warmer days. And maybe a retreat back to stage three or stage two. Which will look the same to me, I think. Except with the teenager in school in person again. And the option to tag along on the grocery run, rather than stay in the park and watch the trees. 

I can't wait. 

Stage four

... And just after yesterday's post, new news!

With another 671 new covid-19 cases announced today, the city of Melbourne has gone into strict stage four lockdown. This means:

* Curfew from 8pm to 5am.

    We had been finding the 8:30pm walk to be one of the best -- fewer people on the dark sidewalks, possums in the trees, the occasional tawny frogmouth. No more 8:30pm walk for us. We'll manage.

* You can only exercise and shop within a 5km radius of home.

    This doesn't affect us at all. Except for school for Jonathan, none of us have left a 5km radius since March, aside from one quick trip for me to liberate textbooks from my office. Even so, pulling out the map on the newspaper, I found that there are a lot of cool things within a 5km radius of home.

* All high school students across the state back to learning online.

    Yay! This one comes as a relief to me. One more day of school in-person for Jonathan, and then he'll back to his living-room office for six weeks. I know it's more fun with friends, but at least he won't have to wear a mask all day, or take the train, or risk school closures. 80 schools were closed last week because of virus, including the high school where he did the French program two years ago.

* Exercising in groups of no more than two.

    Families with young children are exceptions, but we don't count. We'll have to take turns going out in pairs. Or solo.

* Exercising outside for no more than an hour per day. 

    Sometimes we have been taking two or three long walks each day, for more than an hour total. I guess we'll have to pay more attention to timing.

* One person making one shopping trip at most once per day.

    This was basically us, until last Saturday when Jonathan wanted to check out the vegan food with Tim. Now it will be us again.

Tomorrow, they will announce more restrictions on businesses that can be open, part open, or must close. I'll probably be teaching online during the announcement. Tim may have his own online meetings. I won't be shut in this round, since I'm already fully online. But watch the economy for future closures. My industry (higher education) is being hit hard.

Maybe I will end with a photo of one of the parks less than 5km from home, taken this afternoon.

We live in a good place for a lockdown.

Little changes

Before we begin, a few spectacular photos from our travel during the last couple of weeks.

Camellias from the garden outside our building.

Fog in the park outside our back gate.

I would have been in Sydney this past week at a conference, had the year been normal. Instead, all my travel photos are taken within a ten minute walk of home.

The state of Victoria has had a spike in covid-19 cases. We shut down again three weeks ago, but the numbers of positive tests keep going up and up and up, reaching record highs every few days. This is most concerning to me because Jonathan is back in school. Only the students in years 11 and 12 are in school in the state, all the others are online. But because there are exams at the end of high school, and the state doesn't want to figure out how to run different exams for different students under different levels of quarantine, they sent the oldest students back.

I am worried. High school is a place to spread viruses -- we all came down with a bad cold in February that had been spreading around Jonathan's high school. If they keep sending the teenagers back, it seems inevitable that we will all get covid. Maybe we will be lucky and not hit hard. But the disease seems so random we cannot know.

The decision is out of my hands, though. By law, Jonathan goes to school each morning, wears a mask all day, comes home.

Masks are obligatory outside of home now. We're all getting used to wearing them as we walk around the park out the back gate.

Possibly as a way of taking control of some aspect of a life spinning into chaos, Jonathan has decided to upgrade his vegetarianism to veganism. Basically that means he has decided to cut out dairy. He doesn't like milk anyway, and doesn't drink it, but he has had to give up cheese. I am not switching to veganism. I am eating all of the cheese that we bought for Jonathan before he decided on the upgrade.

I'm happy to support a new diet as long as Jonathan is taking control of it, thinking about nutrients and balance, and doing his share of cooking as it becomes more challenging. So far so good. Today Jonathan joined Tim at the grocery store to explore the vegan aisle to see what options were available. He came home loaded with non-dairy cheese, cashew-milk yogurt, falafel, tofu. Tonight Jonathan made green curry with tofu and veggies, and it was tasty. Tomorrow Tim will try a variation on pizza with non-dairy cheese for Jonathan. Many of our vegetarian soups and chilies were already vegan. We'll have to give up the pasta bake, lasagna, unless we make an alternative meal. But I guess we'll see whether this will work or not.

The final small change in our lives is that the new semester starts Monday, and this time around I am teaching. It will be my first teaching of the year. A new class. Online. Taught from my bedroom, where I can look out one window to the garden and the camellias, and then look out the other window to the park. And then look at all the faces on the screen. This is how we teach, now, here. And this is how we learn.

Unless we are in high school, year 11 and 12.

Board games

Tim said, "The three of us are stuck here together in lockdown, and we have all these really great board games. Why aren't we playing more board games?"

I said, "Because that doesn't sound like a fun way to spend our lockdown time?"

Tim said, "But why don't we try it? Let's play a board game."

I said, "Ok fine. We'll play one of your board games. In fact, we can play all of your board games. One per night until there is a widely distributed vaccine for covid-19. And we still won't get through all of them!"

...

Jonathan said, "Why does it take 45 minutes just to get through the rules? I am not doing this every night for the next 57,324,532 nights until we get through all your board games."

Jonathan said, "Why did you put that there? Are you a moron?"

I said, "No, he is a jerk."

Tim said, "Why are you two so loud?"

Jonathan said, "Why are you so grumpy?"

Tim said, "No talking when it's not your turn."

