Into the Pandemic - On the Home Front II

It's now Friday, March 20th, 2020.  Events have been moving at a near-breakneck speed.  Just try to remember last week when all we were concerned about was a time change to DST, a full moon and Friday the 13th.  Just last week, we were just discussing whether we should press ahead with our trip to the Grand Canyon where we had planned to hike for a few days.  Today would have been our day to hike down to the canyon bottom.

Since then, of course, announcements have come fast and furious.  Repeated messages about social distancing, schools closing, city facilities closing all over the place, an upcoming semi-closing of the US-Canada border, airlines shutting down various routes, assorted layoffs, a certain amount of near-panic buying (particularly TP, for some strange reason) and daily increases in the number of people infected, a slowly increasing number of deaths from the virus....  It's been a bit of a blur.

Just yesterday, Italy's death toll of 3400 passed that of China.  In good news, China has reported a second day of no community-transmitted cases.

We've been pretty much staying home.  Brief forays out to pick up some supplies but otherwise spending time with our grandsons, walks in the park, even a campfire to cook hot dogs, some bike riding, some Skyping with other relatives....  Our grandkids have been working on art projects and some school work.  That will have to increase over the coming weeks.  My partner has been looking to playing bridge by computer.  Not a computer game but a real game of bridge with 3 other people, all at their computers.  I'm painting, laying down some new flooring (helped by one of my grandsons) and continuing work on the camper van project.

Fortunately, the weather has been nearly perfect.  It's been sunny, clear skies and relatively mild temperatures.  Perfect for getting outdoors.

Coming up, we have a day-long explore of a town near here, Castlegar, that has quite a number of sculptures set up around town.  We're going to do an art walk there and have a picnic in the park.  Perhaps teach the grandsons how to take good pictures.  There is also school work for them....

Other than that, at this time, we have no idea how things will evolve.  Whoever it was who said "May you live in interesting times" likely didn't have this in mind.