covid

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! It has felt like a whilrwind of a week.

Friday I headed out to the PNW to visit my best friend, because it had been too long and she’s been struggling. It was a pretty brief visit bookended by two pretty long travel days, but it was absolutely worth it to be able to hug her and hang out. It made me think more about queer community and how we look out for each other and show up for each other. I’m grateful to the friends and others who have modeled that generosity and love for me, and grateful that I have the resources to be able to be there for the people that I care about. It was hard to leave my friend, and it’s also nice to be home now that my husband and Nova are here consistently, too.

I ended up calling off from work on Monday – didn’t get home until around midnight Sunday night and I woke up with a pretty bad headache. After sleeping in and finishing my homework, I had my first session of my second fall class Monday night, which went well. I am a bit intimidated by this class, but I think it’s going to be good.

Yesterday I got my covid booster and my flu shot. So far I’m feeling mostly okay…ever-so-slightly feverish and a little achy, but not awful. Hoping I make it through the day at work.

I don’t have a whole heck of a lot else to report this week, but I’ll leave you with your weekly Nova fix:

School Days, School Days

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday. I’m a little discombobulated around what day it is – I woke up feeling rather under the weather yesterday and ended up taking the day off, which was needed and lovely but also threw me for a bit of a loop in terms of my internal calendar. Thank goodness for my calendar and to do list keeping me on track!

It’s been a big week – I’m officially a seminary student! I had my first class on Tuesday, and it was great. It’s a small group (there are 10 students and only four of us are in person, with the rest of the class Zooming in), which I think will be particularly great for this particular class, which is “Introduction to Personal and Spiritual Formation” – basically looking at who the person is that you’re bringing into this seminary journey. My other class (“Religious and Theological Interpretation”) starts this evening. The professor normally commutes up from Chicago to teach on Thursdays, but due to Omicron, he’ll be zooming into class, and invited the students to do so as well. While I tend to learn better in person, this is a larger class, and I think for the time being I’m more comfortable with attending virtually.

I’m already a little overwhelmed by homework and figuring out my new routines, but I’m trying to remember to be gentle with myself as I learn how to navigate these new responsibilities. The class material is already very engaging and I’m excited to continue to dive into it.

I don’t have a lot of other news this week. I leave you with this photo of Nova, with some very sweet context – she fell asleep like this, leaning on my arm as I held her paw, for a solid 30 minutes last weekend. (What the photo didn’t capture were the tiniest little snores.) She is truly the sweetest doggo.

Sweet, snoozy Nova

School Day Jitters

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! It is COLD in the Twin Cities this morning. The high today is going to barely creep above zero (we’re currently sitting around -4 F); currently we’re seeing windchills in the -20 F range. I am grateful we don’t need to go out much, and glad my husband was able to take Nova out for a nice long adventure/walk yesterday so she’ll hopefully feel less cheated that she can’t play outside much today.

The time has finally come – this afternoon is orientation for seminary (over Zoom), and Tuesday I have my first class. I’ve taken this afternoon and tomorrow off from work to attend the orientation and finish getting my ducks in a row before the semester really kicks off; I have some reading I need to get done before my classes next week. I’m nervous and excited in mostly equal measure. A lot of the nerves are around going to class in person – I really feel it’s the right choice for me right now (I know from past experience that I struggle more with online learning), but with Omicron it’s definitely nerve-wracking. I just got a bunch of N95 masks to wear to classes and I’m somewhat comforted knowing that students need to be masked and vaxxed to be on campus and that the number of people in-person for my classes is relatively small in rooms that are quite spacious. But it’s still a thing I’m anxious about, for sure. (At least, as my husband pointed out to me the other day, this is an anxiety grounded in reality?)

Other things that happened this week…a fire alarm went off in our building and we ended up wandering around outside for about two hours (everything’s fine, we think it was probably a small kitchen fire or something), but the up side of that was we ended up wandering over to the library and finally getting our library cards. Nova’s been really happy that there’s more snow on the ground again. I’m working on putting some routines in place in my day to help make transitioning back to being a student a little easier.

And on that note, I think I’ll leave you, as always, with a few Nova photos:

Stay safe, friends.

Happy Holidays

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday: Christmas Eve Eve edition. It’s been a wild week of distressing COVID news as the Omicron variant continues to wreak havoc. It’s the worst sort of deja vu. We’re actively re-negotiating holiday plans to accommodate everyone’s safety and comfort levels. I am anxious, which I think is contributing to the fact that the dog has been extra anxious this week. Thank goodness I have therapy this afternoon!

It’s been a wild week in terms of anxiety. It’s also been an exciting week at work – I’ve started interviewing for the open position on my team, and while I am anxious about making decisions, I have some really strong candidates and I’m excited to fill this position and get my team more support.

I honestly don’t have a ton to write about this week. I do feel accomplished that we got Christmas cards out to some folks this year (first time in the 11 years my husband and I have been together). I’ll leave you, as usual, with some photos of Nova from this week:

Nova spends a lot of time in these chairs, apparently