Us, May 10, 2020: Roy, John, Leo, Shadow, Ondine
Us, May 10, 2020: Roy, John, Leo, Shadow, Ondine
It's been hard to keep up with the journal because now John is in class, and has a fair amount of reading and writing to do for it. And this is just one class, next week he'll be enrolled in two.
The weather has been wonderful with June gloom, and a couple nights ago we even got rain! It's overcast and breezy, and sometimes the nights get a bit chilly with the humidity. We're soaking in the cold because it won't be long before we're suffering in the heat.
One of the hawk chicks in the back seems to have partially fledged, and Ondine has seen him crashing-landing among the branches. The other two kind of gawk at him, and occasionally try jump-fluttering around, so they're on their way too!
Meanwhile, our own two chicks are well settled in, with their free meals, healthcare, and wifi. Sigh.
Coronavirus update: The virus now appears to be out of control again in the U.S., with new record numbers of infections being posted daily. The rest of the world is starting to shun the U.S., with travelers from the U.S. being barred in Europe. California, which had things kind of under control, spiraled into a massive surge of infections since re-opening. Yet, people still demand that things open up. President Trump still refuses to wear a mask in public, along with most of his ardent political supporters. Other Republican party leaders, though, have belatedly come around to wearing and promoting masks.
The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Tracker shows that COVID-19 has been confirmed in over 10,399,000 people worldwide, and has claimed over 508,400 lives. That's over 1,229,700 more cases and over 34,200 more deaths since last Tuesday. The U.S. now has over 2,628,000 confirmed cases and over 127,200 deaths, up over 295,200 cases and another 6,200 deaths since last Tuesday. In San Diego, our local toll is now 13,832 cases with 361 deaths.
It seems every day brings a new worst-day-on-record, so tomorrow California bars will close again. Meanwhile, people still vociferously oppose shut-downs, masks, and social distancing policies. The U.S. Supreme Court has backed religious exemptions, and recently upheld private religious schools' access to public funding, ensuring future generations of American anti-vaxxers and anti-science religious extremists.
In good news, though, the Black Lives Matter movement has gone thoroughly mainstream, leading to small but significant changes. One big change is that the state of Mississippi, which incorporates the Confederate flag in its state flag, will be removing it.
And, speaking of flags, Washington, DC is set to become the 51st state, which will mean a change to the U.S. flag. 51 is a prime number, but there's precedent for U.S. flags with an indivisible number of stars, from the original 13, to 23, 29, 31, 37, and 43, and they all use rows of stars with one or two rows with different star counts to make up the number. But concentric circles of equally sized stars would be cool, or radiating rays.
Leo got his deferral set up for Point Blank, so he'll start attending in January instead of September. We got his next orthodontic appointment for next week, at which he'll get fitted with attachments and get a new set of Invisalign trays.
Roy regularly goes out with his friends or Danielle, so for the record he's the libertarian don't-trust-the-media disease vector in our midst. He's been cleaning and organizing his room, and we got him some drawers and a desk chair to help out. One of the things he found as he cleaned out, was a "Mom Buck."
Ondine had a Zoom meeting with her former boss Bryan. They'd been planning to get together for coffee even before the pandemic shut-down, so it was good to reconnect. Over the weekend she sent her first query letter out to a literary agent for her novella!
John is neck deep in his class in Cultural Anthropology. Starting next week he'll have another class as well, making July and August a full-time schedule. And, he's thinking of going full-time in the fall semester so as to crank through the certification program in archaeology. Another milestone: he hit over 18 miles on his exercise bike every day last week, not bad for an old bike and an older body.
We continue to play charades before dinner. Recent charades included "Yellow," "St. Charles Place (Monopoly)," and "Spam emails purporting to be from Nancy Pelosi."
Neighborhood gas prices are on the rise again as the pandemic shuts down refineries, rising to about $3.29 per gallon. The stock market is around 25,812.
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