Life in the Age of Corona

A Daily Diary

Thursday, May 6th, 2021

Lawn Mower Break Down

A brilliant, beautiful day today with temperatures around 15C and only a slight breeze. How I wish we had this weather tomorrow.

Instead the forecast is getting worse with rain at 100% chance as of 17:00, what a bummer. All four sites I monitor have the same forecast. Please dear gods, make the sunshine tomorrow evening.

Otherwise today has been an uneventful day, a couple of calls, emails and tying up a few lose ends. My lap lane did not come through. Instead I got busy dressing up the Mums I have bought for tomorrow in blue paper with yellow ribbons. They turned out rather pretty. If it rains, the paper will sadly be soaked, but I will save the flowers for the IBDP celebratory picnic scheduled for May 22nd, which will hopefully be a beautiful sun filled day. We do have a rain date for the 23rd, but that would overlap with the swim team recognition and farewell for the seniors.

While the swim squad only met online and had no meets, I am happy to see them get together to send the seniors off. There will be speeches recognizing each one and outlining their university plans. EM has a team friend who will deliver the speech for her.

After weeks of back and forth the kid mowing my lawn finally had time and showed up. As he was half-way through the front lawn the mower inexplicably broke down. Now I have a partially mowed front lawn and my back lawn still looks like a jungle. The new lawn mower will not arrive for another ten days. The kid initially offered to bring his lawn mower, but I have a sense the parents were not to happy at the prospect. Both him and I are now trying to see if we can borrow my neighbor’s lawn mower this weekend so he can finish the job before the grass gets too unwieldy. I am not thrilled at the prospect of buying a device I will only need for a few months, but what can I do? The broken lawn mower, I am glad to report, has found a new home with a neighbor who has the patience to fix it.

As far as the virus is concerned the US appears to be turning a corner. While 49k new infections have been reported over the past twenty-four hours to bring the US total to 33.6 million, ospitalizations and death are in decline. The country has its speedy vaccination campaign to thank. More than half of American adults — 148 million people — have received at least one dose, which makes them less likely to contract or transmit the virus and more people are considering getting inoculated. Good news! Still, it is likely the virus will remain endemic rather than being eradicated completely. Moderna has been testing its booster shots https://apple.news/A3BU2-RnKRqagyJwln7yL-g and initial results show a high efficacy against variants as well.

These will be the strangest summer olympics with no international visitors, but at least everyoneparticipating will be offered two BioNTech shots, though being vaccinated will not be a requirement for attendance. Hopefully Japan will not come to regret this decision.

Now I am off to trim the rose gifts for the Seniors joining tomorrows PhotoPROMenade! Please all, pray it willnot rain.