Listen to the Rain

It's back after a long hiatus! At least for this week

sashagee and Laila are out in the suburbs right now, so that Laila's grandparents and great-grandmother can see her, so when I got back from this office it was just me. And since I was just going to the farmer's market by myself, I decided to try to assemble an old-style farmer's market dinner. I haven't posted one in a while because we kind of fell into a pattern of always eating Peking Order on weeks when she was there and getting some other prepared food on off weeks--sashagee's illness has meant that she very rarely felt well enough to actually cook, or sometimes even come to the farmer's market. Now that I'm back in the office on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, though, and she's feeling better, she'll be the main one to be going to the farmer's market if we want to get things before they're all sold out. I'll have to meet her there.

Speaking of being back in the office, it's been okay! The office is even more empty than before, which makes me wonder exactly how things are going to go--my division is only in on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and quite a few people are permanent work from home. The entire member services division is now work from home, which is a quarter of the floor. We paid for the naming rights on the building, and I expect that the upper management are going to want to keep going into the office as often as they can, but the rest of us? I don't know. Two days in/three days out is my preferred schedule, so I'm happy that's what we settled on--it lets me spend most of my time with my family while also giving me a couple days to go downtown and really buckle down and get work done. Today I went for a walk on the riverwalk and found that the overpriced gelato place I thought had closed forever was still open! The gelateo was still overpriced, but it was definitely delicious.

( Food pictures! )

Slow rest of the week, hopefully. I started reading an actual book on the train to work--Andrzej Sapkowski's The Last Wish--something I've sadly been neglecting for most of the pandemic. The beginning was really good, to the point that I'm probably going to finish it within the week. I used to read eighty books a year before the Plague Years! I don't think I'll get back to that again until I'm retired, what with a daughter to look after and sixty-percent-fewer train rides during the week, but maybe I can do half that. We can hope.

The first is that Laila took her first steps today!! Not completely unassisted yet, but this morning sashagee put her down and rather than plop on her bum immediately as she usually does, she stayed standing, took a couple steps, and grabbed on to the couch! She's been encouraged by her success and a couple times has tried to repeat it--she's been able to stand up on her own for a few moments, but hasn't taken any more steps. Yet. Soon!

Also, we were scheduled to go back into the office next week since the COVID level was reduced to Medium for Chicago, but it just got increased to High again so I get to stay home! Maybe that means I'll see her first independent steps too?

Well that didn't last very long.

When we went back to the office a month ago, the system they settled on after two years of work from home was three days in the office, two days home, with a small minority of people having a different schedule. Well, apparently not everyone in the building got the memo--we were told that while our department had done pretty well sticking to the 80% on, 20% off schedule, most of the other departments were much more lax. There were supposed to be 25 people in IT in the office Monday through Wednesday, but the actual number was more like 15-20 on any given day. So the word came down that we're going down to two days in the office, three days out--from now on, we'll all be home on Mondays.

And then the COVID level is high enough that we're all home if we like until it goes down anyway, so it's back to 💯 work from home anyway. A couple weeks ago, I overheard the data director suggest that we'd be home for a few weeks, in the office for a few weeks, and so on back and forth for a while. It's looking like he was right.

It's been a bit hard to find time to read or write lately.

sashagee is still sick, which means the main responsibility for basically everything falls on me. She can watch Laila while I'm at work (most of the time) and feed her (most of the time), but basically every other household task--cooking, cleaning, shopping, taking garbage out, errands, etc.--I have to do. On a good day, she can do a few chores and sit out on the couch with me while I work. On a bad day, she'll take two naps and go to bed early just like Laila does. And apparently hypothydroidism comes with memory problems, so I still have to keep track of all the chores just to make sure that nothing gets forgotten.

She went to an endocrinologist, but he told her it was probably related to her pregnancy, gave her some thyroid medicine when she got emotional on the phone, and then when she called back and told her that the tiny medicine dose was making her feel better in the morning but it wore off after lunch, told her it was probably allergies and all but accused her of pill-seeking. She's going to her doctor to get a new endocrinologist referral on Friday.

