The Year of the Pandemic

for the Baril Reimer family

It has kind of been a different sort of a year. A lot of staying close and watching nervously. A lot of being outside with friends because inside is apparently dangerous. A lot of learning how to get delivery and how to run remote media. But, so far, for us, not a bad year. We have been forced to slow down, stay put and appreciate our home, our family, and our friends. Some, of course, at a distance.

Given that this year was unique - we sincerely hope - we figured we would put our various photos of the year together and share them. There are a lot. Deid tends to ramble.

The content is mostly targeted at family, but we thought that friends might find this interesting too. So if some of the people are strangers to you that's OK. There won't be any quizzes.

So look at what you want to. No obligations.

December 2019

We hosted a Christmas party for the Raspberry Pi Computer group and the Camosun College Computer Science Dept. A good time was had by all us geeks. Imagine 20 plus people all in one room at the same time.

The Grand Dogs came over for Christmas last year

As did the Grand Kids.

January

Throughout the year Suzanne and I played and learned more about Ham (amateur radio)

We built a GO box. A portable ham radio that can work from 120 volt or 12 volt power so it will run from the RV or from the wall.

We put Ham plates on our vehicles. Free Vanity Plates. How cool.

Suzanne studied and received her advanced Ham license. Deid has yet to get his advanced. Covid intervened. That's his story and he's sticking to it.

It snowed and was pretty. But! It was still SNOW!

We took a course on emergency management and communications - ICS 100

Joined PEMO (Peninsula Emergency Measures Organization) in January, meetings canceled in March although we meet briefly on the radio weekly.

Deid did a Raspberry Pi presentations in person.
Lucille came for a visit to attend Angele Gamache's mom's funeral.
We babysat our grand kids - again in person.

February

Birthday Party for Kurt. Nothing special we thought. We do these thing 2 or 3 times a month. Right?

And all the other things we normally do:

Suzanne went to the dentist - again nothing special ...
We had breakfast with our Ham Group
Deid started teaching a weekly Intro to the Raspberry Pi computer course
Babysat our grand kids
Babysat our grand dogs
Had breakfast with our Pi group

February 28th - Dinner with friends in downtown Victoria. We stayed at the Parkside Hotel for the night. A simple normal thing to do.

Suzanne attended her Wednesday night acoustic jam in Sidney

March

CVARS Ham Swap Meet I bought some power supplies

PEMO Meeting on Sunday

Intro to Raspberry Pi Meeting on Tuesday

We bought an air fryer. The last time we went into a store other than for essentials. Like food, drugs and alcohol.

Thank God for the air fryer. We could not have survived without deep fried pub style fries. But, our purchase of this machine was pure luck. We did not know what was coming in a few days.

And then on Wednesday March 11th everything stopped

And we learned about social distancing

and bad jokes

And we learned about Zoom and Jitsi and Facetime and ... although better than nothing not really good enough.

First Online Raspberry Pi meeting on 14th of March
First Intro to Pi Meeting online on the 24th. This worked better than we expected. But no pizza and beer after the meeting. We missed that.
First Wednesday acoustic jam on line

April

26th Ham Antenna course canceled.

And there were lights. On April 2nd Suzanne
decided that since we were locked down and the
world out there was scary and frightening
she would put up lights on the fence.

Not to be outdone Deid, of course had to add some of his micro-controller driven LED lights so he could run them with his phone.

Clearly, you have to put the micro-controller somewhere.

Not to be outdone, in November Suzanne put up more and more Christmas lights.

Home school for Isabel and work from home for Kurt.

Easter

Entrepreneurs

Last Spring blooms for the cherry tree on April 14th 2020.
We had to remove it later in the year. It was 40 to 50 years old.
Cherry trees usually live 25 years or so. It had a very good run.

Mask construction started in April and is ongoing.

May

Some pottery was done from May to December. All by Suzanne. Graphs by Deid.

Bread started in May and it too is ongoing ...

After being terrified for a month or so we kinda got used to it. We started visiting on the patio, socially distancing and no touching and bring your own ...

Starting to meet with family and friends via Zoom and Jitsi and ...

We bought flour from the farm across the street. There was none in the stores. Jellybeans and KD were also in short supply. Lots of toilet paper by this time though.

Fortunately we have a good supply

These photos were taken during the 76th Swiftsure
race in 2019.

The 77th Swiftsure Sailboat race was canceled. It has, unfortunately been canceled for 2021 as well. We look forward to helping with communications in 2022.

June

Camping Started in Early June at Sooke River Campground.
A way for us to safely visit and see something other than
our house and yard.

Camping 7-12 Sooke River Campground with too many Music People.
Not shown but they were there whenever a ukulele came out.

Sooke River again on July 6th

GO Box and stove. We could not reach any of
the repeaters we normally use from the Sooke River campground.
But from Nanaimo the Nanaimo repeater came in
loud and clear.

July 30th Living Forest in Nanaimo
Same trailer every time.
We are becoming fond of it.

