A First Time For Everything

 Being liberal has been an important part of my identity since I was a teenager.  I have always voted for Democrats.  To be honest, I'm pretty unenthusiastic about most Democratic politicians, but I generally like the party's platform.

Virginia, where I currently live, is one of the Super Tuesday states.  It is also a state that allows you to choose which party's ballot you request during the primaries.  I decided to vote early on Saturday, since our early voting location is close to the farmers market I usually visit.  I will confess that I don't always vote in the primaries.  When I've lived in other states, the primaries have often been all but decided before I even get a chance to vote.  Really, one could make a very strong case that this is true in this election as well.

And this is where it comes down to my first time voting for a Republican.  I didn't feel that there was any point in voting in the Democratic primaries because we don't have a real choice (and no, I don't count Dean Phillips as an actual choice).  There doesn't appear to really be a choice for the Republicans, either, but the idea of another Trump presidency so horrifies me that I felt compelled to try.  I voted for Nikki Haley, a politician with whom I have little to no common ground, but who I don't think is actively trying to destroy our democracy.

The funny part for me was having to actually request the Republican ballot from the election workers.  Apparently, I was very afraid of what people I don't know, and whose political leanings I don't know, thought of me.  When they asked which ballot I wanted, I said "I'll take the Republican ballot this time," hoping they would read between the lines and realize my true party affiliation.

And that's my story of expanding my horizons in a way that I never thought I would.  

A Modern--And Decidedly First World--Problem

 Anyone else hear of our modern day, swashbuckling porch pirates?  I first saw the term on Nextdoor, a social media site I joined mostly to learn about local fireworks displays and see if anyone was giving away any good free stuff.  Suffice to say, I'm engaging pretty minimally with it, although it's occasionally good for a laugh or even some useful information.

As everyone knows, times have changed when it comes to packages.  Many of us (and I'm as guilty as anyone else) are ordering things, usually online, that we might have purchased from brick and mortar stores 20 or 30 years ago.  This means a constant stream of packages going pretty much everywhere and posing a potentially tempting target.  The flipside of this bonanza is that the packages are at least as likely to be, say, underwear or cat food as they are the newest iPhone.  In fact, in one of the times when Nextdoor entertained me, someone found an abandoned opened box of CPAP supplies on a street corner.  She kindly decided to drive it to the address on the box

We've had a series of package thefts in our condo building.  We don't have porches, but I guess you could still call the perpetrators porch pirates, since mailroom pirates doesn't quite have the same ring.  Since our building was built in the late 80's, it dates from a time when people were receiving fewer packages.  We have a little alcove with our locked mailboxes and shelves for the packages.  The going theory is that our porch pirate has been coming in behind residents who are not properly conscious of security (we've received a number of accusing emails to this effect) and then helping himself.  Someone isolated a security footage photo of this person and posted it on the outside door.  Whether this is to warn him or to shame him, I'm not sure.  We're being led to believe that this is a top priority for our city's police....

Since none of our packages have gone missing, I have the luxury of being mildly fascinated by the porch piracy phenomenon.  I've been wondering how any of these porch pirates make money off this endeavor.  How do they even decide which packages to take?  If there are too many to take them all, they have to choose a few, probably quickly.  Otherwise, they risk being stuck with the dreaded box of CPAP supplies with no resale value.  Even if they were to get something potentially resellable, how do they find a buyer?  I have limited experience selling things, but enough experience to know that it's not always easy to find any buyer at all, or in particular to get someone to pay what you think an item is worth.  All in all, it seems like a lot of risk for not very much reward.

In the case of our building, I don't think pretending that the residents are willing to get into it with someone trying to follow them into the building is going to solve the problem.  I think the problem might cost money, either collectively by paying for some sort of additional security for the packages (e.g. creating a locked package room or paying a doorman) or individually (e.g., people who are worried pay for P.O. boxes and pick their packages up).  

Just as I'm as guilty as anyone else of receiving packages, I'm also as guilty as anyone else of sometimes forgetting my own good fortune and getting upset about things that are definitely not matters of life or death.  So I'm not trying to shame anyone for being upset about their packages going missing.  I know it would bother me, too.  But I do think it's mostly a problem that stems from good fortune, both in terms of having the money to buy stuff and having this modern convenience of not having to head to stores every time you want or need something.  To name just a few areas of tremendous misfortune in the world, I think many people in Gaza, Syria, or Ukraine would be very grateful if porch piracy were the most dire problem they were currently facing.