Tomorrow, after over two years of work from home every single day, we finally return to the office. While the New Jersey office is still closed due to higher plague there, starting tomorrow I begin my new schedule of Monday through Wednesday in the office, Thursday and Friday at home. For me, the Plague Years have finally ended. No more matcha in the morning, chill cooking lunch myself, and watching little baby Laila crawl around every day while I'm at work. But I still get to do it two days a week, and to be honest, I didn't really want to work from home every single day. My ideal would be three days home, two days in the office, but three days in is still nice. I like the train ride downtown, I like walking on the riverwalk in the summer at lunchtime, and I like being able to head anywhere else in the city after work, though obviously there's going to be a lot less of that now that I have a family at home. And I'm happy that they're giving us two power cords so we can keep one in each location.

Our home is in a bit of disarray, since with sashagee's illness and the amount of money we've spent on her and Laila, we're probably going to be here a few years longer than we originally expected, and that means we're redecorating. All the walls have paint swatches on them, but the actual painting can't commence until sashagee has had some better days so she can help. We're going to replace the vanity in the back bathroom, get rid of one of the couches I've had forever, we've already put rugs down, and installed a baby gate. There'll be a lot of changes as Laila grows up.

Final Fantasy XIV released patch 6.1 today, on the last Tuesday I work from home (hence my Endwalker story review), and I've got it open in the background and not participating in any of the new stuff, because I have to work. I do get to read aaron.hosek's commentary as he blind progs the new fights, though.

I hope everyone is doing well! I'm going to try to be more consistent with updates in the future, but with my schedule now it's hard to find time to sit down to write. I should at least be able to read more now that I'll have reading time on the train!

Not really, but we've all been moved completely from the new new database to the old database. The new new database is just far too slow to actually get our work done so we need the speed more than we needed any other features. I knew this would happen.

They're supposedly working on upgrades to the new database, but I give it a 50/50 chance they decide to come up with a new new new database--the third in five years--to finally fix this problem once and for all!

...yeah, it's not going to happen.



Re: the subject, I really need to show sashagee the Strongbad emails. The song's pretty catchy too.

In the last division meeting, the division manager said that they never wanted to come into the office five days a week ever again.

Neither do I, so hopefully I won't have to for as long as I work at the AMA.

I've been having weekly meetings with my boss, trying to train her on what I do so that she can take it over while I'm out on paternity leave. That means that she finally has first-hand experience with what I've had to deal with over the last year, and along with the meetings I've had with some of the other management, hopefully that means that change is coming. Even if it's another database, which is what happened when the last new database turned out terrible...though obviously that's a monkey's paw wish considering that the current database is somehow even worse than the last database, which was already light years worse than the custom program written for us twenty years ago.

My current productivity is roughly 10% of what it was in 2016. So much for the advance of technology.

We've been more social lately! I was originally planning to go to the Anime Chicago sampler on Saturday, at least for a bit, but instead I ended up cleaning the house for a couple hours and then going to an early Shabbat afternoon dinner at maptekar's place! She cooked a giant meal for us, with Brussels sprouts, roasted potatoes, baked lemon chicken with onions, salad with hearts of palm, and a giant bowl of fruit for dessert. She and sashagee commiserated over how annoying it was to cook for me and having to keep dairy and meat separated, we talked about our lives since I haven't really seen her other than her dropping off some parenting books since we all went to Sea Ranch last summer. sashagee got to meet maptekar's cat Lily--who is extremely fluffy--and we made havdalah at the end before we left. It was a lovely end to Shabbat!

Then on Sunday, sashagee's parents came into town and went out to brunch with us at A Taste of Heaven, a local place where we had wanted to go with aaron.hosek a couple weeks ago but which was closed on Mondays. Not on Sundays--I got walnut caramel pancakes, far outside the usual savory breakfast that I like. It was good! Definitely sweeter than I usually eat, but as an occasional treat I'll take it. And yesterday, lisekatevans came over for dinner and to have sashagee cut and color her hair, for her first haircut in over a year. I made some beef stir-fry with fresh basil and rosemary picked from the herbs that sashagee and I went to go buy a couple weeks ago and it was delicious. No drinks this time, in a rarity, but that day will come again.

sashagee has been feeling kind of isolated lately since she's been at home all the time. Under normal circumstances, she'd get a ton of social interaction through her customer service jobs and then use her time at home to unwind and relax, which is why she's been a homebody. But nowadays she's not working so the only social interaction she gets is with me, and even then less than usual because she can't sit on the couch for very long so she can't really play games or even sit with me while I work. I've been trying to do more social activities so she can get social interaction, especially since we're going to have a baby soon!

sashagee is at her parents' house right now doing laundry because we're stillwaiting on the association to get back to us about reimbursement. Hopefully this is the last time we'll have to do this!

