Fatigue

Around this time every academic year I along with most of the people around me are fatigued. This is aside from how much sleep we get any particular day. It's cumulative over the academic year. The insidious part is that it's hard to articulate fatigue when you're fatigued.

Last Stretch

Everyone and I do mean everyone around me is looking dead-tired as we move into the last half of the Spring semester.  For me the fatigue shows up in confusing students with similar names, making typos on dates for posting course materials, etc. So far no car crashes for which I'm grateful.

Knee Replacement, Part II

I now have an appointment for having my knee replaced as well as all the other related office visits.  I do need to keep my blood sugar low in order to have the surgery, so I have been fasting a bit.

I get depressed very easily when my blood sugar is low. It hits in waves, where I just want to weep with no particular trigger.  It is one of the reasons I suspect that my blood sugar has been above the norm if not incredibly high.

Catching Up

I often feel very behind. Sometimes that feeling is accurate; often it is because I am not as far ahead as I would like to be.

Once or twice a semester I have a moment where all of the important things are done and there is a brief respite before other major tasks begin.  I felt that kind of respite yesterday.

I know that my stress is self-induced. It isn't very often that I give myself a break.

Vaccination

 I had hoped to get vaccinated earlier in the year, then expected it later, but the changing state priorities finally included me and my cohort and I received my first (Moderna) COVID vaccination a week ago.

My arm was sore but about par for a vaccination; I had no fever nor any other side effects, which is a blessing.  I have my quality-of-life illnesses but I don't seem to get hit with flu or cold stuff very often.

Our live-at-home adult child will have to wait a while to be vaccinated, so even after my wife and I are vaccinated we will need to be careful not to pop our COVID bubble until all of us are set.

Knee Replacement

 I have suffered for some time from arthritis. This past August the pain in my left knee increased to the point where I now walk with a cane.

X-rays show little cartilage left there, and so I will be needing to replace the knee. I do not think that the pandemic has ebbed enough yet but am hopeful that it will be safe to do so after classes end in May.

I have a vivid imagination and do not like to think about the surgery itself or the rehab, but know that the alternative is worse.

Code Review

 One of the things that I've given more thought to over the past year or two is trying to articulate what I've learned in years of programming Python.  Part of it occurs when I document code and realize how better to structure it.  Part of it is trying to improve large structures and make them easier to validate and maintain.

Independently I had to write a small program that would consult a data file and I tried using the json format. It was very serviceable, and it started me thinking about doing the same as part of my code review process.

I am in the process of (it will take many weeks) of creating code to progressively document code, producing a LaTeX document that will serve in ensuring consistent documentation (with docstrings) of my code and force me to think about structural issues. It is quite engrossing.