The US Healthcare System Strikes Again

 Recently, Scott and I attempted to be savvy consumers.  His employer (a local public school district) had replaced their previous PPO health plan with one that was somehow covering fewer healthcare expenses while not becoming any cheaper.  So when open enrollment season came around, we decided to investigate the health insurance plans that my employer (another local public school district) offered.  After comparing the two of them, we decided to give one of the PPOs my employer offers a try.  Scott cancelled his health insurance during open enrollment, and I enrolled in my health insurance.  So far, so good, right?

Not quite.  I had thought that it was fairly standard for health plans that people enroll in during open season to begin coverage on January 1.  For reasons I cannot fathom, coverage under our new plan does not begin until January 14.  Meanwhile, Scott's health insurance coverage ends on January 1, leaving us with a small--but potentially financially ruinous--gap in coverage should one of us, say, develop appendicitis or get into a car accident.

Fortunately, (a) because of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), we are able to qualify for private health insurance even though I have a preexisting health condition that probably would have disqualified me previously, and (b) I discovered this impending gap in coverage before December 15.  I can't speak for all the state insurance market places, but in at least both Maryland and Virginia, you have to enroll by the 15th of one month to be covered for the first of the next month.  I knew this because this is not our first experience with buying coverage.  We were briefly on Affordable Care Act insurance plans in 2017 when we both lost our jobs and in 2019 when I was in grad school 2.0 and Scott changed jobs, triggering a gap in coverage.  

Unfortunately, it's still very expensive.  We are sinking over $600 into what appears to be a pretty crummy plan just to avoid dire financial consequences if we happen to be unlucky in the first two weeks of January.  I'm feeling particularly annoyed because I remember (some years ago and in Maryland) paying a comparable amount and getting better coverage.  I don't know whether to blame the state of Virginia or just inflation for the shoddiness of the coverage.

This has made me wish--and definitely not for the first time--that the US could just come to grips with the fact that everyone needs healthcare at some point or another and view it as a basic human right.  This idea that people will be covered through their jobs has been disastrous, what with layoffs, employers that purposely give their workers less than full-time hours to avoid paying benefits, and these sorts of awkward transitional periods like what Scott and I are experiencing now.  What's scary is that he and I were pretty much ideally suited to not have a break in coverage, what with both of us being full-time employees in public sector jobs, but yet, here we are.  I shudder to think how precarious health insurance coverage is for other people who don't have as stable of jobs, particularly those people who don't have the money to purchase private health insurance during coverage gaps.

As for us, we are going to try very hard to stay healthy and uninjured during the first two weeks in January.  We've even gone so far as to reschedule medical appointments that were originally in early January.  Ironically enough, this is $600 that I hope will just be money down the drain and not be used, and I'm hoping that the insurance we get on January 14 is amazing enough to justify all this annoyance and expense.

Thus Concludes My Annual Pathetic Scavenger Hunt

 At the beginning of every new year, I start watching for tax documents and create a "pile" area for them.  We pay an accountant to do our taxes, mostly because I really hate paperwork and seek to avoid it whenever possible, but there is that preliminary step of giving him something to work with.

I've written about my employment ups and downs here before, but suffice to say, this was a year that generated three(!) W2s for me.  I wasn't excited about the prospect of watching for all three of them, and was imagining the awkwardness and tedium of having to contact previous employers for my tax documents.

Well.  Turns out I needn't have worried because my two previous employers of 2022 sent my my W2s in a timely fashion!  It was my current employer that fell down on that essential task!

If there's one thing I don't like about the school district where I work that I really think I can blame on the district itself, it's the complete chaos with all matters related to HR or payroll.  In theory, we have a self-service website where we can take care of some things ourselves; in practice, it's highly glitchy and often requires intervention from someone in HR anyway.  It took me weeks--and multiple emails to HR--to change my transit benefits allocations earlier this year.  At a previous job, I could change my transit benefits allocations at will, on my own, online.  Anyway, the lack of a W2 is another example of this chaos, but even worse is that it wasn't obvious whom to contact to complain.  My email directory showed multiple emails for payroll.  I started emailing them, and eventually one got back to me to say that I needed a different payroll office.  Naturally, that office has not yet responded to my email.

I value the service our accountant provides and have no objection to paying him.  However, at the same time, I'd prefer to not have to pay additional money for him to file for an extension for us.  I emailed him today and asked what options we had in the absence of one of my three W2s.  He suggested that I send him my final pay stub from December and then follow up by sending him the W2 if I ever receive it.  I'm happy to report that recovering my pay stub was something I was able to accomplish on my own on my employer's self-service HR website.  I mailed our accountant the documents today and am happy to no longer have a pile of tax documents in my line of sight.

