Organized by her sister Susan, Jeanine and her extended family and friends celebrated her birthday with a virtual game of family feud. We used the same rules as the TV show with the Calabria family pitted against the Basile’s and Earle’s. There are few things Jeanine enjoys more than playing games with family so this was a most appreciated gift. Later she fell asleep on the couch and looked so serene that I had to take a picture of her.

This year, Jeanine’s birthday is coincident with Easter. The family did our best to make it a memorable one using telepresence technology. We “attended” church together in the morning, joined Jeanine’s side of the family for Easter dinner, and my side of the family for her evening birthday celebration all by Zoom. She also took advantage of the perfect spring day to go on a nature walk with a close friend. While she was out, I had a little time for some outdoor photography. When I left the house, I was not expecting to return with a photograph of a chicken and pig riding scooters through a deserted downtown Concord. What can I say? We are living in unusual times.

Jeanine and I enjoyed a short 2.6 mile walk into the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge this afternoon. Muskrats were in abundance as were geese. We also spotted a pair of Merganser Ducks but I was not able to get a decent shot of them. The kids did a thorough house cleaning as a partial present to Jeanine on her birthday weekend.

Nicolai was in charge of appetizers this evening and knocked the ball out of the park with one of my favorites, bruschetta. Dinner was followed by a very competitive game of TENZI in which the normal rules were augmented to include projectile warfare to defeat an opponent’s tower on the verge of completion. A video would have been priceless. Earlier in the day, Jeanine spent time dry roasting herbs for a Shawarma dish she is planning for the weekend.

Working from home these days entails a lot of video conferencing. I hope when we reach the other side of the immediate COVID-19 crisis we will not have grown too accustomed to working remotely. While I appreciate the options this technology provides, I think the best engineering happens when teams are face-to-face, preferably with a whiteboard at hand. Although I am well suited to working alone as a genetically programmed introvert, I much prefer working in close proximity to my engineering teams so that we can spontaneously brainstorm and rapidly share ideas and thoughts.

I try to use a new virtual background every day taken from my collection of landscapes or other interesting images. It makes for a nice distraction from the same office backdrop every day.

Jeanine is doing her best to keep us healthy as the whole family continues to hunker down. This evening we enjoyed a kale salad and also a very nice fried rice dish prepared by Nicolai. The amazing thing about both dishes is that they were the result of looking at the food we had left in the refrigerator and deciding what could be made from it.

Last night we were also treated to a Super Pink Moon. This full moon appeared larger and brighter than usual because the moon was at perigee or the closest point to Earth in its elliptical orbit. With this ultra-close event, the moon was just 221,772 miles from Earth, compared to its average distance of 238,855 miles. This closer proximity makes it appear about 7% larger and 15% brighter than the average full moon. The Pink Moon does not actually appear pink. It is named for a pink wildflower, Phlox subulata, which commonly blooms in eastern North America in the early springtime, as it was delineated in The Old Farmer’s Almanac. Full moon names in the almanac, like with this “pink” moon, often come from names originally created and used by Native American tribes.

Kyle started his new job with Touchplan yesterday as a Senior Business Intelligence Analyst/Developer. He has transformed the music room into an office with a line of sight from my office. Who would have ever guessed that we would be “working together” like this? Through the other door to my study, I have a line of sight to Maya who is completing her study abroad course work in the kitchen breakfast nook. Meanwhile, Nicolai is teaching classes via Zoom using the dining room as his base of operations. It is not uncommon for at least three of us to be on a Zoom conference call at any given time which has necessitated upgrading the internet bandwidth to our home. Jeanine has been relegated to the living room and is not all that happy with her sabbatical “office.” Now that the kitchen makeover is essentially finished, she may choose to return to her desk that is built in there.

Jeanine and I got out for a nice 4-mile walk, taking advantage of the perfect spring weather. Rain is forecast for the next couple of days so we were keen on making good use of the opportunity which took us past a number of interesting scenes in the nearby town Lincoln.

At Digital Alloys we have been having “virtual lunch” together since the start of the Covid shutdown. Everyone joins in via Zoom over the lunch hour to keep in touch. Today, I made a premature departure when I heard seemingly incessant car horns honking and left my office to investigate. I discovered a caravan of something like 50 cars making the loop through our neighborhood. The caravan led by the Concord police was composed of the teachers and staff from Willard, our local elementary school. They just wanted to let their students know they were keeping them in their hearts. One teacher yelled out of her car as I was photographing the parade, “Hello Mr. Calabria.” It took me a moment to realize she was addressing Nicolai. Boy, do I feel old today.

I spent the bulk of the weekend creating four photo journals from trips I took during my failed attempt at retirement. The company I use was running a 41% off sale which was sufficient motivation to see me through the effort. I have now completed ten such books and have material for at least 30 more. If you click on the photos you will be able to view the books online. Just click on the icon to expand to full screen for best viewing. Be patient as the images download.

I joined Jeanine, Kyle, and Nicolai for a nice hike today. We returned to the Sears Conservation Lands where we had ventured earlier in the week. We encounter more than a dozen small Garter snakes in a very small area suggesting that they were recently born in the immediate vicinity. We were also treated to several nesting blue herons.

As part of our kitchen makeover project, we decided to remove the doors and wood shelves from the cabinets over our drink bar and to replace them with glass shelves and no doors. This also required removing the center stiles from each side of the cabinet which I did several weeks ago. Today, the shelves arrived and took less than 15 minutes to install. Only the backsplash remains to be completed, a job we plan to sub out.

I ordered a bulletin board (4’x3′) from Staples last week. I will cut it down for use on the wall behind the kitchen desk. Not quite sure why they needed such a large truck to deliver it. I guess anything over a certain dimension automatically goes this route. It seems like overkill for a package weighing just a couple of pounds. When I get some free time I will cut out openings for the wall outlets and cover the board with linen cloth before installing it.

I am always the first one up and generally eat breakfast right after my morning shower. Today, however, I waited until the rest of the family was awake having caught wind of a plan to make waffles for breakfast. The wait was entirely worth it.