the rest of it

I feel rotten. It started with a sore throat Monday night after three days of that, it became a head cold during the night last night. I'm headachy and drippy and sneezy and coughy have had four negative Covid tests in four days. A student who had Covid said she only tested positive on the fifth day, so I'm not taking any chances—I've cancelled all social things this week and weekend. But it's worth noting that this is the first cold I've had in over two years . Wow. The union is striking at work, and on top of that the university shut down for Storm Eunice today. It was a wind day. But, of course, there's no such thing as a snow day or a wind day anymore—things move on line when you can't get to them. That feels like a sad loss—the joy of a snow day (or a wind day) is such a lovely thing. Found time for idling. There's also now no point in taking a sick day unless you are too ill to Zoom. This technology is great, but also: bah humbug. Despite feeling c...

The first gratitude post of the year comes in the second month. That January was just too much—simultaneous the marking for Autumn term, plus MA dissertations from last year, while prepping for Spring teaching and 2022-23 curriculum and workloads, plus a slightly busy time for  Dictionaries. It was very much too much. I did, however, jot down some things I was feeling grateful for in January. In no particular order: The 'compare documents' feature on MS-Word: so helpful for getting a quick insight into how much students have revised their portfolio documents. Just fixed the typos? No need to read it again; the old feedback still works.  Christmas-smelly lotion & soap in one of the ladies' rooms at work (with a little 'help yourself' note). Smelled wonderfully of cloves. Why aren't more things cloves-scented? Inspiration from other people's organisation. One PhD student did a great powerpoint breaking down her project into the research questions and the d...