A House for Hermit Person

It’s been over a month since the official stay at home order from the governor. Since then, the only two indoor locations I’ve been to are my apartment and the grocery store. I’ve more or less been working on manuscript_v2.0 in the hopes that reviewer 2 likes it better than he/she did last time. Our research group has gotten more used to having virtual meetings, with only occasional internet interruptions, and we also have weekly individual meetings with our advisor. Other than that, I mostly hang around the apartment watching a lot of Netflix, complaining about my internet connection, complaining about the screaming children not social distancing outside my window, and wandering around my region of Ann Arbor when it’s either too nice to not go outside or too awful for anyone else to want to be outside.

At the end of March, Tau Beta Pi had to adjust and hold required meetings online on Zoom, which went okay. April Fools’ Day was mostly canceled, but I scraped together enough energy and inclination to bake a half batch of peanut butter cookies. On Thursday, April 2, we had group meeting, then I went to explore a natural area I hadn’t been to before, and finished my reread of The Lord of the Rings. The next day, Friday, April 3, I filed my taxes for 2019. Since I now spend the vast majority of my time in my apartment, as opposed to a lot of my time, I spent the afternoon of Saturday, April 4 tending to a yeasted dough so I could make cinnamon rolls.

Peanut butter cookie tower 

I listened to Facebook sermon #4 on Sunday, April 5, and watched the first ever MLS game on Monday, April 6 (MLS is re-airing classic matches since the season is suspended). On April 6, 1996, D.C. United travelled to visit the San Jose Clash and ended up losing 1-0 to a goal from Eric Wynalda. If no goals had been scored in regular time, they would have gone to a running start penalty shootout. Also, the clock counted down. Seriously. Thursday, April 9 of the same week, I decided what I really needed was to watch the Revolution lose their third (of five) MLS cup finals. In 2006, the Revolution headed to Texas to take on the Houston Dynamo. The game featured a ridiculous number of the best Revolution players in the team’s 25-year history, including Matt Reis, Jay Heaps, Shalrie Joseph, Steve Ralston, and Taylor Twellman. After the teams traded goals within two minutes of each other in extra time (Twellman and Houston’s Brian Ching), the game went to penalty kicks. Reis made a penalty and saved one, but Pat Noonan hit the crossbar, and on New England’s fifth penalty kick, with Houston up 4-3, Jay Heaps had his shot saved. And that’s how the Revolution lost MLS cup, not for the first time, and not for the last.

Sunday, April 12 was Easter. I did two loads of laundry (regular and sheets) and listened to the Easter sermon. Over the next week, research continued, and I worked my way through episodes of Community (now on Netflix) and Star Trek: The Next Generation [the one with Captain Picard, William Riker, Data, Worf, and the Reading Rainbow guy (LeVar Burton, who played Geordi La Forge)]. I also watched the Revolution lose the 2004 Eastern Conference final to D.C. United. At least Taylor Twellman, providing commentary on the game and team, was entertaining. On Friday, April 17, I discovered another nature area while wandering around avoiding people, and on Saturday, April 18 I picked Game of Thrones back up. If I do finish this 700-page brick, I still have The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (all 5 books of the trilogy), Dune, 3 Foundation books, 5 of 7 Harry Potter books, and a couple dozen other miscellaneous books on my bookshelf.

Finger Lakes puzzle

Week 5 of Facebook sermons was Sunday, April 19. That week, I put together my puzzle of the Finger Lakes region, made a friendship bracelet, and read Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid about his childhood in Des Moines, Iowa in the 1950s, as well as (finally) finishing a preliminary draft of my manuscript. On Saturday, April 25, I met (virtually) with friends from Cornell and was introduced to Quiplash and Drawful. The former needs to be played with people who have similar senses of humor and I can’t tell what anything is in the latter. We also defused some bombs.¹ All in a night’s work. I made French toast for lunch on Sunday, April 26 and did some more wandering when the afternoon was warm and sunny with no rain, snow, graupel, sleet, or hail. Now we’re in the last week of April with the stay at home order extended for another couple weeks. That’ll take us to the middle of May, and it’ll have been two months since I really went anywhere. I don’t think we’ll be at a place where we can (or should) go ahead and open everything right back up, but we’re starting to talk about letting experimental researchers back into labs. The computational/theoretical people will keep on keeping on.

¹Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes