Back To Shore

These past few days, when I thought about what I might write here on the weekend I had a more fitting title for the things I had planned to write about. Back then. But now it’s Sunday evening, I’m getting tired and I can’t be bothered. With this and so much else. The 2nd year of pandemic exhaustion is hitting me full force, it seems. I hate this. And at the same time am too knackered to do something about it. I don’t know…

Here are some more uplifting thoughts.

One of my favourite children came to visit me today for an hour, because she’s never been to my flat before and was so curious how I lived. This gave me the final kick to actually do a bit more than just clean my flat: actually sort out a few of the random stacks of paper and stuff lying around on the kitchen table, coffee table, any surface. On the shelves. It looks quite lovely 😉 The child and I had a great time, build some LEGO, tried to explain how it can be that there are photos of me AND that singer I like on my wall. Fun stuff. I might just start with building on of the two remaining LEGO sets in the corner. Though I will need to find room to put them, once they are build.

In the late afternoon I had a lovely Zoom chat with friends in the UK. We haven’t done that for ages and it was so lovely to see their faces and chat a bit more directly than just via text messages.

Only 36 or so hours till the new Outlander Book will be out. I’m really looking forward to it. It’s been too long.

I’m afraid that’s about it. The situation here in Germany gets worse and worse, our government (which government you might ask? Good question!) seems to be doing less and less. It’s really time to start hibernating again and ignore the (news) world outside as good as I can. We’ll get through this somehow, right?

Lyrics: “Dan’s Song” ~ Frank Turner, 2009

60% of the work week done. 70% of the hours worked. *sigh* The plan for today was to start working from home early so I could log off early-ish as well and be at the nursing home for the expected visit from our GP. Sometime in the morning she mailed and told me she had to do the home visit in the early afternoon. So I called up a sibling who has more flexible hours these days and asked them to be there for the visit. It all worked fine and as Murphy’s Law could have predicted, the general state and mood of our loved one was much better today. No worries (other than the general ones). Well played! But I was glad to hear it from my sibling afterwards.

Because there is a lot to do at the office at the moment and because it’s so difficult to get hold of some people on the phone, when you can’t just drop by their office and stand in the door, borderline stalking to make them find the time to talk to you. And maybe NOT answer the phone for the next call right away. The downside of everyone working from home, I guess. Anyway for all of those reasons I ended up with a 10 hours (+45 minutes lunch break) day in front of my screen. I should probably not be in front of another one typing this. But I want to keep some kind of blogging streak for November.

Not much else more to report though. I had tentative plans for some nice activities (at home) tonight. But after fixing some dinner, some mind numbing vintage TV (while having said dinner), some scrolling through my social feeds, I can’t be bothered with anything else.

I catch myself being more and more frustrated and in “willing to go on general strike / march to the capital” mood due to how governments on all levels here in Germany fail us in the pandemic catastrophe we’ve found ourselves in. Two winters in a row! I’M SOOOOO FED UP! But I’m also so exhausted – physically and mentally – that I can’t get myself to do anything about it. Other than rant a bit here.

Memories of happier times, my good friend Amanda reminded me this happened three years (and one day) ago. “Of course, I know who Susanne is…!” *sigh*

Lyrics: “Back To Sleep” ~ Frank Turner, 2008

Just a sort of placeholder post with not much content, because I need to go to bed soon. I awoke way too early again and didn’t fall back to sleep. Lots of coffee helped a bit. Maybe?

For the first time since early March 2020 we did a everyone on board team meeting. In Real Life! We had to talk about restructuring our data storage system on our server, because it has evolved into quite a mess over the past 20 or so years. We’ve got staff retiring soon and new staff on board already and we need to overhaul the whole thing. Easier said than done, but today might have been a good start. Anyway, we thought this would be best done in a room together and not online on shared screens. Plus… we wanted to get everyone at one (large) conference table at least once before one of my coworker retires in a few weeks. We had another coworker retire last December and the pandemic ruined every kind of planned farewell party / gathering. Who would have thought we’d be stuck in the same mess a year on?

The large conference table wasn’t available in our headquarter so we did the workshop someplace else this morning and I went back to the office afterwards. Another coworker gave me a drive in the company car, so I was able to leave my car at that first place and not pay double parking fees. All I had to do was to take the tram back down after work and pick up my car. All in all it might have cost me 10 more minutes of commute but it was fine. I could use the time in the tram to catch up on my social media, which I hadn’t been able to do all day. Win win. It was the first time I used my new public transport pass, which our company subsides immense. I finally signed up for it, because I was and still am planning to use a combination of car and public transport at least once or twice a week. Not as long as the pandemic is still raging on, but hopefully soon afterwards. And it was ok to be back on the tram for the first time in 20 months. Everyone wore a mask, most of them even wore it correctly. I might still not dare venturing out during regular early morning rush hour and crowded carriages any time soon.

I don’t want to get started how frustrated I am with the way we handle or not handle the pandemic over here in Germany. It’s equally infuriating and heartbreaking and the constant change from one emotion to the other is giving me whiplash. So to speak. I’m done…. Or maybe I’m just extremely tired today?

Happy, relaxing thoughts… here is a picture of a beach…