i apologize for the covid-19 stuff but also there's some fun links
there was NO ONE at work today. they're all working from home to avoid covid-19. which is where i am now, altho i went in this morning because a. i hadn't set up my laptop for working remotely, and b. i was supposed to meet admin s from the libraries for lunch. which i did, with the added bonuses of admin r and technically-not-an-admin n. all of the libraries staff is working from home starting probably yesterday, and the libraries are closing, altho i think only for two weeks. the libraries director was apparently ADAMANT about making sure her staff was able to work from home. (the architecture faculty reallllly wanted the libraries to stay open. suck it up, guys. librarians gotta be safe too.) it's a little nuts. the t is EMPTY. SO EMPTY. DURING RUSH HOUR. i feel a burning need to eat out and tip big, because all those folks who rely on people being able to go out and be social are going to lose so much money when we're all social distancing.
i miss my libraries peeps, by the way. i don't know if i miss working there, now that they're all in a rush to equip everyone to work from home - and the other me, the admin who i kind of split my job with, left! she just... quit! i think she has a lot going on in her personal life and it bled through into her professional life, and she had enough - also apparently she'd screwed some things up? i don't think anything major, but still, you don't want to be fucking up on the job - point is, it's chaos in the libraries and i'm not sorry i'm not there. the enginerds are slightly more chill and possibly it's just easier for them to all work from home. except now that they're not traveling or having events or incurring expenses there's not a lot for me to do. >.<
the u originally asked all the students who live on campus to leave by next tuesday, and now they want everyone to try and go before sunday. they reached out to local alums to see if anyone had storage space for students' stuff and apparently they're going to keep a couple floors of one of the dorms open for kids who can't go home. classes are online-only for the rest of the year, and i just keep thinking, what if you're doing lab work? how do you take exams? altho one of the admins told me on wednesday that the u is going to cancel finals. which might be great for kids who hate to study, but at the same time, you're paying for this world-class education - it's a private university, they ain't cheap - but how much can you do from a distance? i guess we'll find out.
in the past three days i've gotten emails from: the dentist (to reassure patients about how often they disinfect) (it's a dentist's office, so... a lot), the hair salon (ditto), the curling club (twice! first to say leagues will continue until the end of the season and then to say games are canceled for the next two weeks after all), the brattle (also twice, once to say they're staying open and sanitizing a lot, and this morning to say they're capping attendance at all their events) (it's an art house theater [1] in harvard square), the grand national curling club (organization for east coast curling clubs) (the gordon international is canceled - it's a big us-canada bonspiel), and usa curling (mostly to share the cdc's best practices). the ncaa canceled march madness, the nfl canceled the rest of hockey season and i still find it weird that there's hockey in the spring, baseball put off spring training, and the nba either canceled the rest of the season or just pushed off a lot of basketball into *waves vaguely* sometime in the future. disney (-world and -land) is closed! somerville in an abundance of caution canceled school for the next two weeks and is closing all the city government offices (including the libraries!) starting monday. boy do i feel bad for parents who have to work from home AND watch their kids at the same time, altho i feel worse for parents who can't work from home and need to find someone else to watch their kids.
i've kind of hit the point where i can't tell where rational response ends and paranoia and overkill take over. like, my parents were going to come up for passover, which they're not now (my mom actually made this decision a couple weeks ago), so my sister and i were going to go down there, which... we're not sure. do we go? is it better not to? what are we going to do about passover, if we stay here? are grocery stores really all sold out of toilet paper?
if you want accurate information about worldwide cases of covid-19 or us cases broken down by state, a high schooler in seattle built a web site for you. the site itself is here.
and if you need a giggle, the cdc released an infographic of facial hair styles most compatible with face masks.
in totally other news, purim was on monday and i went to farwing's house to stuff my face, meet her friends and housemates, and participate in a group reading of the megillah, aka the story of esther. there were nutella hamentaschen. they were unexpected and delicious. i made an experimental kugel - a jerusalem kugel, which is made with capellini, caramel (sugar cooked with oil rather than butter), eggs, more sugar, cinnamon, a little salt, and... black pepper. which is not usually a thing in sweet noodle kugels. it's baked in a bundt pan. it was weird. and dark brown. but not entirely unfortunate! some people really liked it and i think some people had more mixed feelings. i mean, it was an odd option for people used to the sweet occasionally raisiny [2] egg-noodle kugels of their eastern european forebears. i liked the addition of black pepper, tho.
have some fun links before they all get stale.
how to use renaissance paintings to rediscover old varieties of produce - like, that pear the virgin mary is holding in that painting is actually a variety of apple.
food in museums, by which i mean museum exhibits of food.
i just thought this was a neat article - norwegian fishermen and the wandering cod.
women and automotive history. designers, inventors, and, uh, emily post.
did you know there's a history of native american ironworkers working construction in new york? because there is. (i knew there were mohawk steelworkers who helped build the empire state building, but i didn't realize there was historically a group of them in brooklyn and that native american steelworkers were still a thing. neat!)
and in that vein, meet the brothers who photographed the construction of the new york subway. they were not native american.
this is a librarian's uniform. back when actual people actually wore this, they probably had actual pants.
this news is a couple years old, but it has puppies so i have to share. guys head out for a bachelor party weekend and end up rescuing a dog and her brand-new litter of puppies.
tonight we curl in... VALHOGGA! probably funnier if you curl. just imagine pigs in viking helmets. :D
a homeless guy in london built a bunker under hampstead heath to live in, and stayed there a couple years until he was discovered.
in case you were wondering if elizabeth warren has a sense of humor and an awareness of pop culture, here she is with kate mckinnon on saturday night live. i cacked like a loon when i saw this. i love it.
the arctic ocean has chlamydia. yes, really. no one is really sure how, tho, since it usually needs a host and in this case there isn't one.
a hard boiled egg and i don't want it back, and other weirdo things people have left in ubers.
