My life is mostly meetings now. Occasionally I can find time in between meetings to actually do things, and hopefully that contribution is enough that people decide to keep me around!

Seriously though, work and school from home is hard work. I think I've managed to adapt well enough and once again the kids have managed to impress me with their ability to adapt to whatever 'normal' comes their way as long as we can provide stability at home.

They get bored though, and their ingenuity at finding new ways to muck up is starting to leave me... impressed.

Kate managed to figure out that the best way to 'look' like you are paying attention is to run a youtube window beside your zoom meeting, and I caught James in what appeared to be a comfortable nap during a class meeting a few weeks ago.

While I had always thought that a big part of parenthood was sharing your life experiences and (questionable) wisdom with your children in the hope that some of it might sink in, I had never imagined that I'd need to sit down and have a talk on surviving 'boring online meetings' until at least college - which us Aussies call uni (university). I believe the silver lininig in all of this is that this generation of students is getting a crash course in a lot of life skills that could be extremely useful in the coming years.

I've taken some time off this week which has been nice and have begun pottering around home on my kubernetes cluster again, which has been a nice way to sharpen some IT skills and keep me sane.

The first hint of winter came with a very early snowfall this year and while we're in year three in Massachusetts, this was met with the same delight and excitement by Heidi that we've seen in years past.

The pandemic has become an ever-present background noise to life here. I've been astounded at how this has brought so many different mindsets and opinions to the surface and for a challenge that requires a coordinated community response these make things very difficult. Here's hoping things improve from here on out.