Thank you so much for all your good wishes, everyone! I'm home now and under sashagee's care and she's preventing me from overdoing it. I normally walk ten thousand steps a day and it's been very hard to be sedentary, but I tried to walk for just ten minutes a couple times a day and while I accomplished it once, the second time I tried it I stopped within a couple minutes. I've been sitting down and playing video games all day, which I'd normally consider to be kind of a waste if that's all I did during the day, but it's not being lazy, it's recuperating. That's it.

I'm still trying to stand up and move around a lot, but my steps have taken an extremely sharp dip. I'm really itching to get up and moving again but in the meantime, games it is.

To make myself feel a bit better, I've started replaying Suikoden again, which I last played in October of 2019. I'm playing in Japanese so it's good practice, but that means I'm extra confused about what I have to do or where I am. I literally remembered nothing of the plot until I tried to recruit one of the refugees of the elven village and Kirkis went on about how bad the Empire was and I was like, oh, that's right, I'm in the rebellion fighting the empire! The empire used a superweapon called the Hellfire Mirror (焦魔鏡 shōmakyō, localized as "Burning Mirror") to annihilate the village of the elves and decimate their population! Now I have to track down some alchemist named Lucian because he can dispel the barrier around Milich Oppenheimer's fortress. I really need to look up a Let's Play of this game so I can remember what I've done and who everyone is.

Yesterday my parents came over for dinner and to see me. Before my appendix troubles, sashagee were planning to go to Morton Arboretum to see the trolls before they vanish at the end of the month--at least theoretically, since it's been delayed twice before--but that's obviously not happening now. I had invited them to come walk with us and they invited us over for dinner afterwards or in case it was too icy for my mother to make the hike, and with my being an invalid, they came over and my father did some home repair projects while I sat on the couch and sashagee stopped every attempt I made to help in even a small way. It was really frustrating, but now we have her mirror hung on the wall and another set of coathooks down in the genkan by the door. In exchange, sashagee made them pasta with meat sauce--farfalle, since I got to freely choose the pasta--and gave them a picture frame with two photos of the baby in it, with a third slot for after the baby is born. They couldn't stay long because they had to get home to feed my sister's dogs, but it was really nice to see them.

There was a real moment of serendipity too--my mother mentioned that a few months ago she was looking through old boxes of clothes from long ago, which included baby clothes, and thinking, "There's never going to be any grandchildren, I should get rid of these." But she didn't, and now the baby is going to get some of the clothes that wanderluster_kp wore when she was an infant! As a family, we're really big on passing things down.

I went back to work today, since I just have a sitting-at-a-computer job, and sashagee did too! She started her new job for the state government and she's out there in training right now while I'm working in the office. I'm excited she's getting a chance to work from home, since while she's feeling much better she's not back to 💯 quite yet. It's a contract position at the moment but hopefully when her term is up she'll get placed elsewhere. That would be wonderful. 🧿

The subject line is a stretch, but it'll be memorable if I ever have to find this in the future.

There are two things of import that happened lately. The first is that I went through a racial equity training at work hosted by the Racial Equity Institute and strongly encouraged by management. I was pretty dubious of its worth going in, since implicit bias training doesn't work, but though they did touch on that in the beginning that's not actually what the class was about. It was simply informative about the way systems are set up to put white people on top, and how whiteness is implicitly cast as the default and everyone else is in some way a deviance from that. I already knew most of the information they presented about restrictive covenants, the racial wealth gap, and so on, but by their own admission many of my co-workers in the training did not, so hopefully opened their eyes to something that a lot of them had never had to think about before. I'm not sure it really needed sixteen hours--two full working days--of time, but it wasn't the pointless waste of time that I initially expected.

