There's been quite a bit of discourse within my media sphere about when it will be safe to return to work - or in the parlance of the Right: restart the economy. I get it, there are pressures from all over to get back to the old normal. I can't imagine there's much of anyone that likes the new normal. (Mrs. TANBI says Pizza Hut is having a great new normal, so maybe it isn't everyone.) The President and most Red State Governors want to get things going again as soon as possible.
For more than a week now there have been people protesting at state capitals demanding to be let back to their old lifestyle. More than anything else it seems like people are demanding to be able to get a haircut. One assumes that while this is a practical matter that it is also somewhat tongue in cheek. The central theme with this group seems to be about small businesses at risk of going under. Maybe not so much about getting a haircut as about giving haircuts. There's also a fair number of people who are convinced that this group is actually secretly motivated by owners of large businesses that are upset about their ability to continue to make money off of low wage earners: not so much about getting a haircut or giving a haircut, but rather about opening your chain of salons. Probably something to that too.
There's also the more than likely possibility that most of these people are being motivated by stories in their news feed that are being propagated by troll accounts just looking to sow discord. More than four years later we're still not good at evaluating our information sources and the companies that provide that information aren't much better at it either.
Somehow this gets conflated with many other causes. There are gun owners afraid their rights are being trampled by the closing of gun stores or ranges. There are anti-vaxxers trying to show us how right they have always been. There are home schoolers upset that people are calling distance learning home schooling (some teachers too, although not at the protests).
Today I heard that the push to get open again is coming from Right Wing legislators who want to get people off of public assistance. If your job is shut down you can go on unemployment, but if your job is there but you are afraid to go in then you are essentially quitting and not eligible for unemployment. Similarly if you own a business and the government shuts you down that may make you able to collect on some insurance you may be carrying, but if it isn't the government but rather your own good judgement that has you closed then you can't make that collection.
The metrics around opening things up are tied up in a vaccine, although that is far off, or in testing, contact tracing, and social distancing modifications. From what I hear we're not nearly close enough to the capacity we need to be able to come back to normal measuring by those metrics. From where I sit I think there might be some other things that should be considered. Maybe we ought not restore things to normal until you can walk into a Rite-Aid and buy some hand sanitizer. Maybe we ought to hold on to our enthusiasm until you can walk into a Home Depot and buy a box of N95 masks. Perhaps we ought to stay home until you can walk into a Target and buy a can of Lysol or a (is it a jar?) of Clorox Wipes.
(I recognize there is likely a Catch 22 in this suggestion in that we may never get a reasonable quantity of those items before we send people back to work. Navigating that is likely a significant challenge of these times.)
Clearly we're not ready by any of those standards. But we're opening up in PA, at least a little bit, next week. Guess we'll see if that works out or not.
Wednesday, April 29, 2020
When to go Back
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Sunday, April 26, 2020
Worth a Look
Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...
Earth Day at 50: Looking Back at Hollywood’s Early Green Scene
Variety: Variety didn’t pay much attention to the first Earth Day in 1970 but by its 20th anniversary, mentions were far more prevalent, reflecting Hollywood’s growing commitment to environmental issues.
Sustainability and other green topics have become an even greater issue for the entertainment industry in subsequent decades, and planning for a number of star-studded 50th anniversary Earth Day celebrations was well underway when the coronavirus pandemic shut down large gatherings in the U.S. and beyond. Festivities have been cancelled or moved online.
The Power of Proximity and the Theatre of Touch: What Losing Live Audiences May Mean for Theatre
The Theatre Times: Being close to others is intrinsically associated with theatre.
In Shakespeare’s London, theatre gatherings were condemned by the Puritans as evil. They thought the plague spread by theatre crowds was God’s punishment on the wicked for indulging in pastimes such as acting.
The shutting down of Broadway and the West End gives an eerie historical parallel to a world we thought was well in the past. Meanwhile, COVID-19 poses an existential threat to Australia’s fragile performing arts sector.
Productivity Is Not Working
WIRED: Some questions are infinitely more interesting than their answers. One such question started to echo around the internet in the early days of the Covid-19 lockdowns and has become increasingly frantic in the febrile weeks that have followed. The question was this: How shall we stay productive when the world is going to hell?
