What a f**king day….
Fridays are supposed to be relaxing but this one just was not.
Since 2010 I’ve been in charge of a multi-day orientation for students in the iSchool’s (formerly School of Library & Information Studies) online masters degree. We make them come to campus and meet in person, before starting their online degree. We call it Bootcamp.
At first it was a whole week – Monday-Friday, with Friday a half day, and then we shrank it to Monday-Thursday in recognition that it can be hard to get a flight out of Madison – or simply drive home – if you can’t leave till 1:00 on a Friday.
This year for the first time we did the event online due to the pandemic, with about 2 1/2 hours per day where we were all online together, with some pre-work that we released a week ahead so students could get started. We have a huge online class this year – 61 – and we added a few late, as students decide they’d prefer to start online over coming to campus. I think it went pretty well, although I have this slipping feeling that we didn’t connect with a few. Some were unable to participate for some of the days, illness or their technology crapped out, or life. Some got in touch, others did not. But we recorded everything and put it into an online class that students will have access to their whole first year. Now I wonder if we’ll ever go back to having it in person – the genie is out of the bottle and we might not be able to stuff it back in.
So yea, Friday the big event’s done so I should be feeling accomplished. But I still have two syllabi to write and the online courses to set up, and all sorts of administrivia related to keeping track of all 60+ students, and lining up speakers for one of my classes, and professional association awards, getting ready to work the polls on Tuesday, as a chief inspector at a polling place I’ve never set foot in and … and …
I woke up with that “I really just can’t cope with it all” feeling.
And I watched a Town Hall online meeting from upper admin at UW, to answer questions about the “Smart Restart” plan. That was probably my first mistake – an unsettling way to start the day. I’ve been in a number of meetings and official gatherings recently where people are getting mad at leadership because they feel like the leaders are withholding information. I understand the anger – but personally, I think it’s not that information is being withheld – they simply don’t know, but can’t really say that in a leadership position. So resort to unsatisfying policies, like we have at UW, where the administration has said the goal is to provide an on-campus learning experience to as many students as want it, AND no student, staff or faculty can be required to come to campus if they are uncomfortable doing so, which means there must be online equivalents for everything. “The situation is fluid”, how many times have you heard that? And listening in at that Town Hall meant that I didn’t get out for a walk or bike ride first thing, contributing to the not-so-good start to my Friday.
All kinds of little things went wrong. I ordered a pair of Jerry Garcia sandals during last weekend’s Jerry Garcia celebration (which is actually still going on until tomorrow), and they arrived but they’re way too small so I had to send them back.
That was actually Thursday. I dropped off the sandals return package at UPS and went to get my CSA box, a late summer masterpiece. A big bag of green beans, 2 pounds of carrots, slicing tomatoes, see blog banner, Summercrisp Lettuce, a couple of zucchini, one red bell pepper, and one long skinny fryer, a sweet onion, a giant bunch of basil, a bag of little pickle cucumbers and 2 regular ones, and a muskmelon.
We had a big salad for dinner Thursday with sourdough biscuits that didn’t come out quite right – I think I had the butter too soft.
I’m trying to remember the dinners the rest of the week – one night we had sandwiches, and one night a kind of pork carnitas casserole, and one night I made these mashed potato puffs – we actually ate them twice, I think maybe we had some of the leftover ones with our sandwiches?
The mashed potatoes were leftover from making salmon cakes, which were using leftover salmon (a jam band), that we had for dinner the last time I got green beans in CSA, a much smaller handful, glazed salmon and green beans, with fried potatoes, and a bowl sweet cherries as an extra side dish.
One of the Bootcamp mornings, before everything got started, I made Crème Caramel. We’ve eaten 2 and there are still 2 left. The extra one at the back is actually cup custard – no caramel. I ate that one as soon as it was chilled enough, as a snack on whatever day that was that I made them. The timestamp in my phone says Wednesday.
Also on Friday my daughter-in-law texted to say she’d gotten a coveted flex parking spot in a University parking ramp, what I have, the kind where you pay with an app, and only have to pay for the days you park, instead of paying for a regular spot that can cost $1,000/year. Or what I have had. I might not have a flex spot this school year. The system is that you request your spot, using UW’s facilities & parking website, which doesn’t get very high marks on usability, then they email you an offer which you must accept by a certain date, or you lose it. I got my offer on July 23, and I had until August 4th to claim it, and I somehow missed claiming. So I had to reapply in the second round on Friday and we’ll see.
I kept working and not feeling like I was getting much of anywhere, I was too scattered, halfway doing something and then thinking, “oh this other thing is more important”, and going and doing that, and then just after 5:00 I got my roster for my workers at the polling place and they had given me a double shift. Originally, I was scheduled only for the morning, 6:00AM-1:30PM, and the polling place is out on the far east side, where I’ve never been. And all of a sudden I’m doing a double from 6:00AM to 9:00PM. I kept looking at the roster, thinking, “where’s the person who comes in after me?” They had actually emailed me last Tuesday with the switch and I skimmed that email, noting when the recorded training webinar I needed to watch was available, and when to drive to the city/county building to do curbside pick up of the big tote of stuff for my polling place, but didn’t notice, maybe because Tuesday was day 2 of the new student orientation … ya think?! So I spent the evening feeling pretty desperate, you know, when something happens at 5:30 on a Friday, and you feel like you won’t be able to get anyone’s attention till Monday. But by 9:30 Saturday morning I was back to a single shift.
Friday morning I started this marinated pasta salad, and I also baked two loaves of bread. I finally got out for a bike ride around 3:30, stopping at Whole Foods to get some little fresh mozzarella balls to add to the salad. Don’t go to Whole Foods on a Fridayafternoon during pandemic, BTW, not sure what I was thinking there.
All of which added up to a good dinner, the pasta salad, roast chicken, green beans, and fresh bread. I was still feeling overworked and cranky, so I emailed John & Megan for drink suggestions. John said he’d just logged off his computer and opened a Two Hearted; Megan’s laptop was still on, but she was outside with an Anti-hero. I had the some of those beers in my fridge, so I had a few with dinner, but then that backfired on me too – I woke up at 4:30 and couldn’t go back to sleep.
But it’s all better in the morning, right?