Leathernecks

I don't have any good ideas for things that are legal that you can grow in your garage! I'm going to start growing some sprouts this weekend. I've tried it in the past with mixed results, so I finally bought trays for growing them in. Should work better than the Rubbermaid container I've used in the past! They're really nutrient rich, and I like that they only take a few days to be ready to eat. You can keep trying different sprouts all the time to see what you like best.

I liken how it spreads to a game of tag. If nobody is it, nobody will get caught. Once someone is it, they can catch a lot of people in a hurry. Same thing with the virus. I think people get lulled into a false sense of security because they aren't around people who have the virus. If you go to a party with 50 people, and nobody there is sick, you won't get sick. Now with it spreading quickly, those get togethers that were having zero people sick are starting to have 1 or 2, and they infect a lot of people at the get together. I don't see things slowing down much until 2021 with Thanksgiving, Christmas, and cold weather coming up.

For those of you who have schools in your area who are doing remote learning, do the teachers get to teach from home or do they still have to go to the school? My district just said yesterday that we'd still have to come in to the school each day if we go remote.

Yeah, I think yesterday's news was a really good step forward. I'm just cautiously optimistic. It's like we've jumped out to a 2 touchdown lead on OSU. It is a great start, but still a long ways to go. Does anybody know if most vaccines being developed are 2 shots where you have to wait 28 days between them? Also, do the other vaccines need to be kept as cold as the Pfizer one?

I just told you my thoughts.

I know a lot of people are excited about the early vaccine results (with good reason), but there are still a lot of questions to answer before it will be available. There are only 94 people in the trial who tested positive, so it is a really small amount of people. It could end up being 90% effective, or it could end up being way less. They've only released results obtained from testing 1 week after the 2nd shot. How long is the vaccine going to last? Are there any lasting side effects? Is it going to be safe for people who are at high risk? Those people usually aren't included in the trials. Is it going to lessen the symptoms if you do get the virus? The results haven't been published for peer review yet. We're basically just going off of the companies press release. Will the trial hold up to scrutiny? The 90% results are definitely encouraging, but it still has a ways to go. They're working on answering those questions, but they're still going to have to be answered before the vaccine can be distributed. Hopefully all those questions get answered soon and they can start moving the vaccine.

The school I work at is pretty similar. We do a good job of making sure kids are wearing masks. Through contact tracing we've been able to find a couple kids who ended up testing positive before they could be around a lot of people at school. We did have the elementary school in our district have a handful of staff members test positive that I would assume could be traced back to the school. It was 4 or 5 out of about 15 staff members.

I know it is probably different for your space, but I leave my garden over the winter and see what I get in the spring. By the time I was ready to plant this spring, I had a few spices that were huge. Had a couple other things coming up that I probably could have transplanted if I didn't already have ones growing inside.

What kind of compost bins do you have? I thought about getting one of the outdoor tumbling ones to make turning it over easy.

Between Halloween last weekend, the election on Tuesday, and gatherings after the election, this next week could be rough.

I would recommend to all you gardeners to write down the things you did this year that were good or bad. Sometime soon I'm going to post the thoughts on my garden here so I can look back at it in the spring. Some of the things I planted I never touched, and some things I wish I had more of. Have some other ideas for the spring too.

The 7 day average is over 100,000 per day. Up about 20,000 per day from last Friday. With Halloween and the election in the last week having some extra people out and about, I don't see it slowing down any time soon. My school is pretty much the only one around me that is still in person, but I don’t think that will last much longer. Positives are all around us, including at our school, and it is only a matter of time before we have too many. The early elementary school in my district already closed from having at least 3 or 4 staff members test positive out of like 15 or 20 people working there.

Also, my grandma tested positive a couple weeks ago and is in pretty rough shape. I've never been close with her, and she is 99 and has Alzheimer's, so it's a blessing at this point. She spent a couple weeks in the hospital, and she's so weak right now, she can't really do anything. They're trying to figure out if there's even a chance she'll improve with physical therapy, or if they're just going to put her on hospice and let things run their course.

And I just looked and Illinois had almost 6400 cases today compared to about 5100 last Thursday. Set another record by about 200 cases. Pretty much everywhere I go, I hardly see anybody wearing masks. I'm glad I got our golf season out of the way because things are not trending in the right way right now.

Just be thankful you aren't in Illinois. On Tuesday, the governor said they were putting basketball on hold due to the surge of cases. On Wednesday, the IHSA said they would be moving forward with basketball, basically giving the middle finger to the governor's office. Last night, the state board of education said there could be consequences and liability issues for schools if they decide to play and defy the state's orders. Just crazy around here.

The rural area where I live, people are just being stupid. There's a pretty chance our school will have to go remote soon because of a school near us being dumbasses.

Thanks! You too!

Branden Dawson went to a 1 room schoolhouse?

Cracked open my candied jalapeños this weekend. Amazing. Triscuit, cream cheese, jalapeño. So delicious. The peppers from my garden were a little hot, so I could see finding some milder jalapeños, but they're still incredible. Here's the recipe.

My dad and my oldest brother are carpenters, so there was a lot of pressure to not do stupid stuff haha.

Thanks! The picture is a little darker than what it looks like in person, but it's pretty close. It was just starting to sprinkle when I took the picture, so the lighting wasn't great.

Thanks! The grade will come up a little bit, but I'm eventually going to put some kind of stone veneer on the foundation. The house is only 800 square feet, so I wanted my basement to feel like another floor and not like a basement. I have 9 foot basement ceilings, so I had to have the foundation pretty high to be able to get decent sized windows. Next year will hopefully be landscaping, so I'll get a window well for the egress window when I do the landscaping. The gutters were in pretty rough shape, so they're all going to get replaced. I might be able to transplant some of the trees growing in them! Also going to take a pressure washer to the soffit to try to clean it up. If all else fails, I'll throw a coat of paint on it.

Getting close to having siding finished on one side. Coaching golf will be done this week, so hopefully I'll have more free time coming up.

We were at the Kankakee Elks. Had our girls today, and the weather was great both days. That sounds a lot like my junior year in 2003. I still have nightmares about the weather that day.

Our boys won our first ever regional championship today. In Illinois, we do regionals first. Shot a 357, won by 20 shots, and took top 2 spots individually. Pretty fantastic day!