Behind the Scenes Launches Entertainment Industry Therapist Finder
Lighting&Sound America Online - News: The Behind the Scenes Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Initiative, in partnership with HelpPRO, announces the launch of the Entertainment Industry Therapist Finder btshelp.org/findatherapist. The Finder only includes listings for mental health professionals who have previously worked with clients in the entertainment industry or who have personal professional experience in the industry themselves.
How COVID-19 brought down Cirque du Soleil
www.fastcompany.com: The slow-motion shutdown of Cirque du Soleil should have been an early warning of the disaster to come. The novel coronavirus was still considered a local problem in late January, when the world’s largest circus producer canceled performances of The Land of Fantasy, its first and only permanent offering in China. Within two months, the virus had spread to every corner of the world.
Saturday, April 25, 2020
Things That Go Bump In the Night
Have you noticed how much quieter it is at night lately? I guess it is mostly about traffic, and it is possible that a bunch of the apartments around us are empty. One of the results of the new normal is that it does seem to be a whole lot quieter at night. During the day there are still buses and cars and lawn mowers and leaf blowers. I am sure there's less of all of that but it is enough that the burble of city life still sounds like the burble of city life. At night though it is definitely, noticeably quieter.
It is possible that I am hearing things differently than other people. I've for quite some time been what I am learning to call "hyper vigilant" to sounds around me. I remember long ago commenting to other people about the songs that played on the Muzac in the background at work only to get the response "wait, there's music playing?"
Generally this kind of elevated awareness is not a good thing. There's a level of anxiety, or at least of irritation that's there pretty much all the time. Has that sound always been there? What is that beeping? Did you hear something?
In the last year I have been served well by this thing at least twice. I picked up on a clang my car was making that turned out to be a result of the rear spring breaking loose from the axle. If I hadn't heard it eventually the rear wheels would have fallen off the car while it was moving. That would have been no fun. Recently I was folding laundry in the guest room when I heard what I thought was water dripping. It turned out our brand spanking new shower had a leak in it we hadn't previously noticed and at that moment gallon after gallon of water was flowing through the gap. If I hadn't heard that we would have lost the dining room ceiling and potentially part of the also brand spanking new basement renovation. That also would have been no fun.
So there is an upside. It is also worth noting I guess that this sort of observation is a significant part of my job as a technical director. Often you hear a problem before you will see one. Finding problems early keeps small problems from becoming big problems. "Should that sound like that?" is an important tool in my TD and TD teacher toolbox.
But there is also a tremendous downside. Knocking and creaking keep me awake. Any little sound in the car makes me wonder what is wrong with the car. But mostly it is about pretty much always being on the balls of my feet mentally. Always waiting for the next indicator and wondering where it will go from there. Somehow it would be nice to be aware but not concerned. The two seem to go together for me. Truth be told it isn't so much limited to hearing, but that's probably another post for another day.
Owning a home brings you a symphony of hard to decipher sounds. There's the house settling. There's plumbing and HVAC sounds. Right now there are sounds of guests living in the house that aren't normally there. There are alerts from appliances (all of which for some reason have to have sounds that are the same or very close to others such that one can't tell specifically what it is just by listening). There's the BOSS level sound: dead smoke detector battery - simple in an apartment with one smoke detector, a totally different experience in a house with multiple units on multiple floors. Also, the pattern of beeps on a smoke detector matters. For a while one of ours was making three short beeps. Replacing the battery didn't help. Did you know that CO/Smoke detectors expire?
Don't get me wrong, I like having a house and I recognize the house did not have a sound designer. But if it had, that designer did not factor my quality of life into their decisions.
Friday, April 24, 2020
DP Weekly Wrap Up
Thursday, April 23, 2020
My List is Also Out of Control
I could make a list of things that are out of control. I already wrote a screed to the disaster that is my inbox. This is about the superfund site that is my work to do list. I guess part of the problem here is that in blatant disregard for Inbox Zero orthodoxy my inbox and my to do list are directly related. In fact, part of the problem with my inbox is that I used to (well I still do) have a folder slugged "to do" (it is just currently empty) and also a folder called "follow up" (which is also empty). The "follow up" folder has a subfolder called "addresses" (not empty) which are full of emails with peoples' updated email or physical addresses that at some time or another I meant to transfer into my address book or contacts.
Hey wait, there's another thing that is out of control: my contacts.
I just had the thought though that if I stepped through the contents of the "addresses" folder on my iPhone it might automatically detect new information and prompt me to put it in a contact. That might be a worthwhile exercise. Although some of the emails in there are pretty old. I guess I risk "updating" someone's contact with archaic information. Who says technology doesn't make life simpler?
