Good, bad, and ugly long weekend. The local firehouse fundraising event was a complete blast with the best music they have had in years. Good food and turnout. Made lots of bucks. It was 38 degrees when we got up this morning which means that fall is falling, it will get to the mid 60s with full sunshine so not complaining. My sister tested positive for covid yesterday. She has had lots of doctor visits preparing for knee surgery so probably got it at some office. Of course, that means surgery delay. I've been going to the gym with her daily meaning about 45 minutes a day sharing the car and lots more contact generally. So guess who has the faintest of faint lines today on my test. I'm only sniffly like a mild cold, but annoying because I have to let the construction guys know to hold for a while.

Oh, boo, Laura. Feel better and may it be mild and short-lived.

We had a chill week. Saw friends and read. Did some chores but not much.

Well that sucks (except the first bit), Laura. I hope it’s mild for you and your sister.

Thyroid pills day 7: Skin is much less dry, but the digestive issues that made me make a special appointment? Not resolved yet.(That may be fast, but I went to the doctor after dealing for about three months already...off and on, you know, but I've kind of had it. was really hoping there was something about my life that could legit be fixed.) Maybe it just takes a while, though.

It's now been a week of trying to get a tall chair for my classroom. Still don't have one. I checked the other classrooms on that floor to see if there was one that I could take, but the only one is in the other classroom I teach in, and it's not practical to move it back and forth every day. The department secretary offered me one that's in her office, but it doesn't have armrests, so I'm not sure if it'll work for me.

Geez Hil that’s ridiculous.

Apparently it is impossible for the university to provide a chair for me -- there is zero budget for furniture, and they said there aren't any of the stool-height chairs in other rooms that can be moved to that classroom -- so the math department has approved using department funds to get a chair for me. This is completely ridiculous, but at least the department is willing to do it.

Wow, that's pretty bad. I'm glad the department is coming through, but really, somebody seriously messed up.

These classrooms were clearly designed with the intention of having a tall chair (like an adjustable desk chair, but stool-height) at the front of each classroom, and I know that most of the rooms had them as recently as a few years ago. But they seem to keep either breaking or disappearing, and being replaced by regular-height non-adjustable chairs. Most of the professors teach while standing up, so they don't really notice, but I need those chairs. One of my classrooms has an OK chair (no arm rests, and it's kind of finicky about staying at one height, but I can work with it), but the one in the other classroom is so completely broken that I can't even figure out how it could have gotten that way other than people deliberately breaking it. What I really don't understand is why they can't find another chair anywhere on campus that I can use -- like, surely there's some room somewhere that has one of these chairs that they're not using. It's not like it's an incredibly rare special-order item.

At this point you should just set up a GoFundMe that your students can contribute to. (They could Endow a Chair. Maybe put a small tasteful plaque on it?)

I moved some furniture around on the back two-season porch and found a big box of record albums and like 6 boxes of comic books that must have sat there for the past 20 years.

I've gotten to the emotional point where I can let most of it go without even looking at them, but I picked a really bad weekend to start this project, since currently it's Allston Christmas (moving day for literally thousands of student types) so all the charity donation places are incredibly overwhelmed.