Six more weeks of winter

The groundhog has spoken - six more weeks of winter. Somewhat meaningless to us here in Southern California (despite my winging, it’s actually a very pleasant 70 degrees and sunny at the moment), but still makes for a good metaphor; whatever this second winter of covid is, it’s not changing in the next six weeks. 

In lieu of my usual open for registration day which would have been yesterday, I instead posted on FB to just check in and say we don’t know that there will be an event this year, but to stay tuned. I was surprised by the response. Over 300 people reacted to it, and of those who commented, some offered to send money. I realized I really didn’t need to worry about losing my entire audience if I shut down a second year, that people are just as invested in this thing as I am, and are as eager to get back to normal as I am. For a brief moment I felt like a person who runs events, again, and later in the day found myself feeling quite emotional about it. I realized I don’t want to put on a hastily slapped together event where everyone still has to wear masks and social distance, but I do want to put on a normal event with a normal lead time. The thought of starting to plan next year’s event this fall, open for registration, and open hotel reservations, actually makes me really happy. So perhaps I haven’t completely lost my desire to do anything after all. 

I had quite a fright Sunday night when I just happened upon an article about this “firefall” phenomenon at Yosemite that will be happening when we’re there in two weeks - and apparently you need reservations for the park right now, and apparently they were to go on sale at 8 the next morning and were anticipated to sell out almost immediately. WHAT. The thought of heading up there and casually cruising to the park gate only to be turned away because we didn’t have a reservation...I shudder to think about it. Long story short, after a lot of anxiety and constant refreshing, I was able to score a weekend pass. I will never again just assume National parks are open or operating normally, not right now. We’ve been very lucky thus far that, with the exception of Hawaii, none of our trips have been sabotaged due to the virus. 

Today we’ve been asked to take pictures of our kids and send them in to be included in a yearbook. I’m glad they are still making one; we can’t pretend this year didn’t exist as much as we may want to. Still no word on schools, but the head of LAUSD is insisting on staff being vaccinated first and I agree.