There is a week and a day left in the semester. My to do list is always out of control at this point, and in some ways it is pretty normally in a position to get worse in short order. That is true this year too. It stems from the accumulation of assignments that need grading and the fact that there are assignments coming in until the last day of class (and often after the last day if I allow it). This semester there's no Semester Reviews, so I guess there's really no reason not to have my traditional "Final, Final Deadline" much, much closer to the day grades are actually due. Usually I forgo that deadline for one earlier prior to the start of reviews. No reviews, no deadline? Makes sense.
I have four classes this semester: Production Planning, Scenic Fabrication and Installation, Entertainment Rigging, and Studiocraft CAD. The first and the last there are the largest grading stacks because they are big classes, more than 20 people. ScenoFab has like 15 and Rigging has less than 10. Between all those classes I have like 10-12 assignments to grade, each with an instance (I hope) for each student in the class - well, some are partner assignments so that cuts down the submissions. There's also at least three assignments still to come in, and even though I cancelled the final exam in ScenoFab and there is no final in Production Planning there are finals to grade for CAD and for Rigging (oh, and I have to write the final for Rigging too).
Also I have one thesis to read. And one student who seems fairly motivated to move a future thesis project along before we're done.
Normally that would be sitting under a que of work to do for Production and a slew of operations meetings. Those things are less but not non-existent this year. Most of what I did today was Production related, with a little operations work thrown in.
And of course usually I could do this in a frame where Gib5on was in school and Sabian was in daycare. Not so much under the new normal. Finding time was hard before. Now it is even more complicated.
Still, time is running out. Just like my students are trying to find another gear in order to get all their work finished I am going to have to find another gear in order to complete mine. I am right out of room to move the goalposts. All that is left to do is to finish or not, and not really isn't an option in this scenario.
So I should stop typing here.
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
Ellipses...
I cancelled the ScenoFab final again. We're going to do a game show instead... The mayor of Las Vegas should be immediately recalled... It isn't fair when the weather drops into the low 30s after making it to 70... Gib5on has an email address. They grow up so fast... Our house guests are leaving in a couple of days, we were just getting into a rhythm... People are starting to talk about online options for the fall. I guess that's better than nothing for the fall... After all this time still really liking having the ability to stream WRXT on the Echo... I am doing all this typing but I bet there aren't too many folks reading... Meetings these days have a tendency to morph into group therapy. I am not sure that's the best use of everyone's time... I can't help wonder where all this money Congress is appropriating is coming from. It is strange to me that isn't being discussed... Either the battery or the charger for my camcorder has bought the farm. I have to come up with some way to figure out which... We're watching "Shop Class" on Disney+ but it looks like all that's there is the first round. That sucks a little... Sabian can walk with the walker, but she doesn't crawl. I think it is likely she will walk before she crawls. Ruins an aphorism I've heard my whole life... I09 recommended episodes of DS9 today. In the later seasons they could have written less if they told you which episodes to skip (it is a good show)... Netflix apparently has a hit with their Spenser movie even though both critics and audiences thought it was bad. Not sure how that works... We threw it in for crits this semester. I'm trying to think of something cool to do with the TDs in its place... The Micheal Jordan docuseries on ESPN is pretty cool. All the articles it is precipitating are a nice bonus... All my apps have been trying to remind me of carnival over the last several days. Kind of bittersweet under the circumstances... Lunch of Thursdays is a bummer. Monday too...
Tuesday, April 21, 2020
Consequences
When you have kids they do things you don't want them to do. They also often do things you specifically tell them not to do. Eventually they will discover that even though they have done something they've been told not to do that they do not have to tell you about it. Not long after that they will discover that even if you ask specifically about the thing they weren't supposed to do they can tell you something else and there are pretty good odds you won't check.
Gib5on has arrived at the end of that paragraph.
Although the odds of getting away clean are pretty good they are not a mortal lock and you will eventually catch the kid in a lie. Last night, when inquiring what he was up to upstairs he responded - maybe too hesitantly - that he was playing with toys in his room. Not too long after Mrs. TANBI busted him watching a movie with his cousin and his uncle. The uncle did try to mitigate things by saying he enabled the bad behavior, but like with many transgressions: the offense was forgivable but the coverup was not.
And so Gib5on needed a consequence.
