Tag: life

Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction

December 30, 2020 3:27 pm

I guess because news stations were desperate to talk about something that wasn’t the ongoing plague, the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction around Dec 20 was hyped up to be some incredible event. What it really meant was two dots of light in the sky were closer together than they have been in a few hundred years. I mean, astronomically interesting, but not exactly world changing.

Anyway, we got out our dinky binoculars and took a look and I managed to catch some of Jupiter’s moons on my camera with my 200mm lens. And then I turned my camera to the moon since I was out there already.

Not particularly sharp, but you can make out some craters pretty well.

COVID-19: Part 48

November 13, 2020 3:12 pm
  • Quarantine Day 242
  • Livermore cases: 1,110
  • Alameda Count cases: 24,732; deaths: 479
  • U.S. cases: 10,508,000+; deaths: 242,000+

California, overall, is doing really well right now. Almost like several months of actual leadership with clear plans and requirements is worth something. Looking at the CDC metric of “cases in the past 7 days per 100k” puts California at 12th in the nation at 17 (out of 60 jurisdictions reported). The other end of that chart is North Dakota at 169, South Dakota at 155, and Iowa at 135. The nationwide rate is 41.

Skipping the weekends (which always have lower deaths reported due to reporting mechanisms) we’ve been hitting over 1,000 deaths per day across the country for almost two weeks now–trending upwards.

Case rates are ticking up here too. Exactly as the medical professionals tried to warn everyone–with colder weather the virus is surging.

Alameda County issued recommendations on holiday gatherings this week (which overall is, “please don’t, but we know you’ll ignore that, so please do these things instead”). I liked this section:

Avoid singing, chanting, and shouting. If you cannot avoid these activities, keep your face covering on, your volume low, and at least a 6-foot distance from others. More distance and being outdoors are safer.

I’m amused by the idea of being unable to avoid a situation involving singing, chanting, or shouting.

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It started getting colder around here a few weeks ago which was when we discovered our heat didn’t work. The furnace’s control board needed to be replaced as it was no longer sending power to the gas regulator. I ordered the new control board (a non-identical model that superseded about a dozen old models) and spent an evening replacing it myself which went well. Not too bad if you have enough room to put the new board next to the old board and then one-by-one check the label where each wire is connected and match it up on the new board. So that was a nice way to save a few hundred dollars.

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Last week we finally got our kitchen lights replaced (just a short 7 or 8 months we’ve been without lighting in the kitchen). I don’t have any pictures yet because I still have work to do painting the ceiling. We also had two new ceiling fans installed. And six days later I broke one of them by swinging the comforter on our bed up to put it on and it caught the edge of a blade and snapped it off. So that was awesome. The manufacturer is taking pity on me and is sending replacement blades.

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Our solar install is finally progressing as well. The service panel was replaced this week in order to get a panel with a larger bus bar that can carry the load of batteries, solar, and (at some future point in time) an electric vehicle charger. Our solar installation date is now supposed to be Dec 17. So just in time for the solstice and the least amount of sun all year.

Halloween 2020

November 10, 2020 8:00 pm

Halloween was on Saturday this year, which was a good thing because we didn’t get around to carving our Pumpkins until the day of. Heather designed a pumpkin to represent the flag of the Fur and Freedom Fighters (a group from the book series she’s been reading, “Redwall”), which is a spear breaking a chain. Corinne’s design is a goofy face, and my design is the Sheikah Slate symbol from the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild video game.

As usual, I did all the pumpkin work myself because everyone else thinks it’s gross.

Corinne insisted on being in some of the pumpkin pictures and dragged Jess in too:

The girls wanted to be Elsa and Anna from Frozen 2 this year.

We didn’t participate in trick-or-treating this year due to the ongoing pandemic. But instead, we got together with our social-bubble buddies. I made a Halloween trifle of brownies, chocolate cream, orange-dyed Cool Whip, crumbled Oreos, gummy eyeballs, gummy worms, and Reese’s Pieces. If you ate around the gummy things (which were really only there for ambiance) it was quite good.

We did leave a bowl of lollipops out on our front step when we left, but it was basically untouched, so it would seem most of the neighborhood was also skipping the trick-or-treating. Which is good. Our county’s numbers have been steadily improving for the last couple of months while much of the country has been experiencing full-blown outbreaks that are threatening to overwhelm hospitals.

The kids ran around and played until they were exhausted. And that was Halloween this year. Hopefully next year things will be back to normal.

Heather’s Birthday 2020

7:41 pm

With Heather’s birthday we’ve now celebrated the entire family’s birthdays for 2020 in quarantine.

Her birthday was a work & school day. Much of the day was spent trying to get Heather to complete her school work so we could move on to fun activities. We eventually got on with things and the requisite treasure hunt was a big hit. This year’s hunt involved playing a custom-coded guessing game on the computer, decoding a message encrypted using a substitution cipher, some math word problems, and completing some electronic circuitry.

Birthday dinner was McDonald’s cheeseburgers (because what could be better than that?). Then she opened presents before having cake. Corinne thought up and picked out a Toothless stuffed animal (the dragon from “How to Train your Dragon”) to give her and Heather is enamored of it. She puts one of her old nightgowns on it at night to keep it warm and it travels with her throughout the house during the day.

This year’s cake was a white cake with vanilla-cream filling, chocolate frosting, and decorated with Andes mints. Unfortunately, like last year, she wasn’t particularly thrilled with it. So she’ll have to pick another new cake next year.

While we were eating cake she seemed a bit down. After some probing she admitted to having been a bit let down by her gifts. She liked them all, but was hoping for some Je-ne-sais-quoi delight that didn’t materialize. And I know the feeling. I’ve had that experience too. It’s not that there’s some particular thing that you’re hoping for (otherwise you could say so and increase your chances). You’re just hoping for some unexpected surprise and it doesn’t always happen (nor is it always specifically hoped for either). Some language probably has a word for it.

We’ll see if we can land a hit at Christmas. I spent some time looking for ideas and think I found something that will fit the bill.

First Day of School 2020

August 25, 2020 5:36 pm

School started today for the girls. From home via computers. They both had a morning check-in meeting starting at 8am and then a break.

Heather then had more class time of some kind, I’m not sure since I was working. She says they were learning about the stuff in their supplies box (they went and picked up materials from their teachers yesterday) and the teacher read a story and watched a video about kindness.

We set up a desk under Heather’s lofted bed. I zip-tied some Ikea LED strip lights to the underside of her bed to light up her space and she’s using a Chromebook we bought last month. So far so good.

Corinne was very excited about everything. Her teacher is doing one-on-one assessments throughout the week so she had some independent (meaning Jess-led) activities but was otherwise done for the day after the morning meeting.

But being excited also means burning through a lot of energy. 90 minutes after her morning meeting she was exhausted.