We have a cabinet upstairs that we call the office supply cabinet. It was a mess but it had batteries, printer paper, printer ink, tape, and a whole bunch of other things in it. When I finished the dresser project, I tackled three quick organization builds in order. They were built out of scrap wood and aren’t much to look at but I get a smile on my face every time I need to grab something from that area!
Whether this is your first time seeing our card or your second, we hope you had a blessed Christmas! Things were obviously a lot different for us this year, but we found that we enjoyed a lot of the changes. With kittens in the house, we didn’t put up as many decorations which means less work when it comes time to taking them down. And with the global pandemic raging, we skipped all the parties, trips, visits, etc. I’m not saying we won’t enjoy doing them in the future, but it sure was relaxing to just enjoy the holiday season. When you strip away all the traditions and fluff around the holiday, we’re left with more time to focus the birth of our Savior and our eagerness for his second coming to take us to heaven.
1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register.
4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.
8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.
This one is a little geeky but stick with me. Have you noticed how sometimes when you type in the address bar, it changes the UI a little bit and then performs a search on whatever you typed? For example, if you start with “amazon” and a space, it says “Search amazon.com”. Did you know that you can customize this? This post assumes you’re using the new Microsoft Edge browser (it’s fantastic, highly recommended) or Chrome. Let’s use my website as an example.
You can do this for any website that has your search string in the URL. I use it for all kinds of stuff at work like looking up bug numbers or live site incidents. At home I use it for quickly looking up Bible verses. I have defined a search engine called “ehv” (for Evangelical Heritage Version) with a URL like this “https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?version=EHV&search=%s”. I have another one for the NIV translation.
Once I learned about this, it took me a little while to grasp it’s power and also to remember to use it, but now I’m hooked!
On Monday I mentioned that I couldn’t find a good graph showing the increased number of deaths in 2020 (from any cause) in the US. This post is a quick update to say that I’ve found better data. This ourworldindata website shows the number of deaths per week and compares it to previous years. You can also choose other countries and read about where they get their data sources. Note that their data isn’t fresh enough to show a lot of impact from the current spike that we’re going through.
Reddit user sjaquemate took a few countries and made radial line graphs for various countries.
Hopefully you’re not burnt out on Christmas music yet because this post has a bunch of it! Elijah has been learning Silent Night and I’ve recorded 3 songs as well. Two of these videos will be popping up on our church Facebook page leading up to Christmas as well. I put out a call for people to submit videos of themselves playing Christmas music and we got a good response. There are some amazing musicians in our congregation! The first video will launch today at 4pm and then continue daily up to Christmas.
Friday was an exciting day: the FDA approved the use of the Pfizer vaccine and since then, the CDC has also recommended it! Health care workers have been bearing a heavy load this year, but they will be rewarded with the first vaccines and a dramatic increase to their safety while they do their jobs. My family and I are probably still looking at waiting until at least next summer before we get it. This New York Times calculator gives a rough idea of what part of the line we’re in and as expected, we’re pretty much at the end of the line.
Globally, it’s hard to imagine how long it will take to distribute this. In the US it’s maybe a bit easier to estimate but the numbers are sobering when you think about the current death rate. I’ve seen a couple charts like this one that show the number of deaths per day over the last ~10 years, but I’ve only see them for other countries. From what I’ve seen, it takes the US a year or two to collect the final statistics, but using data from 1999-2018 and provisional numbers from 2019 and 2020 is still interesting. If you take the maximum number of monthly US deaths from 1999-2018 and compare them with this year, you can see the impact of COVID. April was 37% (+86,000 deaths) higher than the previous max, May was 18% higher (+42,000) and June was 11% higher (+24,000). The data only goes through June, but given the peak in July and the one that we’re going through now, I expect it to continue to be ugly. There are some other small factors that contribute to the increase like increasing population, but if you look at the trends, these numbers are extreme outliers and they’re in the same ballpark as the COVID death totals we’re seeing. [UPDATE: I found better data. See this follow up post.]
Someone recently mentioned that stem cells were used to produce vaccines and it felt like a gut punch. I’ve been so excited for the development of the vaccines that I hadn’t even considered that. Thankfully that wasn’t totally correct. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were created without the use of stem cells.
On the home front not much has changed. We were hunkered down for Thanksgiving and we’ll do the same for Christmas. Hospitalization rates are almost back up to where they were at the end of March and the numbers are still going up. The isolation gets old but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and we’re not giving up now.
Tyla and I have been plowing through the episodes of Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions. There’s so much good content in each episode and it’s really helpful to hear smart people talking about tough issues.
