Lascours Lockdown, Day 488

Thursday, July 15th. 

This morning, it was quite gusty. However, Louis and Hilaire eventually showed up and started working on the driveway.

At 8:45, I had to connect to Zoom for the online department head election. There were some technical issues, so it ended up taking an hour. Afterwards, the girls and I went out to do birthday party shopping. We found a piñata, things to stuff it with, and paper plates and napkins. We also bought some dried lavendar for making the cake. I think it'll be more flavorable than what we harvested from our own garden last year. Meanwhile, Sylvain was at home with the TV installation guy. Our new TV is now fixed to the wall and looks great. Now, we just have to get a new TV cabinet to go underneath or around it.

This afternoon, Gabrielle and Amanda came to play with the girls. Louis was laying the new surface right in front of the patio, so anytime they wanted to go anywhere, we had to go down to the end, jump across to the dirt under the Judas tree and walk along the rock wall, as the back part of the new surface was laid yesterday and was already dry. I think they mostly played tag and hide-and-seek, and sat around talking and eating snacks.

There was a bit of chaos from about 6 to 7 when Alain showed up to pick up Gabrielle with little Louis and he started playing hide-and-seek with the girls. Meanwhile, big Louis showed up with three little tortoises for the girls. Amanda's dad arrived next, but I'd handed my phone off to Sylvain for the photo below and he'd laid it down on the patio table, so we didn't get David's message that he was waiting for us at the bottom of the hill, and he ended up having to walk up to collect his daughter.

I MacGyvered up a makeshift separation in the cage so the big tortoises don't hurt the little ones while they all get used to the idea of each other. We'll try to work on the fence for the larger enclosure this weekend, or Monday at the latest. More space is desperately needed now. The girls have named the newest arrivals Chorizo, Cosmic and Cherry.

In Covid stats, the 7-day moving average continues to climb back up. The Delta variant is now at 62.5% of new cases in France, and 75.7% in the BDR. R is back up to 1.5 in France, and 1.76 in PACA. The incidence rate is at 40.3 for France, and 54.5 in the BDR. 41.6% of the population is now considered fully vaccinated. Information published this morning indicates that non-vaccinated people are 12 times more likely to spread the virus than vaccinated people.

The new vaccination policy will help, but not soon enough to stave off a (small?) fourth wave. It needed to be enacted at least a month ago, I think. Unfortunately, even after 18 months of ups and downs following the same pattern, people still won't believe it until they see it, which in cases like this is already too late.