So, lots of stuff has happened in the last year or so. There’s still a pandemic. I’m vaccinated, thank Fauci, with the Pfizer vaccine. My mother caught covid at a ‘mandatory work Christmas breakfast’, gave it to my brother and father. My mother and brother recovered. My father spent a month in the hospital, including 2 weeks in a coma on a ventilator. He died on January 29, 2021 at the age of 63. It’s been 8 months and I’m still torn up. I talk to him in my dreams–mostly to say “hey, aren’t you dead?” He smiles and says “yep, I am”, then we talk about more important things. It’s nice.
Mom’s coworkers mocked her for wearing a mask because “his mask didn’t protect John”. I’m just done with this anti-masking bullshit.
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At work, figured out a layout issue and b troubleshooted why some things weren’t indexing. Put in a quick workaround so that things without a unittitle or unitdate would index. Issued a pull request for the change. Turns out that the arclight team had made the choice to fail indexing when a title couldn’t be generated. However, they’re looking into other possibilities, possibly generating a title the same way they generate a unitid when one is absent.
Other news, I sent off 12 masks.. They’re all wrinkledy because I wash and dry them on hot before I bag them.
Michelle, my mask runner/handler really wants me to accept donated fabric. I’ve been hesitant because I enjoy picking out my own colors. She finally convinced me with the suggestion that someone else could cut the fabric. That’s an awesome idea and I approve.
I also got a package of TVP from the Amazon Hub. No mail. Ordered food (mostly sauces and tofu) and a yoga block from Target. I wanted 2 yoga blocks, but they are apparently in high demand. I did my bodbot exercises today. I intend to keep at that.
Symptoms.. I didn’t sleep well last night. Today I’ve been sore, had a runny nose, itchy eyes, and general allergy symptoms.
I fixed the tension on my sewing machine by loosening my bobbin’s tension screw. I’ve also started threading the thread past the tension disc the correct way. Things look more even now. It’s great.
I also learned the hard way to make sure my thread isn’t dangling onto your sewing machine’s gear shaft. I had a mess to clean up.
This was a first
I ran out of the light blue thread I was using. I don’t think I’ve ever emptied a spool of thread.
Masks count: I made 21 masks this week– 15 to donate, 6 for a friend up in MA. I also have about 30 masks cut and ironed, I just need to pin in ties and do all the sewing.
In other news, we have our first PeaPod delivery scheduled for this Thursday. I’m really not sure what to expect, but it’ll be interesting. I’m not sure it’ll be worth it, over going myself. Lots of availability issues in the app.
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Made 12 masks so far this week. I have maybe 12 more cut and ironed, ready for sewing. Six will go up to a friend in Massachusetts
My friend Merav and her family haven’t gotten the masks I sent them yet. They’ve not bounced back to me. I guess USPS is just slow as of late.
I want to up my exercise game. I’ve gotten lax on it. For someone that’s home all the time, I don’t feel very accomplished.
Dropped off buttons at the flagpole for Jackie. Dropped them down a stairway first and had to sweep them up and wash them.
Today’s Pandemic look
Also got my package of stamps and envelopes from USPS. Yay, frog stamps.
Quiet day trying to relax. Ironed a bunch of rectangles into mask shape. Sewed the top send bottom hems of them . Pinned in the ties and sewed half of them, then ran out of both bobbin and brain.
I want more veggies in my diet, but this is hard because fresh veggies don’t last long. I really want prepackaged salads.
I arranged a dead drop to give buttons to someone that’s making ear savers. The buttons are in a white tub marked “Buttons for Jackie. Please leave alone if you are not Jackie”. Saturday morning I’ll leave it under the flag pole at the entrance to the apartment complex. It all feels a bit cloak and dagger.
Today at work, got most of the way through setting up a script to recursively monitor a directory for changes then run a script based on the files that changed. The last bit I need to figure out is a regular expression for extracting the parent directory of a file from the file’s full path. It’s doable, just a pain.
Also talked more about what to save from the current crisis, and a few other things. Felt like a productive day.