Happy 272nd Birthday, Alexandria!

 I've always enjoyed seeing fireworks displays, but in recent years, have only rarely gone to see them.  What usually holds me back is the idea of heading into large crowds with parking and/or mass transit scrums.  I made a happy discovery about our new home this year, though.  While I was researching if there was a way I could view DC's July 4th fireworks without actually going into DC and getting involved in the aforementioned scrums and crowds, I discovered that Alexandria celebrates the anniversary of its founding with fireworks!  Best of all, the park where celebrations were held is an easy walk from our home.  There are things I still miss about Silver Spring, MD, where we lived before moving here last summer.  However, the promise of annual fireworks that I can walk to is definitely a point in Alexandria's favor.

The Potomac River at night

My one fireworks photo that is recognizable as a firework

Breathing A Sigh Of Relief

As is the case for many others, the lead-up to this election took a toll on me.  I voted very early, and then tried to limit my consumption of coverage.  On Tuesday night, I drank some chamomile tea and went to bed early (where I proceeded to toss and turn for much of the night).  And then the next morning, we still didn't have any answers.

All of which leads me to say that I am breathing an enormous sigh of relief right now.  Not just because I'm a Democrat and someone from my party won, but because I think Trump has been so completely destructive and divisive.  I shuddered to think what another four year term could bring.

Four years doesn't sound like a long time, but a lot can happen.  Looking back on my own life, since the 2016 election, I have had three jobs, attended four universities, earned one graduate degree, mourned the loss of one beloved pet, adopted another beloved pet, and bought a home.

A lot can happen to a nation in four years, also. I think it suffices to say that within less than one year, 237,000 Americans have died from COVID.  That is a staggering number, and likely would have seemed staggering even if it had been spread out over four years.

I don't know what a Biden presidency will bring, but I think it's fair to predict far less drama, far fewer tweets, and a move to bring people together rather than sow discord.  At this point, that is enough to give me hope.

Pandemic Daze: The Triumphant Arrival Of The Chinese Toilet Paper!

Remember the early days of the pandemic, when a few people were hoarding massive quantities of toilet paper for the sheer joy of ensuring that nobody else had any?  As I wrote at the time, I wasn't initially concerned because timing had worked out so that I had just purchased a 24 roll pack of TP right before people started panic buying.  But as time went on, and we didn't see any appear on store shelves, we became more concerned.  At that point in time, we started looking online more regularly.  Scott lucked into buying some TP made by American brands and shipped from somewhere in the US that arrived reasonably quickly.  But before that happened, I ordered an unfamiliar brand of TP from China.

This TP was slated to arrive anywhere from April 24 to May 15.  That window passed.  Several weeks thereafter, I contacted the seller, asking for my money back.  The seller got back to me, and essentially pleaded for me to not demand a refund, saying that they had given my package to the international courier a long time ago, and citing imminent financial ruin if they had to refund my money.  They promised to send me a second package of TP in return.  I grudgingly agreed.  I didn't know if their tale of financial woes was legitimate or not, but given the state of things, it seemed plausible.

Many more weeks passed, but this long-awaited TP finally arrived on Monday!  I was surprised when I saw the package.  Given that it came from China, I couldn't think what else it could be, but it seemed awfully small for 24 rolls of TP.  Then I opened it, and found 24 weird, adorably tiny rolls.

Here is a picture of one of the rolls next to one of our regular rolls for scale:

And check out how large its cardboard tube is:

If nothing else, this Chinese toilet paper is providing me with good entertainment, and I think the individually wrapped rolls will make halfway decent packing material for our probable impending move.  After that, I suppose we could try using it for its intended purpose, or maybe distribute the rolls as pandemic gag gifts.  Either way, I got a kick out of receiving a package I had long ago given up on.

Pandemic Daze: Making Decisions

An interesting feature of life in general is that we often have to make decisions--sometimes life-altering ones--without anywhere near enough information.  Unsurprisingly, this has also been true during the pandemic.

The US has been a real patchwork of regulations since the pandemic started, but depending on where you lived, many decisions were made simple in the beginning.  When non-essential stores, restaurants, gyms, movie theaters, museums, and hair salons are closed, the decision is made for you because you can't actually go to any of them.  For a while, we really went very few places.  We had a weekly grocery store trip and an almost daily outdoor walk.  We ordered food a couple times a week to break up the monotony.  As time went on, and public health experts became less concerned about outdoor transmission, encountering other people on our walks made us less nervous.  We started making occasional trips to restaurants to get take-out instead of ordering in (both because food delivery has been a very imperfect process and so that our money would go to the restaurants themselves instead of the delivery services).  But that was pretty much it for our venturing out.

