Delay

Dear Diary,

I must apologise.  I didn't hike for you during this past weekend, which was apparently blessed with beautiful weather.

For much of last week, I waited for "Away from the Manger", which was the argument the previous two (or four) pages were meant to support, to get read by what I thought enough people before going on.  I thought I was making a fairly important point, and set pretty modest bars which it still took until Friday the 7th to meet, before I would send that page any further from the limelight than it already was.  I don't know how many of your readers, dear Diary, read you for photos of parks, but you and I know that you're about more than that.

Unfortunately, on Friday the 7th I missed work for the first time since becoming housed, because work has fairly strict standards for illness, and I was coming down with what I still hope is a cold.  But to make matters still better, on Sunday I learnt that I've also definitely been exposed to COVID-19 recently.  On the whole, I expect to miss work Monday too, or I wouldn't be writing in you this late.  I found it necessary, despite relatively balmy weather tonight, to wear the heavy coat I'm grateful for just to go get groceries.

The contrast between my situation and a front page story Sunday is intentional, but not fictional.  I really do have a cold, if not worse, and a woman had much worse while still living on the streets.

I still have a couple of things I can work on at home for you, dear Diary, as I recover, and navigate what the pandemic demands of these circumstances.  What I worked on during what I hope was the sleepiest phase was a spreadsheet of my favourite music from Korean TV dramas, which I'd put aside in July because I'd reached the time-consuming part of the job.  Well, it took three tired days, but that part's done.  Since this spreadsheet includes YouTube references, it'll probably go out of date pretty quickly, quicker than I can hope to build my planned K-drama blog, so I'll put the spreadsheet into my Google Drive and make it public once it's caught up (sometime in February, according to my current plans).  Meanwhile, I hope I'll be awake enough tomorrow, and any other days I might miss, to work on the at-home tasks for you, dear Diary, and it looks like next weekend might also be dry enough to hike.  Until then, good nights and good days.