August 12th River Bend RV Park near Parksville
This picture is a suspension bridge crossing
the Englishman River, shown above.

Island View Beach August 26th - a few miles from home and a way for us to camp/visit with our neighbors and keep everyone safe and Bonnie Henry from being grouchy.

There are bears

September 10th Sooke River. Again. It was smokey from
the forest fires in California and Oregon. And,
eerily beautiful

October - Kin Beach near Comox and Suzanne's cousins Hubert and Diane's Farm. They joined us at Kin Beach Park for a couple of days then we camped at their farm for a couple of days.

And a fine adventure - courtesy of Garmin - was had as we made our way home. Google knew there was no real road here but Garmin was convinced. By the time we realized what we had gotten into the only choice was forward. 4 wheel drive came in handy.

There was gardening. Lots and lots of gardening. Everyone gardened all Spring and summer. And enjoying of gardens and watching flowers.

The squirrel removed itself. We moved the girl and

we modified our pond and river to add a waterfall.

This required modification to the control system. We're not just about flashy lights and funny hats.

How to get plants without going inside a store

This part of the gardens mostly do their own thing.

And Suzanne built new flower gardens

Catherine built epic food gardens

Christine built garden beds and then gardens. Not seen in this picture and yes they were there.

Outdoor camping birthday party for Granddaughter Evelyn. The dinosaurs are Christine and Steve. Deid was terrified. Not of the dinosaurs, but the people. They did not get social distancing. Suzanne and Deid hid in a corner. No more crowds after that.

We should have had Deid's Social Distancing hat. But that did not come until August.

July

Since we were home more than normal summers - where we wander about Alberta and the Northern US - we wandered about our neighborhood instead.

Tom, Suzanne and Deid (a little bit) painted Everything

The Decks

The blue house is changing after 30 years to gray

Tom adding the new improved gray

New gray

Done with the painting and new trim on all the doors and windows.

The fence got a paint job too

Catherine and Kurt acquired the use of a sailboat. Sailing courses here we come. See below.

August

The cherry tree came down in August.

We now have lots of firewood.

With the cherry tree gone we have ocean glimpses out of the bedroom window. We no longer have to climb onto the roof.

Social distancing hat. It beeps and flashes if people get closer than 2 meters. Unfortunately it also beeps and flashes if walls, trees, ..., get closer than 2 meters. But, it was fun and it causes people to be conscious. Or maybe they are thinking "step away from the weirdo". Either way it works.

https://youtu.be/kskl0ykmiJM

The sound maker should have been on top. It is hard on the ears.

September

Suzanne started playing music with her friends outdoors. Of course this has been going on all summer whilst camping

A youTube of Suzanne Practicing https://youtu.be/nI5drI26QpI

Ottawa Intro to Pi - an upside of being stuck at home. Reaching out further than normal.
More back patio visiting (We had Doug and Peg over for Turkey on the back deck somewhere in about here.)
Camping Sooke River 8th - 13th See above.

Deid built a Covid App so we can look at the numbers without the graphical interface that BCCDC seems to think is a good idea. The numbers on the Island were much better in July and August

October

October Birthdays

Christine (working) and Isabel

Deid - drinking the good stuff Ben with a carpenter apron

18th Sept. Appy's and wine in friend's carport.

Christine, Steve and friends built a deck. Yes, the deck is level. Really it is!

We had a family dinner party on the back patio with hot dogs and music

Halloween. We sat on the front deck and watched the monsters etc. take the
candy in bags from the card table on the driveway.

Christine had a table too (pictured)
and the grand kids actually dressed up.

I was going to turn all the lights off and hide in a closet.
But! Suzanne could not turn the lights off!

November

On the 1st of November we had party to celebrate the 30 Anniversary of our family moving to Vancouver Island. The whole family was present on the back patio. We just forgot to take any pictures...

Catherine took a sailing course. She's in one of those boats.

Gianette, Suzanne's cousin, stopped by for a visit during her Island music tour.

Envelope stuffing. Politics. We had a provincial election in BC. Suzanne and I ignored it other than voting, but we are still supporting our Federal Candidate.

December

Spy Cameras - Deid worked on this for a while, but kind of finished in December.

The cameras watch around the house so if we ever leave home again we can check to make sure the rats, cats and elephants are behaving without supervision.

Mostly they watch Deid and sometimes Suzanne. Sometimes the back deck at dawn.

In January Suzanne started the work to redesign and rebuild the baril.name genealogy website. With assistance from translate.google.com, she is currently in the process of translating the site from English to French on baril.org. It is still a work in progress...

The links will open in a new tab or page

Tourtiere was created. Also captured by a spy cam.

Since Isabel was old enough to hold an ornament she has come
over to the grandparents house to help decorate the Christmas
tree. We used a large step stool for her to get to the top of the
tree to add the star.

This year because Bonnie would have a fit Isabel can't do
that. She had to stay home and help decorate her
parents' tree. Dad works almost as well as a step stool.

Christmas 2020