Day 7 - Mask mandate REINSTATED by LA County Dept. of Health

Hiked the East Canyon trail today…

The East Canyon trail…

2/22/22. Tuesday 

5:45-6:00 – my alarm goes off but I lie in bed until 6:00.

6:15-6:30 – I drag myself out of bed and check the weather. It’s cloudy and looks like rain, but when I check the weather online, I’m informed that today will be “clear.” I go downstairs to say good morning to the dog, but she’s still sleeping.  I tiptoe past her and put my coffee in the microwave, hoping she doesn’t wake up - just once, I’d like to skip this routine – but as soon as she hears the microwave start, she comes into the kitchen to say hello. I grab my coffee and we go outside while I wait for her to go potty. I take note that my yard needs some TLC.

6:30-7:45 – Shower. I sit in the shower, drink my coffee, and ice my eyes. Lotion. I put on my hiking uniform. Light make-up. So far, no rain.  That’s a good sign.

8:00-8:15 – I leave for the East Canyon trail at the Church of the Nazarene location – this is where my hiking group is meeting today. I eat overnight oats en route.

8:30-10:30 –It’s cloudy and looks like rain, but the group gets started. We hike an incredible trail! At the start, the hiking trail is level and moves through large trees, but within 20 minutes, it starts to climb and climb and climb…large portions of the trail encompass 80 to 90-degree inclines. It’s intense and while I’m not out of breath, I do have to regulate my breathing in order to keep going.  I’m second in front and right behind an older man who moves like a machine! The trail is deceptive…just when you think you’re going to reach the top, the spiral around the mountain continues, turning it into an optical illusion and seemingly never ending. Because this hiking group is slotted for a 90-minute hike every Tuesday, we wouldn’t have made it to the top anyway – there’s not enough time – so it really doesn’t matter. Periodically, I stop at cut-outs along the way and take advantage of the awesome view…I liken it to the Grand Canyon. The views are. amazing. I’m so glad I came – the rain never occurred.

-This is the last day of the Winter Season for my hiking group and, ironically, on the last day, I meet three new people as I’m walking the last five minutes of the trail:  Ellie and her friend Melanie [Mel] and an older Indian woman named Areeta.

10:30-11:30 – I go through the Starbucks drive–thru  and buy a peppermint hot chocolate; then

I sit in the parking lot for a little while and drink it.

11:30-12:00 – I drive to Home Depot and buy Velcro so I can fasten the stairrunner to the stairs. Staff are masked and most customers are still masking. Signs advising us to mask are still on the entrance and exit doors.

12:00-1:00 – I take this time to find the location for my Striders speed walking group on Thursday. It’s in Stevenson Ranch and hard to locate, but I found it.

1:00-1:30 – Driving

1:30-2:00 – Return home and change into yoga pants and a T-shirt.

2:00-4:00 – I notice that since I contracted Omicron, when I go hard with a physical activity, I’m ‘down for the count’ the rest of the day and pretty much useless. The hike was intense and now I need a nap.

4:00-5:00 – Awake and I fix the starirunners with Velcro.

5:00-5:30 – The dog has been sleeping all day lately and I think she might be depressed.  Maybe she needs psychotropic medication? We go for a walk and it’s bitterly cold. She spends most of the walk running and sniffing around the hedges near my front door and then trying to crawl under my car.  This is all going on while I’m freezing to death.  We are literally standing in one place while she repeatedly runs around the bushes…until a black cat jumps out and runs away. So that’s what she was tracking… 

6:00-3:00 a.m. – I spend the rest of the evening/early morning doing class prep for my classes.  

