It's tricky to know how to navigate this. To be honest I am surprised there are residential camps for teenagers going ahead at all. I don't think that would be on here. Some outdoor activities have recommenced, loads of parents getting their offspring surfing classes from what I can see, at least on the days the beaches aren't closed because of the sh*t the rivers washed into thew ocean after last week's rains.

But restrictions are wearing a bit thin and the lack of any significant social interaction must weigh heavily on teenagers in particular. And while writing this a headline popped up in another tab that during the last two weeks of July 97.000 children tested positive for the virus in the US. That would be a serious worry, enough to warrant restrictions on them gathering.

New clusters here (and elsewhere) do indicate further easing of restrictions is not a good idea just yet even if the spread of the virus is relatively well under control, compared to some places anyway. But the prospect of a possible second wave is looming on the horizon if we don't stay the course.

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My brain hurts

As far as we can tell outdoors with space is pretty safe, but indoors with crowds is especially a disaster. We have been having people over in out backyard, which is fairly large, and we have a big screened porch with fans, big enough so we can be ten feet apart. So far we've been fine and so have all the neighbors, but of course it only takes one.

It's really rough on teenagers. Our daughter is a focused, self discipline person, introverted, very good at occupying herself at the piano or drawing or reading when not dancing, but it's really tough at her age to be limited to such a small world

I have a new book under way and a few of the archives I need just opened, but there is no way I'm going to do archival research right now.

I was talking to a friend about navigating the transition from recluse to hermit this morning as government restrictions are being tightened up once again in the face of rising CV19 inections in the country. It was inevitable I suppose and I am glad to have taken a few city trips over the past weeks to stock up on some essentials and feeling a bit like there's a world inhabited by other people out there, a world outside the twenty mile circle I have been confined to for the past six months anyway.

That said, I got a call from the local concert venue last week, asking if I wanted to avail of the tickets booked for me for a concert series that was axed last March. They are making attempt to hold the planned concerts in a fully socially distanced and face covered setting, starting late September. Small concert spread out in big auditiorium. That will be nice, hopefully, if it is to go ahead.

Meanwhile an unseasonable, named storm is expected to make landfall tonight, storm Ellen. Meh. Trees heavy with fruit will not take that well, for starters.

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My brain hurts

Not on the scale of storm Ellen, but five days a go we had a whopper where the sky was on fire with lightning - not just the stuff that illuminates from behind the clouds, but naked ropes of it crawling just beneath cloud-level like snakes, easily two big discharges per second, and it kept on coming, nonstop. That's a LOT of lightning, but while there was thunder, curiously no thunder came from the ropy part of the lightshow. It was unnerving, and it went on like that for a couple of hours or so. When the storm finally wound down and the rains were letting up, out in the street came little kids in their rain gear, playfully calling out to the thunder and showy lightning, "Here I am, Lord!" So cute.

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"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

Two things:

Nano, was that your view of the Derecho as it swept by to the South of you?

Mr. G. . .here´s hoping your roof and power hold up during this pounding. Ellen doesn´t sound very lady-like.

Bob

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Not everything you can count, counts. And not everything that counts, can be counted

The Expert's Mind has few possibilities.
The Beginner's mind has endless possibilities.
Shunryu Suzuki, Roshi

Thanks Bob. Ellen came and went. It was a bit wild overnight but I slept through most of it. Nothing untoward as far as I can see, plenty of branches that will keep us in kindling for the week. Did a sweep of the front garden for windfalls. We picked a few of the small trees last night but not the big one in front of the house. Only a small part of the fruit came down. Apple tarts and fruit crumbles for the forseeable.



Kept the power, Cork and Tipp were hit harder, if the news is anything to go by. Roof is pretty sound, even if it doesn't look it, and I used the lockdown to re-point the ridges where needed and fix things up a bit. The MET office seems to err on the side of caution each time, warning to stay in and all that, mortal danger! It's hard to know which way it's going to go in advance.

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My brain hurts

No, the derecho was 3 or 4 days earlier; this was a different system. As thunderstorms go this one would have been thought pretty standard, but its lightshow was remarkable enough that everyone talked about it. Even took the meteorologists by surprise, although they had an explanation: a higher than usual concentration of ice crystals in the cloud formations, I think it was.

Found an actual shot of the electrical storm, seen here at a George Floyd memorial:



Still not really raining yet. Now imagine such discharges carpeting the sky for as far as the eye could see, eerily silent, not high and far away but uncomfortably close overhead, often writhing, new ones every half second and overlapping, with the whole show going full-bore for a few hours straight, and you've got the idea. There was very little wind - just that crazy, living sky. Made me think of Chinese dragons coming out to play.

I didn't want to go out, but I had to before the rains started; so, since the horizontal nature of the lightning hadn't been converting to ground strikes at all for some reason, I took that bet and had a drive under the fireworks. Wherever you were you couldn't help but look up at the arresting spectacle, so I had to be extra-attentive behind the wheel. They could've made a movie scene out of that. The rains didn't come until an hour after I'd made it back home, and they were heavy, but otherwise comparatively normal if you factored out the spellbinding visuals.

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"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

Haute couture masks (one of these isn't like the others):

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"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

Captions, anyone?

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"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

OK......so how the hell do I put it on.....

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Keith.
Trying to do justice to my various musical instruments.

No. You need to wear it over your nose!

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"Only connect!"

https://youtu.be/ezbWVysJAOY
https://tapm.bandcamp.com/

I'll just evolve some ears and that's me sorted.

"They said it was for the birds. I don't get it."

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"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano