April 2021 End of Month Review

And another month of 2021 has passed. I had a conversation recently with a friend who said that the days feel long but the weeks are flying by. It does feel like that.

April is always one of my favourite months because it has my birthday at the beginning. This year my birthday was on Good Friday so I had the day off work and a long bank holiday weekend to follow it. There are some birthday traditions in our house. We had pancakes for breakfast and I had to wear the birthday crown.

I've blogged about how I spent my birthday building a big Lego model with Cathy. 

I also got a second big Lego model as a present - everybody say hello to Grogu (Baby Yoda) from The Mandalorian. It was an interesting build. His ears are adjustable so they can look droopy and sad.

The beginning of the month was also the start of the baseball season. I joined in the #OpeningDay selfie fun on Twitter, wearing my retro 1984 Padres World Series shirt and also the Slam Diego t-shirt that commemorated the Padres brief run of Grand Slams last season.

On the subject of baseball, I was also a guest on the Tea & Topps podcast, talking about my collection of Tony Gwynn cards, among other things. If you want to watch and listen then you can do so here.

Ahead of that podcast recording I was asked to create a baseball card of myself they could use in promotional posts. This was the result.

Meanwhile the pandemic restrictions are slowly easing. This meant that we were able to go to Shrewsbury and see my family for the first time since September. My brother's family has grown with the addition of two new children and I met my new niece and nephew for the first time. They are 4 and 3, and both really lovely. 

I also got to play some back garden football with my oldest nephew. He says his favourite player is Harry Kane. He likes to thwack the ball straight at his hapless uncle more than he likes scoring past him. 

We have also been able to meet up with friends, including visiting the back garden of some friends who have moved into a new house, and sitting on the patio of other friends watching their twins being fed dinner. It has felt nice to actually see people, even if meeting up is still a bit weird and stilted. 

Another part of pandemic life is getting vaccinated. I got jabbed in March. Cathy got jabbed in April, with a short-notice invitation. Unlike me, she didn't get to go to Jabs'R'Us down the Bay. Instead we went to Splott.

Scandalously, when she came back to the car after getting jabbed she showed me she had been GIVEN A STICKER! I never got offered a sticker! I was fuming, and pouted all the way home. 

And finally, our addition to our managerie of adopted animals this month was a Painted Dog who lives in the West Midland Safari Park. I'm going to do a blog post about the menagerie at some point. It's filling up with some cute animals. 

So that was April. Roll on May!