Coming up with consequences as a parent is rough ground. You definitely need to stay in the world of proportional response - and clocking them in the side of the head is right out (although I really do understand what my parents were feeling even if I can't imagine following through). It has to be something they will feel, but it can't be something that makes our lives too difficult.
We lean pretty heavy on time outs. "Go sit on the stairs." When he was younger his time outs were one minute for each year. Now sitting there for that long doesn't have much teeth and sitting there long enough to make an impact, say maybe 15 minutes, would be a real disruption in our day. The utility of the time out is waning.
We've tried taking away toys. He's got a lot of toys. We'd have to take away a lot of toys to make an impact. Sometimes if he is particularly enamored with one thing or another you might find a vulnerable spot for a while, but it doesn't last long. For a while I would threaten to give away a toy to another kid at school who was a toddler nemesis, but I don't think he ever really believed me.
No dessert has a certain amount of effectiveness. But it is fairly discreet in its impact. The idea of losing dessert is horrifying to him, but pretty much just at the moment he is being told it is going to happen and then at the moment after he asks for dessert. Sometimes this results in a tantrum so energetic that we have to start looking for another consequence.
I miss the days when "give a squeeze and count to four" from Daniel Tiger still had some legs.
The nuclear option here is: NO SCREENS. It really is a nuclear option though in that it contaminates the entire countryside. In other words it also makes us miserable. We rely on that screen time for a moment of respite in the day and when we punish him we are making more work for ourselves. Plus also it has some fringe the litigator in him can pull on. Screens are the center of his distance learning right now, and his karate class, and talking to his grandparents. "I can't do that, it is a screen" is only days away in our discourse I am sure - at which point I will be back to considering how wrong my folks had it after all.
This week we discovered a much better vector: 24 hours without Pokemon. He's all up into Pokemon right now. He plays with the cards and engages us in Pokemon card battles (he cheats too - another post for another day), he plays computer Pokemon card games, he has Pokemon toys he plays with, and he watches Pokemon cartoons. It hits behavior, toys, screens; it is a veritable hydra of consequences. I even disallowed his Pokemon pajamas.
The penalty phase just ended. He's off to bed in his prized Pikachu PJs. At least for the first part of the day he definitely missed the content. I think it is possible he might have experienced some behavior modification. But even if he didn't, we got a 24 hour Pokemon vacation. In this case that's enough all by itself.
Monday, April 20, 2020
Shelter in Place Update
We started another week of social distancing today. I've lost track of how long it has been. I want to say five weeks. Looking at the calendar it actually is only three - really two since the order I think. The week before was spring break. Gib5on had two days of Corona-related school cancellations prior to that. I'm looking right at a calendar, so I guess that's the true duration, but it really feels like it has been longer.
This weekend my brother-in-law and his family moved in with us. They were in a high risk area and got the hell out of Dodge three weeks ago. For the first two weeks they did a self quarantine in an AirBNB across town. Then they got a deep discount to stay there so they hung out for another week before coming to us. At the end of that week the landlord tried to get them to stay again but they declined. I guess it is a rough month for AirBNB owners. So we went from two adults and two kids to four adults and three kids. It has only been two days, but so far it seems to be going well (at least from my perspective). It is nice to have more people to talk to face to face and even though the kids are spaced age-wise in a way that isn't conducive for playing together it feels like they all get some satisfaction from having other kids around (two of them are too young to actually express that feeling, so there's a lot of assumption there). Each day has felt like it has gotten smoother. Finding a way for each of us to get on a conference is a challenge - we're all still working full time. I think we'll figure it out soon. They are currently only planning to stay for one week and then go on to my in-laws in Indiana for maybe another month. It will be a shame to see them go. We'll see if that impression sticks. The reasoning behind going is that Gib5on's Grandparents are alone and could use the company.
Work continues apace. Mrs. TANBI is trying to group most of her meetings in the morning and I am trying to group mine in the afternoon. That lets each of us spell the other with the kids for roughly half the day. We'll keep that up for another two weeks until my teaching ends (how long it will end is a significant unknown in my life). It is an arrangement we are used to because it was what we did before Gib5on went to daycare. The status quo is going to take a hit next week as Pittsburgh Public Schools will begin official distance learning. When we first heard about it we were hopeful that we'd be able to manage it without the thing winding up to be more work for us. Now we're not so sure. We got Gib5on a rebuilt Chromebook so he can do school without him using one of our machines. He's pretty stoked about that. Unfortunately a large portion of what he'll be doing is apparently writing, which kind of requires a touch screen. So we're already off to a running start. I looked to see if there's a USB tablet for a Chromebook but an initial search came up empty. Like so many other things it is just a wait and see thing. So we'll wait and see.
