Okay, Get Back out, 2020

Well, here we are. I thought our medical drama was the pinnacle for the year. Turns out that now the whole world is joining in on the fun.

I have more to say on that matter, but let's recap:

I was sent out with my colleagues on a trip up to Sunnyvale to support a test campaign that was/is happening later this year.

San Jose airport is actually kinda cool

Bomb diggity dim sum house. You can see my coworker's ponytail up front. Thankfully one of our company knew Mandarin, as this place was very much catered to native speakers. They had jellyfish. Would not recommend. Squid, on the other hand, is not bad.

That was just a day trip; we actually flew out of Ontario in the morning and were back later that evening.

We had a belated birthday trip for John at the best theme park in Southern California: Legoland!

Alison scored us a good deal on a resort that backed up to the park in Carlsbad.

There was a catch--we had to get the timeshare pitch. It was long and rough, over 2 hours of carrot, carrot, than stickstickstick. We got out without signing up for anything--they even gave us a travel certificate to a Hilton at a later date.

Yikes

 Things were much better in the park. Alison took more pictures, and I only have my own here. Mom and Dad joined us, which made it all the better.

Why my generation is poor

Never would have guessed that Ruby's does good breakfast (they do!)

Tommy didn't want to leave this stationary car

John got the deluxe facepaint and wanted no food from the pizza buffet

Downtown Carlsbad, 3rd attempt at a restaurant suitable for our party

Balboa Park in San Diego

 Not pictured was the fabulous Pacific Beach Fish Shop where we had lunch afterwards. It was also, weirdly, now where we learned of the helicopter accident that claimed the life of Kobe Bryant. IMC are bad business for helicopters...it was real foggy that day as I verified in Xplane later that evening.

Impromptu Ole Hammer Picnic

 John continued his basketball career.

The bench at the "brown playground"

Typical Sunday afternoon

 We got to go out with the McCleves to an escape room and had some real good Korean BBQ. I'm no expert, but I thought it was good. Pork belly...mmm...should write this on an empty stomach. The escape room was nautical themed; sort of a 20 Leagues theme--very fun.

Wanderlust ice creamery

Random Tommy asleep in the car episode (not common, FYI)

 Alison turned 30something! You probably know? Fortunately, this was before the quarantine.

And now we get to the funnest episode of this entry. John had been having some trouble at school...like, running away from class trouble...and it sort of culminated in a seizure just after 9 AM. Needless to say, I wasn't pleased that the school called an ambulance due to American-best-healthcare-in-the-world reasons, but I didn't have much of a say. Alison got to the school before he was transported to Pomona Valley (by the way, if you're in the area, go here and NOT Huntington Ho$pital). I followed them in. John was groggy when I saw him, but seemed alright. I got to accompany him to his CT scan, which he took real well (having been recently sedated helped). I'll go ahead and say here that subsequent visits to the neurologist revealed no abnormalities; it's possible that he may never have another seizure again.

An early moving day assist

Presents from Grammy and Papa!

Stack'd

 John became renowned for his love of somersaults in his basketball team, so everyone got to join in during the last practice.

My aunt Janet passed away of complications from her traumatic brain injury she sustained the same day Tommy was born. Alison had a lot of responsibilities with her work, so just John and I went out to Utah for her services. Fortunately, he travels well as long as he can be plugged into a tablet. Unfortunately, our travel arrangements were less than ideal. I was trying to save money, so we flew Southwest from ONT > SJC > SLC, which ended up getting delayed by 1.5h, so instead of being 6 PM when we arrived, it was more like 8PM. Plus, the Budget at SLC were real fail-heads, having no cars available and forcing everyone to wait as they were returned and made ready. It was after 10 PM by the time we got to our hotel in Lehi, and we were starving.

Since we had most of Friday open, I decided to take John to my old haunt in Provo. A lot has changed since I was last on campus at BYU. I did visit shortly after they closed off Campus Dr, but that still felt weird. I also saw my thesis advisor, Dr. Jones, walking through the visitors parking lot as I rolled in. I was tempted to run him down but resisted.

John wanted no BYU swag but I made him get some anyway

 Eric came first. My parents insisted on driving because that's how they do. In retrospect, I probably should have too for all the hassle I had to endure.

We took John to a hopping Lehi park. Social distancing was not on anyone's mind at the time, although I did notice an uptick in facemasks in the airports.

Eric and I remarked on how many fast casual restaurants there were in Utah. It seemed like that was pretty much the main business in the state.