Now, more options are available in our area.  Restaurants, salons, gyms, and non-essential stores are allowed to reopen under certain conditions (greatly reduced capacity, mask-wearing, etc.).  And so in a sense, some decisions are still easy.  We don't have to decide whether to risk eating in a crowded indoor restaurant, for example, because indoor seating capacity has been capped at 50% for the time being.  But we do have to decide whether we want to risk going to that restaurant (or gym, store, salon, etc.) in the first place.  

This weekend, we decided to make a couple of these decisions.  First, we went to our local farmers market.  This had stayed open with modifications throughout the pandemic, but we hadn't been since before the pandemic started because we had been trying to minimize non-essential outings.  We decided this was probably a safe outing to make since it's outdoors, and besides, I wanted some plants for the balcony.  We could see decisions being made at the farmers market itself.  Some vendors had elaborate systems for socially-distanced lines and the employees handling your produce.  Others were more relaxed and let you wander around and pick your own stuff.  On the whole, I found the farmers market much more enjoyable in the pre-pandemic days, but that's probably not much of a surprise.

We also decided to go to a restaurant and (gasp!) actually eat there.  Our 14th anniversary was on Thursday, and we were talking about how to celebrate it.  Since the pandemic started, we celebrated both Scott's birthday and my graduation at home.  And now we actually had the option to go out.  Ordinarily, we would have gone somewhere in DC (I keep a mental list of restaurants I want to try there), but we decided to choose someplace within walking distance this time in order to skip taking Metro to get there.  And while the whole experience felt very different from pre-pandemic times, it was still pretty great!  Time will tell whether this was a wise decision, but I'm hoping that some of the regulations in place will help us all to get a little taste of our previous life without putting undue risk on anyone.

More decisions are coming.  My gym is reopening in early July (with only two people allowed to work out at a time).  I also haven't had a haircut since February, and am sorely tempted to get one now.  I'm thinking I might spread these "pandemic firsts" out a bit to see how my area's reopening goes and to not force myself into too many decisions at once.

Pandemic Daze: Exercise

One interesting aspect of staying at home and having non-essential businesses closed is how it changes your exercise patterns.  Under normal, non-pandemic circumstances, I get a fair amount of walking each day to and from mass transit.  Now, I'm hardly going anywhere at all (and I'm heeding Metro's pleas to not ride unless absolutely necessary), so that's gone.  I also typically did more formal workouts a few times a week.  Up until winter break, I was using my apartment complex's fitness center.  Then, after deciding that I needed to up my fitness game a bit, I joined a kickboxing gym.  As the public perception of the pandemic began to change, my apartment complex closed our fitness center.  The gym I joined voluntarily closed hours before our governor ordered all gyms to close.

One of the first things Scott and I did when it started to look like we'd be hunkering down for a while was to order some hand weights and a kettle bell.  It took a while for them to come in and Scott mentioned that he thought the hand weights would normally have been less expensive, so I suspect others had the same idea.  On my last "normal" day (i.e., the last day I ventured more than a couple miles from my apartment), I saw a Peloton bike (of the ad fame) being delivered in a ritzy neighborhood, so maybe there was a run on higher-end fitness equipment, too.

My gym has been creating daily workout videos for people to do at home.  None of them require equipment, although you can sometimes incorporate things like hand weights if you have them.  We've been trying to do three of those workouts per week, and while it's not exactly like going to the gym, they're pretty good.  I do miss the uncluttered padded floors of the gym, though--no furniture to rearrange there, and no rough carpeting for floor exercises!  Also, at home, we sometimes get a feline interloper who wants to know what all the commotion is about.

We're taking long walks most days, too.  We usually walk through a nearby residential neighborhood to a trail and then walk on the trail.  The problem is that the trail is sometimes pretty crowded and there's not a lot of room to avoid other people, but we do our best.

Playgrounds here have been closed; the ones near us are surrounded in that orange flexible fencing.  This doesn't directly impact us, but I do feel sorry for the kids, especially ones who don't have yards to play in.  I'm starting to see more kids on the trail we walk on, possibly because it's one of the few places left where they can let off some steam.

I'm glad that the existing restrictions have still allowed for people to get exercise outdoors.  It'll be interesting to see what happens as restrictions ease up--I kind of doubt gyms or team sports will be among the first restrictions to be lifted, and I think most people are fearful enough that there won't be too many volunteers to be first to go into a non-essential crowded situation.

