Routines in Trichotomy

The Setup

Heading into my 7th week in lockdown. But I really don’t notice much being changed… I’m still working, except I don’t have the commute. The company buys everyone a monitor (and keyboard and mouse if they need it) so we work from home with full equipment. We have a new-ish manager who joined last August. He’s been a good source of leadership but now he is starting to show his weakness in technical understanding. Our TL is very technical, so that compensates for that, at least.

I have a good routine - roll out of bed a little before 10, work till ~1, then have a 20 mins lunch, then work till 5. We’d then take a walk around the block to get fresh air, collect the mail and put it in the decontamination area (basically the garage with marked-out areas to show when things are safe). Then we wrap up work, watch the news, make dinner, and then do what we normally do - dance lessons, I’d practice, or we’d watch impeachment porn.

Best part is that La Professeure’s seat is across from mine during the workday - I like having my wife as an officemate.

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The Downtime

The weekends have been busy for me as well.

I am now running my music group’s virtual recital project. It was the new organiser’s idea; as soon as the quarantine recommendation came out, he immediately suggested doing virtual recitals, where our “performers” would record themselves performing, send in their video, and we would post them online in the same place members to view. The board had a long discussion about whether to do “live” events or not (including experimental zoom sessions) and eventually decided against it because the technology isn’t suitable for a collaborative presentation.

Then he got sick with Covid-19 and dropped the ball (he’s fine now, but busy keeping up with work and family). I picked up the task, organised, hosted, and ran one of those recitals last sunday. It was not particularly long (we decided 30-40 minutes would be top attention span), but was pretty well-”attended”… We had almost as many unique views as our “real” concerts. We heard anecdotal feedback that people liked it, so I will keep it going as long as we have performance contributions.

I hope we’re providing essential services. Actually, some of these people I’ve never met before - so I’m wondering if they are out-of-towner and can only join virtually.

If nothing else, I benefit from this by getting pretty good at video editing!

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The Workout

We can’t go out much anymore - I think the last time we used the car was 3, maybe 4 weeks ago to go to the grocer. And now we are ordering delivery to minimize our movement.

We do cook a whole lot more than usual now. La Professeure is now a pescitarian, so we each cook for ourselves. I’m pretty surprised I haven’t gotten bored by our cooking yet, considering my limited cooking repertoire, and the fact that I’m limited to pantry ingredients. Restaurants are still open, so should really order in more - they are struggling to stay afloat now.

La Professeure’s work is more stressful than mine, as she’s working longer hours, and has to respond to more emergency e-mails, so I find myself doing more housework than normal, and she has to tolerate the sub-par quality of my work.

We got a stationary bicycle in the spring last year because I’ve been forbidden to ride the bike in the neighbourhood, so I’ve been riding that regularly for a year and change now. Except I stopped when the pandemic happened. Right about then, I felt a tickle in my throat and started dry coughing. I had no other symptoms, but that was enough to get me worried. Later on I realized that the symptoms got worse after I eat, especially if I eat/drink something acidic or stimulant (like lemon juice, coke, chocolate). That’s when we realized I was having acid reflux. I’ve been taking pepsid now and it’s under control. I should get back on the bike this weekend.

There are many things we should be doing - like tiding up the house so we can put it on the market - but we don’t have the appetite for now.

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