People seem to be relaxing some. Just based on what we see walking up and down the street. More and more groups of folks that really seem unlikely to be families or housemates. The Governor put a rule in place last week strongly advising face coverings whenever leaving the house. For a couple of days last week it looked like the majority of folks had masks. But the last few days, as the weather improved, the number of people with masks has dropped fairly steeply. I'm not sure why. This is a fairly easy ask compared with "stay in your house." We've got masks for all of us, even some small ones for Sabian, although the CDC says kids under two should wear masks. We figure that in spite of that we should have something in case one of us in the house gets sick. Late today I put a fairly passive agressive message on the sidewalk in chalk: "If you go out please wear a mask."
Probably won't help, but probably doesn't hurt.
Sunday, April 19, 2020
Worth a Look
Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...
The 1918 Spanish Flu Wreaked Havoc on Nearly Every Country on Earth. So Why Didn't More Artists Respond to It in Their Work?
news.artnet.com: More than a century after it killed upwards of 17 million people around the world, the 1918 flu pandemic, also known as the Spanish flu, has come charging back into the public consciousness. The disease—the most devastating of its kind in modern history—bears some eerie similarities to COVID-19, especially in its person-to-person transmission and global impact.
The COVID-19 Schedule for the Freelance Sound Designer Mom
SoundGirls.org: Yes, it’s another article about life in the Corona Virus quarantine. My world, along with all of yours, has been completely turned upside down, and I just wanted to share what I’ve been doing to cope, rest, learn, and thrive. I want to remind readers that this is just my personal experience, and no one should feel like there is something they HAVE to be doing while sitting at home every day in quarantine.
The Remembered Act of Assembly (Opinion)
No Proscenium: The Guide To Everything Immersive: It’s 11 AM. At my desk, my laptop fan whirs disturbingly loud. It’s already stressed by all the tasks I’ve set myself up to today. Still, a feeling of relief shoots through my body as I finally finish reading the byzantine essay by Nicholas Berger imploring theatre makers to stop making remote work over platforms like Zoom and Facebook Live. Finishing this essay is a triumph so sizable I now feel like I should do…nothing? Because that’s what I’ve been told to do.
Rio de Janeiro Used Cutting-Edge Technology to Transform Its Giant Jesus Statue Into a Doctor to Honor Healthcare Workers
news.artnet.com: With churches and other houses of worship closed to maintain social distancing measures, Brazilian archbishop Orani Tempesta conducted an Easter service at the feet of the Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking Rio de Janeiro—and projected a special message onto the 125-foot-tall statue.
Institutions Do Not Define Our Artistic Practice
rescripted.org: Institutions do not define our art.
Like many of us, I am an artist who has defined my artistic career by the institutions that granted me entry. This quarantine is causing them to suffer, which is causing my colleagues and mentors and teachers to suffer. In this moment of tremendous uncertainty, where the future of these institutions is unstable, it feels like our future is too.
Saturday, April 18, 2020
Friday, April 17, 2020
Weekly DP Wrap Up
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
Spinning Our Wheels
When CMU closed campus for the rest of the semester we had to figure out what was going to happen with the balance of this semester's production course. We were obviously not going to finish building and installing shows but the higher ups were opposed to just declaring the class over for the semester. There's an objection to giving students credit for work they haven't done as well as an objection to simply abandoning content students are supposed to have.
For some of the various options this was really problematic, or at least really caused them to have to think out of the box. For technical direction, especially within the framework of the Crazy Scheme it seemed like it was a lot simpler. Since in our system everyone does everything there would be very little in the way of content loss - and in most of those cases it was with students who (at least in theory) would have an opportunity to visit this content again next year (more in a moment). Plus there was still real work we could do. The fourth mini of the calendar is when we start the early phases of the production for the fall. We usually get into budgeting for 2-3 shows and get drawings started for at least one. Even working remotely there's no real reason not to continue with that work.