Pandemic Daze: Face Masks

Anybody else suffering from mental whiplash from all the contradictory advice we're getting in the time of covid-19?  Like how wearing face masks was utterly pointless and possibly socially irresponsible until it wasn't?

I am definitely NOT providing any medical advice in this post.  I also don't want to upset anyone at such a sensitive time.  But I will say that I am unconvinced by the utility of most people wearing face masks, especially of the DIY variety.  I'm willing to be persuaded to think otherwise, if anyone has evidence they'd like to share.  But the usual explanation I hear is that various Asian countries where face mask-wearing is widespread have had lower infection rates than the US.  I would argue that that evidence shows correlation, not causation, and that the countries in question also did other things differently.

Also, I worry about some of the wider implications of encouraging everyone to wear face masks.  Sure, they tell us to make our own and leave the "real" face masks for medical personnel.  But is it really that much of a leap in logic to think that if people are being told to wear face masks that they might try to get ahold of good ones to wear rather than, say, cut up a t-shirt for a no-sew DIY mask?  I also worry that people might put too much faith in the efficacy of face masks and become more lax about measures like physical distancing.

Also, to be honest, I'm just very upset at how this whole crisis has been managed.  With two months of warning time, I suspect lots of medical-grade face masks could have been manufactured, possibly enough for (gasp!) our medical personnel to have all the masks they need.  Maybe even enough for the rest of us to use them!

All of that being said, my county has started requiring people to wear a face mask in supermarkets, pharmacies, and various other establishments.  I'm not getting out all that much these days, but I'm still making weekly supermarket trips, so I finally broke down and sewed a few masks over the weekend.  We wore them to the supermarket for the first time today, and I thought they were fairly tolerable.  We could breathe through the fabric and they didn't slip much.  When we were standing in line to get in to the supermarket, the guy behind us complimented our masks very enthusiastically; he liked the fact that they wrapped around our faces to our ears.  Upon learning that I had made them, he told me I was the MVP. 

I wonder how it will feel, at some distant point in the future, when wearing a face mask in public becomes an anomaly again.  I remember when I left a job where it was absolutely essential to have my employee badge every day.  For months after I left, I kept having these brief spells of panic looking for it in my purse, only to remember that I didn't need it anymore and had turned it in on my last day.  I wonder if similar mask panic is in my future, and if so, when.

Pandemic Daze: Grocery Shopping

We went to the supermarket today for the first time since Saturday.  This is also the most contact we've had with other people in several days, which is sad considering we can't even get together with friends right now.  But I digress. 

The supermarket wasn't terrible today.  I wasn't as crowded as it sometimes gets during even normal times, which I attribute to some people ordering groceries rather than going into the store.  It was also much better stocked today than it was on Saturday, which I attribute to the store setting limits on the number of certain high-demand items that people could buy.  Many of these items made sense; one of these items was packaged salad greens, however, which makes me think that people who don't make salads regularly don't understand what short shelf life those have.

In spite of the limits on items, some things were in short supply or nowhere to be found.  I did not see a single roll of TP or a single container of disinfecting wipes.  We bought one of the last two boxes of Kleenex on the shelves.  The store was down to its last few jars of peanut butter.

In other cases, the thing that was missing was the less expensive option.  The bulk bins with the ladles are closed due to sanitation concerns, so you couldn't get the bulk nutritional yeast (which we love to put on roasted veggies).  However, you could buy a prepackaged canister of the stuff at a considerable markup.  The least expensive olive oil was long gone; however, there were many "fancier" options still available.  There was no store brand butter on the shelves, but there was still a good supply of the imported European butter.

Ordinarily, I'm not very germophobic, but that has changed due to current circumstances.  When we got home, I disinfected our phones, the pen I was using to cross things off my list, and my house key.  I also threw both of our jackets and all of our reusable bags in the laundry.

We're lucky in a lot of ways.  We're not rich by any means, but if the less expensive item is missing from the supermarket, we can sometimes buy the more expensive option if we need it.  Similarly, we have enough money to be able to buy extra of things we think will be essential to our well being if we get to the point that we can't leave our apartment.  Also, we have a washer and dryer in our apartment, which means we can do laundry whenever we want.  What worries me is some people have very little margin for dealing with even ordinary inconveniences, and something like this pandemic may prove ruinous to them.

