Shedding It

I have been thinking about this question for a while. And now both my workplace and swim club are starting to think about it too. My workplace is starting to survey staff about what measures would need to be in place for people to feel comfortable returning. Some things are already there, such as restrictions on the number of people per elevator, and hand wash stations everywhere. But a full return will be complicated. We were in the process of renovating our building to crowd more people in when COVID closed everything down - that entire model will need to be rethought. Our work situation may not be as dire as at my sister’s workplace. She works in a very tall building and says that the calculation there is that with only two people per elevator, it would take 24 hours to get everyone to their offices. There are big questions about masks and what works best for people too. Some want everyone to wear a mask. Hearing-impaired people struggle to communicate with people in masks. Som...

This is becoming something of a ritual. Get up way too early on a Saturday, then drive across town to swim with a gang of buddies. It’s now warm enough the Candace and Filippo have joined us. Today three people brought buoys, so the keeners set up a triangular 250m course. It was definitely a little more interesting than the usual back and forth between the rocks. Nadine had posted posted a funny story about forgetting her swim coat and needing to stop for gas while wearing only her bathing suit and towel the day before, as well as a memory of me in my Star Trek bathing suit. That led to lots of jokes and promises to wear our respective Star Trek gear this morning. I remembered, but her Uhura bathrobe is still hanging up at home, and she (once again) has only a towel to wear home Tom decided set himself the goal of swimming 3k, which is the same distance as Bring on the Bay, a huge open water even that would normally take place in just a few weeks, going right past our spot. ...

Today’s lunchtime task was to make up about three pounds of Landjaeger sausage (a beef and pork mix with caraway and coriander, that gets cold smoked and then dried until it is as hard as jerky - perfect for camping). After work I went for a second swim. It was “with” the swim club I do zumba with via Zoom on Thursdays. I was a half hour late, but people were still on shore or swimming. I said hello quickly to one person, hopped in the water and swam by myself to the other side of the lake and back. It ook me about half an hour. By the time I got back the others were starting to leave or had already packed up, so I got dressed, nodded good-bye and went to my car. I’ll try to be more social next time!

While swimming this morning, I was thinking about a 16th C swimming treatise (as one does) and thought it would be really fun to try and recreate all the instructions. The electronic version I have access to does not include the illustrations, so someone needs to make this information available to the broader medieval recreation ist swimming public, right? It feels a bit like redacting a recipe book. I cook a lot so can usually translate medieval instructions into useable modern recipes. I swim a lot, so why not do the same with swimming instructions? I have tried doing almost all the things in the treatise already, so it’s just a matter of matching technique and instruction, then recording clips of it all. There will be a couple of other anachronisms besides electronic recordings: there are virtually no records of women swimming, and the images of swimmers (male and female) show them either naked or in underwear. I‘ll wear my modern suit (maybe with a short chemise over top). I may ...

I didn’t get to the pond early in the morning as planned, but I managed to bike over and swim during my lunch break. The water was absolutely delicious. The edge of cold has completely gone now. You can’t see them from this angle, but there were actually many people swimming or playing in the water. And an unflattering selfie to show I was swimming. This week’s challenge is to decide what to de clutter next. Part of me wants to work on the basement because it’s cool. Part of me is resisting because it’s dark. Maybe I can arrange to be in some conference calls on mute; that has been working quite well for getting chores done.

Today started out rough, with my daughter having another bout of sadness over the breakup of a relationship. She ended up coming to sleep with me for several hours, which meant no swim as I wanted her to rest. There were serious efforts at letting go on both sides - her starting to figure out how to move on and me trying to let go of the desire to punch him right in the head. The rest of the day was much better. We bought groceries (and a huge basket of local strawberries) then collected my sister and her dog so we could all visit my parents for Father’s Day. Here‘s dad with the strawberry shortcake my sister whipped up, and Mom with Gracie.