December 2020

It was a weird December and a weird Christmas. As Covid numbers went up and we began discovering just how fast the virus spreads, a lot of people made the choice to shelter in place for Christmas and try to ride it out until a vaccine becomes available. That's what we did. As several people we knew caught the virus and experienced firsthand how dangerous it can be (including Cynthia's cousin Danny who was hospitalized and died from the Coronavirus), it became clear that we needed to forgo any holiday get togethers. So we spent a lot of time hanging out as a family this December.

Lily loves spending time with us (not so much):

The snow on our front bushes melted and refroze, creating this trippy display of colors and shapes:

Cynthia and I went on a lot of walks to get out since we couldn't really go anywhere. One morning as we walked around downtown I took some pictures of the hoar frost:

On December 21st we walked up the hill from our house to Mt Mercy to watch the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, which only occurs once every 20 years. When they align it appears as one really bright star, but in Iowa it is only visible momentarily right at sunset, which makes it a little difficult to spot. We found it with our binoculars, though. There were a cluster of people with us up on the hill watching the event take place. The sky was very cool:

Cynthia caught a good shot of a sundog as we were driving one morning:

These people got together and took their annual picture in front of the "no sledding" sign where they often, you know, go sledding:

Christmas Day!

Lily is going to hide until this whole ridiculous thing is over:

Emily got a new baja hoodie:

And Rose got some stuff:

The aftermath:

Rose decided to do Emily's makeup afterward:

Later that afternoon we did had a zoom call with my family and later with the Conrads. It felt really weird to be so distant, but hopefully by this time next year we can have a normal Christmas again:

I hit a parked car! Dangit, that is the first time I've ever been at fault in an accident. Luckily it was a slow-motion collision and no one was hurt. We were sliding slowly down a hill and couldn't avoid the car parked at the bottom. Ah well, time for a new bumper I guess:

It was definitely an unusual December, but at least we are healthy.

Not April Fool's

Nobody is laughing. The COVID-19 virus has quickly become a pandemic and the only means that epidemiologists and medical experts know to slow the spread are being ignored by much of the country. The problem keeps getting worse while the orange man shouts out nonsense, causing confusion and chaos and much of the country is politicizing something that is simply a fact. No amount of denial, accusations of "fake news" or rejection of science is going to make it go away. Stockpiling toilet paper won't make a difference and neither will buying guns and ammo - you can't shoot the virus - and feeding on irrational fears will only exacerbate the nightmare. It sounds like a B-movie, but it's what 2020 is turning into. We started off with weekly mass shootings and then spiraled into a rapidly-spreading viral outbreak that is taking lives at an increasing rate. It's scary how divided the country has become over the past 3 years and the recent events have brought those divisions to the surface more than ever.

As bleak as the situation is, there are some good things that have come out of this. For one, we've spent a lot of time together as a family now that our hectic schedules have been cancelled. I'm permanently working from home full-time now and the girls are no longer in school. That last part seems troublesome, but the school district is doing the best they can to adapt and provide some sort of learning from home.

Which brings me to a more positive note: CRCSD began following what other schools across the country have been doing since March and distributing At-Home packets so that elementary and middle school students can keep working on their math and language arts skills since they can't attend school right now. Emily's school began distributing weekly packets that look like this:

So what? Well, imagine my surprise when I opened the first packet and saw this:

Page after page of i-Ready Instruction lessons designed by... me. This is what I do for a living. I never expected to see them appear in the wild, though, despite how much the company I work for has grown. I've been working on these things for years, trying to create and refine lesson formats that are intuitive and can hopefully be clear enough that a student can learn the skills and concepts themselves, even with limited teacher involvement. These lessons may not be super exciting to look at, but I literally created every visual element you see above. That is my FONT. I spent months researching, creating, and revising that font specifically to meet the legibility and accessibility needs of students who struggle with reading comprehension and the ability to distinguish between similar characters and numbers. And that is my LAYOUT where I tried to break down the instruction text into easily "digestible" chunks so students wouldn't feel overwhelmed with the information being presented to them. I only wish they could be printed in color because then you can really get the full picture, but I know the cost of color copying is prohibitive. I'm not trying to brag about any of this, I'm just pleased that the things I've toiled, sweated, stressed over, and tried my best to create for years have hit the mainstream. It's a small thing, but it's a big deal to me. Schools all over the U.S. - not just in Cedar Rapids - are downloading these lessons (which are being offered for free to schools during this crisis) and distributing them to students. Whew. OK, I got that out of my system. And one more thing: CRCSD is now purchasing our curriculum, so elementary and middle school students will be seeing these lessons daily once they return to school.

Another upside to being stuck at home: we're gettin' fancy with our meals nowadays. Cynthia and I have branched out and started making Vietnamese meals and I've added chicken parmesan to our meal rotation (cue Homer Simpson drooling sound):

Social-distancing in the great outdoors:

These people keep taking pics on my phone when I'm not in the room:

Easter looked a little different this year. It felt empty to not spend it with the whole crew, but it's just temporary... right?

Halfway through the month we got enough snowfall to make a snowman:

Bing:

Outdoors, outdoors, outdoors...