Four Things

One of the blogs I read regularly does posts every now and then that he calls "Five Things."  Here's my version:

The House is Finished

It sneaked up on us, but recently it seems like we've completed all the major work we anticipated doing when we first bought the house.  We did one big renovation when we first bought the house.  After that we did a deck out in front of the house.  Last year we finished the basement and refreshed the guest bathroom.  When we did that last set of work we left a kind of an ugly spot around the laundry hookups in the refreshed bath, leaving it kind of unfinished.  Just recently we had someone come in and finish off that room.  When that happened we looked around and thought: we're done.  There's still a list:  I still want solar and a backup generator and we want a deck and some landscaping in the back and a set of partitions in the attic; but all of that feels like "extra."  The initial scope of work is complete.  Maybe it is time to look for a new house.

I Appear to be Riding a Bike

One of my Quarenpurchases was an eBike.  My docs have all been grousing with me for a very long time that I needed to get more exercise.  I added that to the thought that when we start up again at work I won't want to be riding the bus and started looking around for a bike.  With all the hills around the neighborhood an eBike seemed like a good idea and Facebook must have known that because I was absolutely being bombarded with eBike ads.  I found one that wasn't too expensive (and then wound up getting a discount because of one of the browser plug ins I run) and the sitting-too-long-at-my-desk-purchasing bug got to me and I bought one.  It sat in a box for almost a month after I got it, but last week I put it together and finally got on it and rode around some.  I hadn't ridden a bike really in over... I think the last time would have been senior year of college, so hadn't been on a bike in decades.  I'm hoping to be up to five miles a day within a week.  It isn't much, but it is more exercise than I've been getting; even if I let the bike do some of the work on the hills.

School Decisions

The Pittsburgh Public Schools have asked us to choose between 2 days/week in person - 2 days asynchronous distance learning 1st grade or 5 days/week synchronous distance learning for this coming school year.  They haven't told us the hours/day or either approach.  I think we're going to opt for the 5 days/week at home.  It feels likely that even if they start out with some in person that they are likely to revert to 100% distance learning anyway, so why not plan for that to begin with.  Really though I don't feel like they've given us enough particulars to be able to make an informed decision.  I can't fault them too much though since I think the reason they haven't told us is that they don't know yet.  There's going to be a lot of figuring it out as we go along for everyone this fall.  That's going to be stressful for us all and we're going to have to be able to run with it.  As it turns out there was a board meeting today and someone suggested starting out with 9 weeks of 100% distance for everyone in order for them to better get their ducks in a row.  Stay tuned.

Fall Classes

Speaking of fall school, I am still scheduled to be teaching at CMU this fall.  I typically have three classes in the fall semester and I am still slated to be starting that in a few weeks.  I will be teaching PTM Professional Practice, Technical Direction 1, and Technical Direction 3.  I'll also be advising on thesis projects and doing the normal amount of academic advising.  We've cancelled all fall production so there won't be the normal amount of production advising involved, but, we're still planning to do shows in the spring and that would typically involve work for my folks in the fall.  It is still unclear what portion of that work is still going to happen.  Based on the last item, if you are curious, PTM Professional Practice is going to be 100% remote.  It is like half guests and from a social distancing perspective in person classes just seem irresponsible.  TD1 and TD3 are planned to go forward as hybrid classes, with myself and some (currently unknown) number of students in the room - although they are planning to put me in much larger rooms to allow for proper distancing.  I am kinda waiting for the "never mind we're 100% online" email, but it feels like they really don't want that to be the case.  Watch this space.