I said, "But I can sing! La la la la la!"

Jonathan said, "Is this game still going?"

I said, "Do you remember why we don't play board games? We have to go on living with each other in lockdown after this game is over."

Two and a half hours later, we finished playing the game Puerto Rico for the first time in eight years. (Tim has a little paper in each game -- he keeps track.)

As he left the living room, Tim's face was lit up with a perfect little happy smile.

Jonathan and I rolled our eyes at each other.

One done, 57,324,531 games to go.

The fabulous staycation

We postponed our January trip to the coast because of bushfires. Tim's March vacation was cancelled very last minute due to pandemic. The family July trip to the US was cancelled not long after, for the same reason. Since we're at home now 24/7, we can work 24/7 forever and ever and ever. Right?

Not right.

I was going insane. Just because I can work, doesn't mean I can work, if you know what I mean. Stress, headaches, zoom aches. Jonathan's school holidays arrived, and it was time to turn everything off and do something completely different.

We couldn't leave the country, and didn't really want to travel in a pandemic anyway, but how to signal to my body that we were doing something new and different? I switched beds. I decided to take the guest bed for a few days. Tim groaned a bit, so I assumed he'd be staying in our bedroom, but nope. He decided to join me. So then Jonathan looked around and decided that if no one was in the master bedroom, he'd change the sheets and stay there. So voila! New sleeping arrangements!

What do you do on a normal vacation? Lots of walking and sightseeing. I decided on a couple of very long urban walks, departing from our front doorstep, and taking the entire day. We would go hiking for our staycation! Far away from the wifi at home!

Only my first day off, it was pouring rain.  Buckets and buckets of rain. What do you do during a regular vacation when the weather is bad? Thinking back to winter vacations from my past, I decided upon puzzles and movies and books and hot chocolate!

Here is our puzzle from day 1:

And then on day 2 it was still pouring rain, so I did another one!

I realised after the fact that I had been working on the puzzle over Independence Day in the US, which in retrospect was a perfect day for the Washington DC puzzle.

Day 3: The rain was not as heavy, so I convinced the family to walk with me through the botanic gardens up to the river.

And then along the river. There are bike/pedestrian trails running for miles and miles along the river, and forking off into various suburbs. I have taken this trail when I have commuted by bicycle to Monash. Tim and Jonathan had never been on it. It's a fun trail. Where the highway crowds the river, they have floated the bike path out on the river itself.

Or dangled it between the freeway and the creek.

But after only an hour or so Tim and Jonathan began complaining. How long were we really going to walk? And soon after, we took the tram home.

Day four of the staycation: We walked to the park to the east, across two busy streets, and then around the small lake there. The views are really great.

Day five it was raining again. We had made a puzzle swap with neighbours. They took the cereal boxes and Washington DC puzzle. We picked up their map of Melbourne. This puzzle was a little more evil.

But I finished it anyway.

The other big news from day five, which probably deserves its own blog post but likely won't get one, is that we finally had our online citizenship ceremony. We were all sworn in as Australian citizens. Hence completing the Melbourne puzzle that day was apropos.

Day six: The sun came out!

We walked to the north, past the Shrine, closed and empty.

To the flower clock, where I took two photos without having to wait for any tourists to get out of my way.

We then wrapped around the tan track, and headed home by way of South Yarra, where the Victorian houses looked stunning in the sunlight.

These are pricey houses, very rarely for sale. The one across the street, similar in shape and age, had a sign up "accepting expressions of interest." I was interested. Tim looked it up when we got home. They want seven million dollars. I'm not that interested.

And one last photo from that walk: elm trees in the setting sunlight.

Day seven. A full week of staycation. Due to spreading of coronavirus, Melbourne went back onto full lockdown. Only four reasons to leave home: for health, e.g. to be tested for the virus, to shop for essential groceries, to exercise, and to work for essential workers. But I am inessential. And on staycation. For exercise, we walked up to Southbank. 

The National Gallery of Victoria was closed.

The Eureka tower was closed, shown on the right below. Anyway, it looks like it won't be the tallest building in Melbourne for long, if it hasn't already been overtaken by the building under construction on the left.

On Southbank there were no buskers. No tourists. Not many walkers. Almost no bikers. It was really eerie. The last time we were here, we were elbow to elbow with people.

But the views were still good.

Home again via the tan track.

By the time I've finished this post you'll have narrowed down my address. I guess you can come visit, then. Only not for at least six weeks, because we are locked down again until then.

Day eight: I took no photos on day eight. I had a massive migraine. I spent much of the day lying on the guest bed, because Jonathan had moved into my room and my own bed. It is never fair to have migraines on vacation -- staycation. I think I should get that day back to do over again.

Day nine. Rain again. We did our second puzzle from the neighbour puzzle exchange. And when I say "we" I mean Tim and Jonathan helped me spread it out the night before, but then abandoned it early. When I woke up before them the next day, I went into the living room and spent two hours finishing it before anyone else got up.

Day 10. We cleaned. Swapped sheets. Moved back into my own bedroom. Packed lunch. Off to bed early. Although we are in lockdown again, high school students in grades 11 and 12 went back to school as usual -- because the state hasn't figured out how it could do two different end of year requirements for high schools based on whether they were locked down or not.

So this morning, staycation over, we walked Jonathan to the train station so he could go off to school. And then I came home to seven hundred billion emails from a week away from work.

But thanks to a week away, I was ready for it.