One down, one to go

My supplemental grant finally came through late Friday night. I don’t know when the funds will appear, but the paperwork is signed. This should be the last of that grant’s funds…now comes the awesome responsibility of documenting how all the funds were spent. I set myself up for a mostly easy ride - I should just have to print payroll reports and bank reports showing all the refunds I’ve issued, plus a couple of invoices and flight payment receipts - but it’s still nerve wracking. What if they don’t accept some of my documentation or expenses? I won’t really be able to exhale until the grant is completely closed out. I’m not sure when that will be. I’m thinking I’ll get to work on it in January. 

In other news, my cabin rehab has ground to a halt. The contractor has not disappeared, thankfully, but his crew has, repeatedly, and he had a family member die of covid, and he’s just been barely pecking away at it by himself. I don’t think any progress at all has happened in the last month. While our weekends are filling up so I doubt we’d be able to get out there in the next month anyway, it still bums me out that this has all taken so long, and that the fall is slipping away without being able to spend any time out there. I also worry that it will never get done, or that it will get done but so haphazardly and with such cheap materials that we’ll have to fix a lot of it. Sigh. I am attending a wedding out there in two weeks and was hoping to spend the weekend in the cabin - looks like I’ll be making a long drive home instead. 

Covid numbers are dropping like a rock. Suddenly articles are popping up - including one written by my epidemiologist friend - stating there’s a good chance there will be no winter surge, or barely one, and that we’ll more or less have this thing beat by spring. By “beat”, of course, we mean only in the western world, and only in states with high vaccination rates, and only kind of. But hey, I’ll take it. I often wonder if by next Labor Day I’ll still be required to check for vaccines for my event, either by the state or just community standards. In a way I want to just to continue to alienate all the right wing bastards that tormented me when I opened up - but in a way I don’t want the hassle, either. It’s so hard to say where we’ll be in three months, six months, a year. For me personally, I just hope that a) kids can get vaccinated this fall, b) kids can stop wearing masks at school at some point, and c) we can stop doing the “daily pass” for school every morning at some point. Those would be the three things that would greatly improve my quality of life. 

I’ve started trip planning again. We decided to once again do a Thanksgiving on the road. One of the last areas of CA I’ve been interested in is California along the 395 - hot springs, Bodie, scenery. So I booked us three nights in a strange hotel called the Amargosa Opera House near Death Valley (we drove by this last time and thought it deserved a second look) so we can spend two more days exploring there (it will be so much better in a car we can take off roading and with me not being in constant miserable pain from my frozen shoulder). Then we head up to an old school Alpine-like inn in Mammoth Lakes for some ghost town and hot springs exploring. I have also managed to get a really good deal at a Radisson on Fiji for our honeymoon in July and $1000 off flights. I think there are good deals to be had right now because Fiji is only just now opening to tourists again. Anyway I managed a week in Fiji at about half the normal price, so yay me. 

The boys are doing well at school and continue to test negative. Bobby has his first project due next month, which is all too appropriately about California’s desert regions. We had our family photos done yesterday - here’s a preview: