geowench

September was a much better month for me than August - well at least until RGB's death, which has cast a pall over everything.  It's terrible that so much was riding on that one woman - but somehow this country has gotten into such a disastrous state that she was literally all that has been standing between stripping basic human rights for so many people.  Sigh.

I got back on the rehab horse in September.  My knees were really hurting as the month began, and I thought to myself that I bet if I did squats every damn day for the month of September, my knees would probably be much improved by the end of the month.  So starting Sept 2, I did my squats (almost) every day, and indeed, my knees are much improved, although I doubt that they will every be "normal" again.  I walk about a mile almost every day, and on the weekends 2 miles.  Next weekend I'll probably try for 2.5 miles (4 km).  I know 2.5 miles doesn't sound like much, but back in January I could barely hobble 1/4 mile and it hurt like hell every step.  So really this is a huge improvement and I'm quite proud of myself.   A couple of days ago I added pushups (either from the wall or a counter, I can't even do them from my knees yet), and given that I now seem to have developed intermittent sciatica in my troublesome R leg, I think I'd better add SLDLs (straight legged dead lifts).  So that's just three things to do every day.  Take about 5 minutes.  Plus my walks.

Work has been a bit rough lately.  Just stupid politics plus my having a shit ton of work to do, and having a hard time concentrating.  We hired a new person and this is the first new person that I have not trained (because I'm in the thick of things with trying to get 2 books finished).  I'm a little surprising how annoyed I am that I didn't get to do the training, even though I know that I'm far too busy right now to do it, and that one of hte reasons we chose this particular individual is because once she is trained, she can actually help me out.  

Sigh.  What else?  I had a birthday.  Instead of celebrating in some cool town in Europe, like we've been able to do for the last three or four years, it was a night pretty much like any other.  E got me a new sewing machine, which I am learning to use (it's a serger/overlocker, as opposed to my old regular sewing machine).  I used to sew a lot more, I used to make myself these really gorgeous dresses back in the 90s.  I want to get back to that.  Today I cut out a skirt, using a sheet for material.  Hopefully I will get it sewn up in the next couple of weeks and not let it sit around for months (or years).  

So our Arbuckle vacation was ... fine.  Kind of sad, actually, but we had some nice times.  Some of the things we wanted to do were closed due to COVID, and some of the things we wanted to do we skipped b/c too many people, but we did some fossil hunting, took a lot of walks in really nice scenery and saw some pretty but very small waterfalls.  Nobody wore masks (except us).  But at least no one tried to shoot us for wearing masks, so, um, win?  Let's face it, any vacation after our adventures last year would be a let down, much less going to Sulphur, Oklahoma.  But we relaxed, slept a lot, and enjoyed each other's company, so let's call it nice and move on.

Coming back to work has been brutal; its only Wednesday and I'm exhausted.  Part of that is a bunch of stupid meetings since students come back next week.  Part of it is that I have a shit ton of work to do and am feeling overwhelmed.  I got an official "no thanks" email from SEARCH and I am relieved.  Although I have to keep reminding myself this week, "You LIKE this job, damnit!"

Less than a month since my last post!  Go me!  I am back at work full time now and finding it tough.  In fact, I left at noon today, decided to take a few hours sick leave just to have some time alone in the house with nothing to do.  E will be late today and I just needed to be alone.  Which is actually kind of ridiculous since I'm alone in my office most of the day, but you know.  I need some downtime to myself.  And I'm fortunate enough to be able to take it.

At work we are hiring a new person to do my job.  This will make the 8th fulltime person on our team.  I'm part of the hiring committee and next week we interview 6 people.  We've set up a large conference room with half a dozen separate desks, and everyone will be masked.  So that should be fun, and by fun I mostly mean exhausting.

The following week we are going on vacation to the Arbuckle "Mountains."  I put mountains in quotation marks because they are ancient, tiny things. We've driven through them (they're about half way to Dallas from where we live) multiple times, but never really spent any time there.  So I found us a little cabin on 6 acres near the town of Sulphur.  We will go to some touristy spots, but hope that in the middle of the week there will not be large crowds.  We'll bring face masks, but we will probably be the only people who wear them in the middle of rural Oklahoma.  We'll probably bring most of our food so we don't have to go to local shops.  Maybe we'll get take out one or two nights, but certainly we won't be eating in any restaurants, which is too bad, because half the reason to take a vacation is so that I don't have to cook every damn night.

Eating out is what I miss most.  We used to eat out most Friday evenings and every Saturday morning.  Occasionally a second night during the week.  But I cooked every damn dinner otherwise, and I really looked forward to a night off a week.  Oh well.  I'm fully aware how fortunate we are and how good we have it compared to so many, but I still miss eating out.

