What Jen said about parent, kids, and teachers. This is just such a nightmare for all.

The plan was for me to take Molly to the vet today for some antibiotic and steroid shots in reaction to her loud, snotty breathing yesterday. But even after being dosed with a sedative she managed to escape the towel I was trying to bundle her in with some levitating snake corkscrew move, and then led me on an 80-minute chase in circles around my apartment before I gave up for fear of doing more harm than good. Fortunately, after a cooldown period from panting her breathing doesn't seem to be any worse, and she let me pet her while she was hiding out under the sofa.

In related news, my cardio goals for the next couple of days have been met.

I feel for parents, teachers, kids of all ages. I don't have kids, don't have any immediate connection with the issue, but from what I'm hearing it's pretty much a nightmare for everyone involved. I hope that the kids come through more or less all right and more or less educated. It just seems like it's being thrown together with unreasonable expectations from people who are running things and either don't have kids or have shunted the responsibility on to someone else (there was a university - in Florida, I think - that was going to require their people to prove that they either had day care or a nanny ... which got shut down fairly quickly).

I also saw a story about college-level students who were taking computer proctored exams and were being dinged for the number of times their EYES MOVED.

My mailbox today had $640 in it from the Supervisor of Elections for payment for services rendered on election day for me and DH. Seriously, we would have done it for free, but ChaChing, money is good too.

Laura, from a ways back -- how is the Far Northern Son faring in the decidedly non-Floridian weather?

It was a temp that started with a 2 here today so I'm really feeling dubious about this whole 'winter' thing.

It was distinctly cold here as well; luckily, my building JUST finished repairing the boiler, so it's warm inside. One good thing about having moved recently is that I had my winter clothes easy to find - I needed a real coat, rather than just a light jacket, and gloves today.

I remember reading years ago that Carl Hiaasen, a native Floridian, after college tried moving to Georgia (Atlanta, I think). He found it too cold and moved back.

There haven't been any official announcements yet, but I'll be stunned if either Seattle Public Schools or UW go back to normal in-person instruction before the fall.

Since Alex is an introvert who does most of his socializing with online friends, he's coping pretty well. But I was hoping this year he'd start making more friends *at school*, since he's more comfortable in his skin now that he's out as trans and on T. Obviously invisible friends count (she says to her invisible friends), but I'd rather he have both.

Susan, over here in Kitsap no one is going back until at least January - BISD has said even if the case numbers come down, they don't have enough staff to open safely.

Tim, get a Covid test! I'm getting one tomorrow, we can be swab buddies!

I'm just north of NYC and our schools are partially open for now (our district is about half full-time remote, half hybrid) but we've seen new cases daily at all grade levels and the middle school is closed for this week through Thanksgiving. Our superintendent sent out an email this morning describing the rules for school closings if our region enters the yellow/orange/red zones so clearly we're approaching that level.

My kids have been full-time remote all year and are doing okay with it. Our district's teachers have done a really fantastic job adapting their curriculum for the remote students.

(Most of their socializing these days is playing Among Us with a Google Meet running in parallel so they can trash-talk each other, but you know, at least they're having fun!)

Susan, over here in Kitsap no one is going back until at least January - BISD has said even if the case numbers come down, they don't have enough staff to open safely.

UW has already announced that they're staying mostly remote through winter quarter, so basically through March. Last I heard from SPSS, they were closed until at least January, but they're always slower to respond/announce than UW. (With this stuff. UW is annoying slow/reluctant with snow delays and closures compared to the K-12 schools.)