Undecorating for Christmas is far less exciting. I did most of it yesterday, and just have to take down the tree today at some point and put the boxes away.

My last post was perhaps a little negative. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret any time I spent playing music with other people, particularly my quartet over the past few years. I was just realizing (for the umpteenth time) that chamber music has never been my great love, and that I don’t miss playing in small ensembles.

I have missed playing in large ensembles for a long time, but the orchestral world being what it is, both difficult to procure a position and seemingly quite difficult to enjoy that position after you have it…I am fine with my current lot in life.

Today is my last official day of vacation , even though I’ve been ramping up my work each day, at least from the perspective of answering and sending emails, and I even practiced violin a bit yesterday. Over the break, I did other work stuff besides emails, such as submitting grades and setting up courses in Canvas, but I have to say that overall it was amazingly relaxing.

I watched some Great British Baking Show while doing cross-stitch. I read several good books, including Jodi Picoult’s The Book of Two Ways, Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half, Katharine McGee’s American Royals and Majesty. Louie and I rewatched the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy, watched the latest season of Cobra Kai, and are working our way through Schitt’s Creek (two thoughts, why did we wait so long, and of course everybody’s favorite character is David!). I did a lot of cooking and baking, I did some organizing and decluttering though nothing major, and I did a good amount of workouts. We went on a few hikes and walks as well.

We woke up New Year’s morning to a bit of ice storm debris…I forgot to mention this before.

The neighbor’s tree had lost some branches into our yard. Luckily it didn’t seem to cause any damage and Louie was able to saw the branches down easily enough.

The other day we went to Cliff Cave park to walk around. There were more people there than we would have liked, and a few too many groups of people who didn’t see fit to step to the side (rather than walking 2 or 3 abreast) OR wear masks, but we had ours to put on when needed. I’m always more concerned with people who might be walking or running in front of us for any length of time than I am with people who are just walking by, but still, it’s a pandemic and it’s not hard to give space on a wide path.

Very large trees! That’s the Mississippi River.

A picture of Louie taking a picture.

So tomorrow I’m back to teaching. I am both looking forward to it and not looking forward to it. Louie tells me I can’t retire yet, so I guess I’ll log into zoom inside. I originally set up my schedule to start on Wednesday rather than Monday because I was supposed to do jury duty. I started worrying about it a week ago and got a postponement of a year, but they did end up canceling the week (due to COVID) anyway. I guess this time next year I’ll be complaining about jury duty, and I’ll have to miss some work for it (as usual) but I’m glad to have another year. I was originally scheduled to do it in June, then September which I postponed to January. It’s a mess, isn’t it.

One last collection of thoughts. Headaches. Back in early 2020 I finally saw a doctor about some bad headaches I’d been getting, which I started calling migraines. I don’t know sometime, whether it’s a normal headache or a migraine, or if people get headaches like I do, or if they are all migraines. In any case, I got some nice prescription medicine that I end up taking about 2 days a month on average for a headache. The medicine tends to work really well, though the side effects are that I feel fuzzy for an hour or more, and generally a bit more tired and thirsty. It’s a decent trade off though, and I’m glad to have the medicine. I can usually feel the headache disappearing into fuzziness in my body, and that’s a real relief. I’m dealing with one right now, which I suspect is also a bit stress related, between pandemic worries, political concerns, and the worries of going to in person teaching next week and getting back online as well…

How is your week at work going? I’m assuming most people are back to work this week after having had some time off, though I know most people don’t get to take two weeks off like I was able to this year. This year there is no spring break from college, it’s just a slog to the end, so wish us luck!