Taking my car to a new garage this morning, and I was getting apprehensive about getting to/from work... got up in the night because I couldn't sleep, so I went onto Google Maps and discovered that it's significantly closer to work than it is back to my house. But because I had it mentally tagged as "further from home" (which it is mostly because of highways and one-way streets) it follows that it must be more difficult to get to work from there.

Brains is weird.

Flea, could you play Sudoku or do a crossword while the meeting goes on? Or take up knitting...

Daily anything seems excessive to me, honestly.

100%

Oh, knitting! When my sister's kids were in Montessori, everyone was knitting. The kids because it was part of the curriculum and the adults probably also because it was part of the curriculum but also because it was a good way to be able to keep an eye on the kids but not just be watching them or be involved with whatever they were doing. Something like that might be very good for during meetings of the enraging sort.

We started out with daily meetings, and now most of them are two or three times a week. It made sense when we we first working from home, because everything was about COvid resonse and setting people up to tech their classes online in a two week period. I actually requested a one on one with my new supervisor, so we cancelled one of our group meetings to do that. Our group is just us and the Admin, but for some reason neither of us are the admn's direct supervisor (we have a person whose job it is to control the budgets and supervise the admins). I am one of the rare staff members that doesn't report to her, but I think it is because we are pay grade peers. so I report to the faculty member who is the director of both departments I work in. I am a mess to put on the org chart.

But I came here to make a petty complaint. Yesterday we were told that we are to have a uniform email signature across the company. I followed the directions to copy and paste the template into my Gmail settings and know I have this weird looking .sig where the font is suddenly bigger than the body of the email. And I have to remember to type out "Thanks," instead of having it automatically appear. Boo.

Last night I started taking this Yale course on happiness that was recommended by our Wellness director at work [link]

The first module was pretty good, but I am terrible at practicing mindfullness and using my strengths! There is a journal to track. We are supposed to try and use our strengths every day for a week.

My strengths are 1. Creativity 2. Perspective 3. Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence 4. Love of Learning 5. Fairness.

Not really sure how to use those sometimes. I have been planting flowers to indulge my love of beauty and creativity, but using perspective is way down- she doesn't really use me as an advisor the way Sue did, but then Sue worked and I worked together for close to 10 years so I think her appreciation of me grew over time.

Daily meetings NO. My team has been going the other way - almost all of my weekly meetings are now every other week, and I dropped a monthly meeting down to quarterly (and got a nice thank-you note from the Big Boss.)*

*Not the BIG BIG boss, just the Big Boss of my subsidiary.

A family friend just posted a picture on FB of her teenager having a "prom" in the backyard with a dozen teenagers. No masks, no distancing. I just can't with people.

Here it is county driven. In Fort Lauderdale area everyone is masked. Palm Beach, maybe 85% masked, certainly in stores. Martin county, just north of us, rarely see a mask. My kids move this weekend to Martin and I told them how worrying I find this. Ugh.

Last night I started taking this Yale course on happiness that was recommended by our Wellness director at work [link]

That looks very interesting.

I saw a very sweet story about a seven-year-old boy who discovered that his babysitter, a high school senior, wouldn't have a prom. So he invited her to a prom in his back yard. He put on a suit, got a bow tie to match the dress she'd bought before everything was cancelled, got her favorite foods and (non-alcoholic) beverages. After eating, they kicked off their shoes and danced barefoot on the lawn. Throughout, they used a six-foot pool noodle to maintain their distance.

Toddson, stop restoring my faith in humanity, when I've just rid myself of it.