Easter Bunnies

Welcome, heathen reader, as we celebrate the distinctly pagan-tinged festival of Eostre. Here in the US, Easter is definitely different to back in the UK, so let's try to shed some light on what's different and what's very much the same.

Perhaps the biggest difference to the working population is that Easter in the UK means a 4 day weekend, whereas here there's no such luck: neither the Friday nor the Monday are public holidays here. That said, the schools have Spring Break round about this time, so you have plenty of folks taking time out from work anyway. In fact it seems like many of the colleges hold open days during that Spring Break period, so many of our colleagues and neighbours with college-age kids are off travelling to visit universities (or "schools" as they call them here) in exotic-sounding places.

That 4-day holiday has made Easter a traditional DIY-fest in the UK, with hardware retailers enjoying record takings at this time of the year. No such evidence of that here; however we'll be going to the hardware store later to stock up on charcoal for my birthday barbecue, which is scheduled for next weekend.

One thing which is common on both sides of the pond is the entirely natural desire to load up on all kinds of egg-themed confectionery, with 'Today In The Bay' going as far as listing out the favourites in a recent survey as follows:

Helen's a big fan of the Reese's, but not so much a fan of the American take on hot crossed buns, which are firstly rather difficult to get hold of, and secondly lack some of the attributes of what makes such things unique to this time of year:

In other news, as of April the 1st, Helen's now eligible for the vaccine. That doesn't mean she has an appointment, it just means she's eligible, in roughly the same way that we're all eligible to go and collect unicorn droppings by moonlight should the mood take us. I'm sure we'll get scheduled for inoculation soon, but I'm not convinced the classic market-led strategy of first-come-first-served is the right one to deploy here. Anyway, I'm sure there are folks that need the vaccination much more than we do, so we're happy to wait our turn.

Talking of dates, we've both noticed something very odd in the last few weeks: having endured 20 months of confusion over the American date format (4/1 is the 4th of January everywhere except the US; here it's April 1st), our brains are now completely fried and the digits 4/1 are now basically meaningless to us; I see those figures and I no longer think "4th of January", I certainly don't think "April 1st", but instead I just think "ALERT! ALERT! THIS DOESN'T MEAN WHAT YOU THINK! IT MIGHT NOT MEAN ANYTHING AT ALL!". I've been insisting on folks using ISO8601 to avoid this confusion - that's YYYY-MM-DD, which as we all know, not only makes perfect sense, but also makes dates sort naturally in a COBOL program - although I'm having a little trouble getting this to stick when I talk to doctor's receptionists and the like. Still, gotta keep on keepin' on.

Anyway, that's about it for here and now. It's my birthday next week, which marks two years since we made the momentous decision to come out here, and we'll be taking a short staycation to get some rest from work. I'm particularly looking forward to the "self-guided driving tour of Bay Area tech sites" which we're booked in for!