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Jul. 16th, 2020 09:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dchenesI had Trader Joe's instant miso ramen for breakfast because it was the most breakfastlike thing in the house. I still haven't gone grocery shopping, although I should have done it yesterday in the nice weather. But yesterday I was too worn out by the end of the day. This afternoon I have at least two, possibly three, meetings, so not holding out a lot of hope for having after-work energy today either. But I must go to the pet store and get some wet food suitable for hiding gabapentin in, so I can finally give Snip a manicure and she'll stop getting her feet stuck in the rugs.
Yesterday I got worn out at a Zoom "HR Teatime" meeting that was a waste of a perfectly good hour between 3:00 and 4:00, and I actually like our main HR person; it's just that she's been doing too many online seminars and has too many online-seminar-based "warm and fuzzy self-care in the time of pandemic" ideas at the moment. What I got from the meeting is that staff are way down on the list of priorities; students and faculty first, patients second, staff whenever they get around to us. Which is probably as it should be, because after all we are a dental school, but I also got emails that the new dean wants to meet with all the students by class year in his first week. I wonder if he'll ever want to meet with staff?
Well, never mind, at least the HR meeting didn't even mention furloughs or layoffs, only early retirement, and I don't qualify for that.
The Dachau transcription project has led me into doing research occasionally, and I discovered that it wasn't entirely out of left field for the Nazis to want porcelain painters, because one of the subcamps of Dachau was a porcelain factory. (Also, the earlier the date on the card, the more likely the person's listed occupation is to be something other than worker, assistant worker, or farm worker.) I do still want to know why some of the cards say Lodz and some say Litzmannstadt; Germany renamed a lot of places in Poland and the Baltic states and used those names most of the time, even though Litzmannstadt takes longer to write. They also misspelled a lot of Russian place names, but that may be a consequence of having different alphabets. Or maybe it's a consequence of thinking that Poles and Russians were subhuman. Or maybe some of both.
On a cheerier note, my cousin who would have no luck whatsoever if not for bad luck is now in complete remission from myeloma. When he was diagnosed they gave him five years to live, and then he went into a clinical trial for a new drug, and now he's in remission. Score one for the good guys, because he is pretty much one of the good guys.
Yesterday I got worn out at a Zoom "HR Teatime" meeting that was a waste of a perfectly good hour between 3:00 and 4:00, and I actually like our main HR person; it's just that she's been doing too many online seminars and has too many online-seminar-based "warm and fuzzy self-care in the time of pandemic" ideas at the moment. What I got from the meeting is that staff are way down on the list of priorities; students and faculty first, patients second, staff whenever they get around to us. Which is probably as it should be, because after all we are a dental school, but I also got emails that the new dean wants to meet with all the students by class year in his first week. I wonder if he'll ever want to meet with staff?
Well, never mind, at least the HR meeting didn't even mention furloughs or layoffs, only early retirement, and I don't qualify for that.
The Dachau transcription project has led me into doing research occasionally, and I discovered that it wasn't entirely out of left field for the Nazis to want porcelain painters, because one of the subcamps of Dachau was a porcelain factory. (Also, the earlier the date on the card, the more likely the person's listed occupation is to be something other than worker, assistant worker, or farm worker.) I do still want to know why some of the cards say Lodz and some say Litzmannstadt; Germany renamed a lot of places in Poland and the Baltic states and used those names most of the time, even though Litzmannstadt takes longer to write. They also misspelled a lot of Russian place names, but that may be a consequence of having different alphabets. Or maybe it's a consequence of thinking that Poles and Russians were subhuman. Or maybe some of both.
On a cheerier note, my cousin who would have no luck whatsoever if not for bad luck is now in complete remission from myeloma. When he was diagnosed they gave him five years to live, and then he went into a clinical trial for a new drug, and now he's in remission. Score one for the good guys, because he is pretty much one of the good guys.
