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What I did this summer: There's a lot I didn't do this summer. I didn't travel. I didn't go into the office. I didn't swim in the pool at my apartment. So what did I do? I worked from home. I mostly avoided working on weekends, including long holiday weekends. I did not do as well at actually taking Fridays off. I had periods where I was very productive and periods where I was less productive. I had a lot of meetings, enough that we rearranged the apartment so I got an office of my own, which was a big improvement in my ability to concentrate and not monopolize the apartment. It meant no longer having an outdoor view, but instead I got to be on the cooler side of the house. The shuffle instigated some reorganizing and even some downsizing. I did some cooking and baking, but less than anticipated, due to a combination of heat waves, easy availability of fresh fruit and vegetables and cheeses to eat without cooking, and a general lack of time, energy, or interest. Food experiments and trusted staples included pizzas, various roasted veggies, falafel and sides, poke (technically not cooking), grilled cheese sandwiches from many kinds of cheeses, and Indian & Indonesian lunches "with" my coworkers. I also made tiramisu (ladyfingers are magic!), berry shortcake, peach galettes, banana bread, muffins, brownies, cookies, and endless croissants. And some ice cream, although mostly I tried to deplete our ice cream and sorbet reserves to make room for other things. And we ordered out, taking advantage of all the kinds of things we can get here: dim sum and sushi, burger and sandwiches, paella and tapas, Indian burritos (and non-Indian burritos and Indian non-burritos), Jamaican food and Guamanian food (which both have plantains in common), .... I ate a lot of tomatoes and peppers. We had an early tomato crop from a compact dense variety called Mountain Princess, are now starting to pick tomatoes from a late-season tall and prolific Indigo Rose variety, and have had several red and orange cherry (or similar sized) varieties in between. Our three-year-old red bell pepper plant is still producing, and this year we added yellow bell pepper, shishito, and Italian frying peppers. This is the first time I've grown shishitos, and they took little space or water and were extremely prolific. We tried a bunch of leafy greens (kale, kohlrabi, spinach, bok choy, mesclun salad mixes), but once it started warming up, they didn't stand much chance, and when they did we didn't always pick them before they were too bitter or had gone to seed. The herbs did well, but we rarely used them, and the strawberries were tasty but sparse. The citrus trees are growing a lot of fruit, but it's not yet time for them to ripen. I've stuck with my New Year's resolution to get back to language learning, and took a followup class to the adult ed Italian class I'd been taken once that shifted to online. Mostly, I've been working my way through Italian Duo Lingo (on track to exhaust their content at the end of the year) and watching a lot of shows/movies with Italian dubbing and/or subtitles. (Speaking of shows, I indulged in the nostalgia of the excellent new Baby-Sitters Club show, which prompted me to read some other YA, including starting on the The Baby-Sitters Club graphic novels in Italian.) I also took some C programming courses on coursera and wrote a bunch of code. I swam. Less often than last summer, but still averaging every other day, and I'm almost always spending more than an hour in the water, swimming and doing exercises. I'm working on my swim form (particularly shoulders and hand entry and lengthening my glide), as well as exercises for ankle and hip flexibility, which are really helping. It's a long drive, but the pool I'm swimming at is in such a lovely setting. There are neighboring deer and turkeys! I've taken to playing "spot the deer" when going to and from the pool, and a few times I've caught a family of deer lounging in the yard and even coming right up to the pool! Too cute! My swim scheduling has become more complicated the last month because of smoke from California forest fires. Smoky hazy sun-choked days of air that's not great to be out in, let alone to exercise in. At least the late afternoon/evening breezes have often brought in enough clear air for me to swim before driving home with the red-red sun setting. That is, they had been until this past week when fires from Oregon blew in enough smoke to tint the lighting orange and sepia-toned, rendering the days even more timeless. The smoke has overlapped with heat waves, leaving us with the choice of whether to open up windows overnight to cool off or to keep the windows closed to breathe cleaner air. What a year! Besides my swims and grocery pickups most weekends, I've gotten out very little summer. A drive along the coast for my birthday (though all the parking was closed, so I didn't get to stop at any of the beaches or overlooks). Once for an impromptu day trip to Daly City when it was hot and smoky at home and yet the coast had cool clear air. Somehow I'd never explored that bit of coastline (I think because I'd always assumed beaches that close to SF would be too crowded), and I enjoyed seeing the ocean and sand dunes and watching hang gliders. Another time for a local Black Lives Matter motorcade/rally. The mainstream awakenening this summer is too little too late, but feels like it could be a real tipping point nonetheless. Other outings were to check on the egrets at a nesting site in Mountain View where I've seen them for a few years, and along the Bay in Redwood City where there are ducks and geese, and to see a friend in San Francisco. I've kept in better touch with friends this summer, especially long-distance college friends, who I've written, called, texted, and/or video chatted with. I instigated a last-minute HCSSiM virtual reunion, during which many yellow pig hats were worn. I've had virtual lunches or breakfasts with a few former coworkers. I attended conferences and even a wedding virtually. With everyone social distancing, people who are close can seem far away, and people who are far away can seem close. Summer photos to follow eventually. |