Pandemic Daze: The Long Wait Begins

Plenty has changed since I last blogged about the covid-19 pandemic.  My gym made the decision to close early on Monday; later in the day, our governor ordered all gyms, movie theaters, bars, and restaurants (except for drive-through, carry-out, and delivery functions) to close.  I'm also staying home from my hospital internship for at least the next couple of weeks.  I'm sad about that, but it was the right decision for everyone involved, and I actually feel less stressed out now that the decision has been made.

So now there will be a lot of time at home.  I have work to do, which I ignored today in favor of cutting out fabric for my next sewing project.  I have plenty of fabric to sew, beads to turn into jewelry, and books to read, so if I can stay healthy, I have a chance of staying reasonably content.

Scott and I are still taking long walks outside; we feel that there isn't too much risk in that since we're not getting very close to other people.  Plus, it's important to try to maintain our  baseline level of health.  My gym has promised to post workouts we can do at home, and I'll plan to do some of those exercises, too.

Wishing everyone good health and at least a tolerable stay at home!

Pandemic Daze: Wading Into Uncharted Waters

I'll admit I've been feeling a little uninspired to blog lately.  I just feel like there hasn't been much material because life has mostly been a cycle of classes, internship, household chores, and angst about looking for work.  If there is anything the covid-19 outbreak has brought us, however, it's a departure from the routine.  I've decided to write about pandemic life, not because I expect our situation to be particularly special or unique, but because this chaotic and uncertain situation is much different from other chaotic and uncertain situations I've experience previously, and I'd like to document at least some of it.

I feel like last week was when everything started to change for us.  Last weekend when we went grocery shopping, I wasn't particularly concerned, and didn't buy more than I normally would.  Then my university announced that classes would move to online after our spring break.  That's when I started to think that life really would be different for a while.  I made two (very uncharacteristic) mid-week grocery store runs and went again yesterday.  Some items had already been picked clean from the shelves.  I'm grateful for the amount of food, cleaning supplies, etc. that I normally keep around, and I'm glad I made two mid-week grocery runs when there was still more selection.

One thing that's been in the news recently is the toilet paper shortage.  I was lucky on that account, as well.  I normally order 24-roll packs from Target, and had already ordered one just in the natural course of things.  By the time I learned that there was a run on toilet paper, I had a large package of it en route to me.

As of now, the school where Scott teaches is closed to both teachers and students for two weeks.  It will be closed for students for two additional weeks after that, during which time I suspect they'll have online classes, although that hasn't been made clear.  One feature of having had only one snow day this year is that there is more flexibility for the schools to just give everyone some time off.

My university has decided that classes will be online through early May.  I have an internship (at a hospital!) for the clinical part of my requirements.  As of now, I'll still be going there, but I have a feeling that will probably change.  It'll be disappointing if I have to end the internship early, but I realize the pandemic has brought all sorts of disappointments, on top of the tragedy of so many people dying.

We've been trying to live a fairly normal life until we can't.  We took a long walk this afternoon.  The gym I joined this winter is still open (albeit with some additional precautions).  Assuming it's still open tomorrow, I'm planning to go get a workout.  I have a feeling we might all be spending a lot of time at home in the near future, but I haven't wanted to settle into that prematurely.

Do This, Don't Do That, Can't You Read The Sign?

Our apartment complex has an online forum where people can communicate with all the residents.  Usually people use this forum to try to sell things before moving out, but sometimes people use the forum to complain.  Over the past several months, there have been a number of complaints about people smoking marijuana, ranging from people being upset about the stench to actual respiratory problems that are exacerbated by smoke of any kind.  We've been fortunate that none of our immediate neighbors seem to be marijuana smokers, but I do believe this is a problem since I've smelled marijuana in the courtyard.

Anyway, our complex's management--ever cognizant of their role in making the community a pleasant place to live--took immediate action!  Clearly, this sign was what the U.S. war on drugs has been missing all these decades:

Honestly, this sign made me laugh when I first saw it.  Throughout all the years--and all the permutations of marijuana laws in different locations--I have never actually seen a marijuana leaf crossed out on a sign.  Also, I would have thought that the "no smoking" and the crossed out cigarette would by default imply that one is also not allowed to smoke joints.  Or are they also trying to prevent people from eating marijuana brownies in the stairwell for fear of the crumbs fueling an army of well-fed, high mice?

It occurred to me that I don't envy the leasing agents who are taking people on tours of this building while these signs are decorating every door to the stairs.  I'm not sure I would have rushed to sign a lease if these signs had been up when I toured here four years ago.  At least in theory, though, I suppose that fewer no tenants might mean fewer pot smokers to pursue, and maybe that's the extent of their strategy. 

