A news headline that has stuck out to me? Of course it would be the inauguration. My take as a teacher, I can give you perspective from the lens of an elementary school teacher. I had great reservation about showing the inauguration live to my students, particularly after the insurrection, two perhaps three weeks ago. I was a little concerned that something could happen during the live inauguration ceremonies that I would rather my students not see. However, upon the realization that Washington D.C. was more or less going to be in just about military lockdown more or less, it seemed pretty safe. Chances of something going wrong seemed pretty low. And then I also saw a tweet from Dr. Jill Biden and Jill Biden shared a link to the inauguration the day before, to a link for a student-friendly inauguration ceremony. It had fun facts on the screen, it had explanations of procedure. Frankly, it was honestly a fun form of inauguration coverage for adults as well. Cause there were a number of facts that I did not know throughout. So, I did opt to show the inauguration to my students and I'm really thankful and glad I did. These times are -- these are wild times. I tell my kids frequently that they're living through history as we speak and I believe I spoke on this last week. We discuss the creation of the United States in fifth grade and we discuss things like primary sources, secondary sources, where do we get -- who tells history? And where do we get our facts and artifacts and sources from in history? And I tell these guys that they are the sources for future generations right now just by being here and a witnessing so many historic events this year.

Another thing I do in the community and I don't tell a lot of people about this, but as long as you're asking. At my church, which we've been closed since last spring, we've been doing all our church services virtually. But I had been bringing flowers to the church in memory of my mom on her birthday, in memory of my dad on his birthday, and in memory of both of them on their anniversary. And when the church service was over, what I would do with the flowers is I would take them, because they'll just die and somebody else has to get flowers. I would take the plant or the flower, whatever it was, I'd take it to a local nursing home and I would tell them to give them to somebody who probably should get flowers but never does. Y'know there's always somebody in a nursing home who's forgotten or there's no one in their family or no one that knows or no one that cares, sadly. And that's a sad thing. But I do that too, so I'll bring a flower, hopefully that'll brighten somebody's day.

This past week has been a big one for me. So, I got my second dose of the covid-19 vaccine on Tuesday. So the first dose I had just like a little bit of arm pain and a tiny headache, and it was nothing. And then I really started getting nervous cause as I started hearing about other people that had gotten a second dose they said, you know, “well, it's gonna be -- gonna feel it a little more, it's gonna be a little more rough probably.” Of course everyone reacts differently, but you know, in general. So I'm in my mid-thirties, so I kind of figured it, I'm pretty healthy, pretty good immune system, wasn't super worried about it. It was unpleasant. But when I think about the stories I've heard about actually having COVID, I would do it again. I definitely had gotten it at a quarter to 8 on Tuesday morning, and I worked the rest of that day. And then by about 10 or 11 PM I was feeling kind of tired and just sort of like overall, not a general feeling of unwell, basically. So I went to bed and I woke up at midnight. Muscle aches, joint pain, chills, my skin just like, I couldn't get comfortable and my skin just felt like it didn't want to be touching my other skin. It was extremely uncomfortable, and I pretty much didn't sleep for the rest of the night. I think I fell asleep at like 3:00 for maybe an hour. The rest of the night was that, and then I couldn't eat or drink just felt really terrible. I don't think I had a fever but I don't know, I just, I didn't want to get up so I just laid in bed for about 12 hours. By noon, I pretty much felt better. I went out. I mean I got up, and I was able to kind of like do my normal things for the day.