What a World
I had a good time visiting my Aunt in North Carolina last week.
The extra days of sleeping in, relaxing, and talking with people I care about were helpful in many ways.
On the drive back I noticed all of these "Stay Home" signs along I-95:
I didn't stay home obviously, but I did take every precaution it was possible to take.
I drove instead of flying.
I used hand sanitizer and paper towels at every gas station, touched nothing unecessarily, and washed my hands thoroughly.
When I got to my Aunt's house I showered, and during the stay kept all of my things in one spot in the house.
When I got back to Florida I immediately threw everything in the washer and took a shower.
It turned out to be a good thing I drove because my flight home got cancelled.
I had all day Sunday to prepare for going back to work and relax a little.
I was only gone for a few days but during that time a lot of my garden plants took off, especially the strawberries.
I was most excited to see the passion vine growing some flower buds. Awesome!
My mystery sprouts also grew bigger, and a FOURTH one appeared.
At this point I am pretty sure that these are the passion vine seeds that I tried to sprout.
When they failed to sprout within the germination period I simply tossed the soil, seeds and all, into the planter.
(The seeds are small and black and I couldn't find them in the black dirt)
Kind of hilarious and awesome that they sprouted in their own time.
But...what am I gonna do with FOUR passion vines?!?
Maybe I'll give them away!
On Monday it was back to work, but only for two days.
I've only been away for a little bit but a lot has changed.
Instead of monitoring captionists using a numerical scoring system, we've reduced scoring to either "acceptable" or "unacceptable", and we're only observing about 100 words instead of 250-300. This is to save time (since supervisors now need to be available to caption calls too), reduce the number of people taken off phones for retraining, and ultimately get rid of the entire retraining method which involves two people in a cubicle in close proximity for two hours or more.
There are also changes to how we switch captionists onto in-progress calls, mostly involving more cleaning and distancing while the change is taking place.
My supervisor duties have been reduced to recording my employees' daily adherence to their schedules, taking these reduced monitors, and cleaning. If I'm not doing these things, I'm being a captionist.
Another cool thing, each of us got a Very Fancy Letter to carry with us as we travel to and from work.
It has the seal of the Dept of Homeland Security on it, and designates CapTel as a TSP Level 3 facility, meaning we cannot be shut down during a shelter-in-place, statewide shutdown, etc. So I have work, and I will have work, for the foreseeable future. And a cool letter to show my sister's kids when I'm old.
So that's what's new at work. I'm very grateful to have a job right now, and glad that we have some guidelines for dealing with this new normal (as opposed to the chaotic situation happening when I left for vacation last week). I'll continue to do my best and hope things return to normal soon.
I was thrilled to hit my "weekend" so soon!
I enjoyed waking up late, doing some cleaning here and there, and mooning over my plants.
I've given up counting how many tomatoes are on this plant. 50? 100? Who knows!!
https://instagram.com/p/B-Kbbayg1a9
For a while now I have noticed a lot of ants running around all over my passion fruit vine. At first I was concerned but since they didn't seem to be damaging the plant I let them be.
Today I spent a little extra time watching them and noticed that they were moving in a purposeful way. They seemed to be stopping near the base of each leaf to do something, and also moving excitedly around each of the plant's blossoms.
Turns out ants have a symbiotic relationship with passion vines!
The plant excretes some sweet nectar from special glands at the base of each leaf and near the buds, attracting the ants.
In return, the ants protect the plant from caterpillars and other herbivorous bugs while also helping to pollinate the passion flowers. When the fruit forms the ants will not eat it, but they will continue to guard it against bugs and other herbivores. Neat!
https://instagram.com/p/B-Ka8HdAGC-
On the flipside of ant/plant relations, when I went to check the moisture level of my vanilla orchid's potting medium, I was horrified to find an entire colony of ants living in the pot! Like, eggs and all. EEEEEEEEW.
I dumped out the pot and forced the ants to scatter, killing lots of them and smashing the HUNDREDS of nasty eggs they had deposited on the inner walls of the pot. I spread diatomaceous earth EVERYWHERE.
When I put the dirt back in the pot I left about half of it out, both to help it dry out a little and to discourage ants from burrowing in again.
In general, ants are not harmful to orchids. But having an entire colony around the roots seems like a bad thing to me.
Anyway. Ants.
In the afternoon Jameson and I went for a walk around the neighborhood. It was really pleasant, and fun to see all the things people do to their yards and houses. We even found a mansion hidden in the back of our development! Pretty cool!
For dinner I made turkey meatballs and whole wheat spaghetti. So far it's been easy to find everything I need at the grocery except toilet paper and disinfecting wipes. Neither of which I consider to be necessities. I'm trying to avoid hoarding but also trying to avoid going to the grocery more than necessary. To balance that catch-22 I'm going to the grocery once a week maximum, and making sure it's the same grocery every time. I don't wear gloves or anything but I use a produce bag to pick up and touch the fruits and veggies I want, then dispose of the bag to avoid spreading anything around the store. I give everyone a wide berth and only buy what I need for 1-2 weeks. That's about the best I can do, I think.
After dinner I watered my plants, and decided to finally pull one of the radishes!
Its leaves have gotten really big and are blocking out sunlight for the carrots and mystery sprouts, and even the other radishes.
My first radish. It looks really good! 
In case you haven't been able to tell from all the photos, I am extremely happy with my little garden. I cannot believe how successful it's been...every single thing I've planted has flourished with the exception of the carrots (which may yet have a chance). I know a lot of this is due to the forgiving Florida climate but also I never would have gotten started in this if it weren't for my dear Jameson, who bought me the planter for Christmas. It's one of the best gifts I've ever received. Even without a plot of land I can grow 60+ tomatoes, several radishes, 4+ strawberries, more herbs than I know what to do with, and even passon vine. I'm really grateful and really impressed.
On Thursday we got up late and ate breakfast. Jameson did some coursework for his classes and played Xbox MLB while I fixed our toilet and practiced some steno. For lunch we decided to eat leftovers and incorporate the radish into a salad. Wow! It looks so beautiful! And it tasted wonderful, peppery and also sweet. This is one of the only plants that I grew completely myself, from seed, so I'm overly proud that it turned out so beautifully and so tasty!
Later on Jameson had a meeting, and during that time I vacuumed my car and placed an online pickup order for Lowe's. I have been wanting/needing a few things for my tiny garden before summer starts, and this way I can prepay and pick the pre-gathered items up, meaning I will spend minimal time in the store and have minimal interactions. I got more potting soil, some root growth hormone for a tomato cutting I'm planning to make, some weed killer, a big pot to move the tomato plant into, and a mint plant. Well, two mint plants because I couldn't decide between peppermint and chocolate mint. Ah well ;)
I came home and got all my stuff put away, then we went for a walk around the neighborhood, talking and planning where to get dinner. Uber Eats right now has a $0 delivery for local businesses so we took advantage of that, ordering delivery from Bento. It was just as good as when we get it from the restaurant.
Tomorrow I'm back to work, we'll see how things go. I'm looking forward to captioning anyway.
Traffic should be very light because Orange County is under a shelter-in-place (I live in Osceola but commute through Orange).
I wonder where things will go from here.