Archives for May 2020

The day started out great, I woke up around 5.30, did yoga, meditated and wrote morning pages. Then breakfast and then I decided to – watch videos. Not the best choice.

The morning went okay with everybody on time and a nice breakfast, then I did the dishes and such and went running. In between I had to deal with some group admin stuff on Ravelry, slightly unpleasant. With the running I decided to scale back even more and went out for 57 minutes, alternating 1 1/2 minutes of running with 3 1/2 minutes of walking. It still felt too much but I did it:

Look how nice the weather was and not too many people:

Then I took a shower and helped with making lunch. There was one of those misunderstandings while cooking that resulted in a longer heated conversation but everything was back to normal in time for eating:

There was the wine and a rather heated debate followed about the question if there can be an objective standard to the quality of wine. The boy was in debate mode (a pretty normal setting for him, we used to joke that he is his own debate club back when he was in elementary school), my husband was just exhausted from running and cooking but still held a different opinion and I stepped into the ring and proved that everybody else was wrong. Of course.

The boy and I did the dishes. I took a break and then my husband reappeared and revisited the discussion. That whole debating left me pretty deflated and I ended up spending the rest of the afternoon doing nothing in particular, hence no podcast again.

The boy and I ate dinner in front of the TV, all three of us talked again and things went back to normal. We watched an episode of Voyager where we weren’t sure if it was good or not and another rather excellent episode of Firefly.

Then there were dishes again, and again with help from the boy, I started writing this post, wrote in my journal and went to bed too late.

Of course, today everything will go smoothly without a hitch. There will be the podcast and all the planning for June and writing and yoga and all the things. Of course.

Well, at least not after the first 90 minutes of the day or so. I have now scientifically proven that picking up my phone first thing in the morning will lead to nothing productive in the morning at all. Good to know.

Hence no yoga, no meditation, no morning pages and no novel-writing. Boo.

But. I did the routine cleaning and folded lots of laundry. There is no laundry hanging to dry anywhere in the house right now. The clean laundry hasn’t really made it into the closets and drawers yet but it’s a start.

Lunch was very good and I didn’t help much which is the reason for the folded laundry:

I did manage to break a full glass with alcohol-free beer in it right before because I moved some things out of the way of taking the picture. Fortunately none of the glass ended up in the food. Phew.

While doing dishes, cleaning and folding laundry I had an epiphany about why I have been dragging my feet with the novel so much. I really need my thinking time and sitting around isn’t cutting it. Apparently housework or walking are perfect for me when I need to mull things over. I’ve been having a problem with the novel for a while now and have been trying to fix it by sitting down and writing but what I really needed was some dedicated thinking time. Who would have thought? I am now excited to proceed. First step will be to go through the manuscript, though, but not all the way through but to plant the seeds to make everything more plausible. Cue evil cackling…

Then I taught all the student and in between worked a bit on the podcast. I’m mildly unhappy with this episode. I’m hoping to release it later today.

After work the boy and I had dinner in front of the TV. We watched one episode of Voyager that was nice-ish, and then some really, really good Firefly. I had a hard time to get going again after that but finally managed to start this post, write in my journal and make a list for today and finally go to bed.

Today there will be running, and the podcast, the putting away of all the laundry and then I will probably make a plan for next week. Because that will be the first week of Pentecost break and I don’t want to waste all that time. I might even do some scheming for the novel. Bonus point for making use of the big stack of fresh new post-its I got for reanimating the kanban fridge. I have so much stuff going on that visual reminders might be a good thing. Or I might overload the fridge with stickies. Stay tuned.

I think I woke up early but I honestly can’t remember and that is basically how the whole day went. I spent lots of time learning how to use my new Apple Watch and the new watch was one of the reasons my routine was off. I did manage yoga and afterwards found that I had forgotten to take my thyroid meds. I sat in front of my breakfast for thirty minutes to make up for that.

There was the usual talking with the family and knitting. My husband and I talked at length about how we’ll set up everything for teaching students in person again after Pentecost break. Then dishes. I went walking/running rather late and was dragging my feet most of the time. It was great, though:

I was out for almost an hour and met some people but not too many.

Using the new watch for exercise gave me great joy. It integrates seamlessly with my phone, of course, and both my running and my podcast app can be accessed through it. I can actually read what I’m supposed to do next and switch between the podcast app and the one for running with an easy swipe. So that was fun.

I came back home, took a shower and was a little too late to help with lunch. Because it was pizza day. The cheese was about to go off. So lunch was a little later than we would have liked but rather tasty:

I procrastinated a bit, did the dishes and finished just in time for teaching. Then it was just one student after the other, then dinner and then I tried getting the video for the podcast off the iPad and onto the laptop. When I finally managed it was time to get ready for bed.

So. Today I will turn into a productivity machine. Or something.

There will be writing and yoga and the health food store and podcast editing (I hope) and teaching and then a virtual knit night with a friend.

Is it the weekend yet?

Woke up early, didn’t find my way out of bed, went straight to breakfast. Afterwards I watched a video and was just about to start a brain dump in my journal because I thought that might help me get productive again when my husband showed. Right on time, by the way.

There was talking and knitting. My new needles arrived so I can transfer the cardigan-in-progress to something not quite as blunt.

I spent more time trying to troubleshoot my Fitbit Versa but didn’t succeed. When my husband was finished with breakfast the boy showed up. There was more talking. He helped me with the dishes and I did the usual morning chores. By the time I was ready to go to the supermarket it was already 11.30 or so.

I made a detour to throw an envelope with two guitar picks and a note in a student’s mailbox. I had forgotten to wish him a belated happy birthday on Monday and he is starting to learn how to play chords on the guitar and that is no fun without a pick. I always give my students a pick at that point. I couldn’t send it through Skype, though.

