I can barely remember February at this point (now that it’s nearly the end of March). We started off the month with an ice storm. This is the kind of ice storm I think of as normal for our part of the world, but because of how badly we were hit last winter and how poorly our power grid withstood the abuse, people around here were worried.

Happy birthday, Mom!

The only downer for me was that it happened on my birthday. We pay enough attention to the weather though to have acquired birthday dinner the day before. This year it was the special lobster pizza from Via 313. They have magnificent Detroit style pizza anyway, and I know it sounds like a gimmick, but their lobster pizza is wonderful! And the kids don’t like it, so more for me!!!

Sean, Maya, and Ian gave me nice gifts. I am now the proud owner of a light pink pair of silicon oven mitts (Ian’s favorite color, since he couldn’t find purple), and Maya gave me a super soft blanket. They both seem pretty thrilled when I make use of their gifts. I gotta say, using the baby pink silicon mitts to handle a 12 pound brisket over a hot grill makes a statement – not sure what that statement might be, exactly, but it’s being made regardless. As a group, they also gifted me with a one year Masterclass subscription. This gives me access to tons of self-paced video coursework on a variety of topics, taught by people you have heard of (currently I’m taking a writing class taught by Margaret Atwood). I have been only minimally successful at making use of that lovely gift, but I’m still trying desperately to carve out time. We’ll see.

Playing in the … sleet and ice

The kids had a couple of days off school for the ice storm, and they enjoyed crunching around in our sleety yard. They yanked icicles from bushes, which more often than not resulted in them tearing off whole branches. I’m *sure* that was an accident. They lamented the fact that they wouldn’t get real snow this year, but managed to have fun anyway.

So busy with their valentine writing!

They had fun writing up valentines and exchanging them with classmates at school. Because Maya has a doubled up classroom, she wound up writing nearly 50 valentines out, and she seemed to genuinely enjoy it. I think I may have a plan for Christmas cards this next year! On their own, the kids decided they’d send things to their grandparents. The wrote or drew them, packaged them up, and then presented them to Sean for help with stamping and addressing. We didn’t know what they sent! It was weirdly cute.

The kids received Pokemon cards from Grammy and Grandpa for Valentines Day. They very quickly dug into those. Even now, they still spend so much time with their Pokemon cards, designing their own decks and occasionally even playing together. They received crafts from Lolli and Pop – birdhouses to paint and build and rocks to decorate. Those projects got saved for future (now past) deployment during spring break week.

Maya’s big project for the past couple months has been rock tumbling. She received a tumbler for Christmas, which had enough of each grit powder for one batch of rocks. She loved the first run so much that we restocked her supplies and almost immediately reloaded it with more rocks to tumble. The original set had four different grits, each with a finer and finer texture for smoothing the stones to different degrees. The refill set had those  four grits plus something it called “gem foam” for final polishing.

Before …

We were astonished how much of the rocks got smoothed away, so we decided to be more scientific on the second run. And to our delight, the gem foam really did manage to put some shine on some of the stones! Here’s the data we collected:

• Original rock weight: 342.3 g
• Grit 1 – 4 days – post grit 1 weight: 324.4 g
• Grit 2 – 7 days – post grit 2 weight: 296.5 g
• Grit 3 – 7 days – post grit 3 weight: 273.0 g
• Grit 4 – 10 days – post grit 4 weight: 244.3 g
• Gem foam – 3 days – post gem foam weight: 242.9 g

… and after

The only other noteworthy things that’s really happened around here is that Maya has started soccer again! She only got a few games into her first season in 2020 when the whole world was shut down by COVID. And then we wouldn’t let her sign up again till she had gotten her COVID vaccine. Aaaaand then her first game in late February was canceled for weather, alas.

I know it looks like a regular steak, but that thing weighed between 2 and 3 pounds!

We tried a new food thing too. Sean makes a run to Costco about once a month, and on his February trip, he found they had tomahawk steaks. These are ribeye steaks that are still attached to the big rib bone. Because those rib bones are so wide, the steak is cut nice and thick. I grilled that puppy (I think this is the method I went with, but I took no notes, so I can’t honestly remember), and it was BLISS. Maya won’t eat grilled food, but that one steak fed the other three of us, and we even had leftovers for Ian, who had chowed down. He explained to us that he’d like to eat that every week, and we in turn explained to him that that wasn’t really in the budget.

These numbers were screen-captured right at the end of February. Percentage of US population that has been fully vaccinated (64% as of 2/1, 65.2% as of 3/1). Travis County – 1/31 168,740 cases and 1264 deaths – 2/28 199,845 cases and 1350 deaths. Texas – 2/1 6,258,336 cases and 79,447 deaths – 3/1 6,617,106 cases and 84,899 deaths. United States – 2/1 74,943,050 cases and 886,691 deaths – 3/1 79,045,719 cases and 950,489 deaths. The World – 2/1 378,721,023 cases and 5,675,545 deaths – 3/1 437,247,221 cases and 5,958,321 deaths.