 My last entry was 6 weeks ago.  Oops.  But not much has changed.  I'm still working at home.  Cases in my county were at 0 for several weeks, but now they are rising dramatically along with much of the US.  Oklahoma is often called out as being one of the worst states for increased cases.  A couple of weeks ago we went to Trader Joe's in OKC, and this felt like an enourmous adventure akin to sky diving -- probably we wouldn't die, but there was a non-zero chance that we just might.  TJs is actually prettty good about taking precautions and it felt significantly safer to shop there than at the local Evil Empire of Doom (Walmart).  

I had a grand total of 2 social adventures since this all started in March.  About a month ago, when cases were still at 0, my friend M from work came over for lunch.  We ate outside on the porch and had a really nice, more or less socially distant visit.  Then on Friday, my work had socially distant picnic at a local park.  Bring your lunch and a lawn chair and sit 6 feet apart and visit.  Normally I'd eschew such work nonsense, but the solitude is getting to even me, so I went, especially since M wanted me to go.  Everyone was really good about keeping their distance, well except M, who came and sat right next to me and wanted to share food, digging her grubby paws into my CheezIts, sigh.  I insisted she keep the bag, snort.

My big news is that my best friend from grad school, L, called me last week to tell me her cultural resources archaeology firm needed a Technical Editor and I should apply.  So I did.  Got a call for a preliminary interview, and maybe I'll get another, more formal interview.  But as much as I want to ditch FPP and work for an arch firm, the job sounds incredibly boring.  There is no actual writing, just collating reports and filling out forms and making sure all the formatting is correct and the regulations met.  For which they will pay slightly more than I currently make.  L works at home and thought this position could also, but they might want someone in office (in Florida) to produce and coallate and print those stupid reports, and then box them up and send them out ... so who knows.  I'm not sure I want the job, but I definitely want them to want me.  Snort.  I doubt think it will work out.

I've stopped going to PT for now ... I spent about a grand out of pocket, and while I've had significant improvements, I'm not sure there's much more she can do for me.  Plus the last time I was there, I was unhappy at how lax they had gotten with the mask wearing.  So for now at least, I'm not going.  I'm walking 2 miles now, without pain, which is such an improvement!  It's proper hot here now, so in the morning I water the plants and take my walk (usually 1 to 1.5 miles, and I'm doing 2 miles only once a week at this point, but may increase to twice a week) and then I start my work day.  

Well that's all I've got for now.  I genuninely want to check in more, but every day is so boring except for you know World on Fire Pandemic Black Lives Matter that I don't have much to say.

Time got away from me - I meant to post every few days.  But I've been journaling every morning before starting work (from home) and so I have been chronicling what is going on, just not here.  So I am weirdly fine.  The month of April has been spent completely at home except for going to PT and hte occasional grocery store, and one trip to Lowe's for plants.  Occasionally (usually on the weekend) E and I will take a drive for an hour or so just for a change of scenery.

Oklahomans are not taking this whole pandemic thing nearly seriously enough, probably b/c this is a conservative Trump-loving state.  When I go grocery shopping usually there are only a few other people wearing masks.  When we went to Lowe's last week, we were the only ones wearing a mask.  There is still not a state-wide Stay at Home order, just one for elderly and at risk.  Gatherings are still permitted of fewer than 10 people.  Our closest neighbor had a party last weekend, and judging by the number of cars, there were way more than 10 people there.  OTOH, most businesses *are* shut down.  The town of Stillwater (where the U is) does have a Stay at Home Order, and the university has already decided that summer classes will be only online.  And my PT place is being extremely cautious/careful.  So it's a mixed bag.  I feel pretty safe because I am very very careful.  I worry about the people I see working the cash registers with no mask.  I worry about all the Okies that no longer have jobs.  I just worry.  Although weirdly enough, my anxiety, because it is so clearly appropriate at this time, is not overwhelming me.  It's there in the background, but I go about my day surprisingly OK for the most part.

I'm enjoying being at home.  I've done some sewing.  I take multiple short walks a day.  I water the plants.  I do my PT exercises.  I cook nice meals.  I'm aware that I'm living in a bubble of privilege.  I feel quite a bit of guilt about that, but the best way I can help others is to stay at home and not become part of the problem, yeah?

The world has turned upside down.  No one in my direct circle is so far infected or sick, although an old friend from highschool who is a nurse in NM seems to have a light case and is home in isolation.  She was tested but still has no results.

Oklahoma is behind the curve on both infections and precautions.  I have had to go to work because the Dean is a short sited fool.  I hope someone sues the *:&$ out of him.  A small bit of good news is that starting on Monday my office will be working home/office on alternate days, at least for the next two weeks.  So I will be at home MWF, then TTh for the next two weeks, which is at least some reduction in exposure.  E should be working from home, but he will be going to his lab every day because he simply incapable of being home with nothing to do.  There will be no one there, b/c that department has sensibly sent everyone home for the forseeable future.  Classes are online for the rest of the semester.  So even with him going to work, he shouldn't really be exposed either.