The tiny mall with the supermarket was rather busy. They had new signs at the doors:

It’s pretty funny if you can read German and know something about grammar and typography. It says, „Dear customers, please wear a face mask everywhere in the center’s and keep 1.5 meters of distance, stay healthy, your AEZ-team (order from the Bavarian state government“. Basically.

The funny thing is the not-quite apostrophe after center. First, it’s nice that they are using the genitive, that’s almost dying out by now. Unfortunately, the only time you get an apostrophe in a genitive in German is when the word is ending in an s anyway. Like „Klaus’ Fahrrad“. So, not only is it a green grocer’s apostrophe but they also used an acute accent instead of a real apostrophe. I also personally dislike the fact that they are writing ‚Center‘ instead of ‚Zentrum‘ but that’s my preference, ‚Center‘ is pretty common by now.

Sorry. I can’t help pointing these things out, they do bug me a lot.

Grocery shopping went really well. I should have taken an „ineffective face mask bingo“-card. I wouldn’t have gotten a full card but almost. On the other hand everybody in there actually did wear a mask. Granted, one woman had pulled hers down under her chin and two pulled theirs down to talk to a sales woman (who was behind a shield) but still, people are making an effort.

I had ample opportunity to study the fit of all kinds of masks on all kinds of faces. I’m rather interested because I’m not happy with the ones I made. Today my husband tried the one I made for him and was not pleased. I will have to try another model next weekend and maybe put darts in all the masks I have already made. Meh.

When I came back home lunch was already in progress, in fact, my husband had finished eating by then. With the detour my shopping tour took ages. They did leave me something to eat, though, and it was rather tasty:

You might have noticed that our attempt at eating mostly vegetarian has come to an end. My husband and I both found that meals with no meat equal meals with more veggies which might be healthy but really doesn’t agree with people who are fructose-intolerant. So we’re back to our meat-eating ways. It’s a pity, I really liked the idea but it’s not worth constantly feeling bad.

After and during lunch the boy had a great deal to talk about. More linguistics, if I remember correctly. Also, his grievances about school. We did the dishes together again and then I had a short break before starting to teach.

In between students I folded two loads of laundry and hung up another one and printed some sheet music out that a student had sent me as a bad photo. It’s amazing what you can do with modern technology. She takes a pretty bad picture of her sheet music then I take that photo, put it into an app and end up with a much clearer image that I can then print out on my printer through my phone. And then I can follow along with what she’s playing. Marvelous. The lines are still all wav but you can actually read everything. Fabulous!

I had spent most of the day waiting for delivery of my new Apple Watch. Since the Fitbit was acting up I looked at a replacement and found that the Apple Watch 3 is priced pretty reasonably. So I ordered one that was due to arrive some time yesterday. Needless to say it took until after dinner before I held it in my hands.

So far it is delightful. I mean, the packaging alone is soothing and beautiful. As with all my devices it was easy to set up. I’m still blown away by these modern times. I buy a new phone or tablet or smartwatch, turn it on for the first time and it says, „If you already own another of our devices just put it next to this one and everything will be magical done“. Then I wait a bit and everything is synced and ready to go.

I did play with the watch for a while, then started this post, wrote in my journal and went to bed a little too late.

You might have noticed that I did not work on the podcast, did not do yoga or work on the novel. I’m not happy about that but I was feeling somewhat sluggish and had a lot of things to do on top of that. I spent most of the afternoon with that feeling of having a headache without a headache. At least that was gone after dinner.

Today there will be running, more playing with new gadgets, a moderate amount of teaching and maybe, just maybe, I will actually look at the podcast again. Wish me luck!

My alarm went off at 5.18, I actually got up right away and when I entered the kitchen for the first time it was 25 minutes later. I was pretty certain that I didn’t spend that much time in the bathroom. Well. Turned out that my Fitbit was showing the wrong time and was twenty minutes early. Huh. It was also showing my heart rate at 180 again. Let’s just say that ordering a new watch seemed like a great idea in that moment.

I did yoga, made breakfast, opened the novel-in-progress and closed it again right away. I was stuck. But then I had the great idea to write the monthly newsletter instead. I finished that right as my husband was showing up. We talked, I knitted, we planned the day.

The boy was late and I had already started doing the dishes when he finally came downstairs. More talking. I was reluctant to go running, for one because it was raining hard and secondly, because I was waiting for a package in the mail. In the end I ordered the boy to stay downstairs so I could go out but then dawdled long enough to open the door for the mailman myself. It was the new camera! I’m hoping that that will help with recording the podcast. Here’s a picture I took late last night:

By then my Fitbit watch was out of juice again so I recharged it and took my other heart rate monitor with me on my walk/run. Only, that one wasn’t working either.

I’m still determined to repeat intervals of two minutes of running and three of walking until I feel that the running is unbearably short. I was lucky, because it mostly stayed dry and I met almost no one:

Only slightly wet:

Back home it looked as if the Fitbit watch was showing correct numbers again. Especially after I installed the new firmware update. Odd.

I did help a little with cooking, took a shower and had lunch a little late:

That was very good.

I had a short break and then proceeded to teach all the students all afternoon. Afterwards there was dinner with the whole family where we talked a lot and then the boy and I did the dishes while talking about things like how to pronounce ‚Gouda‘ in Dutch, the difference between phonemes, how ‚Holland‘ is pronounced in Dutch versus German, anatomy, tetrapods, Jacquard looms, computers, and agile project management.

While this was highly enjoyable it also meant I was already a little late and there was no time left to work on the podcast or play around with my new camera.

I started writing this post, planned for the day ahead and went to bed.

Today there will be a big supermarket run, quite a bit of teaching and I’m hoping to work on the podcast as well. Also, laundry.