New Year, new me (but not really)

Christmas and New Years seemed to rush past. Got to spend some great time with the kids though. While a lot of 2021 was working from home, trying to work full time and supervise kids and homeschool all at once was such an impossible task. Being able to go with the kids to the park, or to have a water balloon fight in the back yard, or go to the movies together has been such a wonderful thing during the summer break. While there have been the occasional fights and arguments, we have probably had more quality time together over the past few weeks than probably all of 2021 combined. That being said, the Omicron COVID variant is running rampant through the state and alot of people have been going into self-imposed lockdowns even though the state governement is not mandating anything other than a 7 day self-isolation if a confirmed case. We (My family) are trying to limit our exposure lest we risk the much anticipated annual kids camping trip (I also just had my third vaccination shot which knocked me around a bit this time) but I feel there is more a feeling of complacency now than with the previous variants. Given how many people are coming down with it recently, PCR testing takes forever and the Rapid Antigen tests (RAT) are almost impossible to source. I went to 2 chemists last week to buy some, one chemist had already sold out, I managed to purchase 5 from another chemist but later, I was notified that a positive case had been in both locations the same time. It seems you can't go anywhere without coming into contact with a positive case. There have also been some reports of businesses selling Rapid antigen tests for $35 which is crazy! The only other time I have left the house was for groceries but later found out that a positive case was reported from there as well. Thankfully no symptoms so I'm hoping we manage to escape it all but its getting to the point where I feel it will be a matter of when rather than if. If it could just wait until after the camping trip, that would be great!
The issue of supermarkets running out of food is also getting a little bit scary. Could not buy any beef mince or chicken of any kind last week. Only gourmet sausages and lamb steak (which were both delicious by the way but totally not what was planned for). All painkillers have disappeared from the shelves but there seems to be a lot of panic buying just generally. I just hope it is all over soon.

In the mean time, while I am still working on learning the piano, I have also been working on my Blender 2D/3D content creation skills. A Humble Bundle offer came up recently for a bunch of courses through gamedev.tv which I have been really enjoying. While I have dabbled in Blender before, it involved a lot of youtube video watching for specific tasks and I had forgotten a lot of it. I have really enjoyed these lessons from gamedev.tv - great production value, very easy to follow along and one of the outcomes of a course is displayed with this post. Am I about to become a professional artist? Definitely not, but I enjoy learning and having the skill to create 2D and 3D art I think is pretty handy. I think the ultimate goal would to create some kind of narrative game or movie but I'm still a long way off.

Speaking of games and movies (just entertainment in general), I am currently half way through a Mass Effect trilogy run through on insanity level which has seen me stuck in a few places but it is such an epic story, I am loving every minute of it! The other thing I have been really getting into recently is the Andy Weir title "Project Hail Mary".