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Happy Yellow Pigs Day! I was pleased to learn that HCSSiM is having a small virtual program this summer after all. |
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A photos update. Here are the last few months in photos: food, garden, egrets, and deer. |
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Social distancing, month two. Against the backdrop of utter tragedy, there have been some ordinary moments and even some bright spots. I'm swimming about every other day, and since it's a shorter and warmer pool, I spend more time on exercises and stretches, and I'm improving my ankle/knee/hip flexibility as a result. On weekends, I often chat with my pool-having friend while I do exercise. There's no traffic on my drives to the pool, and there's far less background road noise or airplane noise, the vibrations from which had been one of my primary pain triggers. For the most part, I like working from home, which is good, since it seems quite possible that I won't be back in the office this year. I do miss the convenience of tasty work lunches, but we're doing okay on food, including ice cream and sorbet production. After weeks of trying to get Amazon/Whole Foods delivery, we have finally settled into a routine that involves a combination of the farmers market (for essentials such as milk, eggs, pie, scones, and sometimes produce and meat), a CSA pickup (which at this time of year has consisted primarily of apples, citrus, and avocados, yielding apple pie, juice, and guacamole, respectively), Safeway delivery (yielding lasagna), occasional other small markets for fruit variety, and best of all, our old favorite local market Milk Pail. Milk Pail had closed about a year ago, but has now re-opened as a drive-thru, providing us with copious quantities of surprise cheeses and vegetables, as well as their signature croissants and other goodies. We're also getting takeout or delivery once or twice a week, appreciating the many places that are still open. We're gardening. We finished eating our tangerines, but have had pretty much nonstop mesclun/lettuce mixes. Our peas haven't been very productive in recent years, but we've gotten a few, as well as regular strawberries. We have a few kale plants that are about ready to harvest, basil, parsley, and cilantro that have taken root, thyme and dill starting to come up, and a giant hedge of rosemary. We have one very bushy tomato plant and several smaller tomato plants, all of which have tiny green tomatoes, and we have four different pepper plants with flowers. I traded one of our tomato plants with a coworker/neighbor for an avocado plant (which won't bear for years). Between increased work and food-related activities, I'm not reading as much as usual, but I am watching more movies and musicals. I've continued studying Italian, and even wrote some Python for fun for the first time in ages. I (mostly) finished my multiyear photos project; photos from college onward are at photos.yellowpigs.net (older photos are password-protected; if I know you and you want access, ask). And I'm enjoying catching up with many people via a variety of video chats, games, phone calls, emails, etc. |
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Social distancing, month one. I stopped going into the office at the end of Februrary. Fortunately, I was already set up to work from home, and I like working from home, as it is much easier for me to reduce my walking and manage my pain levels at home than in the office. But it has been a far from typical month at work, between everyone else adjusting to working from home, the busyness of ensuring business continuity and supporting the increasing use of many Google services globally, and generally adjusting to these new and scary times. As for home life, we already had a pretty thorough disaster preparedness kit, including N95 masks that we got for fires a year+ ago, and we ordered more cleaning and disinfectant supplies early. The biggest adjustment has been having to make all of our meals, especially as it is has become impossible to get Amazon delivery. Karl is still going to one of our farmers markets, and we signed up for a CSA, so we've been avoiding supermarkets. Fortunately, we also had ripe tangerines and mesclun on our balconies, and we now have the first peas on our pea plants. We ventured out to the garden store a few weeks ago and bought more seedlings than we have room for, and we've been slowly transplanting tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, leafy greens, and herbs. I hardly went out before, so there's not all that much change there. Italian class was cancelled, but I'd been doing most of my Italian on my own, and