Week 3 - Quiet Pandemic Week

It was a quiet week at home as omicron spread all around me. It just didn't seem to let up as it impacted more and more of my life.

First thing was Monday Night Knitting didn't happen since Andrea and I were the only ones going and one of our members was sick with something that sounded suspiciously like Covid. I was told on Monday morning to plan to work from home for a couple of weeks due to the high positive rates on campus. By Tuesday morning, it had become a month at home. Since I'd be perfectly happy to work from home until retirement (2 years from May but who's counting!), I was fine with that.

That said, it was the week for staff to do re-entry testing. If you didn't get tested (and test negative, of course), you wouldn't be welcome on campus at all. And while I don't WANT to work on campus, I want the option to should the need arise so I wanted to get tested. The weather on Thursday was gorgeous - sunny and in the 50's - so I felt the need to take advantage and do something. But when you only decide this in the morning, no one is available to play. Insert sad face here.

After ridiculous amounts of indecision, I decided against taking vacation time to play alone and so opted to book an appointment for a test on campus. They were closing at 4:00 and I couldn't get a timeslot on East Campus so booked a 3:45 on City Campus and headed off. And you know me - if I was going to Lincoln I was going to make it worth the drive. I dropped an undelivered Christmas present on a friend's windshield on campus then parked at a meter and headed to the spit hit. I must be a spit prodigy because I filled the tube in a minute then went to drop things in my office. From there I went to the Library Commission to pick up our next book club pick, to St. Louise's for some happy thrifting (found some goodies) then went to another friend's to drop something in his door since he was out of town, which would have left me with 30 minutes to kill before meeting Darla. But when I approached his house, his mom was there feeding his dog so we had a wonderful chat on his porch. Bertha and I hit it off immediately and vowed to plan lunch for the 3 of us sometime soon. I met Darla for a fruitless Goodwill run but we caught up as we did the aisles. So far a very successful trip to Lincoln.

But my day wasn't over. It was Cindy's birthday and I was going to Waverly to surprise her with a hat I'd knitted and some cookies from The Cookie Company, which I'd bought after picking up the books. She was indeed surprised and we sat at her table talking with her son's girlfriend for 2 hours. It felt SO NORMAL. I have made zoom work but there really is nothing as nice as seeing people in person. I didn't get home until 8:30 and since all I'd eaten since lunch was a piece of toast with the quark cheese Cindy had made, I was pretty hungry but nothing a bowl of cereal didn't fix. What a great day! And since it was for a Covid test, I didn't have to take vacation time. Win win.

The weather changed overnight and by Friday morning, the ground was covered with black ice and then it started snowing. It snowed for most of the day and the wind was blowing but by the end of it all, we only had an inch or so. Works for me.

My entire plan for the weekend was to work in my front room. The Ikea was 90% done but the rest of the room was a disaster with crap piled on the hutch and boxes of junk on the floor. I'm happy to say that over the course of the weekend, I finished stage 1 of the front room. While I did put a few things in my donate bag, which has a permanent spot in the corner of my bedroom, it was more about putting things away. I have a couple of things to decide where to put but the organization is done and now it's time for the deep clean. I have one more weekend in January and so am confident I can get it done and have a successful first month of my "do a room a month this winter" plan. I'll do some after pictures of the hutch after that's dusted next weekend. Stay tuned.