The Big Pause - Day 24 - April 4 - Night At the Movies

The weekend started like any other Saturday. Even though we are all home most of the time now we still plan on treating the weekends like weekends. One of the items on my to do list is to try to deal with my new front yard friend. I usually have some crazy backyard project going on with the neighbors wondering what I'm doing and this year looks similar except there is no major project. All I did was clean up the garden beds and rake up underneath the cedar trees in our back yard and I ended up with a dump truck load of debris.

My task for today was to try to get the large pieces cut down so they would fit in our green bin. I could probably take it all to the dump but there is a charge and I'm not even sure if they are accepting residential right now. Ordinarily you can put out extra cans but right now they are only picking up the ones the truck will automatically load. This means I'm able to get one bin out a week. Should take about a month though I'm trying to hurry things along by putting stuff in the neighbor bins early in the morning. After they've moved it to the curb of course.

Kerry and Callie went to the dance studio near our house and picked up a floor matte which would make some of Callie's home dance practices a bit easier. I spent the afternoon getting preparing parts for finishing up the mantle around our fire place. We got a new fire place and the new one is a bit bigger so I have to raise the mantle by three inches.

The best part of the day was family movie night. We all watched "The Rise of Skywalker" and we ordered Cineplex popcorn for the experience. It was okay but I suspect they are not getting a lot of orders so the popcorn was a bit stale. It probably works better when movies are playing and they can send fresh popcorn.

The Big Pause - Day 23 - April 3 - McDelivery

Today started with a much better family meeting. Everyone showed up on time and I think people are liking the routine. Callie had some things she needed to bring up and we planned our day. Carter had walk, weights, reading and TV and we discussed the idea of assigning 'house helpers' to particular chores each week. We'll sort that out on Monday. Callie had reading, dancing, walking and she focused our planning on the evening since it was Friday.  My big item for the day was that the hot tub repair man was showing up in the afternoon. The bearings went on the motor and it needed to be replaced. I had been without my nightly soak for two weeks.

Dinner plans included McDelivery for Carter and I. It went quite well. Faster than if we had gone ourselves and it was hot when it arrived. Kerry and Callie walked to pick up Sushi. We now also have a family routine in the evening during the week that involves Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. The hot tub was fixed and I managed to get it filled and heated by night time. Next up is our first real weekend which I suspect is going to feel a lot like the week with less time in front of the computer.

The Big Pause - Day 22 - April 2 - Setting Up an office

Family meeting day didn't go as well as it did on yesterday. I don't think Callie likes the idea that we will are committing to do this every day with no specific end day in site. There was minimal contribution from her but I think she was still glad she knew what everyone else was going to do. Carter had a walk to Fresh Street with Kerry planned as well as reading and TV. I also committed to doing a weights class after lunch. We found a 10 minute you tube video on arms and managed to do most of it. We should have picked lighter weights. We finished off Carter's day with a lesson on the camera. The batteries were low so we didn't get too far.

Kerry was starting to settle into her new office space. We have the old computer that Carter uses to watch Netflix and a space for Kerry and her laptop. I think this might be the new permanent home for this table. It's nice having an office area in the house. Callie did her dance but because she never told Carter he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He managed to survive the encounter. I had to switch to a kitchen table chair because the office chair I was using keeps going down on it's own. We ordered a new one from Amazon but it's not expected to arrive until May. Could be longer since I haven't been charged yet.

The Big Pause - Day 21 - April 1 - Getting into a Routine

It's not exactly clear when the first day of 'The Big Pause' is. The first case was diagnosed in Wuhan in November of 2019 and problems escalated for months after that. It became real for us on March 12th, 2020 because that was when BC recommended against travel outside of Canada. This was the moment when we cancelled our trip. That would make today Day 21.

We started the day with our first 8:00 am family meeting. Our first couple days of what was supposed to be school had a few hiccups. There was no routine and plans for lunch, dinner and other events were not communicated resulting in hurt feelings. The family meeting is designed to plan the day, set goals and make sure everyone knows what everyone else is doing. Day one went well.

Carter still had no direction from his teachers so we set simple goals. He had to set a schedule and keep to it. His schedule involved a walk with Kerry at noon, hot dogs for lunch and some reading and TV time. He kept to his schedule.

Callie's schedule had already started to take on a routine. She went on the spin bike in the morning, took the schnoodle for a walk at 11:00 am and there were dance classes online from noon to 2:30. She doesn't like to admit it but she likes to have a schedule.

I did my work day and made sure to get my bike ride in at lunch. I had to make the hot dogs and we had hamburgers for dinner. A new event was also added for Kerry and Callie. One of Kerry's teachers was hosting a Zumba class.

