Closer, ever closer, for us. Dd's first DE college class had the one case on campus though all students and prof were masked, there's excellent ventilation, and they are all required to be vaccinated. I'm trying to see where I can "balance the budget" on our exposure to compensate for her taking on-campus classes, but we don't do anything other than run our business and go to the store. Suddenly more guests are walking in unmasked - why now? Two weeks ago we had easy, excellent compliance from the traveling public. I really do not understand.

Time to update your signature! Beautiful photos, thank you for sharing. The flowers look perfect, nicely done!

@bibichehas answered above.

To Good Home Only: empty ice cream cartons in the freezer In Search Of: a pet peeve that is OK with other pets

Re safety - both ds and ddil work at a national lab with nuclear engineering components. Yes, they are safety nuts at work! But ds loved to blow things up as a young person, is a mountaineer and climbing guide, played rugby through college - so risk mitigation is maybe a better way to phrase it.

Not correct. You can withdraw from the ED agreement for financial reasons. It is not binding if you cannot afford to go. Yes, the only reason withdrawing is allowed. The 100% meets-demonstrated-need schools say they offer the same during ED as they would in RD, which makes the giant admissions boost more equitable in theory.

It's also about money. If you don't qualify for a lot of financial aid, they take your ED commitment as agreement to pay the price they offer. We have a young friend who was wildly overqualified, applied ED to Middlebury, was accepted with zero aid. Yes, he went. Absolutely a better way to apply if you don't need to compare aid packages.

I'm sure you know this but auditioned schools care much more about auditions than SAT scores, so I really don't think seeing that first SAT will give them any pause. But am I remembering correctly he wants dual-degree? I would be curious if the teacher/studio at a dual-degree school has less input to an acceptance than in a non-dual setting.

Oh dear. Dd is taking Physics at the local college and just last night read the syllabus - class starts on Monday. I was feeling pretty smug that oh yes, my kids all read the syllabus - quick! order the textbook! Pay for 2 day shipping! Lesson learned, hopefully.

My paternal grandfather had a drug store and my father worked in it as a "soda jerk" growing up - meaning he would pull the levers to make the soda water come out for ice cream sodas.

See above.

Birthday Outfit

Son says December or January!

Well, my son read that a third season is being made, so fingers crossed!

Sent to chem eng ds and chemist ddil, thanks! Ambivalent about safety, uh huh...

Lupin. Slightly obsessed, Netflix not TV.

Dd just bought her ticket back to Switzerland, via Lisbon. Denial no more! Researching the requirements looks like not much for Switzerland - quarantine no longer required for vaccinated people.

I have just learned that there's a new homeschoolers' facebook page in my area. I don't have facebook or young kids, but am feeling a little exposed, if someone started reading here from my local community they could easily figure out who I am. After years of lurking I finally made the leap to posting and now people from my town might show up here? Wish it weren't so! I feel like some people here are my friends, some I'm a fangirl of, some I disagree with and still like to read what they are thinking. I like the Hive title - I bet in real hives there are some bees that don't "like" each other but they're still working on the same project. When I reference what I've learned here, I say "I've been reading that..." which is entirely true.

Mmm, these all sound great other than the navy. I only like purpley-blues, otherwise a room feels like a fishbowl to me.

I also love color. My living room is a warm yellow called Nasturtium, I think it was Sherwin-Williams. When all my friends were painting their interiors all chic neutral white and gray everywhere, I was still happily tucked into my warm colorful cocoon. Nice to see I might be on the cutting edge for once!

I'm so sorry, that's awful.

A lot. We call it Projects Anonymous - a brilliant, creative idea strikes (or so it seems) and sucks all my and/or my family's focus for the days or weeks it takes to get done. The on-going things are homeschooling, hiking, helping run our business, gardening, library board, town politics. The Projects Anonymous things are like designing and making a massive papier mache puppet for the parade, researching family history papers, making board games, pesto or apples (butter, pies, sauce, dried, cider) or political stuff like cutting 1,000 connected paper dolls to bring to a family separation protest. I will say the political theater projects have thankfully lessened recently.

We live in the boonies but work in town - our nights are filled with coyotes, barred owls, foxes barking, crickets. We love the quiet and the sounds, but we don't love roosters. Any roosters we end up with tend to find their way to the coyotes' and foxes' bellies. I like the sound they make but don't like how much they beat up the hens.

Many restaurants have closed for a few days for covid among staff, they reopen and everything just goes on. The cognitive dissonance is close to overwhelming.

"but it's educational!"