Time snapshot

Happy April. 

This morning, we finally had a time change, last of the world, I think. I know this because I have meetings with people in the US and Europe. The US changes first, and has to meet an hour later. The UK changes next, and I shift to meet an hour earlier. Then I change. That puts our group meeting two hours off of our previous meeting time. What was a 7:30am meeting time for me would become 5:30am. No way am I meeting at 5:30 in the morning. So we change the meetings to the opposite ends of the day. I go from early morning meetings to late evening meetings. From now until October, I'll meet my colleagues after 8:30pm. That's ok. It will be dark now by 6:30pm. And getting darker earlier until June. 

In the pandemic realm, our state has gone more than a month with no virus cases. We are pretty much fully back to normal, just face masks on public transit, and more flexible work arrangements. We aren't getting vaccinated very fast in this country, which means we'll be susceptible to outbreaks for a long time, and short lockdowns and state border closures. But meanwhile, we appreciate every day free of pandemic. We walked to the beach on the bay yesterday, and it was bustling.

So life carries on. 

Day by day, I know what is happening. I still can't plan things out too far in advance, though. Back in December, when we had first eliminated the virus, we thought Australia would be in a safe travel bubble and we'd be able to move around the country easily. I applied for and received funding to collaborate with a colleague in Sydney in May. Then right around Christmas time there was a virus outbreak, and snap lockdowns and state border closures to contain it. People who had traveled from Melbourne to Sydney for the holidays were given only a few hours to rush home, or be stuck indefinitely and subject to two-week quarantine when they were eventually allowed back. 

Since then, my university has been very wary of interstate travel. My visit to Sydney, scheduled for May, wouldn't be approved today, in early April. I don't know how much will have changed in four weeks. So maybe I won't travel. 

In non-pandemic news, I gave a virtual public lecture on Thursday. This was an incredible amount of work, curating pictures and stories and building slides appropriate to share with a public audience. Forty-five minutes long! (Too long.) It came together, and it worked out well, I think, but the public lecture filled most of my free time for multiple weeks. I am still tired. Maybe I can catch up on some other things, finally. Now that it is April. 

Justice

I think that life sucks. 

No really. I think that life really really sucks. And sucks is a word that personally offends my mother, more so than nearly any other word that escaped my lips as a child, so I do not use it lightly. 

(In retrospect, I should have played with harder words in my childhood. So many lost opportunities.)

Life sucks.

When a person is religious, a person can put that on God. Life sucks, but God is Good. There will be justice for the wicked, when God hears the blood of the slain crying out from the dust. And then one can walk away from the suckage, and put one's head back into the sand of one's existence, and manage to continue living through the horror that is humanity.

When a person is not religious, the blood of the slain cries out continually from the earth, and God does nothing. And the suckage, the pure unadulterated injustice of it all, can get overwhelming. 

And yet, looking around, I find that we are all stuck on this rock, spiraling around an inconsequential star, in a rather ordinary galaxy, somewhere not in the middle, not on the edge, but just towards the unimportant back left side of the vastness of a universe. And though we pour all our wickedness into the task of keeping the spark of life going on, in the end the effect is the same. The star will fade, the galaxy swirl into oblivion, and we are dust.

And therein is justice.

Screen time

It's been a year, guys. 

It's been a year since Tim canceled his trip to Vegas two days in advance. Almost a year since Victoria told the school kids to take an early holiday, and a late one, and then we'd figure out what to do next with this pandemic. Almost a year since the day I started working from home.

More than a year since I missed my trip to Germany. Much more than a year since we've visited family. 

Probably at least another year to go before international travel reaches us again.

***

Sometimes, a pandemic strikes and everyone is locked up inside and realizes that there is so much to do with screens and on screens. There is TV and social media and movies and video games and skype and zoom and blogs and news and online board games. 

And sometimes, a whole year of screens goes by and the headaches come and go, swimming in, swimming out, and you look around your world and decide a year is long enough for all those screens. 

Take more long walks, even though they are along the same paths over and over and over again.

Color. 

Cook. 

Play an instrument. 

Go outside. Sit on the bench in the park and watch the dogs run back and forth and back and forth. Birds. Soccer players. 

***

I live in a great place. My walks, along the same paths over and over and over again, are nice walks. This is home. I am home. Here is home, even though it is far away from extended family. 

We are doing ok. We are open. I am back to work, whenever I want to go, and home when I want to stay. There are restaurants and theaters and public transit and events, and they are all safe.

It hasn't been the year we thought it would be, but here, this year, there is much more hope in the world than here, last year. 

News from February

February is over. 

