Thanksgiving this year had us all bored to tears, almost. Alex and Missy have been off school since getting contact traced and Nat was on Thanksgiving break all week, so nobody had much to do. There was a family dinner in Michigan, but we didn't feel comfortable going there and several family members ducked out as well. So, we sent our regrets and Beth made a ham. It was really good, too. We did have Mary Jane over for dinner, and Beth and I did a Zoom call with Laura & Thomas in the evening, but that was about it. I did catch most of the Lions getting pounded; a Thanksgiving tradition.....I continue to work on interior painting. The stairwell and hallway are done, the living room is mostly done with the gray. I keep finding dings in the walls that I need to fix before painting, or another old drywall nail bulge. But it's looking really nice, even though we're already thinking the teal paint we picked out as an accent wall is going to be too green, since the gray has a bit of blue in it.....I finally cut the cable last week, not entirely but I dropped our Comcast TV service and now it's down to internet only. I signed us up for Sling instead to get our TV, which altogether should save us $60 a month.....

 Coronavirus is surging across the country, and it has finally found us, or at least it almost has. Both of the kids in the high school got contact traced last week. On Thursday, Beth got a call in the morning that Missy had been in contact with someone who tested positive. She's got no symptoms, but she will be out of school for 2 weeks. So Beth went to get her, and literally 10 minutes after she got Missy home, the phone rang again. It was the school to tell her that Alex had been in contact with someone else who had tested positive, so he will be out for 2 weeks. He also has no symptoms. Both kids can go back the day before Thanksgiving, but since there's no school that day anyway, they'll go back the Monday after. Both of them are bummed, especially Missy, since a few of her friends have been out themselves and were just about to come back. So they are supposed to stay at home during their quarantine period, and they're already really bored with it.....Tuesday morning, before the contact tracing, I finally called in to a morning radio trivia contest (Fresh Out of Bed and Head to Head) on Pulse-FM, the one that we've been saying for weeks I should call in to because I always know all the answers. Well, I finally did, and I won it by answering 2 of the 3 questions before the other person did (Who won the Masters' golf tournament last year [Tiger Woods] and what was the Gilligan's Island Professor's real name [Roy Hinkley]). So being the champion, I got to play again the next day (and won again), and the next day (and won again, in double overtime), and the next day. So with four consecutive wins, I have entered their hall of fame, won a few prizes (including the controversial coffee mug, but I don't know why it's called that), and get to be on a tournament of champions at the end of the year.....We also went to Fort Wayne on Thursday, even though the kids were supposed to quarantine. Alex had a $500 paycheck from Walmart, and he wanted to be able to spend some of it. So we went to the mall, and let them shop. Alex bought a bunch of stuff at ThinkGeek. I think Missy is a bit jealous of the paycheck, because she's been talking about maybe she should get a job there herself. She can't right now, of course, and Alex is off work too. But Missy is back to her babysitting job with the small group at least, but that's only $20 every other week.....This weekend was mostly about leaves. It's been so windy lately that I didn't need to rent a big leaf blower, since the leaves were all against the fence in the backyard. But I did get a tarp and a rake and some kids and drag the leaves into a huge pile out in the back 40. Took almost all day, but then it snowed the next day, so my timing was impeccable....

 Maybe things are finally looking up for 2020. At least we seem on track to end it on a high note, with the idiot in chief being thrown out on his big orange @$$. But enough about that.....Halloween lasted a little longer than usual this year: our church had a trunk-or-treat last Wednesday as the kids' event for the month. People were invited to come in costume, set up in the parking lot at church, decorate their trunks (or, their whole car), and pass out candy. We probably had 20+ cars set up. We made up the back of the van like it was a cave, with spider webs and stalactites and bats (made of socks and construction paper). Missy was sort of a shadow, she dressed all in black but carried around her dragon puppet. The dragon was guarding the hoard of candy in the van-cave. I put on Alex's old crusader knight costume from when he was in 3rd grade and went around saying "ni" to people. Beth and Nat wore cat ears and had catty makeup on. There were also 2 food trucks there, one taco truck and one Cuban food truck from which we got the best Cuban sandwiches we've had since we lived in Orlando 25 years ago. Overall, huge success, and a lot of fun for everyone.....Alex has been working in earnest lately. He brings out pallets of stuff and puts the stuff on the shelves, then does it again. Hard work, and he's been scheduled for quite a few more hours than we had planned, but he likes the job at Walmart a ton better than he liked Culver's......We all found that the diner downtown, formerly B-Mac's on Buffalo, formerly Dig's Diner, is now Buzz on Buffalo. Friday we were going downtown to Mad Anthony's, but the diner was open, which is unusual for that time, so we stopped in and it turned out they were having a fish fry dinner since it was First Friday (even though FF had been cancelled). The fish was really good. We'll have to keep that place in mind..... I've started painting the living room, finally. Beth and I finally agreed on the colors for the room. We're doing a light gray with just a bit of blue as the main color, and a teal as a secondary color on the L-shaped wall and the dining room back wall. So far, I haven't got much on the wall, because I'm also getting the trim on the front door repainted and I'm painting the trim around the pantry white.....Voting in the time of coronavirus was pretty easy this past week; after all the fuss about it I walked in, voted, and walked out, maybe 10 minutes in total. More and more kids are testing positive or being contact traced at the school, things really seem to be building back up again like in the spring only this time nothing is closing.....

Halloween in the time or coronavirus didn't seem all that different, but there were fewer activities for the little kids for sure. Alex and Missy both got costumes together (Missy was a plague doctor, but she looked a little steampunkish too; Alex was a soldier character from some video game). I had found a red jacket for Alex at Goodwill, and he got some accessories for it at Dollar Tree (including a collander that he turned into a helmet using duct tape). Missy bought most of her things online. Then on Saturday (which was actually Halloween, with a full moon, and a blue moon to boot) they both met up with some friends to go trick-or-treating in Winona Lake, in the village and on the island mostly. Alex went to a friend's house afterwards for video games and Missy's friends came here to watch a movie (The Nightmare Before Christmas, which 2 of her friends had never seen). Natalie did her makeup like a cheetah but didn't go out. She did Instagram pictures of herself instead. Back at home, we had one family stop by for trick or treating, and we had to practically lasso them; a couple with 2 little kids (maybe 2 and 3) walked by on the road, weren't going to stop but Beth called them over (we're open! We have candy!) so they came up. Nobody else the rest of the time, so we ate the candy ourselves......