Fanfiction and Corona

On Monday I felt absolutely on top of the world. On Tuesday, I felt close to miserable, particularly in the afternoon. I was sneezing a lot and having to blow my nose every ten minutes. I went to the supermarket and bought some allergy medicine, which I took before bedtime, but I really didn’t feel like doing anything. Even when I tried solving a Rubik’s cube, I made several mistakes and got frustrated. I tried to find a book to replace the one that I finished on Monday night, about four kings of the renaissance, but I couldn’t find anything that piqued my interest. So, I ended up reading fanfiction on Tuesday, about Harry Potter in the world of Lord of the Rings. It was good, but had an unsatisfactory ending in which Harry was transported to another dimension, and it implied that he might not return for a long time if ever.

After taking the medicine I slept better and felt fine on Wednesday, so I guess it really was allergies in February. I got a little bit of schoolwork done at work, but I also found another fanfiction which I have continued to read in my free time since then, replacing all my good habits with one that I’ve been trying to eliminate. Of course, that has only really totaled three days, but since my final paper is due this week and I will do a monthly report this weekend, it’s not a very nice end to the month.

For some reason I decided that I was not going to cook at all this week, and have been eating convenience store food instead. That might be bad in America, but I live close to a nice convenience store with fresh food, kind of like a Sheetz, but the food is stir-fry bowls instead of sandwiches. A couple of my coworkers have only eat from convenience stores for over a year, so I don’t feel like a week will be too bad for me. Still, after this week I think and hope that I will be excited to return to cooking.

The panic over the corona virus has increased steadily. I wasn’t really worried about it until on Tuesday I heard that someone in Matsumoto had the virus. On Thursday there was an announcement in the school that if anyone in the Shiojiri school system caught the virus, all the schools in the city would immediately close for at least fourteen days. Furthermore, the long graduation ceremony at the end of the term would be shortened to only 15 minutes, and the participants reduced to the graduating class, their parents, and the teachers. Then yesterday the prime minister of Japan made an order to shut down schools until the end of spring break. Nagano prefecture apparently wasn’t addressed immediately in this order, but the situation is still developing. Before my third period class, I was told that we would indeed stop classes until spring break. That means that I won’t be able to see my students again. I’m still sorting out my feelings about this, but I’m definitely feeling loss.