The girls' school had a fundraiser event on April 15 of wearing white t-shirts and running through clouds of chalk being thrown at them. The fundraising aspect was "please give us money while kids run in circles" I guess. Some of the pictures look like a mustard-gas attack, but they had fun. The older grades were running around the track. The younger grades were on the blacktop.
I painted this pair a couple weekends ago. I'm working on going faster while still getting results I like. I spent a little over 3 hours on this pair.
The post-holidays surge has mostly petered out--finally. During that surge another ~141,000 people died. The state lifted the indoor-masking requirement on March 1 (excluding high-risk settings). The county followed suit and the school system and the Lab lifted indoor-masking requirements on March 14.
Yet, the nation is still recording ~1,000 deaths a day. And a newer, even more contagious variant is being tracked in Europe.
The news around COVID has mostly disappeared due to the combination of losing its novelty (no one cares anymore how many people are dying) and Russia invading Ukraine back at the end of February.
It will be interesting to see what happens public-health-wise when there's another big surge. I suspect the political will to do anything is gone and we'll see recommendations from public-health officials that will be largely ignored.
It's too bad health-care demands don't end in between surges. There are a whole lot of medical professionals that could use a couple of months off. I think the two biggest failures of our country in response to COVID (beyond federal leadership denying it was a problem for months) were 1. Failing to enact mandatory paid sick leave and 2. In no way addressing the intense demands placed upon healthcare workers during an extended public health crisis.
Maybe this will be the last post in my COVID-19 series. It sure would be nice if everything settled down and when next January rolls around there's no post-holiday surge that kills another 100,000+ people.
Corinne's birthday was a smashing success this year. School was an early-release day because they're doing parent-teacher conferences this week. When she got home from school her treasure hunt was ready and waiting.
First she needed to find which cone was hiding the next clue.
But when she did reveal it, she didn't see it (in the blue).
But she eventually noticed and moved on to the Chasm of Chaos!
The clue collected from the chasm of chaos directed her to the shooting gallery.
Which was a bit more difficult than intended and we all took turns helping out.
The four clues indicated they would need to be assembled.
Upon assembly their bread-shape was clear and the clues said that to reveal the next secret the bread would need to be toasted (toast is one of Corinne's most favorite foods).
Interesting photography note: The photo was apparently captured between LED refreshes on the toaster oven display which appears blank.
After a thorough toasting a message written in invisible ink (lemon juice) was revealed. The paintbrush I used was a bit too big and the juice spread a bit too much, but they managed to decipher about 90% of it without help.
She then found the elephant that was sitting on a blanket that was hiding her presents in the family room.
A chicken, from Heather. It looks like the chickens they're raising in their co-op game of Stardew Valley.
Corinne's teacher read the book Slugs in Love at school on Valentine's Day and Corinne was absolutely in love with it. So we gave her a copy for her birthday and Grandma made the two slugs as stuffed animals. Corinne just about popped when she unwrapped them.
London didn't want to miss out on the family excitement, but was less enthused.
After presents I had to go back to my closet and do more work and before dinner the girls had gymnastics class. But once they got home it was Corinne's favorite dinner: spaghetti! And then cake!
On Saturday we went to the zoo with the Spencers because that's what Corinne wanted to do to celebrate. So she got to be in charge of where we went. We had lunch of chicken strips, hamburgers, and corn dogs at the zoo. Afterwards we stopped at the Ghirardelli factory store for ice cream.
For our February hike we went to Sunol Regional Wilderness and did a couple of short loops. Heather's friend, Evie, came with us.
Near the end Heather took a tumble down a hill and scraped up her arm pretty solidly. It took a few weeks but it eventually healed up.