This is just quickie update to tell everyone (all 2 of you?) that I am alive and OK, and to encourage anyone still reading to also update.  I will write more in a few days.  I promise.

I'm currently about as sick as I've ever been with a nasty flu or something, very congested and hard to breathe, was wondering if I'd have to resort to a Czech ambulance last night ... but I seem to have come through the worst and am hopefully on the mend, so let see what happened in November:

We spent first full week in the little town of Mikulov in Southern Moravia because there was the big yearly Czech/Slovenian radiation conference and E was informed that he was to attend.  The conference was literally held in a bloody castle, which was kind of a trip.  Our pension was one of the nicest accommodations I've ever stayed in.  The pics don't do it justice; it was lovely, plus we were shown the wine refrigerator and told to take whatever we wanted and just tell them when we checked out how much we'd had.  I worked for a lot of the time we were there, but we also took some time to explore the town, which is really lovely. 

The town is also near the site of Dolni Vestonice which is the oldest known permanent settlement ever found and one of those groovy mammoth hunter sites complete with their own venus statue.  So you can imagine my disappointment when we got there to find it closed!  They were filming some stupid movie and no way no how could we see the museum.  BUT, the conference organizer M is also E's boss and she said, this is a small town and everyone is friendly, let me see what I can do.  So she arranged for us to visit not the museum but the actual research institution and meet director!  So after the conference ended, M drove E and me plus an older professor out to the research center where we met the director of research.  I was a little shocked at how young he was (about my age, so not that young, actually).  At first he addressed all his comment to E (grr, they always do that), but both E and M made a point of saying that I was the one with the PhD in archaeology, thank you very much, and once it also became clear that I was the only one who really knew anything about the site, he talked mostly to me.  So he spent about an hour and a half with us and showed us several artifacts and the research premises.  I tried to get him to tell me what his overarching research goal was, but he said he didn't know yet as he'd only taken over as director in the last year.  So all in all very cool, although I still would have liked to see the museum!

The following week, E left for Japan and my good friend M from grad school arrived for a visit!  I took him around to a lot of the sites and a couple museums, and we generally had a really nice visit.  We talked mostly about books, and did some souvenir shopping and also visited the plague cemetery and in the evenings watched The Umbrella Academy, which pissed us both off.  The same day he left E came back (E was supposed to be home earlier, but his trip got extended), and it's been pretty quiet ever since. 

Last weekend we ventured out to Old Town to check out several crystal stores (Czech crystal is a THING and we wanted to get some gifts).  We'd both been feeling somewhat under the weather and even went to a Dr. on Wed who basically said we were fine and gave me some allergy meds for my congestion.  Of course after seeing her, I got significantly worse, to the point where I was worried about pneumonia, but E is definitely on the mend and I think I am also, although I'm still in pretty rough condition.  I'm hawking up all sorts of disgusting crap, but at least it's coming up and not settling in my lungs, so I have hopes that I'll recover with having to negotiate the Czech health care system any further.

We are in the home stretch now, less than 4 weeks before we head back to OK and our Prague adventure ends.  We contemplated taking a final trip to Athens (we were invited by friends), but then we really started feeling crappy and decided that if we got a sudden burst of energy we'd do a more local weekend trip.  

Holy moly, September was a crazy month. In fact the whole summer was crazy and now we both paying for it with a lingering cold/cough. However, back to the beginning of the month -

We headed to Athen on Sept 1 for 12 days. Eric's big yearly conference was there this year, so of course I tagged along and we spent some extra time as well. We were picked up at the airport by the husband of the organizer, V, and taken to a late dinner with some other conference VIPs. (E was THE VIP at this conference, which was nice, but quite weird also.) Dinner was at a famous sea food restaurant and was, of course, sublime. I'm not a huge seafood fan, but this was amazing. In fact all the food we had in Greece was amazing. We stayed a kind of weird hotel, but at least it was air conditioned, and had a very nice breakfast buffet which we took full advantage of each morning.

Monday was a free day, so we headed out to a Technical museum via taxi. It was quite difficult to find, the taxi driver ended up asking an elderly local man, who pointed up a street that cars can't go and then personally escorting us there after we paid the taxi - only to find it was closed on Mondays. Ah well. We were quite close to the Agora, so spent several hours wandering around the ruins. We had been there on our honeymoon in 2002, but it was lovely to see it again, of course.

