Bad Air Day

 

Today there was an air quality alert because of the forest fires up in Canada, and just walking from my car to the shuttle I could feel the air wasn't right. I dug an old mask out of my backpack (still there from the pandemic) and wore that on my walk from the shuttle stop to my building, and that seemed to help. Seabird didn't want to walk at lunch with the bad air, so I asked Hardingfele if she wanted to walk in her building. "It's nice out," she said. "I want to walk outside." So here's the thing - Hardingfele works for the medical school, so she can hook you up with all kinds of stuff (my longtime readers may remember how she got Rich and me disposable hazmat suits for a movie we were making), and I knew she would have access to N95 masks. Of course she had some in her office, but she didn't want to wear one herself. I wore it during our walk, because the air quality was really bad per my phone and I saw no reason to breathe in a bunch of ash. 

I didn't do a morning walk because of meetings this morning. During my afternoon walk I wore the N95 mask again and felt a bit resentful that, as I walked under the blooming black locust trees, I couldn't smell their sweet scent. Then I suddenly noticed a really big black locust with blossoms hanging down really low, and I pulled my mask down low enough to smell them. The tree sort of made a shelter around me, and I spent a few moments just basking in that glorious scent. Here's a photo.

Too bad I can't post the smell on here too. The one crazy thing that happened today was that a letter came addressed to nobody, but the address was a coworker's office, so I brought it to her. She opened it, and it was empty. It had come from a grad student, and she guessed the student had meant to mail back their office key but forgot to put it in the envelope... and then she noticed a big hole on the edge of the envelope, certainly large enough for a key to have fallen out of. So there's one key we will never get back! I also had a package in my mailbox, and it was actually a gift from the faculty member who had a huge trip to Finland with tons of people and just lots of complications, like that invoice that had to be created in one day. He brought me back a seat pad.

It's genuine lamb's wool. They were in the Sapmi region, or as some people call it, Lapland (maybe that's not PC? I never hear it called that anymore), up above the Arctic Circle. I don't know how I can get invited on one of these trips... I did joke that they should bring me along, since I have the credit card and could just pay for everything once we're there. Though honestly, the idea of those flights does not excite me.

And why not? A couple more random DuoLingo screenshots.

Speaking of DuoLingo, I should wrap this post up and go play with the Green Owl.

Famous Hat