have kept up Duo Lingo and some other materials, albeit at a slower pace. My biggest concern was pools closing, since swimming/water exercise is a big part of my physical therapy and pain reduction. (Usual pool chemicals kill coronaviruses, but that doesn't help with shared changing facilities.) I got in some longer swims in anticipation of pool closures, and then imposed on a friend who has his own pool. I feel ridiculously privileged to be able to have a pool all to myself (especially an outdoor pool that I'm paying to heat in the cool rainy weather we've had most of the month), but this is definitely not the time I want a major pain flare. Other than swimming, I haven't been out of the apartment in weeks. I'm trying to spend more time reading books or watching movies and less time reading the news and worrying, though it's hard. And I'm trying to be better at keeping in touch with people. |
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Happy Leap Day. I've had far fewer swims than usual this month, on account of the primary pool I use being closed for a week and the secondary pool I use being closed for a month. But I have been trying to get in longer swims when I do swim. Since I've been swimming less, I've had more time for weekend farmers markets (and lunches and bookstores and garden stores) or for sleeping in. A few coworkers visited for a week, and we went out one evening. Karl and I went out another evening. I went to a party V had in San Francisco. Mostly though, I've been studying Italian. At work, performance review season has started, and I am attempting to get through it without increasing my hours. We'll see how that goes. |
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Seattle, Bellevue, Kirkland. I went to the Seattle area for a summit. It was an exhausting week of long days, endless clouds and rain (and even a bit of snow), and a lot of wheelchairing. I also taught a session of my course, made significant progress on a work project, had Ethiopian food with some of my coworkers, and briefly stopped by Ada's Books. I went up the weekend before so I could catch up with several friends, including two of my former housemates who now live there. Saturday I spent a long afternoon/evening catching up with S, who I hadn't seen in almost 15 years! Sunday I had lunch with L & N, and their son showed me his cool computing games. It was wonderful to catch up with them all, and I wish I saw them more often. Finally, I had lots of time to catch up with D, who I stayed with for part of my trip, and since our former teammate R was also in town, we went out for tea. |
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New Years Resolutions. One of my resolutions is to get out more on weekends, and I started out the year well, going to the farmers market and lunch one weekend and then to Santa Cruz and Capitola the next weekend. Another resolution is to take a language class again, and I went to my first session of the Italian class I signed up for. The class seems to be mostly conversational, which is by far the part where I need the most practice. (Reading and grammar is pretty easy, since I've studied Spanish and linguistics and read a lot of scientific Latin.) I've also been spending a lot of time doing Italian on my own. In between, I got back in the groove at work, went to a bunch of doctors, posted old photos, swam, and read. |
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Island time. Karl and I flew down to my parents for New Year's Day, and I quickly fell into my swim routine, going to Magens once or twice a day to swim, do exercises, and watch turtles. Ocean swimming is so much more interesting and varied than swimming pool swimming. We went to Coral World one day to swim with dolphins. It was wonderful watching and interacting with the dolphins, but it seems like their area (a fenced off portion of the ocean) is pretty small. I went to a few other beaches: quick stops at Lindbergh and Brewers when we happened to be out that way, Mandahl for birdwatching, and Coki, Lindquist, and Sapphire for rougher, choppier swim. It was the first time I'd swam at Coki since the storms, and it was really sad to see the destroyed reef. Otherwise, it was a quiet trip. We ate a lot and got together with the usual people for dinners and lunches, I typed up a few more of my old writings and found (what I think are) the last few photos I hadn't scanned. I attempted to identify various frogs (several kinds of coquis and the Cuban treefrog). I also did some Italian cramming because I signed up for an Italian class, having done very little Italian in the last 9 years. And slept a lot of course. |
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End of year. I got back from Zurich in time for yet another summit, which fortunately meant I also returned in time to meet up with my college friend E, who was visiting San Francisco; it was great to see him and his wife and to meet their son. My friend P left, so we dropped by to say goodbye, and then ended up with a few things, like a guitar which I've been entertaining myself with. Mostly it has been a quiet few weeks of end of year work (with visitors and work dinners), doctors, photo editing, reading, fewer swims than usual (due to both holiday schedule and my schedule), and the occasional meal out or farmers market. I slept through a lot of Christmas weekend, which was good since I clearly needed it, and last weekend Karl and I went out to Half Moon Bay. |