So it goes

Like Von­negut said, “So it goes.” Poo-too-weet!

Workin’ from home

Posted on by Patrick
My work-from-home setup

For a while now I’ve won­dered just how nec­es­sary it is for me to be on cam­pus. I live about five min­utes’ walk­ing dis­tance away; when I bike to work, it takes about as long to lock up my bike and walk to my office as it does for me to get to the University.

Now that the offi­cial word is “work from home if you can”, I’ve got my lap­top at home. Today I grabbed one of my two exter­nal mon­i­tors, too, so that I can code on one screen and view the results on another.

(Lap­top wall­pa­per: The Foun­tain of Indo­lence by J. M. W. Turn­er; exter­nal mon­i­tor wall­pa­per: my pho­to of the Milky Way from sum­mer 2019.)

Also, it turns out that a book on mythol­o­gy is inte­gral to my set­up; with­out it, the exter­nal mon­i­tor isn’t up high enough.

Monitor, back view

(My ISP’s upload speed is pret­ty abom­inable, but that’s a prob­lem for anoth­er day, I think.)

Two years

Posted on by Patrick
Eye (photo by Vanessa Bumbeers)

…and I real­ly don’t miss wear­ing glass­es all day every day.

(On St. Patrick­’s Day, 2018, I got my eyes lasered into prop­er shape by these fine peo­ple, and went from a 20/400 pre­scrip­tion in my good eye to a 20/16 in both.)

Some­times, when I’m feel­ing a lit­tle dopey in the morn­ing, I’ll still reach for them. (And find the read­ers on the night­stand, and put them on, and won­der why every­thing’s a lit­tle blurred…)

That reminds me, though, it’s prob­a­bly time to sched­ule an eye appointment…

(That’s still not my eye­ball. Pho­to by Vanes­sa Bum­beers on Unsplash)

A friendly face

Posted on by Patrick

At the cof­fee shop this grey Mon­day morn­ing, the young woman behind me asked if I used to work at the research sta­tion. I said no, I’ve worked at the uni­ver­si­ty for 25 years¹.

“You look famil­iar, though,” she said. “Maybe it’s just that you’ve got a friend­ly face.”

It’s good to know that my Mon­day face was­n’t a scowl.

¹ !

A bit of excitement

Posted on by Patrick

I pulled up at Chez Angela not long after a car acci­dent. As I was prepar­ing to leave, the ambu­lance pulled up and parked next to me, box­ing me in, so I went back into the bak­ery and had a cof­fee to wait them out.

The cars involved are on the oth­er side of the fire truck in the pho­to. I felt it would be bad form to wan­der around the site tak­ing pho­tos. Plus it was way warmer inside, sip­ping my cof­fee, than out in the street.

When I left, about ten min­utes lat­er, the police were still there, and two tow trucks had showed up.

As far as I could tell, no one was seri­ous­ly hurt, but at least one of the vehi­cles was not in great shape. 

The Hollow Bean 2019 count

Posted on by Patrick
Happy Hollow Bean

This year we had the fol­low­ing cos­tumes come to the door look­ing for can­dy (and receiv­ing 2 full-size bars apiece, because frankly we bought more can­dy than we should have):

  • a kid in par­ka and balaclava
  • a knight
  • a princess in a parka
  • a princess in a dif­fer­ent parka
  • Mal­e­fi­cient, horns ‘n’ all
  • a princess
  • a uni­corn with wings
  • Elsa (I think)
  • a princess asleep on her mom’s shoul­der (her old­er sis­ter, in the Elsa cos­tume, col­lect­ed can­dy for her)

…for a grand total of nine.

I should’ve giv­en ’em all 3 bars.

Last year: 10; 2017: 16.

The last few days

Posted on by Patrick
Tess

Our friend Tess dropped by for a vis­it last week­end, and stayed overnight. I decid­ed to snap a pho­to of her, and one of Kath­leen as well.

  • Tess
    Tess, smil­ing
  • Kathleen
    Kath­leen, sit­ting in the win­dow’s light

Then I saw a love­ly red-and-yel­low autumn tree on my way to work.

Autumn leaves
The tree up the block went all red and yellow

And today it snowed.

Winter
The court­yard through a win­dow spot­ted with snow