Coronavirus Update: Week 33

Back in March, I started doing weekly updates of being "stuck at home" with the boys (through mid-June) as they started distance learning as I was remotely teaching. I did 12 weekly coronavirus updates: week one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11 (also about George Floyd), and a final update post-riots.

Fast forward to this fall, and my boys started school in-person with lots of restrictions. And I started teaching a "hybrid" class at my old university, and an in-person class at a new university.

Things were great until about 3 weeks ago or so. Then COVID cases started to spike. No one passed COVID around school, but the occasional kid would come down with it. Then some entire classes were sent to "remote learning" for 2 weeks if the threat was deemed high enough. My oldest is in 4th grade, and the "other" 4th grade class was sent home about 2 weeks ago. And last week Wednesday, my son's 4th grade class was also told to quarantine until the end of this week (so for 9 days). That also meant that my 1st grader Charlie would have to be home until he had a negative COVID test.

So now that we're back in the thick of it, it's time for another weekly update. Yes, I counted the weeks: we'd be at week 33 from my initial count starting in mid-March.

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Monday: I shared a photo of our happily filled freezer after a summer and fall of garden goodies:

(People asked about the tomatoes: we wash and stem them, and then they can be
peeled by dunking them in hot water later. We use them in chili all winter.)


Also, our "big" grill officially died (background),
so I grilled burgers on our tiny camping grill.

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Tuesday: another full day of teaching and a remote faculty meeting with my coworkers:

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Wednesday: I spent some time making some headshots for a new department website at one of the colleges where I teach:

I'm not sure if I like the white background...


... or the blue background better.

I posted those photos on Facebook, and my Mom disapproved of my beard. My currently bearded brother-in-law chimed in:

I was glad I spent some time at school on Wednesday because it was later that afternoon that we learned Henry's class was going to be quarantined for the next 9 days. So I'd be home with him (and Charlie) leading some at-home learning.

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Thursday: I took the boys to get COVID tests. Per school / MN Dept of Health guidelines, Henry was still to be quarantined for 9 days, but if Charlie had a negative test, he could go back to school.

Waiting in line at the viral clinic while having his "morning meeting" at school via Zoom.

We also bought a treadmill!! We mainly set it up on Wednesday night, but I spent Thursday evening getting it properly leveled (when on it, the left front corner is low because it's near a drain in the floor). And then my wife had her first at-home treadmill workout:

Charlie likes to row next to her.

Oh, and the first good news of the week came as well! I had jury duty all week, and because of all of the COVID issues at school, our "back up family" who would take my boys home if I got called in at the last minutes wasn't at school that week. But during my mid-day check on Thursday, I was informed I wasn't going to be called in at all:

Election week, COVID worries at school, and jury duty make for a semi-stressful week!

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Friday: both boys' tests came back negative so Charlie went to school. I stopped by Menards to look at grills, and they had palettes of lumber stacked up by the door in case of any election rioting - they had a similar plan back in late May during those riots:

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Saturday: I went on my first outdoor ride in exactly 6 weeks - my previous ride was when I got hit by a car. I didn't do anything special, but I just had a nice 22 mile ride.

Big Rivers Trail was closed (detour), so I did a
few miles through Lilydale on Water Street instead.

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Sunday: I folded laundry as we watched our weekly mass:

The most mindless thing to do while being able to still pay attention.

And the boys started taking apart our broken grill the day before (they love it when things break because that means they can disassemble it), so it looked like this by Sunday night:

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So Henry's still doing distance learning at home with me this week, and Charlie's still in-person. We'll see how many more weeks we can go before the case count gets too high and our school moves totally to distance learning.