Day in the Life of an Idiot

 
Image: This is what 58 looks like (on Shawn, anyway.)

Yesterday, no April Fools, was Shawn's birthday. Shawn decide that one of the things she really wanted was a bunch of meals out. So, we started the day at Day By Day Cafe on West 7th in Saint Paul. From there, we made a brief stop to pick up charcuterie (which will be tonight's meal--our family believes in Birthday Week Observed), and then off to S. R. Harris fabric wearhouse for some light shopping. Home for a while and then off to dinner at Bole, which is an Ethiopian restaurant in St. Paul. 

When Shawn was on the phone with one of her brothers, I heard her laugh and say, "Yes, we *do* really know how to whoop it up." 

Maybe this is something about being 58 (which I will also turn in mid-November) or maybe we've always been like this. SPOILER: it's the latter. 

Listen, you don't even understand how boring I am! I got so excited this morning to officially record my first snowfall, it wasn't even funny. But, you know, re-read that sentence. I was excited to record a snowfall on the CoCoRaHS page. I am, in fact, living the high life. 

Today is also Wednesday and I haven't gotten much read. I listened to several of the stories on the audiobook of Queers Destroy Science Fiction, but then kind of petered out on them for some reason. I haven't started the next book, though I did download another option (Please Report Your Bug Here, by Josh Riedel.) Ironically, I also went to the library on the day before Shawn's birthday (when we went out to eat also as part of the week long celebration, this time to--don't mock!--Red Lobster.) So, I have a literal pile of manga I should be reading, too. I just started one that Reactor (formally Tor.com) recommended called Touring After the Apocalypse. (<--pretty excellent so far, honestly.)

Anyway, I need to start getting wits gathered so that I can go pick up Shawn at work. Hope you all are doing well! 

 For reasons known only to the Loft (probably cost saving,) they host the back end portion of their Zoom classes on Google Classroom. I find Google Classroom to be somewhat opaque and annoying, but what has me stressed this morning is a problem that came down late last night. 

I got a panicked email from a student who had been diligently working away on an assignment in Google Docs. As she herself said, she is very familiar with Docs and how it works and so she didn't bother saving it... because Google Docs does that for you. Even so, she had noticed it doing its usual "...saving" thing. Right, so, she put in all her work on the assignment (a critique of another student's work) and closed up. Having had a secondary thought after that, she went to add it... and no longer seemed to have access to the document she was working on. She couldn't, in fact, find it AT ALL.

This stymied me for a long time until I remembered that the way I create assignments is that I upload the critique piece into the shared Google Classroom Folder and then send it out to each student by having Google Classroom's mechanism create a copy for each student. I thought, "Ah, my student doesn't realize that her work is being stored in the shared classroom folder and not on her personal Google Docs. I'll just go find it for her and point her to how to retrieve it."

EXCEPT.

When I went to open up the Classroom's Google Folder, I found myself barred. At least on the instructor's end, I got a message that said, "This folder has been moved to trash. To access files, have the owner of the folder restore it." I was initially like... WHO THE HELL IS THE OWNER, IF NOT ME?? Turns out, the answer is: a Loft staff member who no longer works at the Loft.

I wrote a very panicked email myself now, to the Loft, begging them to have that former employee restore the folder and for god's sake NOT TO DELETE THEIR ACCOUNT because it would end my access to probably everything that's on the cloud as well, since they are the owner of it all, not me.

I woke up to a reply from someone who is supposed to be out of the office until tomorrow, so apparently I write panic very well. They didn't quite understand my problem because I don't think that other instructors use assignments the way I do. I like to protect the anonymity of my students wherever possible and Classroom can send out copies to everyone without me having to generate an email (which I would still bcc everyone one, but you know, it's another layer for people who want/need that sort of thing.) But, obviously, there are work arounds if they can't restore the folder to us. It doesn't seem to affect any documents that I have stored on my own Docs, so no class materials generated by me are affected. The only thing we wouldn't be able to do is use Classroom to generate assignments.

It's probably never come up before because I suspect most Loft teachers don't even use Classroom, much less do a deep dive like I do into all the functionalities. I guess this if only because the Loft is forever sending very simple "how-to"s on what Google Classroom EVEN IS whenever I say, yes, please, I would like a Classroom set-up for me. I do wish they'd let us do it ourselves, but we also have to use their Zoom license, and I guess the point is to teach through them, after all, and not just GO ROGUE which is what I'd honestly like to do.

At any rate, the Loft is, at least, working to have it restored, one way or the other. I am hoping they can transfer ownership to someone who is not the FORMER employee, but honestly if that person could just keep it out of their trash until Nov. 3 when the class is over is really all I need.

So, that's been MY MONDAY! How's by you?

Or something like that.  

I just spent two hours on my yard. Can you tell that I just spent two hours on my yard? Probably not.  Though, you might be able to tell that I mowed the boulevard, if only because the grass had gotten long enough to start to sprout seed heads. But, really, now our boulevard basically looks like everyone else's boulevard, so maybe not?

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person in the world that struggles with basic yard work. 

Though, last night, Shawn and I took a walk around the neighborhood and I noticed that my immediate neighbors seemed to have as many bare patches and rough sections as I do. I do wonder that, given the shift in how my generation feels about going organic and chemical free, if we're going to see a lot more crappy lawns in general.  We're certainly not the only people in our immediate neighborhood to plant front yard gardens.  Several folks a block or so east have entirely shade/natural flower gardens for "lawns."

But, back to my original point, I also have to wonder if some of my frustration with yard work is that I'm kind a clumsy nerd at heart.  Just pulling out the lawn mower was a huge hassle of untangling the electric cord and hauling it around to the boulevard and THE WHOLE THING WAS JUST SO HARD.  Probably other people don't trip over the cords they're carrying. Gods, I do. And, then, like Pig Pen from "Peanuts" I end up tangled in the cords and completely immobilized. (At least that's how I feel.)

On the other hand, it's done now and the yard looks fairly passable. 

At least where most people can see it.