ummmm....... in shiny things

I keep trying to make an entry, especially after I got so fired up by writing more in the last few weeks than I have in the past year or so, but. I just stare at the blank page and then wander away again. I’m currently at work, and we’re in an oddly boring slow period. I think I’m so bored it’s frozen my brain. And work has been… weird. I mentioned earlier that Mr. Organized and Miss Tattoo and I got moved out of the main office to a little maze of offices that are way off down the hall. Which in many ways is great - it’s a lot quieter as far as foot traffic goes. Our previous area was where everyone came to see the dean or associate dean, and students and faculty would drop by constantly. We’d end up dealing with them instead of whoever they actually needed since we were right there in front of them as they entered the office suite. And we were all three constantly being interrupted by things we have nothing to do with. So the move has been great for fixing that. Our new offices are way off down a zigzaggy little hallway and not part of the main office, so people don’t realize we are actually connected. Yay!

On the “this is weird” side, though, we are feeling mentally cut off from the main office as well. We’ve gone from being a central component of the Dean’s Office alongside coworkers we’ve been with for years, to being in a strange, seemingly unconnected grey zone. Again, I would be fine with this except that it’s.... unsettling, somehow. And I know it’s because we have a new dean who is a total stranger to us, a new dean’s assistant, and several other people that aren’t technically brand new but thanks to working from home for a year and four months, we’d hardly met in person. It’s like being in a completely different office, and one that we barely know anything about. Now the three of us are the only ones who have been here for any amount of time. Luckily we really like each other and feel bonded amongst ourselves, not abandoned to the wolves! And I’m sure all these new people aren’t wolves. I’m sure New Dean will be FINE.....

Anyhow, it’s really not an alarming thing, but as I keep saying… it just feels weird. It’s like doing the same job I’ve done for years but being in a completely different office with a completely different feel and completely different, unknown coworkers. Who may or may not be wolves.

SO. That’s my life lately. Pretty dull! As I mentioned earlier, we’ve gone nowhere, we’ve done nothing. I have cancelled my October trip to Delaware because Baker B was really really REALLY concerned about it. I think it would have been fine - the riskiest thing would have been flying and between being vaccinated and everyone being forced to wear masks in the airport and on the plane, I wasn’t worried. We were going to stay at a beach house that belongs to Cousin J’s friend, just the four of us, all vaccinated. I think he’s being overcautious, but also I think overcautious is better than under-cautious, annoying as it is. Cousin J’s vaccinated, very cautious husband came down with Covid a month or so ago and although he wasn’t hospitalization sick - vaccinated!!! - he felt pretty horrible for five or six days. Also, it’s pretty bad here. The hospital is full - one of our new mysterious-to-me coworkers has some health issues and is going to have to have surgery in Atlanta next week. Winston is a lot closer but couldn’t work him in till late October. His specialist said if he’d been able to spend a week in the hospital here, he’d have been fine by now (he’s got some sort of blood clot issue that was worsened by falling recently), but our hospital had no beds and they sent him home to decline.

All to say, I don’t blame Baker B’s nervousness. I blame all the eedjits who won’t get vaccinated and won’t wear a mask on their stupid faces. But I am not going on a rant about THAT now.

Kim and I DID go to the Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit in July, though, which was just incredibly fun! Also incredibly hard to describe. Basically it’s a series of enormous projections of Van Gogh paintings - and interpretations of them in motion - projected on the walls, floors, etc of this big room (we were in an old car manufacturing warehouse which is part of an area of once-abandoned but now arty stuff warehouses) - immersing you.

Oh, look, here it actually is, the whole thing, on You Tube! Of course this isn’t exactly immersive, but you get an idea of what the projections are, and hear the amazing music.

The music is mostly by Luca Longobardi, who I’d never heard of - some of his own work apparently, and some other composers- Handel and Bach being my favorites. They also threw in Pictures at an Exhibition, fittingly, and Edith Piaf, AND the lovely Thom York. For starters. So, a fun and gorgeous mixture that went amazingly well with the paintings.

I took ten million pictures, of course. I won’t post them all. You’re welcome.

We stayed in an Airbnb uptown that was basically just walls of windows looking out at the skyline. It was SO nice and SO fun to be somewhere totally different than where I usually am. I wish we could have spent more than one night. On the positive side, it’s only a couple of hours from here so we can do it again.

We wandered around uptown quite a bit too. Charlotte is really not a huge city, at least the uptown part isn’t, but it’s got some enormous shiney buildings.

And of course I did not manage to get that posted and am at home now. This has gone on quite long enough. Next time - writing update!