12 Days Of Cheese

Out of all of the holiday sales and specials that we have to choose from, the one I'm most excited about these days is the 12 Days of Cheese at Whole Foods.  I'm not sure when they started it, but I became aware of it a couple years ago, and I've eagerly anticipated it each December since then.

For the uninitiated, the 12 Days of Cheese is when Whole Foods marks a different cheese 50% off for twelve days.  They distribute a cheese schedule ahead of time, so you know what you'll find each day.  Like all sales, I'm sure the intent is just to get people in the store with the hopes that they will buy more than just the cheese...but you get to decide that!

In years past, at least in the Whole Foods near me, you had to search for the half price cheese.  This year, they displaced the half price cheeses prominently.  The good part of this was that I spent less time looking for them; the bad part was that a couple days when I went to Whole Foods, they had sold out of the half price cheese.  I decided that on days when I was really interested in the half price cheese, I needed to go there early to make sure I could get it.  Fortunately for me, by the time the 12 Days of Cheese rolled around this year, my semester was winding down, so I had more free time to go on cheese runs.

This year, I managed to buy cheese on 6 of the 12 days.  This might seem like an excessive amount of cheese for two people, but (a) you can buy small amounts of some of the cheeses, (b) most cheese lasts a while in the fridge, and (c) for me, there is no such thing as an excessive amount of cheese.  Every year for New Year's Eve, I make an appetizer dinner, and I was very happy to have pre-bought all the cheese I wanted for it.  "Fancy" cheese is one of my vices at the moment, and I'm happy to be able to combine it with my love of bargains.

Independence Day Wish

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

-Emma Lazarus

This portion of "The New Colossus,"by Emma Lazarus, is rightly famous, and often quoted.  I realize that the use of this quote may seem cliche at this point, but I really do find the words beautiful and inspiring.  To be a citizen of a country that may serve as a refuge to others is an amazing privilege and responsibility.

Like most Americans, I am descended from immigrants.  My family came from various parts of Europe.  The last of the immigrants in my family left the Netherlands in 1912.  My great grandfather was among them, along with his parents and siblings.  My great grandfather died before I was born, but I did meet his two sisters, who lived into their nineties.  I sometimes wonder if contact (however brief) with older relatives who spoke heavily accented English helped cement in my mind the concept of the US being a nation of immigrants.

I know very few details about my family's immigration story.  However, to the best of my knowledge, none of my family's immigrants were wealthy, and none of them had attained a high level of formal education.  Yet, I am the daughter of a professor and an attorney.  I myself have one master's degree, and am on the verge of starting another.  I have held several professional jobs.  I also have the privilege of living in an area with a large number of recent immigrants and seeing how they contribute to our society.

My wish for this Independence Day is for the US to live up to Emma Lazarus' beautiful poem.  Whether the people in question are central Americans fleeing gang violence, Syrians fleeing a long and brutal civil war, Yemenis fleeing a war that the US government supports (!), or anyone else who needs refuge, I hope we can open our hearts and minds to them and allow them to enrich our great country.

And Then There Were Tomatoes

I wrote this summer about my (mis)adventures in balcony gardening.  Even though it's technically fall now, balcony gardening season has continued, courtesy of the unseasonably warm weather we've been having.  In my opinion, this is really the only upside to the weather at this point.  This summer was a challenging time for me, and I'm anxious to put it completely behind me and move on to fall.

However, the upside of continued balcony gardening has its own very specific upside.  I finally have tomatoes!  After a string of cherry tomato plants inexplicably died over the summer, I tried a beefsteak tomato plant.  It stayed alive, but it took a while before it did anything else, like grow taller or blossom.  However, now it's huge and full of green tomatoes!  Just in time for a first frost (if the weather were a little more fall-like)! 

Eventually, three of them ripened, so I'm happy that we got to enjoy at least a few tomatoes from our plant.  At this point, I'll either be stuck with an extra long summer that refuses to move on (but plenty of ripe tomatoes!), or I'll get my wish for fall weather and learn to embrace fried green tomatoes.

In Which I Struggle NOT To Tell The Truth

I'll get the good news out of the way first:  I'm employed full-time again!  The employer which laid me off in June asked me to return, so I'm back at the same place!  I'm just hoping not to repeat the layoff experience again in a few months!

Since there was about three months between receiving my layoff notice and returning to my office, I have some thoughts on the job-search process.  Chief among those right now is that interviews are the pits.  Of course, when you're looking for work, you want to have them.  But really, they're bad on both sides.  If you're the one being interviewed, you're going to feel anxious and awkward, and then you're going to second guess everything you said as soon as the interview is done.  If you're doing the interviewing, you're trying desperately to fill a position with someone both competent and tolerable, and you have very limited means of determining whether your applicants are either of those.