It was our last month of summer. It was a cold summer, though -- the coldest summer in ten years. The temperature hovered around 20 degrees Celsius most days, which is not quite warm enough for shorts and sandals and beach days. In the past, we've had at least a couple of days over 40 Celsius in the summer, but not this year. Even so, it was still a hotter than average summer, where the average is measured over all the years of record keeping. That makes me feel sorry for all those people who lived through much colder Melbourne summers way back in history. No beach days and keep your coat on all summer long. Oh well. No one has bothered to do anything about the climate, so at least next year should be back to record-breaking hot.

Besides the cold, a few other things happened in February.

 

Jonathan was back in school full time all month. Except just at Valentine's day. We had an outbreak of the super-contagious form of Covid-19 escape hotel quarantine, and so the state government snap locked-down the city without any advance notice for five days. The five days spanned the weekend, then Jonathan spent three days doing school from home. I was part-way through a five day online leadership training course anyway, so I was already locked down, tethered to my computer by my headset for the time period in question. I just got the whole city to join me. And Tim has spent the last 18 years essentially locked down, working from home, so he didn't even notice that anything had changed. Except there were more dishes in the sink, what with having Jonathan around for those three days.

In fact, in addition to messing up plans for Valentine's day, the five day snap-down also messed up year-12 camp plans. Jonathan had been scheduled to spend three days with his classmates at camp, running Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. With the lockdown through Wednesday, the camp got shortened. When the lockdown ended as expected Wednesday night, Jonathan was able to head off to camp Thursday morning for one night away. I dropped him off, and worked in my office on campus for the day. Then I went back Friday to pick him up.

Q: "How was camp, Jonathan?"

A: "It was fine, but I'm glad it was only two days and not three."

Since the snap lockdown, we have been virus free again. Jonathan has gone to school as normal. I have been taking the train with him at least once per week, and working from campus. It is different. Sunny. With campus people. We begin to think that life might be normal again, again. Whatever normal means.

February was also the month of the Great Australian Facebook Fiasco. Midway through the month, Facebook turned off all news coming in and out of Australia. Just on Facebook, and just Australia. It was good motivation to turn off social media for me. I have found, especially in the last four years, that Facebook is where you go to find out that your friends are total morons and you hate them. It is an angry place. I have decided that from now on, instead of going to Facebook, I will go to the park.

 

Last first day of school -- probably

The school year started on Friday. Assuming we don't stop, go online, and start again (as we did twice last year), this will be his last first-day-of-school photo.

Year 12

In a day of record-breaking rain.

I took the train with him to campus, and worked from my office while the rain pounded outside. Aside from the rain, campus was very quiet. And in terms of my workday, it just meant I held Zoom meetings from a new location. But with access to a printer! 

Jonathan was willing to stay a little late and come home with me when I had finished work, so I got to hear about the last first day on the train. 

Just for fun, some other first-days:

Year 11

Year 10

Year 9

Year 8

Year 7 -- Melbourne

Year 7 -- New Jersey

Year 6 -- Utah

The first time we came to Melbourne, since we weren't going to be in Australia long, we just put Jonathan into a class with others his age, rather than trying to match his grade level.

Year 4 -- Melbourne

And then we have the years in which no one took first-day-of-school photos. But these photos were taken near the first day of school.

Near Year 5

Near Year 4

Near Year 3

Year 2

Year 1

That's a lot of years of school. 

 

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.

Eating like a vegan

We buy onions in bulk these days. 

And bell peppers. Only they call them capsicums here in Australia. I don't know why. They don't call them capsicums in England, or in the US. They call them bell peppers. On the other hand, in England, it is called a courgette, while here in Australia and in the US it is called a zucchini. 

Anyhow, onions and bell peppers. We used to buy one every so often and keep it in the corner in the back of the refrigerator in case there was a recipe that used it. It would be there hiding in the back, hopefully without too much freezer burn for having lived in that back corner for weeks. 

Now we go through an onion or two per day. Per day! What kind of crazies have we become?

 

Onion-eating crazies. That's the kind. The crazies who have to make our own sauces rather than buy a pre-made jar. Those pre-made jars? They have non-vegan ingredients hiding in them like cream or fish sauce.

I'm not vegan. Tim isn't vegan. But with a vegan in the house, it's easier just to make meals that all of us can eat, rather than cooking multiple times. So make your own sauces. 

We've also bought spices we never bought before. Ingredients we never knew existed. I wouldn't say I'm finally learning to cook. Rather, I'm following recipes I've never followed before. With onions. Lots and lots of onions. 

I'm just glad we're not dealing with the vegan on top of food allergies.