Wednesday December 30, 2020 I just came back from what has become my annual short trip down to Santa Clara. I left Sunday and came back this morning. 3 short days really. Left 4am, 10 hours down, had a late lunch Sunday with Mara with Poke bowls, then spent Monday with Jana walking around downtown San Jose and we sat at a table on the SJSU campus and had noodle soups, then walked around the Mission College campus where she spent her last two years of high school. On Tue Mara and I drove down to Santa Cruz, more on the north side and walked around. We stopped at the park cafe and she got a rock cod sandwich and I got a hot dog. Then we walked down to the board walk and got tshirts. One for each of us, and one for her current boyfriend "Mike" that I have never met. Then I left after dropping Mara off at the house, and spent the night in Eureka. The only wrinkle in the trip was getting a ticket from a cop just north of Crescent City "Passing in a turn
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Tuesday December 22 2020. My mom's birthday. Janice Cassin, born Dec 22nd 1934, married and became Janice Hebert and had four kids, me being the third, married again when we were all mostly grown, and became Janice Isenberg, then changed her name back to Janice Cassin again in the last decade of her life. My mom had two sisters, six and nine years older than her, so always was dismayed that her father's name (Cassin) disappeared once all the daughters married men and took their husband's last name. I was born Tod Hebert, but when my dad disappeared from my life in my 20s I told my mom that if I ever had children I would give them the last name Cassin. When I met Michelle and it looked like we were serious, I told her that if we ever had kids they would be Cassins, and she was fine with that. Then we got married and had two great daughters, and they both were given the Cassin last name. But then the complexities of 3 last names in the house, and schools always gettin
Wednesday December 16 2020. And so another month of COVID goes by. Solitude for all of us becomes the norm. Quiet days, and - unlike the summer - the house is cold so not much going out either. This is the normal season where people stay inside and go stir crazy, and with COVID and social distancing even more so now. This is also the season on the Oregon Coast when the rains settle in for the winter. Rain all day today, but I managed to get a good walk in before the day's onslaught. I have been quite disciplined in getting 40-50 miles of walking in a week since the beginning of the Pandemic, which for me consciously began on March 15. Its been 40 weeks since then, so I reckon I have walked about 1800 COVID miles so far. I have my set of 6 or 7 mile walks. With everybody indoors and breathing on each other, the virus is back to raging around the planet again. 300,000 deaths in America so far, with 17 million infected to date. Worldwide 75 million infec