That's not enough work to fill out the units. We're only a little concerned about that since a decent argument can be made that they are always working more than we assess them at. But it did seem like it was worth to come up with some more program. The team decided that they would spread the work they have a little wider and do it redundantly to evaluate different approaches - plus they would take their time, something we never get to do under normal circumstances. They've also added what would nominally be called "professional development" in other contexts. They are spending time learning new software for CAD and data management. Some of them are doing an online OSHA class. I'm working on getting a few panel discussions together utilizing alumni.
Altogether it felt like we had a plan. It wasn't perfect and it wasn't "crew" in most cases but it was a good use of time and most importantly it would work in the current setting. Today at least part of it came off the rails.
The design of the fall shows is a collaboration of a team of designers and a director. Today we heard that on at least two of the fall shows one or more of the team members was sick. Maybe capital S sick, maybe just plain sick, we don't know yet. But the sick they are is sick enough that they aren't working and will likely not be able to meet the deadlines that will allow my team to keep working.
Suddenly we were in a discussion about the expectations around fall production both right now as well as in the fall and through the summer. Did we need to hold to existing deadlines? Should we be assigning "understudies" to all the personnel in case of illness? Could we slip deadlines from the spring since it was unlikely that folks will be working summer production like they normally would and could therefore maybe work on the show through the summer?
All of those are good questions but they got me thinking bigger. If we're remote in the fall will there be any students? If we're back in the fall is the Governor going to allow large assembly? Would we do production if there can't be any audience? Before the stay at home there was an order prohibiting assembly of more than 50 people. Our mainstages probably have about 35 people around doing the show. Would we do the show for an audience of 15?
The interesting thing there is that the only thing we could do that would be under our control would be to cancel right now (although I am not sure we would be permitted to do so even if we wanted to). Any other decisions are fully dependent on the decisions of outside people. What will the University decide? What will the Mayor decide? What will the Governor decide? What will students and parents decide? Students can elect to take a leave of absence into the semester so there's no way we would know how many students and what program they're in until they are standing there in the building. As a planner by profession this is fairly worst case for data.
In the mean time, the latest revision to the first fall show arrived with my team on time. Maybe it will be in budget and we can keep going. Here's hoping. And here's hoping for a vaccine and sufficient tests by the end of the summer.
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
My Inbox is a Disaster
I don't want to admit it, but my email has gotten out of hand. For years now I have been a fairly aggressive Inbox Zero practitioner - although I kind of break one rule. Each day I would process my inbox to zero: acting, filing, or deferring whatever was there two or three times each day so that there was nothing in my inbox. I have historically been a little dysfunctional about it, with the notification icon on my phone being a small source of irritation.
Of course doing things this way is all very five years ago. Inbox Zero is a folders mentality and I have a directory tree with many, many branches. The Google Inbox is supposed to break that mold and have you keep everything right where you find it but assign things tags and find them by searching rather than by looking in the correct folder. For a little while I have been doing a hybrid. I have my folders and for things that are fairly recent I stay in Outlook and check the correct place. For things that are older I bring up the Gmail web interface and search.
I don't know if I was trying to bring myself around to the Google Inbox idea or if it was something else but this fall I really stopped the processing behavior. One of my folders, the rule breaking one "ToDo" just declared war and conquered my Inbox and so instead of being nice and empty it was always choked with slowly rotting messages.
Partially I think this coincided with making an effort to accept assignments electronically. I've been taking work as pdf files attached to emails. A combination of that and the sabbatical my ToDo folder is on really produced a boom. Without the ToDo weigh-station and not wanting to file emails with pending assignment attachments there was nothing to do but let things pile up in the Inbox. Recently I have been putting new document folders on my desktop, moving the attachments to those and then filing the emails, but the students defeat that when instead of attaching a pdf they share a Google Doc. Then my new solution is no solution.
I miss my ToDo folder and my FollowUp folder. But at the end of last summer I declared folder bankruptcy and dumped everything that was remaining in there into my Inbox with the hope of chipping away at it until I could get through it all. Some messages had languished in the ToDo folder so long that it seemed downright irresponsible.
So I started the year with a backlog - never a good thing. Then the assignment emails started piling up. And then we had a pandemic and everything went online.
The days between the announcement we were going online and the first day we were online were probably the heaviest email days in memory. We were getting instructions and surveys from three different university administration levels and many of those generated helpful contributions from other colleagues in response to the originals and it all just piled up. There's stuff in there I just don't want to process because I really do think I should read it. But it has been nearly a month now and I haven't.
