I took the day off today, which was way better than working from home. I set a stupid precedent, though: while walking to my fly shot at Walgreens, I looked at work email on my phone. There were already dozens of unread emails and it's just one fucking day, but also a lot of those aren't relevant to me. I suppose it wouldn't take a huge amount of time to just delete those Monday morning but it made me feel better to clean at least some of it up today.

Today is day 4 since Shobhit's symptoms began, and day 3 since he tested positive, and still I have no symptoms. I mean, the slightest sensation in my body sets off my paranoia constantly, which makes it feel a lot like re-living the early lockdown days. At least we're not all worried about literally dying—although honestly, I never worried I would die. I did worry about getting deathly sick. This time, so far, knock-wood, I'm not sick at all. I read that testing again is encouraged five days after testing positive; I suggested to Shobhit that he test again tomorrow, which would be five days. I'll test too. If by chance he tests negative, we may drive out to Discovery Park and hike around a bit. I'm already getting stir crazy, although I did go to a movie today. I just wore a mask, and I went to the 12:30pm matinee. There were only two other people in the theater.

Anyway, Shobhit is still coughing a bit but otherwise he says he feels better. I'm still sticking to separate rooms until he either has no symptoms at all or he tests negative. He did have a fever for two days but his temperature was back to normal yesterday.

I do have a dilemma regarding work next week. Assuming I still have no symptoms, I could get away with going back to the office and just wearing a mask—which I would rather not do all day. I hate working from home, but I hate wearing a mask all day more. Unfortunately, we also got notice today that the Building Repair Project is using next week to replace the windows in our unit, and Monday through Friday we need to have all furniture and items at least three feet away from any windows—of which we have ten in this unit, across three different rooms, at least if you count the two doors that open onto either side the balcony (and clearly we should count them, as they are also getting replaced).

My home work desk faces the bay windows in the bedroom, which I will have to move. If I weren't working from home, I would just push it back against the bed right behind it. And it's not like I can easily just move it to another part of the bedroom, because these guys will need to come and go through the unit to get this work done. So now I have two choices: I can move the desk to the nook area outside the guest room, which was where my personal desk was for the first few years we lived here (and I moved into the bedroom the first year I had a roommate, in 2010), and just work there; or, I can avoid the hassle altogether and just go into the office with a mask on.

If I actually get sick between now and Monday then that will really complicate things. We'll just have to make sure that doesn't happen I guess. Thankfully at this point that seems relatively unlikely. Either way, I'll be so glad when at least another week or so has passed and I can feel like we've moved past this state of uncertainty that I truly hate.

[posted 7:41pm]

— पांच हजार आठ सौ अस्सी-सात —

Well, so far so good. Still feeling fine.

Working from home is already getting a bit tedious, though. I really don't like it. Something slightly worse this time around: we have scaffolding all over the south side of our building, for the "Building Repair Project" that will eventually leave the entire complex resided. This is the wall all of our windows face, so all my window views are now obscured by scaffolding. Each level of the scaffolding is level with the floor of each story of the building. So far no one has done any work on the walls of our specific condo, or even the fourth floor, while I've been working here. But, I do so a construction guy walking up or down every once in a while. I've taken to keeping the blinds drawn on the one window that faces the angle through which we would otherwise be seeing each other.

I had already planned to take the day off tomorrow, and I'm keeping that plan, mostly because I don't want to upset the balance of work days and other PTO days also planned through the rest of the month: I'm also taking Monday the 13th off (that's a week from Monday) and Thursday the 30th off (that's Shobhit's birthday).

I'll have one more single day to take off in November, and I have my Thanksgiving Week and pre-Christmas PTO on the books already. I think one other single day in December as well, and then I'll have burned through all the PTO I need to burn through without losing any of my balance at the end of the year.

— पांच हजार आठ सौ अस्सी-सात —

— पांच हजार आठ सौ अस्सी-सात —

There was an interesting work-related twist yesterday.

Because I was working from home, I missed the Office Relocation Team appreciation lunch at the office—and was going to miss the planned Team Happy Hour later in the afternoon as well.

Well, I won't say who it was because that could potentially get me into trouble, but one of the hosts of the lunch sent everyone on the team an email later in the afternoon that they had gone home after lunch "on a hunch," and took a covid test—and were positive. That meant direct exposure to everyone else on the team yesterday alone. So, it kind of looks like I dodged a bullet there.

And in light of that exposure, over Teams chat the team decided to postpone the afternoon Happy Hour to another day. That works great for me! Now I can actually make it. And if I had to choose just one of the two to be able to attend, I'd much rather make it to the Happy Hour. It hasn't been rescheduled yet but hopefully will soon.

So that part really worked out in my favor. I'll take the wins where I can! And honestly, my life on average is way more wins than losses.

— पांच हजार आठ सौ अस्सी-सात —

[posted 12:28pm]