The Kuraoka Family Weekly Journal
www.kuraoka.org

Us, August 22, 2020: Leo, John, Ondine, Roy, Shadow

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

The year is winding down, and we're gearing up for our annual Year-in-Review in a couple days.

It was a kind of low-key Christmas break here, because lockdown meant we didn't travel to L.A. to spend time with John's family. Usually, there would be a big clan gathering at his sister's house, then Christmas day spent with his immediate family. This year, though, we had one of the few Christmases when that didn't happen.

For the record, we've missed the big family gatherings at least twice before, in 2010 when we took a Carnival Christmas cruise to Mexico with Barbara and Bill, and in 2013 when we took a three-generation trip to Japan with Barbara and Frances.

But this is definitely one for the books in that we stayed home. Instead, we had a lovely Christmas Eve dinner here at our house, which Barbara joined us for. We grilled up some chicken, and had yams and Brussels sprouts and a fresh salad with microgreens. Afterwards the boys settled in to playing games, first Connect Four with chess pieces, then chess. Meanwhile, we took a night walk.

Christmas Day, Ondine made waffles and we had a quiet at-home Christmas. Here are pictures of some of our favorite tree ornaments, including some very old family pieces and handmade ornaments from the kints over the years. The USS Enterprise was a gift this year from Roy to John; Roy printed it on his new 3-D printer!

We watched A Christmas Carol (the version with George C. Scott). We miss going to Glendale Centre Theatre with Grammy to see their live production of A Christmas Carol, but this is what we could do. On the plus side, the George C. Scott film is excellent, and we also saw the Dick Whittington Panto from the National Theatre in England, the first panto we've seen. It made John think of how much fun it would be to create an American Panto, blending topical humor and an annual review with our own folklore, like George Washington crossing the Delaware River (on Christmas night, by the way), and John Henry and Paul Bunyan.

It's a little weird to not have school, at least for Roy and John.

Ondine has been busy migrating her website (check it out at ondinealegra.com) and ramping up her Older Writer's Life newsletter. She's off work until after the New Year, so she's taking a Master Class in writing taught by Joyce Carol Oates.

Leo put himself on Fiverr, in case anyone needs custom electronic music. And, he too is working on a Master Class in music production, or at least he says he is.

John has been reading his way through a short stack of books about archaeology.

Shadow got a new collar for Christmas, it's orange with a reflective stripe.

Frances is still in quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19, along with a few other people at her senior living community. The whole place is in lockdown, and she says there's only about 50 or so people living there now. At any rate, she's staying in her room and off her foot, which should give her fibula time to heal after she fell and broke it last month. So far, she is completely asymptomatic, and says she feels just fine. Strong immune system! In totally unrelated news, John was compelled to write lyrics to "Grandma Caught Corona From a Reindeer." For the record, Grammy is nothing like the Grandma in the song! But it was too easy a thing to not go ahead and write down.

In coronavirus news, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Tracker shows that COVID-19 has been confirmed in over 81,713,200 people worldwide, and has claimed over 1,783,100 lives. The U.S. now has over 19,427,700 confirmed cases and over 336,500 deaths. In San Diego, our local toll rose to 147,530 cases with 1,404 deaths. Mandatory stay-at-home orders are in effect throughout California, and local ICU beds have been overrun by COVID-19 cases.

Neighborhood gas prices are about $3.29 per gallon.

Visit us often - this journal is probably the world's oldest continuously updated family blog, having been updated at least once a week since 1998! Who else has a 23-year-old active blog?