-This semester, I met with L. on three separate occasions so she could make multiple edits to my AUDIO lectures. I then loaded the newly minted lectures into the Canvas shell for my Core Class, but that’s all I did. This means I have NOT created a separate file for the edited AUDIO lectures, which is a real problem because I will be using these edited lectures for my Core Classes for subsequent semesters. Other than the Canvas shell, scattered entries in my Ipad, a few emailed lectures in my personal email, and various lectures in my Downloads file, I’m unable to access 15 Core Class lectures in a coherent, cohesive manner. I need to cull every newly edited AUDIO lecture from whatever space it inhabits and put all of them into ONE AUDIO lecture file for easy access. I’ve been dreading this task. This means the OLD lectures must be deleted first, then replaced with the newly edited AUDIO lectures that L. has spliced over the past 60 days. 

If this sounds confusing, it is.  The project is unbelievably time consuming, but a necessity. I have to search my Downloads for each AUDIO Chapter Lecture and put them in chronological order in my personal file on my thumb drive. THEN, I have to delete the OLD AUDIO lectures so they’re never used again. 

-Once I finish, I  complete the entire process for Specialty Class 1B, i.e., dump the old lectures and replace them with the newly edited AUDIO Lectures that L. spliced and that I added to the Canvas shell. I put the Specialty Class 1B AUDIO lectures in chronological order in my personal file on my thumb drive. I also record two PSAs and download them to the Canvas shell. 

-Now it’s time for my high school class.  The exact same process also needs to occur for the high school Canvas shell, which happens to be my second Core Class. I go through every Module on Canvas and delete the AUDIO lectures because they are old and defunct, especially since L. recently  edited every lecture. Although my class is a F2F class and I’m lecturing in person, I want to replace the old AUDIO lectures with the newly-minted lectures that I just finished organizing in my personal file in the event I need to take another Tuesday off in order to get a hike in.

In fact, I took today off for just that reason…it’s the last hike of the Winter Session and this group takes a mandatory 3-week hiatus after the last day, so I really wanted to be there. I was also able to take today off because I set up the students with a pre-recorded lecture and the Google slides, which they listened to for the duration of the 90-minute class period. Mr. G. should NOT have to do a thing, but I’ll find out how things went from the students when I see them on Thursday. 

-This shit is so confusing that I need complete silence in order to perform this “deep work” effectively. No podcasts or You Tube videos are running during this block of time.

I finally finish the AUDIO lecture project for all three classes and have successfully created a file on my personal thumb drive for every edited lecture that I received from L.  All of the OLD AUDIO lectures were deleted.  

-But, I’m still not done. EVERY due date in the high school Canvas shell must be updated to reflect the current Syllabus. I already changed the due dates for ten Chapter Review quizzes, but more due dates need to be updated. I still have to change the due dates for the remaining Chapter Review quizzes and ALL Video quizzes. This task is unbelievably laborious, but I finish. 

-Now that the due dates are updated, I turn to the Module Home Pages in the high school shell. There are 15 of them and each Home Page needs to be reformatted to coincide with the Spring 2022 Semester Syllabus, primarily for the simple reason that LAST Semester’s schedule changed constantly due to the numerous religious ceremonies and holidays that kept cropping up [I was at a different high school]. The Fall 2021 Syllabus for the high school I taught last semester does not resemble the Spring Semester 2022 Syllabus in the slightest. 

The saving grace is that I do NOT have to create a weekly Discussion Board because my highschoolers in this class no longer need to sign in on the Discussion Board for Attendance. We meet F2F and I take Attendance in the classroom this semester. 

I finish the above projects! but I have some personal business to attend to… 

Lifestyle Admin. 

-I received the bill from my tax preparer [$250]. I write the check and prepare an envelope for mailing.

-I received the bill for my roof repair [$500]. I write the check and prepare an envelope for mailing.

-I complete the CalPERS health insurance form attesting to the fact that L. is truly my dependent. I prepare an envelope for mailing.

-It’s that time of year again…my HOA needs my current contact information.  I complete the form and prepare an envelope for mailing.

-I need to make my monthly 457 retirement payment. I write the check and prepare an envelope for mailing. 

3:30-4:00 – Nighttime routine. Bed. I’m exhausted.  Is it “Long Covid” or the fact that an Adjunct Instructor’s workload is just too much?