[1] movies i've seen there include snowpiercer, only lovers left alive, lawrence of arabia, and i'm pretty sure that's where i saw deadpool. millions of years ago neil gaiman did a reading there.
[2] the best ones include raisins. either golden or regular, i'm not picky. i had one with pineapple once but it wasn't my favorite.
i miss my libraries peeps, by the way. i don't know if i miss working there, now that they're all in a rush to equip everyone to work from home - and the other me, the admin who i kind of split my job with, left! she just... quit! i think she has a lot going on in her personal life and it bled through into her professional life, and she had enough - also apparently she'd screwed some things up? i don't think anything major, but still, you don't want to be fucking up on the job - point is, it's chaos in the libraries and i'm not sorry i'm not there. the enginerds are slightly more chill and possibly it's just easier for them to all work from home. except now that they're not traveling or having events or incurring expenses there's not a lot for me to do. >.<
the u originally asked all the students who live on campus to leave by next tuesday, and now they want everyone to try and go before sunday. they reached out to local alums to see if anyone had storage space for students' stuff and apparently they're going to keep a couple floors of one of the dorms open for kids who can't go home. classes are online-only for the rest of the year, and i just keep thinking, what if you're doing lab work? how do you take exams? altho one of the admins told me on wednesday that the u is going to cancel finals. which might be great for kids who hate to study, but at the same time, you're paying for this world-class education - it's a private university, they ain't cheap - but how much can you do from a distance? i guess we'll find out.
in the past three days i've gotten emails from: the dentist (to reassure patients about how often they disinfect) (it's a dentist's office, so... a lot), the hair salon (ditto), the curling club (twice! first to say leagues will continue until the end of the season and then to say games are canceled for the next two weeks after all), the brattle (also twice, once to say they're staying open and sanitizing a lot, and this morning to say they're capping attendance at all their events) (it's an art house theater [1] in harvard square), the grand national curling club (organization for east coast curling clubs) (the gordon international is canceled - it's a big us-canada bonspiel), and usa curling (mostly to share the cdc's best practices). the ncaa canceled march madness, the nfl canceled the rest of hockey season and i still find it weird that there's hockey in the spring, baseball put off spring training, and the nba either canceled the rest of the season or just pushed off a lot of basketball into *waves vaguely* sometime in the future. disney (-world and -land) is closed! somerville in an abundance of caution canceled school for the next two weeks and is closing all the city government offices (including the libraries!) starting monday. boy do i feel bad for parents who have to work from home AND watch their kids at the same time, altho i feel worse for parents who can't work from home and need to find someone else to watch their kids.
i've kind of hit the point where i can't tell where rational response ends and paranoia and overkill take over. like, my parents were going to come up for passover, which they're not now (my mom actually made this decision a couple weeks ago), so my sister and i were going to go down there, which... we're not sure. do we go? is it better not to? what are we going to do about passover, if we stay here? are grocery stores really all sold out of toilet paper?
if you want accurate information about worldwide cases of covid-19 or us cases broken down by state, a high schooler in seattle built a web site for you. the site itself is here.
and if you need a giggle, the cdc released an infographic of facial hair styles most compatible with face masks.
in totally other news, purim was on monday and i went to farwing's house to stuff my face, meet her friends and housemates, and participate in a group reading of the megillah, aka the story of esther. there were nutella hamentaschen. they were unexpected and delicious. i made an experimental kugel - a jerusalem kugel, which is made with capellini, caramel (sugar cooked with oil rather than butter), eggs, more sugar, cinnamon, a little salt, and... black pepper. which is not usually a thing in sweet noodle kugels. it's baked in a bundt pan. it was weird. and dark brown. but not entirely unfortunate! some people really liked it and i think some people had more mixed feelings. i mean, it was an odd option for people used to the sweet occasionally raisiny [2] egg-noodle kugels of their eastern european forebears. i liked the addition of black pepper, tho.
have some fun links before they all get stale.
how to use renaissance paintings to rediscover old varieties of produce - like, that pear the virgin mary is holding in that painting is actually a variety of apple.
food in museums, by which i mean museum exhibits of food.
i just thought this was a neat article - norwegian fishermen and the wandering cod.
women and automotive history. designers, inventors, and, uh, emily post.
did you know there's a history of native american ironworkers working construction in new york? because there is. (i knew there were mohawk steelworkers who helped build the empire state building, but i didn't realize there was historically a group of them in brooklyn and that native american steelworkers were still a thing. neat!)
and in that vein, meet the brothers who photographed the construction of the new york subway. they were not native american.
this is a librarian's uniform. back when actual people actually wore this, they probably had actual pants.
this news is a couple years old, but it has puppies so i have to share. guys head out for a bachelor party weekend and end up rescuing a dog and her brand-new litter of puppies.
tonight we curl in... VALHOGGA! probably funnier if you curl. just imagine pigs in viking helmets. :D
a homeless guy in london built a bunker under hampstead heath to live in, and stayed there a couple years until he was discovered.
in case you were wondering if elizabeth warren has a sense of humor and an awareness of pop culture, here she is with kate mckinnon on saturday night live. i cacked like a loon when i saw this. i love it.
the arctic ocean has chlamydia. yes, really. no one is really sure how, tho, since it usually needs a host and in this case there isn't one.
a hard boiled egg and i don't want it back, and other weirdo things people have left in ubers.
[1] movies i've seen there include snowpiercer, only lovers left alive, lawrence of arabia, and i'm pretty sure that's where i saw deadpool. millions of years ago neil gaiman did a reading there.
[2] the best ones include raisins. either golden or regular, i'm not picky. i had one with pineapple once but it wasn't my favorite.