I agreed, with internal but unvoiced reservations, to serve as co-Moderator of my church council this year (and probably next, but I left my self an opt-out for my Dad's health) and it has been-- interesting, time-consuming, a little frustrating, occasionally very funny, and a significant reminder of the gap between the working class and the middle class in terms of the middle-class progressive's conception of what it means to really struggle. 

( Read more... )

Hah, in the rush to get work and church and home and pet & etc. done, of course this fell by the wayside. 

Work has been busy with the new President onboarding and now the CFO retiring.  I was inundated with staffing agencies trying to send me candidates and I had to keep saying no, and one of them tried to go around me only to get slapped back by the CFO and the Controller-- and now they go in the "never work with you" pile.  It's just been a lot, and open enrollment is soon, too, so now through Christmas will be flat out.   We also had a bit of a COVID outbreak after a staff gathering and while no one was seriously ill, notifying folks and making sure bosses were in the know about department impacts was one more thing to add to the pile.   Our vaccination clinic is Tues. the 30th, but in the outbreak a lot of our well folks went and got vaccinated early (thank you, Massachusetts governor, for being sane and ordering unrestricted patient access to the vaccine) so I'm not sure how many people will show up.  

It was probably unwise to take last week off-- and I did have to work Monday AM and Tuesday for an hour or two-- but I have so much vacation to use up that it's crazy to waste it, and of course, I could use a little downtime.  I did get my room and the dining room better sorted and cleaned (and some pictures hung that have been stacked, gathering dust) before the asleep overnight PA came, and she and Dad both reported that things went well.  It's so expensive, though, for private pay-- $35/hr for asleep coverage, $40/hr for awake.  He needs it in that if he falls out of bed or gets suddenly ill, his cognition goes through the floor and he's not going to manage to find and use the phone to call for help, but of course he's healthy unless it's something out of the blue.  Still, I'm glad it was an option-- and that I make enough money that it was only uncomfortable, not impossible.  

Not looking forward to looking at email tomorrow afternoon, but if I don't it'll be an almighty mess.  

One fun thing I did do in the run-up to going away was trade in my camera.  I've been using the range of Canon EOS Rebel DSLRs with a range of zoom, macro, and prime lenses, but the 2019 trip to Rome was a lot between the 95F degree heat every day (in late September), juggling the camera, and Dad being in active heart failure (i.e., had a heart attack and a triple bypass three weeks after we got home) and I never fully processed the photos-- or trauma-- and pretty much stopped lugging the camera around.  I have missed taking pictures but've become hostile to the weight and gear-ness of the camera I had, and all the fussiness of processing photos in Lightroom (plus Adobe's shitty business practices), so I just never really picked it up again.  

I was able to do some research, though, and decided a bridge camera was the way to go.  With the trade of my camera and lenses I ended up only paying a third of the final price (and I appreciate the manager showing me I could make more money trying to sell it myself even as I told him one of the reasons I was trading down was that the gearhead aspects took the fun out of it for me) and the new camera is smaller, lighter, easy to use, and has good menu options for shooting manual or auto, as well as some interesting preset filters I need to try out.  I took 400 photos during this trip, however, and like them a lot.  I've got to figure out some free Lightroom alternative for the purpose of tagging and processing, but that's secondary to enjoying getting out there with my camera again.