Pastor is putting out a series of videos covering the psalms and one of the most recent was Psalm 34. It’s full of reminders to take refuge in the Lord and put our trust in him:
The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears.
Psalm 34:17-19
From all their distress he delivers them.
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.
He saves those whose spirits have been crushed.
Many are the troubles of the righteous,
but the Lord delivers him from them all.
Every year we add a new ornament to the tree to commemorate something big from the year like a family vacation. But what kind of ornament would we get from 2020? We thought about one of the funny ones like “Our First Pandemic“, but we wanted to remember the good stuff about the year. This called for a custom ornament. To the CNC machine!
This year’s ornament has two photos that we snapped on random family adventures. The top one is Rasar State Park which we loved because it was beautiful and we could carve out our own piece of riverfront without anyone else around. The bottom picture is from a rainy hike at Saint Edward Park. We did a lot of rain hikes because we knew nobody else would be crazy enough to hike in that weather! The ornament also has the outline of two cats near the top for the new additions to our household.
You can see our past ornaments in these posts: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2008-2010
The current situation isn’t great: since I wrote last, cases have continued to rise. Increased restrictions don’t seem to be bringing the numbers down. The daily confirmed case counts are higher than they’ve ever been around here, but it’s hard to compare the various peaks since we’re always increasing the number of tests being performed. The death count is probably a better way to compare, but it is a lagging indicator. It takes people a while to die once they get it and then reporting takes more time. The chart below (source) shows where it’s at now, but it feels like we’re going to hit close to the peak from March. Hopefully it’s not worse than that. It will be hard to tell because the reporting is going to be wonky during Thanksgiving week because of people traveling, the day off, etc.
Despite the increasing death count, there has been some very encouraging news about vaccine trials and we could be a few weeks away from it being approved for emergency use. In the first world, the rollout could easily take a year and it will take much longer than that to cover the globe. Given that we aren’t frontline medical workers or in a high risk group, I expect it will be next summer-ish before my family gets it, but we’ll be lined up and ready to go when our turn comes. It’s easy for me to get bogged down dreading all the misinformation that’s going to spread causing more deaths because some people won’t get the vaccine, but I’m trying to stay positive. It’s incredible that we can even have the discussion about vaccines already, and I’m thankful for all the rules and regulations that are in place to produce a safe and effective treatment. What a bonus that there are a few vaccines that all look promising. I keep thinking about going through this 20 years ago. How would we have even gotten information about the vaccines? And yet today I searched around for info on the vaccine and was immediately presented with CDC pages including this page for individuals and a deeper page targeted at health care professionals. The road ahead won’t be easy, but it’s the way out of this mess. Stick that needle in me so I can safely leave my home and figure out what our new normal looks like.
Continuing the positive internet news, the seemingly unlikely duo of Bill Gates and Rashida Jones launched a podcast. I’m not all the way through the episodes they’ve released so far, but I’m really enjoying it. Rashida Jones asks the questions we’re all thinking, Bill Gates has devoted his life to global eradication of diseases, and they bring in additional experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci. The episodes aren’t all focused on COVID, but the series starts off in that subject area.
On the home front, we had a very different Thanksgiving, but as with all things this year, we looked for new opportunities to make special memories. We made all our favorite foods, baked Christmas cookies and got started with Christmas decorations. We had already planned to do Thanksgiving with just the three of us many weeks ago, but that decision was reinforced by a strong request from health officials to not celebrate outside of your household. On top of that, Elijah has a cold and got a COVID test on Tuesday (a negative result came back within 24 hours) so with all that piled on, we were thankful that we already had plans to stay in our bubble. Christmas will be the same way.
As I wrap up this check-in, I’m taking comfort from Deuteronomy 31:8:
The Lord himself will go ahead of you. He will be with you. He will not abandon you, and he will not forsake you. Do not be afraid and do not be overwhelmed.
Those words were from Moshes to Joshua and all the Israelites just before they entered Israel. Their situation was so much more stressful and complicated than this lockdown but those same promises apply to us. God is a constant. God is guiding our path. God is here.
2020 Year in Review
Some years I start off this “year in review” post and wonder what I’ll say. This year I start it off wondering how I can write it without diving into all the emotions around the global pandemic that knocked us upside the head. In the beginning, we didn’t know what the virus was, how deadly it was, how it spread, or what preventative measures helped. Much of that got figured out but then it became a communication problem. A vaccine was created unbelievably quickly and it looks like the light at the end of the tunnel but there’s still a lot of tunnel left. It feels like the next couple months could be horribly bad with the spike from people celebrating Christmas and all the other factors that are already contributing to the body count. And there we go, it only took a few sentences and I’m getting sucked in. I’ll leave the wrapup of that stuff to Bill Gates who wrote an excellent post about things to be hopeful for in 2021 and what we can learn from 2020.
