Us, May 10, 2020: Roy, John, Leo, Shadow, Ondine
Us, May 10, 2020: Roy, John, Leo, Shadow, Ondine
Life is bursting out all over here! The Cooper's Hawk couple have chicks! It's amazing we missed the nest until recently, because it's huge.
But, we can see it only from about one square foot of the yard, jammed under the pomegranate tree, and you have to sort of lean down to peer across the
embankment into the foliage of the huge tree behind. At any rate, that explains the activity of the hawk parents as they scramble to feed three, and
perhaps four, hungry chicks. The chicks are already big enough that we can see them clearly through the binoculars. Here's a shot of one of the parents.
It was perched on our side fence and Shadow ran up to it barking. The hawk glanced at him, then continued intently surveying the yard next door for food.
Also, the humminghen on the shell hanging beneath the patio has at least one chick!
Coronavirus update: 8 million cases worldwide so far, more than a quarter of them in the U.S. The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Tracker shows that COVID-19 has been confirmed in over 8,096,400 people worldwide, and has claimed over 438,800 lives. That's over 332,500 more cases and over 9,200 more deaths since Saturday. The U.S. now has over 2,130,500 confirmed cases and over 116,700 deaths, up over 56,900 cases and another 1,400 deaths since Saturday. In San Diego, our local toll rose to 9,610 cases with 320 deaths.
In other news, peaceful protests continue around the world for Black Lives Matter, and significant police reforms are actually starting to gain traction across the United States. Somewhat related: the UC Regents endorsed a measure to repeal Prop. 209, a 1996 state initiative that prohibited Affirmative Action, responding after two decades of data showed that "color-blind" admissions ended up diminishing campus diversity, and concluding that systemic racial and sexual inequities in American society need positive action on the part of educational institutions to overcome. And, remotely related: The U.S. Supreme Court let stand California's "sanctuary city" rules, and backed LGBTQ workplace protections.
Leo is continuing his Music Production course.
Roy went to lunch and the park with Danielle on Monday. Today he spent three and a half hours on hold with the California Employment Development Department to see whether he could file for unemployment as many of his friends have. Some of them are raking in up to $600 a week! However, Roy's application was complicated because he had out-of-state earnings from his job at the Ent Center in Colorado Springs. Anyways, after waiting on hold he finally spoke with someone and got the scoop. The good news: his earnings in Colorado don't count as out-of-state income because he was working for the university. The bad news: his earnings in Colorado don't count in calculating his benefit because he was working for the university. So his benefit will be calculated based on his very short summer job at Wendy's. Still, it's something!
Ondine continues to work from home and will likely continue to do so for some time. She's revising her novel based on suggestions and resources offered by the sensitivity reader.
John shifted the orientation of his workspace, moving his monitor to the left arm of his desk so he'd have desk space on the right free to take notes. It's much more efficient having space to his right instead of to his left. He hadn't set up his office this way originally because when the kids were small he wanted a clear view of the corner of the hallway.
He also cleared and rearranged his bookshelves, getting rid of a box of business books, outright recycling an entire shelf's worth of old college textbooks, and moving all his advertising books to an out-of-the-way shelf and moving his vast library of literature and history to the main shelves.
All of which enabled his desk to be in order for the start of his Cultural Anthropology class at City College (online). The class started Monday and his textbook just arrived this afternoon!
Barbara was under the weather, a rare thing. Roy and Leo are still helping clear out her yard of the shubbery they pruned a few weekends back, it's taken both our greenery cans and will keep needing both for at least another month. Then it's time to work on our own back yard.
Neighborhood gas prices are about $3.19 per gallon. The stock market is hanging around 26,289.
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