Online class, church, work, choices

I taught a 4-hour class yesterday morning and although we had multiple problems during that presentation, we managed to muddle through. I was fortunate to have Red with me in the room as I broadcast to the attendees scattered across the United States. Because he was in the room with me, I was able to hop on his computer when mine messed up and he was able to work to correct the presentation issues on my new computer while I carried on with the class. It was only after the class was over that I was able to diagnose some of the issues and get corrections in place to avoid them next time…hopefully. Our online classes continue to be a work in progress, but they are meeting a need for our clients especially because they are expediting the recertification of our veteran evaluators in spite of travel restrictions imposed by the companies those evaluators work for. After I entered the grades for those in class yesterday, I headed to the house to finish out my day. That was about 2 pm.

Mama and I had an uneventful evening. So uneventful that we took a short nap after I got off work. Neither of us had slept well for several nights so the nap helped. Since we would be getting ready for church in only a couple hours, we did the minimum feeding and watering necessary to get our flock and herd through the night, collected eggs, and called it good. We did not want to get too sweaty before dressing for church. Victoria came home as tired as Mama and I were, but we all gathered up the energy and headed to church on time. Once we were there, our attitudes and energy levels improved dramatically.

That is always the case. Church attendance with our church family is always reviving. So much so that Mama and Victoria spent almost an hour after church talking in the parking lot with several other women. We were the last to leave – along with the families of those who Mama and Victoria engaged in the long, winding conversation.  We ended up getting home a little too late to water the garden as I have been doing each evening.  When we closed up the chickens Mama and I took time to locate one of the younger chickens who had gotten out of her side of the coop and was taking up residence with the older chickens. I am glad Mama was there to select the chicken. I do not know that I would have been able to determine which one to remove from the larger, older flock.  It was important to get the chicken back into its younger group to avoid it being severely pecked and tormented by the older birds. That done, I changed and called it a night.

This is the first week in months that I have come into the office daily. It has been a mixed bag of good and not so good. Good because I am able to get a lot of little things done while on the internet. Not so good because it makes for a very early morning, keeps me from helping Mama in the mornings, and adds the travel time to and from work – with the added expense incurred in that daily trip. All in all, it is good to be back in the office. It makes me feel like I and actually back at work. Plus, I enjoy the company of my office mates even though few are making the effort to work from the office. At some point we will all be required to work from the office, but for now, we are allowed to choose our work location until July 10. I do not know what will be decided on the 10^th, but that is the next time our work remote status will be announced.

I hope to be able to get some work done for the bees this evening. I just received the pieces I needed to assemble honey super frames for the extra hive. Those honey supers may be installed this Saturday if the hives are ready for them. I have to choose between that and carting the tractor over to Bro Daniel’s to move some large pieces of concrete, so he can set up a burn pit outlined by those concrete pieces. Those pieces of concrete are now dumped in a haphazard pile that has served as a snake pit. Repurposing those pieces will clean up a mess left for the family when they moved onto their property. Bro Daniel and his son are going to make us a dual-purpose picnic table/bench as a thank you for the tractor work.

Talk about a win-win-win!