I"m catching up on blogs now but as soon as I do I"ll also give an update on what's happening in the world and my predictions for the future. We'll see whether I'm any good at predicting the future.

The Big Pause

This particular blog post was supposed to be the first day of our trip to New Orleans. COVID19 changed that and everything else in our lives. When all of this started I wasn't planning on documenting it. It looked like Canada was going to avoid the worst of it but that quickly changed.

Our trip to New Orleans and Orlando was scheduled to start on March 16th and things looked promising in February and even into the first week of March. The counts were low in Orlando and New Orleans, there were no travel warnings and there was no specific reason not to go. It was early March that things started looking bad in Italy and when we started learning about the models. The models of where different countries sat on the Italy curve and things in the US didn't look good. Major centers had hundreds of cases despite low testing. It was at this time that I decided it would be prudent to buy toilet paper. Not in a hoarding kind of way but more in a making sure we had certain staples on hand in case supply chains started breaking down. On a trip to Costco on a Thursday it was apparent we weren't the only people thinking this way. Toilet paper, flour and cleaning supplies were all running low. Soon after this the number of cases in BC started to raise and a warning went out recommending against travel outside the province. This was the last straw for us because it was apparent that even if we went we would be asked to self-quarantine upon our return, likely without pay for Kerry. Within days Disneyland closed, cases started rising in New Orleans and then Disney World closed. We weren't happy but we knew we had made the right decision.

The first week of vacation was not what we had planned. Barb and Reg came down anyways because they were planning on looking after Oliver while we were away.  After a quick visit they went home to Oliver and Kerry and the kids joined them. The kids really wanted to get some sort of vacation in. I stayed behind and took the week off work so that I could get some things done around the house. I managed to order dirt and mulch for the garden just before our local nursery closed up. The garden was ready a month earlier then it usually is.

The second week of vacation the kids were home and I went back to work. By this time, stay at home orders were in place and the recommendation was that BC Hydro staff work from home. I went in one night and grabbed my keyboard, mouse, monitor and plants. I set up a temporary office in the guest room and tried to get a home routine in place. This involved starting around 7:30 am and making sure I got a bike ride in. Work was slow as people got used to working from home. The kids finished off their spring break and Kerry started preparing to help teachers work from home.

After Spring Break ended on the first two days of what was supposed to be back to school we still had no direction from the kids schools. Kerry went into her school for two days and the kids started to realize what life was going to be like stuck at home. We got together on the Tuesday night and agreed to having a family meeting at 8:00 am each morning where we would work out the plan for the day. It was going to important that we had a routine and that we all knew what everyone was expecting each day. 2000 square feet for four people is not a lot of space. Starting tomorrow I'll be trying to blog our experience daily. These are unprecedented times and deserve to be recorded.

Carter's Science Fair

Last year Carter got to go to the district science fair and won gold so this year there were high expectations, mostly from him. The easy thing for him to do would have been to just use his passion project and build a science fair project around that, however he felt he needed something he could test rather than just demonstrating hydraulic force. We offered him many suggestions but in the end he decided he wanted to hammer nails. That's it, just hammer nails into wood. There was an example on one of the sites he felt he was allowed to reference and from there he had to build a science fair project.

Once again he paired up with his best friend Jevin and for this project it was even more important that the two of them do the vast majority of the work themsleves. The hypothesis centered around whether the density of wood impacted how hard it was to hammer a nail into it. I helped by providing 8 different types of wood with different densities and I also happened to have a small shoemakers anvil that they could use to do the hammering. It was important that they had a consistent hammering force so they used the anvil and a pulley and built a tower that would drop the anvil on the nail. They then did this for 5 nails per board and determined their results. I was a bit surprised based on how simple the effort was but they created a great presentation board and were able to speak to their whole project. Once again they were finalists for their class and school and got to go to the District fair where they won gold. Even higher expectations for next year.

Carter's Passion Project

Carter is in grade six this year and was given an interesting assignment. He got 4 months to do a 'Passion Project'. He could pick any topic and do whatever he wanted as long as he was passionate about it. It could be a report or in his case a physical build. We had seen plans for this hydraulic arm before and decided it would be a good project to work on. He teamed up with his best friend Jevin and his initial plan was to do a prototype in cardboard since that was what many of the online videos showed. This seemed like a good idea but I think we didn't really have the right cardboard so the first example was less than successful.

Luckily I happen to have a fairly well equipped shop and the skills to take a fun project and take it to the extreme. I of course did help them with deciding on things like materials but my goal was to have them do as many of the steps that they could. This included using the scroll saw, drill press, handsaw, drill and hammer. They were also responsible for any sort of painting and when it came to the build, I helped with the initial assembly but as we were nearing the end we took the whole thing apart and they had to build it themselves. In the end we were successful in lifting and moving a pop can. Great fun!