Extreme Ironing VI - Lockdown

It’s here!  Despite the best efforts of Nunavummiut, COVID-19 has arrived in Nunavut!  A true positive case was confirmed in Sanikiluaq on November 6.  Another case was confirmed in the community a few days later.  Then a third case was confirmed in the community of Rankin Inlet on November 11.  Arviat was the next community to see confirmed cases, reaching 8 on November 14.  The Nunavut Government made the decision to declare a 2-week lockdown for all Nunavut communities, starting on November 18.  All schools would be closed until early December.  Here we go again.

If you’ve been following the news since the beginning of November, then you already know everything in the above paragraph.  Naturally, I could have written about it in earlier posts, but it wouldn’t fit the themes of those entries.  Plus, the posts would become too bloated for my taste.  Better late than never.

When the first case was confirmed, everyone here wondered if the school would be closed?  Sure enough, the answer came a week & a half later.  The rules for the lockdown are strict.  Teachers are not permitted to access the school at all.  We even had to turn in our keys to the principal.  I made sure to take any important items home on November 17.  I wouldn’t see my classroom until early December. 

I also had to cancel all cadet activities for the duration of the lockdown.  The cadets weren’t pleased by this announcement, but they were glad the closure was only for 2 weeks.

I was suddenly blessed / cursed with extra time.  Of course, some of that time would be used to relax, but a lot of it would be devoted to getting ahead in my school work.  It took me the first 3 years of full-time teaching to learn you can never have everything “done”.  There will always be one more thing that can be prepared and/or corrected.  The best you can do is to always remain ahead of your students and I don’t mean by one chapter.  It’s more like 3 or 4 chapters ahead . . . in each subject. 

The 2-week lockdown also gave me the opportunity to do some extreme ironing, bringing an end to a 2 & a half year drought.  The last time I extreme ironed was in April 2018!  I know, it’s unforgivable.  But I finally set things right.  Unfortunately, the lockdown severely limited what I could do, so I had to tone down the extremeness.

My sixth extreme ironing stunt occurred on November 22 and featured me wearing my HAZMAT Halloween costume while ironing indoors.  This would reference the current lockdown, the fact that we have to wear masks everywhere in public, and hypothesize COVID-19 protection in the extreme.  (We have to protect ourselves from our own stuff).

I turned my residence into a photo studio by moving furniture around.  I created a large open space in front of my blackout curtains in the living room.  The curtains would serve as the backdrop.  I brought out the ironing board, iron, coat stand, and extension cord and set them up.  The extension cord wasn’t plugged, but I would crop any photographs in post-production to make it appear that way.

Once everything was set, I changed into my costume, and brought out some work clothes & an extreme ironing t-shirt I bought online during the summer.  I used a makeshift stand to set the camera.  Unlike previous outings, I would have to operate the camera myself.  Thankfully, my camera features a 10-second delay option.  I would only have 10 seconds to get into the proper pose.  Thankfully, I had all day to get the pictures I wanted. 

The extreme photoshoot lasted an hour.  I took a lot of pictures in as many poses as I could think of.  I changed the set up a few times and deleted the pictures I didn’t like.  That left me with 58 pictures.  I didn’t film any video clips because the thought didn’t occur to me.  Satisfied with my work, I spent the next 30 minutes putting everything back to the way it was.  I then entered post-production, cropping, brightening, enhancing, and adding captions. 

I think I’m the first person to extreme iron in a fake HAZMAT suit.  I couldn’t find any pictures posted on Google Images.  As the late great Neil Armstrong would have said, “That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.”  I hope you agree that the pictures are one of a kind!  Try extreme ironing today!  Or after the COVID-19 pandemic.