The only thing I really took issue with was their claim that the concept of race began when the white planter class needed to pit workers against each other in order to maintain economic dominance. It's all nice and progressive, but the first racist laws in recorded history were actually the Limpieza de Sangre laws in 15th century Spain targeting Jews and Muslims, and the concept of race is ancient--the Book of Gates in the time of Seti I in 1275 BCE depicts the four races of humanity: the Libyans, the Nubians, the Syrians, and the Egyptians. Inconvenient for their narrative, but history is rarely neat.

The other major thing I did recently is that I ordered a new phone! I've had my iPhone 7 since the day it released, and since it had 256 gb I stopped doing yearly upgrades because I finally had enough space for everything. Well, I filled the whole phone up and now the battery is such that it goes from 100% to 20% while playing music on a 20-minute walk, so when the iPhone 12 came out this year I decided it was finally time to upgrade. It came on Friday with my information all set up on it, I moved my SIM information (or whatever) over and then copied the rest of my phone's data...which I should have done on Saturday, because I have gigs and gigs and gigs of music and I was up until almost 4 a.m.! sashagee wandered in at one point because I hadn't come to bed and found me not playing games, not reading anything, just staring at the progress bar, willing it to move faster. It eventually completed without issue and the next morning I started trying to get used to how it worked.

I miss the button. Now everything is done with swiping, but with different degrees of swiping, so I'm constantly swiping too much and closing my program instead of going to the app switcher. I need to find some kind of guide to all the functions I've missed, because I had my perfect phone and didn't pay attention to any new capabilities. My phone's at 55% and I haven't charged it since Friday night, though, so that's already a huge improvement over my old phone! I feel like I went from a stone tablet to a Star Trek data slate.

FaceID doesn't work with a mask, though, so the future isn't quite here yet.

sashagee went back to work today after being off for medical leave...or at least, she would have gone back to work except she was sent home almost immediately after arriving because she didn't have the right doctor's note. Yes, they sent her home on her first day returning to work because she didn't have the proper note for the time she had off. She has to go back to the doctor and get a new note that will allow her to justify the time she had off before she'll be able to work, and while she has an appointment tomorrow, it's still another missed day. She can't work now until she proves that she couldn't work then, even though without proof, doesn't that mean she could have worked this whole time?

Basically, what I'm saying is that workers of the world should unite because they have nothing to lose but their chains.

On the other hand, I can't complain too much because it's a beautiful day in Chicago. It's blue skies and sunny with a cool breeze and 24°C, so sashagee has revived the plan from last week of going out for a walk along the beach. We were going to get ramen and go eat it on the beach last Thursday, but it threatened rain and the weather report finally confirmed it so we just came back and ate at my place. Now it's like a fall day, so we're going to treat it like one. I've already had the windows open all day and I'm looking forward to that lake wind.

The cicadas are out, the trees are screaming. Summer has arrived.

Slowly working my way through Chrono Trigger. I've played it over a dozen times, so I know it like the back of my hand, but playing it in Japanese means that it's a new experience. I have to stop and work through what people are saying, and I make sure to take to every townsperson because for the first time in twenty years, it's a new experience for me. Chrono Trigger is one of the games I really wish I could go through and play with fresh eyes, and while that's not possible, this comes close. There are old quotes that have new meanings in the original language that really can't be translated without a lot of difficulty. My favorite example in what I've played so far is talking to Spekkio, the Master of War, when he described the Kingdom of Zeal with the words:

おめーらの生まれるずっと昔……魔法でさかえた王国、あった。その世界、みんな魔法使った。けどその王国、魔力におぼれほろびた……。それから人は魔法を使えなくなった。魔族以外はな。
"Long before you were born, there was a kingdom that flourished through sorcery. There, everyone could use magic. But that kingdom grew proud and magic was its ruin... Since then, no one has been able to use magic. Except the Fiends, anyway."

The word I translated as "grew proud and [...] ruin" is おぼれほろびた, from two verbs. The second is 滅びる (horobiru, "To be destroyed, to come to ruin, to fall"), but the first is interesting. It's 溺れる (oboreru), which can mean both "to grow proud, to indulge in, to go wild over" or also..."to drown, to sink beneath the waves."

"Gone is the magical kingdom of Zeal, and all the dreams and ambitions of its people."

