I’ve had back-to-back phone and zoom calls for the past couple of days. I’m just coming up for air before I have to deal with dinner (potato-leek soup) and with an Anderson window salesman at 7:30.
Most of the phone calls today were with teachers and education advocates as part of a research project for an education website. I got fairly surprising answers to my questions about silver linings for virtual education. I just need to figure out how I’m going to mold all this information.
The rest of the phone calls revolved around setting up Ian with a full set of tests with the Yale Child Study Team next month. Will our insurance company cover the $6,000 price tag? Probably not, but we’re still going to fill out the damn paperwork.
So, here are some links to random stuff:
Ian’s video game of the week? Fallout 4.
Now that he no longer has a daily three-hour commute, Steve’s finding a new life. He’s running again (necessitating a new Fitbit) and volunteering with the local historical society.
We continue to move furniture around our office to make it work for both of us. We still have a guest daybed in there, but its days are numbered. I think it’s time for me to invest in some better video conference lighting.
I am not handling the news about Eddie Van Halen very well.
Don’t forget to watch the debate tonight. I would say that there’s a 50/50 chance that Harris will end up as president in the next couple of years.
I’ve been stumbling across loads of pre-1800 books lately. This weekend, I bought about 80 antique books for $100. I think I can turn them around for about $5,000-$10,000. I have so many very old books that I need to buy more bookcases and set up special dehumidifiers for the basement. Do you guys want to know more about this hobby? More show and tell?
Apt. 11d 
Umm – you spent $100 on books, and you’re going to sell them for 5-10K? Yes, I want to know more about this hobby. But I don’t think you want to tell us or put that information up on the internet, as you may end up with a lot more competition at those estate and yard sales. LOL.
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And, I was, alternatively thinking how little I would want to do that (get musty books at garage sales in order to resell them). But, 10K would actually pay for something nice!
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bj said, “But, 10K would actually pay for something nice!”
Like, storage for all those books!
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I keep the money in a separate account and use it to buy more books. I am building a book empire!
Actually, for me, the most fun part of the job is digging through old barns and basements for the books. The most boring part is taking them home, photographing them, and listing them. I also hate shipping them. So, I guess the only part of this hobby that I really like is digging through barns and counting the money.
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I want one of those small house sheds, like Modern Shed. But, we don’t have enough yard space for one. If we did, I might try to raise funds for one with a hobby that would be done in the shed.
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I would live vicariously through Laura if she got a small house shed (Modern Shed is a local company but there are companies located elsewhere).
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bj said, “I would live vicariously through Laura if she got a small house shed (Modern Shed is a local company but there are companies located elsewhere).”
One of my aspirations is to stick a screened gazebo in my backyard for hanging out during the months when the temperature is pleasant but the bugs are lurking.
No hobby required!
(I suspect that the chiggers would still get me, even if I kept out the mosquitoes.)
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Exchanging work for money as a moral endeavor has always been a topic of interest to me. Psychologically, I’ve always imagined doing work that I wanted to do and then figure out how to live within the means that work pays. But, I’m now at a point where I don’t have to make that decision (that is, I get to not work, but also don’t have to worry much about living within my means, and the work I could get wouldn’t substantially change my means).
I’m a pretty serious hobby photographer, but have no interest in monetizing for the kind of money I could make from the hobby. Sure, if there were art collectors out there who would pay big bucks, but not in exchange for having to deal with a customer (who is even sometimes right).
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We’re seeing some (not unexpected) peculiarities with the two open school districts (one city, one suburban) that I track:
–The elementary and intermediate schools are continuing to be fantastic. They each typically have either 0 or 1 active case.
–The middle schools are so so.
–The high schools are bad/heading into the “oh crud” zone. I see that the 2400 kid high school has 12 active cases. Granted, those kids are not currently in the building, but I don’t know that I would keep a high schooler of mine in-person there.
–As far as I know, our private school just had the one 3rd grader with COVID very close to opening. This is my younger kids’ 8th week of in-person class. *knock on wood*
–Hometown U. continues to have a lid on COVID and is testing 10% of the campus community every week. I saw more social activity outdoors last night, though, and there’s a bit of an uptick in active COVID.
I’m really curious what they’re going to be doing with the millions of fast tests. I personally want to see them being used in public high schools. A Monday AM mass fast test would be fantastic, even if that’s all that would be possible.
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I see that two big city high schools and two smaller (?) city vocational schools are closing for a week due to COVID.
I keep googling, and the 2400 kid suburban high school with 12 active cases is still open. I feel that the city schools are closing a lot faster than the suburban ones. In fact, I know of no local suburban schools that have closed this fall.
???
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Little cracks in my armor because the adorable kid next door is shouting “but I want to go trick-or-treating” while helping decorate their house for Halloween. He’s being answered with what they will do and what they can’t do, in quiet terms, but he is not happy. I might touch base with parents to see if there’s anything we can do to help.
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bj wrote,
“Little cracks in my armor because the adorable kid next door is shouting “but I want to go trick-or-treating” while helping decorate their house for Halloween. He’s being answered with what they will do and what they can’t do, in quiet terms, but he is not happy. I might touch base with parents to see if there’s anything we can do to help.”
I need to touch bases with my neighborhood people before Halloween to see what we’re all doing.
I’m minimally going to put out a big self-serve bowl of the good candy on my front step. I don’t think we ought to be doorbelling our older neighbors (and they may not be prepared for Halloween anyway), but we should be able to pre-arrange with younger-neighbors-with-kids that the 2nd grader can ring the doorbell for and do a more traditional Halloween.
Today was the 2nd grader’s school celebration of her 8th birthday. As arranged, I showed up with store mini-cupcakes and fruit punch Capri Suns. It turned out that I needed to drop off the treats at the front desk and then the receptionist walked the stuff into the class.
On the bright side, my school responsibilities are greatly streamlined this fall!
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We have an outbreak in our frat row. Our county numbers were trending downward, even potentially into the good range (<25/100K/14 days) but now their climbing back up again.
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bj said, “We have an outbreak in our frat row. Our county numbers were trending downward, even potentially into the good range (<25/100K/14 days) but now their climbing back up again."
Bummer.
Our local pattern is (as far as I can tell) that new cases peaked on July 2 and then trended down for the next 5-6 weeks and then have essentially plateaued at about half of peak for the last 2 months. On the one hand the baseline is a lot higher than I would like to see, on the other hand, cases aren't exploding, and even with the city high school closures, local kids have gotten a bunch of in-person school.
It's funny how many states have been essentially flat for months:
https://rt.live/
(Page down to the individual state graphs.)
There are states with trends that look kind of nasty, but there are so many states that keep bumping along very close to 1.00.
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Even $10k seems like too little to have to deal with all the sales tax regimes from selling on the internet. Does Etsy help with that?
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Yup!
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