I promised DH I'd make macarons and I am not feeling it. I've separated the eggs and the whites are resting on the kitchen counter and I just can not get in the baking mood.

CSV file of historical data by county.

Quoted instead of edited. Gah.

It's only slightly different than mine. Their pre-Thanksgiving peak is a little higher, and post-no-cases-reported-on-Thanksgiving-dip peak is a bit lower. I think considering it a noisy plateau from November 12 to December 3 is the best way to deal with Thanksgiving reporting effects. Edited to add: My graphs are the MN Department of Health numbers with cases counted on the day they are reported, not backdated to the day the sample was taken. That probably accounts for small differences.

Ignoring the reporting blip around Thanksgiving, MN state positivity appears to have peaked on Dec 3. That would be 2 1/2 weeks after the Governor tightened restrictions on indoor dining, gyms, etc and most schools moved to all online. Unfortunately that means deaths stay at peak levels for another 6 days.

A family trying to figure out arrangements that work for everyone is different than an invitation to a set event. When someone is trying to adjust their plans to accommodate you it is polite to let them know what accommodations would be necessary for you to attend or that you won’t be attending no matter what so they can stop trying to adjust for you and do what works best for everyone else. ”I’m having a dinner party on the 12th and would love you and Fred to be there.” —> “I’m sorry, we won’t be able to make it.” No excuse necessary. ”I’m trying to figure out a day we can all get together for an extended-family Christmas dinner, does the 12th work for you?” —> “I’m sorry, we won’t be able to make it” is not enough.

My mom handed one off to us, saying if we didn’t like it we should throw it out because they never use it. Someone has used it at least once a day for a month. We love the thing. The kids can make their own popcorn without making a mess, it’s wonderful. edit: cleaning. We mostly don’t. We dump the popcorn into a bowl or bucket before putting butter or seasoning on it and just brush the popcorn crumbs out of the silicone bowl.

I would not assume the rules now are the same as they will be three weeks from now. Which sucks for planning, but I think you are going to have to keep monitoring updates right until the last minute.

So he was working and shouldn’t have had to use a sick day.

Re: the bolded, I keep hearing this and how are districts getting away with this? If you’re working you should not be using up a sick day and if you’re using a sick day you should not have to be working. What nonsense is this!?

Duluth Trading. https://www.duluthtrading.com/womens-longtail-t-elbow-sleeve-scoopneck-37301.html?dwvar_37301_color=BMX&cgid=womens-tops-t-shirts#start=8&cgid=womens-tops-t-shirts Edit: Jinx!

Districts around here have been doing “e-learning” instead of snow days for 4-5 years now. For elementary that usually involves a grid of learning activities that you pick one from each column and have a parent sign off that you did them.

Take the meals. Your children qualify because they live in the district and that is the only qualification. You won't be taking meals from someone who needs them more because there are enough. If there were a limited number of slots and a waiting list this might be a dilemma. As it is, not even a question. Sign up right now!

Second this. Trapped is our local escape room, and their distance stuff is top notch. We’ve also done one put together by a library, and it was seriously lame. I would pay money for a virtual adventure done by a company that does in-person escape rooms, but no one else.

@Mommalongadingdong, the way I would interpret your daughter’s model and explanation is that she doesn’t think about the picture on the screen as a solid shape. She was trying to build the walls. Try telling her explicitly that it’s a block, not a box, and see if that helps.

Let her draw it! You don't want her to learn this based on one rule for tops are the same and one rule for bottoms are the same, you want her to understand what the fraction represents. Drawing a shape and dividing it into 20 parts is a great way to see that.

That looks like fun! My youngest is halfway through Algebra, but I think I'm going to print it out anyway and use it for review when we need an easy day.

I've been playing around with numbers, and it looks like maybe what changes as the positivity goes higher is both the scaling factor and the lag. Which is, unfortunately, much harder to model in a spreadsheet. Edit: but is consistent with the idea that higher positivity means things are out of control and testing isn't keeping up.

I said a few weeks ago that the multiplier seems to go up when positivity is above 5. Which makes sense with what epidemiologists have said that at 5% you know you're doing enough testing. Above five means you aren't testing enough, which means a higher % of cases are being missed.

It's gone way up.

My whole family was tested last month before a small get-together with friends. We made an appointment online at a pop-up site, which was easier than expected because after I registered myself it asked if I wanted to register other household members and I just needed to add their names and birthdates. We arrived at our scheduled time, walked up, waited maybe 3 minutes for them to finish the family in front of us, and were back in our car in less than 10 minutes. No charge. When the pop-up sites aren't in the neighborhood I could call our regular clinic for an appointment, that would be no cost to us but they do bill insurance. Or, since I teach at a college my family can access the testing on campus at no cost to us. But since that's a 40 minute drive and I'm teaching online through January it's more convenient to do one of the other options. Blue state.

It was in Iowa. If you look at their death and hospitalization curves they hit a low point the first week in July and have been climbing ever since. The absolute numbers were just low enough that they didn't set off enough alarm bells.

It was not going well. Your state leaders confused being on the early part of the exponential curve with going well and fantasized all kinds of “it’s different here in the heartland than in the big cities” ideas to justify doing nothing to head off uncontrolled spread. We’ll all be lucky if “uncomfortable” turns out to be a reasonable description of what this winter will be for the Midwest. 😞

The error messages are consistent with the database being down. It’s looks like it’s the parts fed from the database, not the static parts. But when it comes back I’m definitely exporting a copy of all my lesson plans.

And if so, do you know where they post info about downtime? It seems to be down and the error message says they'll post on "the discussion group" with details and timeframe, but the link goes to a "no site for domain" host page. Their facebook page doesn't seem to have any posts since May.