Let’s back up a bit. Back in February, I had an amazing adventure (business trip) to Israel. The main purpose was to visit a team that I work with closely and spend time on their turf. That created some strong relationships and partnerships that have been incredibly useful and enjoyable. But beyond that, it was my first time really being out of the country (not counting Canada and Caribbean cruises). On top of that, I got to spend a day walking around Jerusalem. That day plays through my mind on a regular basis. I want to go back and see more of the Biblical sites. While we know the city has changed a lot since Bible times, it’s a lot closer than anything I see around Woodinville. It’s neat to read the Bible with those pictures in my head.
That trip was happening just as the first COVID cases were hitting our area and the first Paris case happened on the day we flew through. On the flight from JFK to Seattle, I sat next to a guy wearing a mask, coughing like mad and downing prescription meds. At the time I thought, “Eh oh well, who knows what he has but hopefully I won’t get it.” Now that situation is the stuff of nightmares!
Work has been very good to me. We were one of the first companies to send everyone home and we’ll be one of the last ones back in the office (current estimate is July 2021.) It took a while to adjust to this but I think a lot of us are realizing that it’s pretty great. I don’t spend ~1.5 hours a day sitting in traffic, I save money on gas and I get to spend more time with my family. Now I wake up and wonder why I’m living in a subdivision when I could be doing this job from anywhere with high speed internet. It’s hard to imagine moving and starting over on all the home improvement projects but it’s getting more and more tempting to move somewhere with a little more land whether that’s 5 acres around here or 50 acres in Montana or Wyoming.
Elijah’s school closed down pretty shortly after I started working from home. Thank goodness that Tyla is a trained teacher because she did a great (and difficult) job helping him to finish off first grade. Schooling from home is going to change the scholastic course of a lot of kids, but for Elijah, so far I’d say that it has been a good thing. We put a strong focus on reading and kudos to him because his reading skill level has skyrocketed. Second grade has been mostly in person with lots of rules to avoid spreading COVID and all that extra reading work has been paying off. He loves math and with his solid reading skills, the other classes are going smoothly too.
The lockdown wiped our calendar clean but we tried to fill it up with more family activities. Here’s at least a partial list of the parks that we visited: Langus Riverfront Park, Tahoma National Cemetery, Brickyard Road Park, Lake Easton State Park, Kanaskat-Palmer State Park, Saint Edward State Park, 60 Acres Park, Flaming Geyser Park, Hyak Sno-Park, Marina Beach Park, Lord Hill Park, Seaquest State Park, Rasar State Park, Deception Pass State Park. Many of those were in the rain or very early in the morning to avoid crowds but it was fun to explore. We even got in a couple camping trips.
Early on in the lockdown, I struggled listening to the internetz talk about how bored they were and how they couldn’t find anything to fill their time. I dream of empty time that I can fill with hobbies like woodworking but even with cutting out my commute time, I felt stretched very thin. Work was extremely busy as we worked hard to find extra capacity for everyone who was ramping up their online presence and also provide extra support for all the research teams who were fighting the virus. Before the lockdown hit, I made some coasters for Elijah’s school fundraiser, but the major project was the chest of drawers. That took me an enormous amount of time and it’s still not quite done because I’m working on smell issues with the finish that I used, but I’m happy to be moving on to other projects.
My time has also been filled up with a lot of work for church. Pastor, the organists and I have been working together to pump out online church services every week. I had intended to learn Davinci Resolve to step up my editing game so when these church services popped up, I dove in. It was a very steep learning curve but I’m so glad that I learned it. Pastor and I have been having some editing fun with a few of the children’s sermons like the one on Pentecost when I made a flame appear over his head.
As an elder, I was (and still am) involved in a lot of difficult discussions about whether we should be having in-person services or not. Amidst all that, I tried to really pump up our online offerings beyond just the online services. We started doing member spotlights, sharing pumpkin carvings, posting Christmas music played by members, etc. I pray that it will play some small part in keeping our members close to God’s Word and that when we’ve able to safely worship together again, the church will be full.
One of the other changes from this year just climbed up the curtain: we got two cats! Tyla and I have spent years chatting about whether or not to get a pet and what kind of pet to get and we finally pulled decided to get two cats. We adopted them from a shelter in Stanwood and they have filled our house with joy and snuggles ever since.
So yes, it’s easy to focus on the negatives from this year, but hitting reset on our entire calendar had a lot of benefits to it too. My hope is that as we look back on this year, we’ll remember a lot of fun family times and how we got through it together.
Previous Year In Review Posts: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019