I sometimes wish I could do more for the audience of this blog – all three of you. Particularly for those of you who have never actually met me, and have stumbled upon this blog and actually kept reading it. Really, big up to you guys. You make this worth it.

So, my dirty little (not so much of a) secret is that the timing on this blog is completely off. I keep a back log of posts that are set to publish every Friday. The closest thing that I do to a live post would be my monthly music challenge, and even there I cheat where I can. No, as far as you the audience knows, I am still living in January – a much simpler time.

In fairness, I am pretty forthcoming about this. I think I have mentioned this more than once in various posts.

Today I am going to break that a bit by writing about what is going on right now. I am doing this partially because it is very topical (you’ll see what I mean in a second), and partially because I have a bit of time. Doing the posts in advance often lets me ignoring this blog for months at a time, and then hastily pound out several posts in one sitting when I feel up to it on some weekend. That’s pretty much where I am at now, so I figured I would give this a whirl. I figure I can do this because things are pretty upside down right now, and so why not try to follow it live. Err, somewhat. I am writing this on Sunday and will set it to go live this following Friday, because I love me a good routine. Lord knows, much of this could change in five days, although I think its not likely. Things are obviously weird right now, so let’s see how shit goes.  I only feel a little weird about it because I do feel like there is something of a narrative thread to my posts. Sometimes.

So all that being said, here is a message from the future, er, the present.

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“May you live in interesting times” goes the old curse. And we are certainly living in  interesting times.

Both my parents live in northern Italy, which is currently quarantined to a frightening extent. Yesterday I was told that they are disinfecting the damn streets. My mother has cleaned the house to such a degree that the nails in her hardware box are now organized by length and diameter. I have no idea how my father is getting by.

(A day late! A dollar short! See, this is why I don’t do this nonsense normally)

But it is getting to my mom. She is beginning to check health stats pretty regularly. She is starting to obsess and concern about the Coronavirus a bit too much. But I guess this is to be expected. Still, concern is catching, and I am trying to remain calm in this uncertain period.

I am well quarantined. Greece made the decision to pretty much shut down as much as possible about a week ago. You can still get groceries, but every place of social gathering is now closed. Technically, all gatherings of more than 10 in public places are banned, and you are not meant to be closer than a meter to any given person. Not that there is really anywhere to go in this town to begin with. its a pretty sleepy place. Thankfully, me and my flatmate have pretty opposite schedules, with her sleeping well past noon and my being up with the dawn. That helps, considering we live in a smallish house. No, that isn’t an exercise in social distancing – but it helps maintain amicability between us. Yesterday, we only really saw each other for about an hour. Not bad, all things considered. Quarantine is expected to go on for another month or so, and at this rate I expect we may still be friends by the end of this all. Well, we aren’t exactly friends now. Friendly. We may still be friendly at the end of all this.

So how is work going? I may be with the most stressful job I have ever had in my life. I don’t want to get into that now, so just wait and see because I will kvetch about that here on this blog eventually. Because of the quarantine laws, we had to shut down the actual physical school and we are not really allowed on. We are trying to keep our education project going through online means. We, as of right now, have no way of getting the email addresses of our students to invite them to regular online classes via zoom. Why not? Um, don’t ask. It has to do with the whole ‘the job that shall not be named’ (confused? don’t worry, you will get there) aspect of this.  I had originally asked my team to make some simple power points with voice overs and I got all the imaginable insubordination. Some of my team members were closer to the retired side of things, and had understandable hesitations about the technological side of things. I persisted, and they gave it a very valiant effort.

But it has been like pulling teeth.

I now need to try to figure out how we can do actual online classes. Frankly, I have no idea how this would work out, and even if it is a good idea. But we shall see.

plague times are no fun.