On the personal front, got tired of my hair being long and split-endy, so I cut a few inches off of it. It’s still long, just less annoying about it. It’s a little lopsided, but I can just put it in a bun if I ever feel self conscious about it. I used the classic “put it in a ponytail using two ponytail holders, slide a holder down a bit, then cut between the holders”. I also broke my hair-cutting scissors–the joint just snapped and I was left with two scissor-halves. I finished the job with my fabric scissors.
I swear I cut off 3 inches, it just doesn’t look like it.
I also decided to start sending mail to friend. I’m combining this with my desire to get back into painting. I’ll do some small watercolors and mail them off. I hope it puts a smile on faces.
Sunday was a nice, quiet day. Played board games (Time Stories) online with friends. Dropped off 12 masks for donation. Asked Merav if she’d like me to make masks to send to her and her family. She did, so I sent pictures of fabric so they could pick out patterns. I… have a lot of fabric.
I have a lot of fabric
I’ve gotten some of my fabric from Etsy sellers, some from Fat Quarter Shop. I’m loving the batik patterns right now.
Anyway, I’m making 8 masks total for Merav’s household, 2 for each of them (one to wash and one to wear). I’ll mail them out in pairs, in envelopes with at least 70¢ of postage (2-oz letter).
Monday
Andrew let me know his pair of masks arrived. Yay! My mailing method was a success!
Skype was funky and didn’t share my messages with my boss nor his messages with me. I explored ways to capture Facebook feeds–I’m saving the Mayor’s page, the Danbury Covid-19 support page, and the tri-state mask making page every Monday. This should help give future researchers a feeling of how it was to be around now.
I also went to the pharmacy to pick up my meds. I was in a rush because Trader Joe’s, the grocery store next to the pharmacy, closes 2 hours earlier than normal. When I realized this, I dashed out at 6:15 with my mask and keys, took Chris’s car (mine has a slow leak in a tire that would have taken a few minutes to re-inflate), and got to the store. While there, I took pictures of the signs on the stores and the chalk drawings at Trader Joe’s, showing where to stand in line to enter the store. Lots of folks in masks. Several stores required masks.
Saturday was napping. In the evening I was trapped in a real-life nightmare where I kept threading my sewing machine needle, sewing a bit, then breaking my needle. I killed 2 needles. I’m on my last one, with more on order. I think the issue was that my needle was either not toughened all the way or maybe it was in crooked. It was very frustrating, but I think it’s set now
Did some troubleshooting of why EAD files failed to index in Arclight. It’s mostly due to very long note fields, which is fixable by changing how those fields are indexed.
Sewed a few masks. Used the last of the rice. I ordered more earlier in the week and it should arrive on Friday.
Went to the code4lib Thursday Happy Hour at 5 pm. It was happy, and slightly over an hour.
Finally got around to putting plastic over the drafty back door. It’s billowing like a sail, indicating the plastic is stopping a major draft. Once this pandemic softens, we’ll have the apartment maintenance folks come by and make that door suck less.
We’ve transitioned Elvis to a more formal litterbox. He’s handling it well.
I figured out what the weird doohickey on my sewing machine cabinet is for. It’s a knee pedal! I just need to install my footpedal in the side of the cabinet, and I’ll be able to control my machine with my knee.
Since I’ve been using my machine more lately, I put in an order online for new needles, machine oil, a sasher, and a walking foot. I’ve never used a walking foot before, but it sounds awesome, like it’ll solve all my “feeding fabric” problems.
Mayor Boughton said in his “live at five” briefing that we’re up to 1032 cases in Danbury.
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Highlight from work was talking about how we’re going to deal with this whole Covid-19 situation, from an archival/documentation situation. I’m going to start saving Mayor Boughton’s “Life at Five” talks. They’re interesting snippets of daily status, and it’s unlikely anyone else is collecting them.
We’ll try and conduct interviews with folks, once things have quietened down a bit. I’d like to collect diaries and blogs of locals.
On a personal front, I finished a couple masks for a friend. I put them in an envelope and they weighed in right at 2 oz, so hopefully the post office is happy with the forever (55¢) and 21¢ stamps I used. I’m overpaying by 5¢ 🙃. I’ll get them in the mail tomorrow.