There are only three weeks of classes left in the semester. I think this year's end of semester tying of loose ends is going to have to include an Inbox cleanout. Even if it means doing a cntrl-A & delete.
Monday, April 13, 2020
Stay at Home Update
I heard something the other day that said we'd been shut in for a month now. I don't feel like it has been that long. Spring break basically started Friday, March 6th. Gib5on was held out of school the following Thursday and Friday I think, so he's been home since 3/12. That's just about when they called things off for us at CMU for the following Monday - and also when they closed Sabian's daycare program. That means we've been at home as a group since Monday 3/16. Today is April 13th - so yeah, about a month. Although we didn't get the stay at home order until after that, so more like 3 weeks - but I guess there isn't a bright line in this case.
Of course Mrs. TANBI works from home without the stay at home order, so she's been in longer than that. Her schedule usually includes travel every six weeks or so and weekly trips to a shared office about a half hour away. None of those trips have been happening.
For the most part my wife and kids really haven't been... anywhere in that time. They've been out of the house for walks but that's it. The last family excursion was to a comic book store so Gib5on could show mom the discount Pokemon cards on, I think 3/14 - I wasn't writing it down.
In that window I have been to Costco, Giant Eagle, Staples, Trader Joe's, Uncle Sam's, and my office twice. A couple of those came before the stay at home order, but most have been after. Trips out have featured left over N95 masks and nitrile gloves from our renovation flotsam. The boy came with on that lunch run to Uncle Sam's. That felt like a mistake in the moment. He can't keep himself from touching things. Since then we've had him take a pair of kids gardening gloves on trips out of the house. On that run I just hand sanitized him over and over.
I felt stupid with a mask and gloves at the grocery the first time. I brought both but only used the gloves. This was more than two weeks ago and pretty much nobody else had masks that trip. That's been less of an issue more recently. The governor has issued an order to wear masks in public and so lately you could do so and not feel dumb. The was a huge increase of people wearing masks end of last week. But then this weekend the weather was nice and there were many, many people out and the number of masks seemed low. I guess we'll see if it mattered when we hear the hospitalization numbers in two weeks.
I'm working from home. I've got six class sessions each week and a handful of meetings. We're using the Zoom platform and it has been going ok. I was fortunate this happened in mini 4 and not before. Most of my content in this mini was easily transferable to online. We've just been asked to look into what being in this mode for the Fall would be like. I think my content will be fine as online, but I am going to have a lot more work to do in order to get it ready.
Sabian's schedule is the same as it was with daycare except we're no the daycare. She's up around 7am. There's a nap at 10am and another at 2:30 (if we're lucky). On good days when she's awake we can put her down. On less good days she needs constant attention. She's skipping crawling altogether and seems to be days away from walking on her own. She's been cruising pretty much since the stay at home started. If there's an upside we're getting to spend a lot of time with her.
Gib5on is having a tougher time. He's also up around 7. We're trying to put him on a schedule:
7-8 Breakfast, Screen, Get dressed
8-9 Free play
9-9:30 Morning work
9:30-10 Active play
11-12 Play with Dad
12-12:30 Lunch
12:30-1 Chore
1-2 Play with Mom
2-2:30 Reading
2:30-3:30 Screen
3:30-4:30 Snack and Neighborhood Walk
4:30-5:30 Creative Play
5:30-6:30 Free Play
6:30-7:30 Dinner
7:30-8:30 Get ready for bed, books
8:30 Lights out
As you can see, it is a detailed plan. Most days it works pretty well and we can juggle slots if we want - or if he wants. Lately the formative parts of the schedule have been becoming more difficult. He's feeling cooped up and it is making him impatient. Thursday of this week he starts official distance learning with his school. So far we've been getting the worksheets we've been using for his morning work from them, but there hasn't been much contact. They did two Zoom sessions for some story time. The whole mode is changing this week. We're waiting to see if he can handle it. And if we can handle it. We're hoping more school for him doesn't also mean school for one or both of us. I guess we'll see.
We're all in good health. I'm putting on weight. I'd been on a diet but I dropped off it when the stay at home began. I restarted today as I was up almost 10 pounds. As I am sure that would indicate we have plenty of food around. We're well supplied with other things and there have been deliveries almost daily. Stores being closed hasn't effected much of the online shopping (although it has slowed down some). The biggest problem there so far has been gas cylinders for the SodaStream and if we get through this with that being the biggest problem we'll be pretty damn thankful.
More to come.
