The Pandemic Year

Over a year ago, the country abruptly came to a stop as COVID-19 spread through the states. In an effort to control the coronavirus, events were cancelled, businesses closed, and people asked to remain home as much as possible. One year and half a million deaths later, the US is still reporting tens of thousands of cases a day, but the situation appears to at least be managed, if not controlled, plus vaccines are rolling out, so people are starting to return to jobs and school and other everyday activities. I’ve written about how I spent most of my pandemic year, but I wanted to highlight a few more things, and present some pie charts, because it’s been awhile since I posted any graphs [see here for definitive proof that studying lowers your grades].

My last big public event was my band concert on Sunday, March 8, 2020. On that same day, Bernie Sanders held a rally in Ann Arbor and undergrads were returning from spring breaks in who-knows-where. By Wednesday, classes were cancelled; Thursday, March 12, was the last time my research group saw each other in person at group meeting, and I haven’t set foot in my office since Thursday, March 19. In the year following, I’ve basically only been to the grocery store and the great outdoors. I’ve travelled exactly zero miles on any form of motorized transportation, including car, bus, plane, train, ebike, and Spin scooter. I did cover close to 300 miles on my bike and another ~200 on foot for recreational purposes.

Pandemic activities included 1 trip to the dentist, weekly outings to the grocery store, and just under 140 Ann Arbor parks visited (~90%). On the home front, I attended 1 Zoom wedding, hacked off my own hair twice, did a couple dozen loads of laundry, and washed approximately 5,982,481 dishes (confidence level = -99%). Shockingly enough, research got done. Weekly meetings with my advisor continued via BlueJeans/Zoom, as did group meetings every 1-2 weeks, one of my coworkers had a successful Zoom defense, and, of course, I got my first first-author manuscript published. H-index greater than 1, here I come. This brings us to our first pie chart, summarizing how I spent the pandemic, more or less.

How I Spent the Pandemic
[click to enlarge, and it should also be less blurry]

Next, we’ll consider my questionable diet, in which peanut butter may or may not be a staple food. For over a year, I’ve prepared/cooked every single breakfast, lunch, and dinner that I’ve eaten. While I would like to support local restaurants, I haven’t eaten out or ordered takeout at all. The process is almost as much effort as cooking and more effort than granola bars and instant oatmeal, so I’m probably deficient in any vitamins not found in fortified cereal and milk. See pie chart below for a model of a highly balanced and nutritious diet. I baked on average once every other week and made the following: peanut butter cookies, cinnamon rolls, sugar cookies (x2, different recipes), banana bread, pineapple upside down cake, popovers, apple cobbler, cranberry orange muffins, chocolate chunk cookies (the only bake from a mix), banana walnut muffins, chocolate peanut butter swirl brownies, pineapple cake, pumpkin cranberry bread, pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, chocolate cupcakes, molasses cookies, cranberry orange scones (x2), brownies, banana muffins, shortbread cookies, thumbprint cookies, and pecan rolls.

What I Ate (featuring 193 peanut butter and jam sandwiches)

Finally, let’s look at what (TV shows) I watched on Netflix. Additionally, I saw Jeopardy! almost every weeknight, watched the Revolution’s post-shutdown season, and saw a couple dozen movies, but the Netflix breakdown is more interesting. This pie chart includes a rough estimation of the time spent (in hours) watching each show based on the number of episodes and episode length. Bake Off has close to hour-long episodes, TNG and Grey’s Anatomy are about 45 minutes, and everything else is 21-25 minutes. I finished The Office right as lockdown started, and started on TNG, which I’m now 6 (of 7) seasons through. For both Avatar series, Parks and Rec, and Schitt’s Creek, the hours shown are the complete series. Kim’s Convenience is everything on Netflix, and I’m now eleven seasons into Grey’s Anatomy, which is ridiculous, but entertaining, in a ridiculous way.

What I Watched on Netflix

In hindsight, should the pandemic have been handled differently, particularly in the United States? Quite probably. But despite everything, I still managed to explore Ann Arbor, eat a lot of baked goods, get a paper published, and watch plenty of highly educational TV, so the year wasn’t all bad news.

X Marks the Spot

In my December 2020 summary I mentioned that I bought cross stitch supplies to have something to do during winter that didn’t involve staring at a computer screen. I’d stumbled across the cross stitch subreddit some months ago and thought about getting into it more seriously than I had in the past but didn’t know if I’d be into it enough for it to be worth buying all the supplies. Then I figured I’d basically spent a year only paying rent and buying groceries, gave in, and bought all the supplies. Cross stitching may not be as useful as say, knitting, or woodworking, but it has its advantages. It’s reasonably compact and at the bare minimum, all you need is embroidery floss, fabric to stitch on, a needle, a pair of scissors, and a pattern. You can also buy hoops, frames, and stands to hold the fabric as you stitch; lights, headlamps, and magnifiers to see better; bobbins and cases to organize your floss; thread conditioner; needle minders; and lots of other gadgets, but you don’t absolutely need those things.

I had a pair of scissors from a Walgreens sewing kit, so I ordered floss, fabric, and a pack of needles online (thank you, 21st century). The site I ordered from (123Stitch) looks like it’s stuck in the early 2000s, but they offer fixed rate shipping in the US and fulfill orders quickly. The subreddit also has good things to say about their customer service, though I haven’t had reason to contact them. They ship using USPS, which despite mail volume or staffing delays, has delivered my packages within a week the two times I’ve ordered supplies.

To start out, I decided to try some free patterns from DMC, one of the big embroidery floss manufacturers. My first pattern in about six and a half years was carrots. It was a good project for getting back into cross stitch. Each individual carrot was a few hundred stitches and just four or five colors so they came together pretty quickly. There weren’t a lot of randomly scattered single stitches (confetti) or an excessive number of color changes. The only part that had to be counted a little more carefully was the carrot tops, but even there, unless you severely or frequently miscounted, no one would know if you were off a square once in a while. No half or quarter stitches, just full stitches and backstitch.

Carrots

After the carrots I moved on to a blue whale and a sea turtle. The blue whale used the least number of colors of thread (seven, I think), so had a large patch of a single blue across most of its body. The backstitch in this pattern was a little weird. They asked for the backstitching to be done with three strands (it’s common for backstitch to be one strand), and there were long runs and stitches that ended in the middle of edges or squares, which is fine, just unexpected for an otherwise straightforward beginner-ish project. There was also a French knot for the whale’s eye. I followed a YouTube video and made a knot. Whether it’s a French knot . . . or not . . . I don’t actually know.

Blue whale

The sea turtle was probably the most complicated pattern, and it’s not entirely done because I’m missing a color of floss that was sold out online. It’ll get done eventually. All three patterns are 4-6" in width/height and were stitched on 14-count Aida (the fabric with holes for cross stitching) with two strands of floss except for backstitching. The coverage I’m getting is satisfactory, though you can see gaps with some of the darker colors if you’re very close. I’m now five weeks into a full coverage 30,000-stitch pattern that I picked to keep me occupied for the rest of winter and I’m about a third of the way done, so you can start looking for the big reveal in May at the earliest.

Sea turtle