This morning was a department meeting that I was told I'd have to speak briefly for, on the adjustment process for working from home, and I mentioned the biggest challenge for me had been ergonomics. My home is designed for a floor-based lifestyle, to the point that I'll sometimes just sit on the floor with my back against the couch if I'm watching something, and I have my mouse arm and mouse propped up on some pillows as I sit on the couch with my laptop on my lap (despite the name, this is actually inadvisable). When I said that, I got messages from two senior managers offering to get me a lap desk. My setup now works for me, but I certainly won't complain about a lap desk.

( Farmer's Market Dinner )

At meditation tonight, the new rabbi brought up Tisha B'Av, occurring next week, and the weird liminal space we're all in now. One of the people brought up how strange it is to mourn the destruction of Jerusalem when it's the current capital of Israel, and the rabbi mentioned how when she was a chaplain, one of her patients with dementia barely spoke at all except the occasional seemingly-nonsensical statement or fragment of memory, but once the rabbi started actually listening and engaging with her, she started talking more and more, eventually revealing some coherent memories of her past, and the rabbi tied it in to how it's important to acknowledge and remember the past even if your current circumstances are very different now. As someone whose current circumstances are very different than in the past, well. I can understand that. And this year isn't going to be anything like last year's Tisha B'Av event was. But this year, I feel that it's a lot easier to mourn.

It's okay to be sad.

I logged on to work this morning to an email from my boss's boss scheduling a meeting entitled "quick chat." That's the "We need to talk" of the business world, so I spent the morning a bit worried about what was going to happen--they just ordered me a laptop, but did they actually order it for me or were they just covering while they put in the paperwork to let me go? My brain spun up a bunch of terrible scenarios, and I did a bit of meditation before the meeting so I could calm down before going in.

...and then it turned out that I was getting a surprise raise because market analysis had revealed my salary wasn't in line with market rates. So this special dinner is celebratory even though it wasn't originally meant to be.

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might remember the old series of Farmer's Market Dinners that I wrote about that was a summer tradition. I didn't do it in 2018 or 2019, but I wanted to bring it back for 2020 now that I'm settled into a new place that's closer to the market location. Normally I'd go to the market in person, browse around among the offerings, and then pick some things out and decide what to get based on what I saw, but thanks to coronavirus that's not possible this year--all market offerings are available online, you shop through them, and then reserve a time slot and pick up the food in person. So, that's what I did.

I only ordered a couple hours before the deadline, and since I didn't have much time to decide, what I picked this time didn't require as much cooking effort as it might otherwise would. That'll change in future weeks.

( Food pictures )

Now that Chicago is getting back into Phase 3, my schedule is getting a bit more active again. There's no theatre, obviously, and though restaurants and so on are open I really don't want to go to them. But I've been seeing a small group of friends, one at a time, with a few days in between each event--if any one of us is sick, we should be able to catch it before it spreads. And I'm not in contact with anyone at risk unless I'm wearing a mask--a stylish mask, since I just bought one that says 危 ("danger") on it. At least in Chicago, people are still wearing masks in public. But I'm certainly not going to sit at home, alone, until I get a dose of vaccine administered to me. Even if the Oxford trials have zero problems at all, I'm not in any risk groups, so I probably won't be eligible for anything until late next year at the earliest.

And now, book group! We read The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee. It was very predictable, but still a fun read.

Just got an email from the top brass with the following directly-relevant parts for me:

• If you don't volunteer to return to the office in Phase 2, you will not be required to do so. In fact, for the remainder of 2020, returning to AMA offices during any phase will be on a voluntary basis.


• Employees who commute to work on mass transit will NOT be eligible to return during Phase 2, and not more than 20 employees per floor (in Chicago) will be permitted to return in Phase 2. Similar distancing parameters will be adopted in our other offices.

Since I normally take the CTA to work, that means I'm specifically banned from returning to the office. I'm very glad they're taking this seriously--there is value in working for an organization run by physicians--but it does mean that I'm suddenly added to the fulltime work from home crowd. For the foreseeable future, it's me on my couch on a laptop.

There's psychological value in that, since I can step out of my sun nook and thus step away from work, but maybe I should come up with a better work setup.