Unfortunately, the very limited means of trying to learn about an applicant often mean asking questions that are nearly impossible for the applicant to answer truthfully.

I'm going to purposely leave out a lot of details here, but I had an interview for a position for which I felt qualified, but was different in many ways from other positions I had had.  I was surprised when I was contacted for an interview.  During the interview, one person asked me how this position fit into my career goals.  An honest response would have been something like this:

"I applied for this position shortly after being laid off with no warning.  At that time, my goal of having income and benefits overrode any loftier career goals I might have had.  As a plus, this position seemed like it might be pleasant, and the office is close enough to where I take evening classes that work shouldn't interfere too much with my studies.  Otherwise, though, this position has very little to do with my current career field, and probably even less to do with my planned future career."

Obviously, there was no part of this I could have shared with my interviewers.

I don't even remember how I answered the question, but I doubt I was either convincing or credible.  They say practice makes perfect, though, so for any future interviews for positions that are not obvious career fits for me, I'll have to be sure to get my lies straight ahead of time.

Remote Work Mysteries

I've recently started a part-time job, working remotely for an employer in another state.  Most of the other employees work onsite.  I'd never really thought about this, but when you work in the same space as other people, you share a lot of experiences with them, good and bad.  You see colleagues and bosses come and go, you partake in office parties, you complain together about the flickering light in the conference room.  Sometimes, you even get a group layoff experience!  When you work remotely, you don't have these same points of reference.  Messages were circulating recently about a goodbye party for departing colleagues; I never met any of them in person, and I didn't get to eat any of the food.

But the weirdest thing is that in the few weeks I've been doing this job, there have already been two(!) emails about the restrooms.  I don't recall receiving any emails about the restrooms at my previous job, which I held for over a year before being laid off, so two messages in a just a few weeks seems noteworthy somehow.

The first message was to advise us that only employees and authorized visitors were allowed to use the restrooms.  Evidently, random people from the parking lot had been trying to come inside the building to use the restrooms.  (Why?  Are the restrooms in this building really nice, or are they just the only restrooms around for miles?  I need details!).  All of us employees were supposed to somehow fend these people off, and if they persisted, we were supposed to notify the sender of this email so he could deal with them.  (How?  I'm picturing parking lot fist fights that I'll never actually get to see.)

The second message mentioned that the restrooms had been left in "disarray," and that if we needed further clarification on what that meant, we should stop by the sender's office to ask.  I'm so curious about this email, but yet, so glad I don't know what the sender was talking about.  The "disarray" must have been pretty bad to warrant any sort of mention, and the fact that the sender would only elaborate on it in person makes me think it was fairly lurid.

But, since I can neither visit these restrooms nor stop by anyone's office for clarification, the exact nature of the "disarray" will forever remain a mystery to me.

A blurry photo of my distinguished office mate, Laila.

Eclipse-Watching With No Photographic Evidence!

I'm sure few people are unaware at this point of the solar eclipse that could be seen today in North America.  I'm no astronomy buff, and it was impractical for a number of reasons for me to travel anywhere in the "path of totality," but I started to have serious fear of missing out as the eclipse drew closer, so decided to take the afternoon off to see what I could see in my area.

I ended up heading to the roof of my building around the time the eclipse started to be visible here, special eclipse-viewing glasses in hand.  A small group of people were assembled up there, also watching the eclipse.  During part of the time I was on the roof, cloud cover prevented me from seeing anything, so I alternated between reading my book and putting on the special glasses to check out the eclipse's progress.  It was a surreal experience.  Since the eclipse-viewing glasses block out all light except sunlight, it felt like I was seeing the moon against a dark sky while I was wearing them.  Yet, it was the middle of the day.  Attempting to photograph the eclipse was a similarly odd experience.  I would locate the sun in the sky while wearing my special glasses, hold the camera in front of my eyes (thereby blocking my view of everything), take the picture, and hope for the best.  I'm pleased to report that the pictures I took do indeed contain the sun.  However, they all look suspiciously like they were taken on a normal day.

Today was fun, but maybe I'll try to be a little more ambitious the next time a solar eclipse can be viewed in North America.  It would be fun to have an excuse to travel somewhere new (assuming I won't be living in the "path of totality").  I'm sure thousands (at least!) of other people are taking care of photographs, but it would also be fun to take a few good pictures of my own.  It looks like I'll have several years to prepare!