Ehlana and Ethan:
Our home-school day was awesome – mostly because we were given an outdoor assignment for the afternoon that allowed us to basically play from lunchtime through to we needed to be home for dinner. The temperature climbed into the low-seventies, so after biking around the park and completing that science-math assignment; we were free to bike the trails around town and at the park; hang out at the playground; and explore by the falls and river – along with the usual gang of friends. More of our favorite trails in the woods are drying out enough for us to bike on too; so Miles and Joshua led the way for some riding competitions. That was fun too, but Emporium treats for our afternoon snack picnic at the park was a highlight of our afternoon; and we multi-tasked that with watching football because the guys wanted to check out a scrimmage that some of the teen guys were having after school too.
We should mention that sports around here continue to be different as mask and social distancing rules apply – even as they’re slowly being relaxed too, but the risks here at home are also still very low; and we haven’t had any new cases since the first little outbreak. While we’re on the pandemic subject – sort of; let’s do an update for that too. Worldwide and national daily cases have dropped a lot from the peak in January, but they’ve also leveled off at a still-too-high average with more than two-and-a-half million new cases and more than sixty-thousand deaths a week worldwide. New milestones that seemed important just months ago aren’t even mentioned anymore, but that isn’t really a surprise when adding millions or tens of thousands is now a comparatively-small percentage of the totals. Vaccine rollouts continue to ramp up, but that’s happening more-rapidly for the wealthiest countries while the poorest nations and people may wait years before vaccines will be widely-available to them.
We’re still not getting nearly enough information about any of the vaccines, but we’re working to get orders for all of them – or as many as will be allowed by the government; we’ll do our own research; and then make the best one available for everyone that can safely use it. We will not use any of them if we find any problems; and are considering other options if none of the vaccines work as advertised – and safely.
We actually prefer one of those other options – using our Magi talents to immunize everyone in our area while using a placebo set of injections, but even doing that for a couple of thousand people would be a challenge; and the Magi council may not approve doing that even if we can prove it possible. Considering the international push for things like immunity passports, though, we may need to work that out sooner instead of later – or have everyone barred from public travel and whatever other restrictions might be applied to anyone who isn’t vaccinated.
Let’s stay away from the politics and ethics involved in all of that; and move on with our local news.
The biking and park play adventures were the highlight of our day; we got home in time for dinner with Mom and Dad; and then we’ve had a standard school night work and study session after we ate and took care of the clean-up. Bath or Jacuzzi time was needed when Mom sent us upstairs to get ready for bed; so we skipped the music play time tonight. Our bedtime twin chat has taken a while because we’ve needed time to wind down, but that’s pretty much all we have for tonight; and are ready to go and get some sleep. We’ll mention that Cassie, Michael, and their friends have had a good first day of mid-terms, but that wasn’t fun for most of them; and we definitely had a happier day by comparison. That trend should continue for us through the week – even if we get all of the rain in the forecast over the next four or five days, but we’ll have to let you know how that goes for us as we get around to living those adventures with our family and friends.
Stay tuned for those reports; and we’ll go and get some sleep so that we’ll be ready for all of the work and fun between now and the start of our March break on Friday!
This is Ehlana and Ethan Proctor; live from the hidden home of the Magi of the Light – and May the Magi Force be with you!
