I ordered Legos for myself. After watching Lego Masters: Australia and enjoying that show so much and feeling inspired by the creativity and teamwork of the groups, and building my own Captain America (thanks, Shari) and triceratops (thanks, parents), how could I not purchase a basic kit for myself? I decided some of my April fun budget should and could go to legos and boom, they got delivered late last week. On Saturday, Shari and I built our own mini masterpieces. I wanted to build a city block, like the contestants do on the first episode of the show, but I didn’t have quite the skill that they have so I ended up with a courtyard with a tree in it and a stand alone water fountain. My pieces were definitely something an elementary school child could build (I haven’t figured out the subtly of curves yet) but no bother, as is always true with new endeavors, you have to start somewhere. I shall take my time learning Lego and learning how to put them all together. It’s fun to just connect things and to look at all the different pieces too. This basic set is not at all what the set was like when I was a kid. There are so many new pieces that I don’t recognize and have no idea what their function is. I’ll find out eventually, I’m sure! Shari built a blue and grey scale house with a cute pink and purple roof.
On Sunday, I met up with my meetup friends and we went ax throwing! I’ve never thrown axes before so this was a new experience for me. Plus, I hadn’t seen all of my friends in one place since October so it was wonderful seeing everyone again. Ax throwing is fun, and, if you don’t care about accuracy or hitting a specific ring, is really easy. Ok, I take that back, there were many times I threw my ax and instead of lodging itself in the wood block, it bounced off and hit the ground. So it’s not easy, but it is something that everyone can do, you don’t need a lot of strength in order to play. The group next to us were all middle schoolers (I assume they were middle school cause they were tiny but maybe they were in high school, age is hard to gauge). I hit the bullseye a couple of times as you can see by the picture of the left!
Then, this past Tuesday, Shari ran a trivia night for our weekly meetup video chat. She spent hours looking up and creating questions for us and on Tuesday evening we all gave it our best go. I named myself “What in Carrnation?!” and am happy to say I tied with my friend, Mel, for first place. I didn’t go in planning on winning or even wanting to win so that was a pleasant surprise. I had a blast and hopefully another of our group members will run another trivia night for us in the near future, it was a hit.
AND, yesterday I got my second vaccine shot! In 13 days I will be fully vaccinated and at this point I am 80% protected from catching covid so I feel like life is good. I am grateful that I didn’t have the pounding headache that I know a handful of people get after the second shot. I am tired and I seem to have had a slight allergic reaction to it as my legs were itching like crazy this morning, but it could be worse. I took this afternoon off from work so I could take a nap and relax, in hopes that I’ll be back to my normal energy level tomorrow. I couldn’t help but tear up as I drove to the vaccine site yesterday and as I saw all the other people in their cars lined up for the shot. It felt so surreal and also hopeful. Of course, there’s more work to be done, as my sister, Kaitlin, mentioned to me yesterday, not all countries are privileged like us. The poorer countries are still suffering because our country has bought most of the vaccines. So I will be grateful for my privilege but also remember that this isn’t over. Still, I look forward to indoor game nights and time spent with my friends without masks on. It’ll happen. 🙂
Just Lauren 