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(Day 10, for those uninitiated into Snoopisms.)

As others have noted, the COVID19 quarantine is giving people a lot of opportunities for activities. Folks are spending time outside, cleaning their homes, educating their kids, learning to play instruments, and even putting on virtual concerts.

In addition to some of the stuff I mentioned last week, we’ve been doing some baking:

Working on a 1000-piece puzzle:

Creating art:

I’ve been practicing the piano nearly every day for at least a half-hour, and have taken my skills from “yikes” to “I can play like a couple Bach 2-part inventions fairly well and fumble my way through sight-reading easier hymns.” By the end of the crisis I hope to be up to “Playing some portion of Joplin’s ‘The Entertainer’.”

The call came in tonight; schools are closed until May 15th, which is terrifying. We’ve decided to try and do at least 3 hours of “learning” a day, in sort of a Montessori-style method. The kids are given some tasks, and then choose from among them to be completed in any order:

• Some Duolingo language practice
• Online learning (Dreambox, Khan Academy, etc.)
• Practicing musical instruments
• Math
• Lots and lots (and lots) of reading, followed by crafting some kind of response

If they want to do other stuff, like googling up how the nudibranch do, they can absotively have at it. The kids seem to have embraced the new schedule, at least after day one, and we’re happy to have their heads out of devices for a few hours. The downside is that they require a certain amount of monitoring and they constantly request help or attention, which means getting our actual jobs done is a touch challenging.

As to the crisis itself, so far nobody we know is sick, but the counts just keep going up, so I suspect it’s inevitable. I’m legit worried about my older relatives and friends, particularly since people don’t seem to have the sense God gave a gooseberry and keep going out and getting breathed on and touched. It’s a shame that governments are having to order people to stay home, but apparently we’re too stupid to be relied on.

We’re also getting our spring allergies, so every day I wake up with a tickle in my throat thinking “Uh oh,” and by mid-morning I’m feeling fine. Probably going to continue until one of us actually gets the dreaded COVID.

Avoid touching, you know, anything. Especially your face. Tell your kids to read. Stay safe out there!