This new wave of Omicron has me more nervous about catching COVID than before, not sure why. Possibly because I keep hearing about how it’s far more transmissible. Like I’ve been fine with my cloth masks, even if they’re gappy around the edges, because I’m still trying to stay away from people, but apparently the Omicron COVID virus is really sneaky. So I ordered some new masks and will be more careful about using them. I’m still assuming that if you’re outside (especially if it’s windy) and you don’t actually stand by a person for any length of time, you’re fine. But we live around the corner from an Urgent Care place and the lines for COVID tests have been lengthy and often taking up the entire sidewalk. So I’m starting to at least think about crossing the street so I don’t have to squeeze by this pack of humanity.
A few weeks ago I got one of those ‘hey we’re doing COVID testing right here on the sidewalk’ tests. Those aren’t rapid, but if you just want to check, you get your results in a day or so. But now that I’ve decided to take advantage of those more often, the city is shutting down again. My office, which had been on a ‘please come in one day a week’ plan is now again saying, ‘please work from home unless you must come into the office for something’. Also, almost every day, we’ve been getting a report of another co-worker testing positive. (so far they’ve all been on the other floor) The last time I was in the office was a week ago – the day of the holiday party, which got cancelled because of COVID. (We did an impromptu team lunch instead, which I kinda organized. That was fun, and I got to meet teammates I’ve known for over a year, but hadn’t met yet. It’s definitely the first time we’ve done something social since I came on board.)
Anyway, so everything shutting down isn’t going to get in the way of my job (unless I get sick…), so not worried about that, but I’m going to miss my weekly trips into the office, and I guess this is putting paid to getting back on the ice, which I was looking forward to. Well, maybe not, but maybe I’ll do outdoor rinks for a while.
I also bought some home test kits (no, stop it, I’m not hoarding them, we currently have 4 waiting, 2 apiece, I think that’s fair). If one of us gets sick, I figure I can take over the guest room, bathroom and home office, and C can have the rest of the apartment. We’ll figure out details later. We are both vaccinated and boosted, but that doesn’t seem to be that much protection from getting it, with this highly transmissible variant.
I have to remind myself when I get down on myself for not having a lot of energy that, jeez, this stuff, and the political stuff too, just weighs you down.
Work’s been super-busy. Last week, especially, because we introduced a rotation on my larger team where there’s a stupid but necessary somewhat-annoying task that has to happen. It used to be the purview of just one role, but the people who had the job kept quitting. So we’re trying something where we rotate those duties, and so one week out of every three months or so, you’re stuck doing this stupid thing, which takes at least an hour a day and sometimes more. We just started this a month ago, so I was only the 4th person to do it, and we’re still ironing out the kinks in the process. And I had a bunch else going on, including some crises that had to be handled, plus Christmas prep and concert prep on top of that (and then the concert got cancelled but I didn’t know that until the night before the concert). So that was exhausting. I’d been planning to take Friday afternoon off, to use up the rest of my ‘personal day’ time before I lost it at the end of the year, but ended up working through the end of the day so I could finish this rotation stuff before the weekend.
But a suddenly-free weekend and the rotation passing to the next person this week and me finally getting caught up on stuff means it was better this week. And I’m taking both this Thursday and next off (the “Eve Eves”), have the Eves off anyway since the holidays are Saturdays, and will take that personal day half-day next Wednesday. I’ll probably use the end of the year not only to clean up some disasters but pick off some of those low-level “I need to do this at some point” tasks that have been floating undone at the bottom of the list for months and months.
(I kinda also need to take a look at doing some certification stuff. I earned a big professional certification last year, but I need to do a certain amount of stuff to keep it up and I haven’t been doing anything extracurricular.)
At home we’ve been watching Christmas movies and prepping for Xmas. C had the decorating basically done before Thankgiving, but there are presents to wrap and mail and buy. I didn’t have a lot of send out, but I’d bought some silly socks for my dad and brother, had to get them out. Actually, they both have December birthdays, a week apart, so birthday/Christmas prep for them is sort of one huge blob for me, and I need to keep a list of what each is getting for the birthday and what for Xmas. But that’s been handled. I’d been late on the holiday letter too, but C sort of guilted me and I managed to finish the draft and get them printed in one frantic day. And I got the ‘absolutely must go out the door’ Christmas cards done this weekend. Any Xmas cards I get from this point on will get New Year’s cards (already obtained) in reciprocation.
I’m at the point now where I just need to wrap some presents, not a big deal. I’m looking forward to the days off, not only to relax, but to clean up my home-life ‘should do this at some point’ tasks and prep for the new year.
More as it develops. This is a good time to blog more frequently, any random crapola that comes out of my head.
This post is part of a larger project, #MOC19. Read more about the Mass Observation COVID-19 project here.
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