The View from the Hermitage, Day 142

When Virginia was in Phases One and Two of reopening, the seven-day rolling average number of new cases was pretty consistently in the 500s. Since we moved to Phase Three on July 1, the seven-day rolling average has been rising to the low 1000s that it is now. While a good bit of that increase is due to the beach areas, those alone are not the culprit. Looking at the number of new cases daily does more than hint that we're in as bad or worse place now as we were back in May before any reopening started. There was something to be said for the "stay at home" days. I'm not sure the situation will improve unless and until someone or something mandates a second as-total-as-possible shutdown. That said, I am not at all certain that people would take a second shutdown seriously after having gotten a taste of reopening,

I have been following the play-or-not quandary of college football. Fortunately, someone, probably the NCAA, said that individual players can opt out of playing this season without losing their scholarship. More than a few have, though some of those will be going directly to the pros via the spring NFL draft. A group of players in the PAC-12 conference have said they will not play unless coronavirus, social justice, and compensation issues have been handled. Kudos to them. I wish more student athletes would do the same.

I don't get out at all, but the husband does talk on the phone and email with various people. He has yet to encounter anyone who supports the university's decision to bring students back for some in-person instruction. It is not going to end well, but then I've said that before.

My new pandemic game is to see how far I can make it while still technically employed by the university. In May 2019, my mom began having some medical issues. I had been mulling quitting what would seem like a perfect job--part-time, flex-time, from home. We had changed bosses, and the new one was given too many (in my humble opinion) responsibilities. As a result, she was usually unavailable when I needed information from her to complete a project. She also more than once forgot to tell me of something she wanted me to do until the very last minute. I spent the week before my knee replacement in April 2018 working almost full-time on a project I could have started in February and finished well before April. At the end of May 2019, I told the boss that I was quitting but that because it was short notice, I would complete the two projects I normally did over the summer. She said not to worry about them and suggested I treat the summer as being on leave and tell her what I wanted to do at the end of August.

Fast forward to the end of August. I still wanted to quit and had prepared thorough documentation on all the projects I did regularly complete with two file boxes of supporting documents. When I went in for what I thought would be an exit interview, she asked if I would stay on the payroll so that if someone had questions about one of the projects I'd done, they could call or email me with questions and I could get paid for the time it took to answer them. Okay, I agreed to do that. There were some questions, more from the boss than other staffers, and always at the last minute. It got to the point at which I'd work out at the gym then after showering and dressing would check my email as I walked out to my car. I had to see if there was any news about or from my mom or from the job. That got old, but I did it. Come this past May, the office had gone through a full year of all my projects, and I told the boss that it was time to let me go. She asked if I would stay on until the end of the fiscal year June 30.

So, yes, I agreed to stay on through the end of June. When July started, I'd heard nothing from the boss or the office manager about taking me off the payroll. I'm not going to bug the office manager; she has her hands full with two school-aged kids in the middle of a pandemic. I have decided that neither will I ask the boss about it. If she or a colleague calls me with a project question, I'll simply say that it was my understanding that I was gone as of June 30. Out-of-sight, out-of-mind. I'm going to see how long it is before I hear anything. I can count still-employed days (35) in addition to hermitting-pandemic days (see above).

As an update to yesterday's weather forecast, the storm went to the east of us. We did have a huge, non-storm-related thunderstorm yesterday afternoon and some rain overnight, but that was all. No tree took it upon themself to crash into the house. However, the heat pump managed to spring a small leak in a coil that we could pay big bucks to repair. The heat pump is 16 years old and past its use-by date. After discussion, the husband and I decided just to replace it. There goes the money we would have spent going to the Silk Road in May. But that's better than paying big bucks to repair it this year and bigger bucks to replace it next winter or summer.

Not much reflection on the pandemic, but much of that is getting to be "same old same old" and "we're fucked." Since I'm not strong enough to get the furniture I want out of younger son's bedroom (even a small card catalog with its drawers removed weighs a ton), I think I'll go straighten up some things on the porch that the husband went through looking for something he did not find.