Cubby's didn't disappoint

 The services were very nice. Janet was well-loved. She was such an empathetic listener; it seemed like no matter how busy she was, she always had time for you. She took care of everyone--her own family, my grandma, her grandkids when they lived with her...then my cousin Stephanie had to fill that role after Janet wasn't able. All the Grant girls have followed in her footsteps, becoming wonderful people in their own right. It was good to be able to see them again and let John run a little wild with his 2nd cousins. He later asked me what it meant to have a "crush," which leads me to believe that perhaps one of his relatives said something...

Janet was buried in the American Fork cemetery on a plot owned by Terry's family, which I recalled was also the burial site of our common ancestors William and Catherine Lageard Francis (on the my maternal grandmother Robbins' side). It was a bit chilly, being Leap Day, but I wanted to hunt it down--a bit reminiscent of my cemetery crawl the previous year in Salt Lake City. Fortunately, my cousin Ken happened to find it right away and pointed us to the gravestone. It turned out to be very close to the Grants' tombstones. I do wonder who had the updated gravestone made, as these two were buried well over 100 years ago.

I didn't take any pictures with my college buddies, but I got to hang out with them for a couple of hours. Jordan and Bill settled on the western reaches of Provo, where they pursue their careers and Twitch and Ancestry, respectively. It was a good visit; I hadn't seen them in a couple of years. They assigned me reading.

Brick Oven. John managed to finally find a eatery that wasn't horrible near where I went to school. I couldn't entice him with the Creamery (he wanted Jamba Juice instead).

The in-house root beer was even better than I remembered

 Eric, John, and I all had stupid early flights out the following morning, so we carpooled back up to the airport. A winter storm was threatening, but fortunately it was delayed long enough to allow us to get off without any trouble.

Being Southwest, we naturally had to route through another airport, this time Las Vegas.

My Sanderson reading assignment

 I purchased a basic laptop for my planned travel to Sunnyvale. It was going to be very inconvenient without one, plus Alison had basically inherited my HP farewell gift. My plan was to hook this up with GeForce Now, although they've been hemorrhaging games at an alarming rate. Most upset about losing 2K games, since those seem to be the ones I play the most.

Random ice cream run

 The rains finally came; we hadn't had nearly enough for the winter. Along with the rain came pressures from the outside world--a virus that had been circulating in China was not adequately contained, and it had spread to all across the planet, especially Italy, Spain, and Iran. Given the nasty tendency of the virus to show few symptoms in many people, it spread unchecked and untested, right up to our own community (4 cases and 1 fatality as of this writing). COVID-19, the disease caused by this novel coronavirus, is a respiratory disease that is highly infectious (1 person can infect approximately 2 other people) and deadly (1 of every 100 that are infected die, as compared with the seasonal flu which kills 1 of every 1000). Tests have been in short supply, so it's hard to know who has it. Fortunately, children appear not to get ill from the virus, but it is believed they can still carry it and infect others.

As such, public schools have been closed. On the 19th of March, the California governor ordered everyone to stay at home unless working "essential" jobs, out of which my industry managed to eke a waiver (a sacrifice we're willing to make, I guess). The idea is to "flatten the curve" of infection to prevent overwhelming our health care system. This will make the pandemic last longer, but it will save lives because an overwhelmed health care system will lead to people dying of all manner of injuries and diseases besides just COVID-19--lives that could have been saved otherwise.

The socially distancing tooth fairy awarded John a dollar for his first lost tooth

 I was able to arrange to work from home...which is turning out to be a bit more intense than I thought it would be, due to the distractions of my children. Tommy's daycare closed as well, but fortunately, Alison's school did too, so we have a bit of a chance at making it through without accepting my employer's "generous" offer to allow me to draw down negative hours of PTO.

And Disney cursed us with an early arrival of Frozen 2.

We explored the abandoned campus of Citrus College, right across from our residence.

Kids are going a little crazy at home.

I am becoming God of a virtual island.

Feeling a little like a post-apocalyptic video game, walking to and from the grocery store. Toilet paper is the biggest casualty of the COVID-19 panic, for some reason.

In a rage of quarantine ennui, the children sacrificed Gumby to amuse themselves.

We are permitted to socially distance ourselves on walks. The same wasn't true of county trails, which were packed and subsequently shut down by the county due to the crowds.

Tommy is learning a new skill at least.

My work is a bit antiquated in its approach to telecommuting, which was practiced semi-frequently at my last job. I had to actually heft my desktop home in order to do this, which meant I needed a KVM switch so that I didn't have to set up a second desk and junk. I doubt my employer is planning on reimbursing me for that.

We are regularly holding sacrament meeting at home now. More than ever, the church is becoming a home-oriented faith. General conference will be held next week without a live gathering for the first time since...ever. Technology has wonderful ways of connecting us even though we cannot be physically present. We held a church-wide (and multi-faith, I believe) fast to pray for the hastened end of COVID-19. My greatest hope is that more intelligent minds will prevail at the levels of public policy.