Robotics Ref'ing Again

With the upsurge in COVID Omicron cases, robotics teams have once again turned to Zoom to run their competitions. In St Louis, it worked out especially well this past weekend as they got 3 inches of snow on Saturday and the coaches probably would have had trouble driving the kids and their robots across town.

I always enjoy working with the St Louis refs, mostly because they are just so darn silly. One of them found out how to add graphics to his picture and pretty soon the whole crew was looking hilarious.

In Denver, we've only had one big snowfall this year and it really wasn't all that deep. Mostly the days have been in the 50's - warm enough to get outside, but evidently not warm enough to melt the ice and snow that's still hanging around on the north side of houses and in the shade of trees. I went out on my first bike ride of 2022 (weird to think of riding my bike in January). The trail was mostly clear, but I found one really bad stretch of ice on a steep hill. I opted to be safe and walked my bike around it.

Courtney and I are still painting together via Zoom on weekends. We've been teaching ourselves to paint snowy mountains (from photos, not real life - my blood isn't thick enough to paint outdoors in the snow).

When Courtney came to visit, she nicknamed the chair in our livingroom the "timeout chair." We have such beautiful views, especially sunrises, that we turned the chair to look out the window. It does tend to look a little weird facing away from the couch, but we turn it back around when we have company.

The other day I found some swivel chairs on Wayfair, so I bought a couple to replace our one timeout chair. They're a bit loud, but our house is so neutral it can stand to use a little color. Plus, we can both sit in them and look out the window. And if someone comes over to visit, we can just swivel around to talk to them. And even though Courtney made fun of the timeout chair, I noticed she spent a lot of time in it drinking coffee and looking out the window herself.