Month: April 2021

COVID-19: Part 57

April 24, 2021 9:21 am
  • Quarantine Day 404
  • Livermore cases: 4,184
  • Alameda County cases: 82,157; deaths: 1,442
  • U.S. cases: 31,730,000+; deaths: 567,000+

Alameda County has been in the orange tier for about 4 weeks now and the trend continues to look good. So hopefully in another week or two we'll be upgraded to the yellow tier. The state of California has set a target for all restrictions being lifted by June 15 and it seems like we're on track for the public health situation to support that move.

Jess is getting her first shot of the Pfizer vaccine today with the second shot scheduled for May 15. There's a public clinic being held just down the street from us which she can walk to/from in about 5 minutes.

So things are looking pretty positive in our local area, maybe even an end in sight. However, there are some concerning trends elsewhere in the country and the world. India's case rate has skyrocketed in the last week or two and Japan has announced a new wave of lockdowns. Brazil has been a mess for a long time and that doesn't look to be changing. More locally, Michigan in particular, but also Minnesota, are not doing very well right now either (relative to the rest of the country).

Voidwarden

April 5, 2021 5:36 pm

I've been working on painting this figure from the "Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion" game a little at a time for several weeks now. The figure is 1.5 inches tall, so the detail work is pretty tough. This took about 13 hours worth of time. It looks somewhat less impressive in blown-up, high-detail photographs; so just zoom out and imagine it being quite small so the errors in detail are less noticeable.

Overall I'm happy with how it came out.

There are 4 characters in the game, so three more to go. This may be the most detailed one, but I painted it first because it's the character I'm playing.

Easter 2021

April 4, 2021 2:36 pm

I spent just about all day Saturday trying to get the exterior of the house spruced up and looking decent. Mowed the lawn, washed off the dirt and cobwebs, cleaned the back yard, edged the grass, pulled weeds, etc. It looked pretty nice for the five minutes before the wind blew more leaves off the neighbors tree all over the backyard. This tree loses leaves all year long, so it never stays cleaned up.

The wisteria's blooming landed just about perfectly on this weekend. It blooms before it leaves, which makes it look a bit weird, but you get to see more of the blossoms since they're not blocked by any other growth.

The Easter Bunny visited the house mid-morning while the girls were watching TV. Corinne had been planning for at least a week that we would all sit together and read Humbug Rabbit on Easter morning. So we did that and then the girls realized there were eggs outside and the game was afoot.

And a mere 15 minutes later the eggs had been collected.

Now I'm making a triple-batch of rolls to have with dinner. Jess was working on deviled eggs, but became annoyed that the guaranteed-to-work Instant Pot recipe for hard-boiled eggs failed to live up to its guarantee. And everyone has had too much candy already.