The conference started the next day and I spent the day in the hotel room, working. I worked Wed and Thurs also, but managed to get out on Wed briefly to see the Museum of Cycladic Art, which was literally across the street from our hotel. That evening was conference banquet held at the historic Hellenistic Officer's Club. There were local dancers, and everybody got quite silly, as I suppose it the usual at these kinds of deals. On Thursday evening the conference organized a private tour of the Acropolis Museum. This is a new(ish) museum, and quite fabulous. The tour was great, but I didn't get wander and see all that I would have liked, actually.

Friday was full day boat tour of three islands and it was fabulous. I skipped getting off the boat at the second island to save my energy for the third island because I wanted to hike up to the Temple of Apollo on Aegina, which was more than worth it. The boat ride, at sunset, from Aegina back to Pireaus (Athens port) was one of my top life experiences.

Saturday, conference over, was a blessedly free day. We slept in, and then went back to the original museum we had wanted to see, the Museum of Ancient Technology. After that we went to the Herakleidon, another technology museum.  We were tired by then, so came back to the hotel for a nap before checking out Aristotle's Lyceum at sunset.  I would not recommend seeing this because it was a smallish site, but it was quite close to our hotel, and it was part of a multiple site ticket that we purchased.

The next day we checked out of our hotel and into an AirBnB and then our Greek friends picked up for the day.  M is a youngish female physicist who E's PhD advisor has asked to look after.  She organized the conference (and did an amazing job) along with her businisman husband V.  So V and M took us for a nice long drive along the coast to Cape Sounio to see the Temple of Poseidon. We also stopped somewhere at a lake, but I don't really remember.  After that we had an early dinner at a traditional Greek restaurant which was fabulous.

On Monday we finally got ourself to the Acropolis.  Even at 9AM on a Monday morning it was crowded beyond belief.  Still it was, of course fully worth it.  We walked to the Library of Hadrian and the Temple of the Winds.  Then we took the tram north to meet V and M again for dinner.  Next day was the National Archaeological Museum and we failed to do it justice because by then we were exhausted and over-saturated.  However we did see the original Antikythyra Mechanism, which was cool, and the original mask of Agamemnon, among other treasures.  Once again we had a ridiculously delicious and over the top dinner with V and M.

Our last day, Wed, we spent again with V and M, but I just sat on a couch with my kindl while E and M talked about a detector system she and V are trying to market, and E had some interviews and stuff.  Then we went for a final dinner with them, complete with a nightcap of ouzo.  It was back to Prague the next day, which was not without its own adventure - it took over 2 hours for our bags to show up ... the company that does baggage claim, unloaded about a third of the baggage, and we got our first bag, but then they just sort of forgot about the rest of the luggage and left it sitting somewhere - it was very strange and very Czech.

So we had less a week to recover from this wonderful adventure before E's dad showed up with his girlfriend and boy was that a grind.  The girlfriend brought three pairs of sandals, and no practical shoes, and so I lent her a pair of sneakers - which she proceeded to wear for three days WITHOUT SOCKS.  Needless to say I'm never wearing those again.  We did our best to show them a good time, though they seemed to whinge and complain the entire time.  I found it all trying, but E found it almost unbearable.  They stayed for a week and after they finally left on the 24th, I promptly got quite sick, and then of course so did E.  So we have spent the last week being absolute slugs, and may spend the next week doing the same ...

Whew, August was kind of a whirlwind!  The first weekend of august, we took the train for a long weekend in Vienna.  We went to the always amazing Natural History Museum, largely to see the new Antrho exhibits and the Venus of Willendorf.  The next day we went to the Collection of Anatomical Pathology at the Madhouse Tower.  Yes this was the major reason I wanted to go and we have to go back because you can call and arrange a behind the scenes in English, which of course I must do!  After that we went to the Technical Museum, which we did not really have time to do justice, b/c we were exhausted.  The following weekend, we stayed close to home because I felt horrible, plus we headed back to OK 13th for a quickie trip since E had a grad student's Comps to deal with.

I didn't tell anyone we would be there, although I did call L at the last minute since I had to go to OKC to get bras, so we got together for a last minute lunch.  We got back to Prague, exhausted, on the 23rd.  E's friend/colleague arrived in Prague on the 28th.  Yesterday we took him site seeing and went Brevnov Monastery, plus I unexpectedly got a text from my only OK friend (B), who is in Prague for just 2 days with a tour, so we went from the monastery to her hotel to have drinks and dinner, which was an unexpected pleasure.

And today we are heading to Athens today for 12 days.  

Prague has been lovely (though hot) and we have definitely been enjoying ourselves.  My anxiety has been much less present that it was in the Spring, for which I am very grateful.  When we get back from Athens, E's Dad and girlfriend will be coming to stay for a week, which may end up being pretty grim!  We shall see.  But I'm happy t be heading back to Greece, and will take tons of photos and thoroughly enjoy myself.