Birthdays, fishing with Alex, live on-line class

The one time I got away from the house yesterday was to participate with Mama in a “birthday parade” for Nathan, Trace’s youngest boy. Mama had gone out to get silly string and confetti eggs for the drive by birthday, so she wanted me to drive while she bombed Nathan. I have to admit that it was fun. I am not sure how many others had been by the house, but we did what we could to give Nathan a happy birthday. And today, those birthday activities will continue as Joshua and Alicia celebrate birthdays today (Joshua) and tomorrow (Alicia). Also, today, one of the Miller boys is celebrating a birthday, so they are coming to the farm. It will give the kids a chance to stretch their legs and see Mama’s little zoo. They will not stay long this time. They are headed to a relative’s house in Gainesville for an actual birthday party. I like the drive by idea. It saves a lot of money hosting a party and it does not restrict the invitation list at all. Anyone who wants to can participate. – and you don’t have to feed or entertain them. In our current isolation stratagem, it is a great idea. One we might want to keep going. I vote yes.

Yesterday afternoon, Alex and Leslie came over to go fishing. We were at the lake about 4:40. We started catching fish right away. I caught two bass and a small crappie. Leslie caught a large crappie. It was almost an hour before Alex caught his first crappie. We tried several places and had limited success by my standards, but my Chinese friends were overjoyed. They had been fishing several times at Bridgeport lake and had caught nothing. This was really exciting to them. It was fairly cool for this time of year – about 52°. I wore a vest over a long sleeves shirt and was okay for a while. but after a couple hours, I started to get chilled. The wind was steady at about 15 mph. I told Alex and Leslie, I needed to get out of the cool air and they told me they would walk back to the house if I did not mind leaving them to continue fishing. By that time, we had caught about twelve nice bass and crappie. Many had been thrown back. We were only looking for the bigger ones.

I left them there about 7 pm. I went back to the farm and fed the calf her evening bottle, helped Mama with a few late evening chores and drank a little hot broth. About 8:15 I drove over to the lake to check on Alex and Leslie. They were just starting home. I do not think they realized how long a walk it was going to be. They had the bucket of fish between them supported on their two fishing poles while they carried all the other items we had brough for our evening fishing trip. They were obviously struggling with the weight of the bucket of fish the water used to cover them. They had only just started the long walk home when I met them. They were delighted to see me. Once we were offloaded at the house, we talked about splitting the catch, but I told them to keep all the fish. The only thing I asked is that Alex cook one of the fish the way they normally do so I could share that meal with Mama. He quickly agreed.

This morning, we are doing our first ever online Instructor Led Training from the office. One of my coworkers is presenting the class. It is set up to be a refresher class for a group of individuals that have taken this class multiple times. The client we are presenting to is a long-time client and agreed to be the guinea pig class for this premier presentation. I am curious to see how it will go – especially from the presentation angle. One of the things that brings a class to life is the participation and engagement of the participants. Here, there will be no face-to-face interaction. Only a live stream. One on one, that is effective. Think Facetime. But in a group or classroom setting it is fragmented. Those who would be reluctant to be drawn in in an in-person classroom setting will be very reluctant to participate in this setting. They have no reason to do so. But we will see.

It is something that is long overdue. I have been after our management for three years to offer something like we are doing this morning. My idea has been to produce a computer-based course for this need versus doing something live. I believe we will lose something in delivery if we try to do only remote classes, but I will not make that decision. we will learn from this one and make all the required improvements as we learn.

Ready. Fire. Aim.