Monday, August 31 Deaths: 459 (+1) Cases 26,713 (+159)
Busy day, what with grocery shopping at two different stores by two different people at two different times, M going to Winco and E going to Market of Choice. Good thing they had some Vermont maple syrup with blueberry pancakes on the side to get them started. (An early version of this post accidentally omitted the maple syrup. This error was spotted by our ever-alert proofreader.) After all the shopping E worked in the garden planting asters while M worked on materials for the TESL seminar in Chile. Dinner was grilled salmon and roasted vegetables, including a crookneck squash that E picked up from a neighbor’s giveaway box.
Then there was another action packed episode of Cable Girls. The highlight was when serial abuser Mario dragged his wife Angeles and up onto a rooftop and started whaling on her. He was mad because he suspected that she had been trying to poison him, which was, of course, quite true. Three friends of Angeles saw her get dragged away and followed them up to the roof. They all jumped on Mario and tried to stop him. But Mario repulsed them and got one of them around the neck with both hands seemingly intending to strangle her to death, at which point Angeles took a big swing and hit him upside the head with something heavy and Mario passed from this world. Well, that was plucky and no one will mourn Mario, but now the four women have a whole new problem…
Tuesday, September 1 Deaths 465 (+6) Cases 26,946 (+233)
We both sent some info off to Chile today, more or less agreeing to participate in F’s TESL seminar via Zoom. E will use some mostly tried and true pronunciation activities and M will try a totally new writing thing, based on a reading that E thinks is totally impenetrable. M says that yes, it’s challenging, but hey, at least it’s not Merleau-Ponty. In the garden E did more aster planting and M did more ceanothus pruning. For lunch M went to the Taco Time drive up. They gave him the wrong bag, which he didn’t notice till he opened it up back at the house. It was only partly different from his real order, and it wasn’t bad.
Wednesday, September 2 Deaths 468 (+3), Cases 27,075 (+129)
On the 160th day of Pandemic Diary data collection, Oregon COVID fatalities have reached the level of 10.88 per 100,000 residents. The curve, as per the Pandemic Diary system, looks like this:
Thursday, September 3 Deaths 470 (+2) Cases 27,336 (+261)
Today M got a haircut and took a little drive and E went clothes shopping. M went out just for fun, but for E it was serious business. She needed some new shorts for this hot weather, nothing grand but they had to be comfortable. She called her favorite local shop to ask if they had a selection of shorts that she could try on at home. They were ready and willing to work things out. The sales clerk asked what E was interested in and offered to pick her out a group of items. All E had to do was come in and pick them up to take home. All were charged to her card, and then, when she returned the items she didn’t want, the charges for those were refunded. This required two trips to town, but E was pleased to know that there was a relatively safe way for her to shop. In the end she bought two items. Neither is quite right but she can modify them to suit her needs.
M reports that the Oregon coast is cool and beautiful but that visitors are swarming over every inch of it to take advantage. In contrast, the narrow and winding secondary roads that M took to get over there were almost deserted. That was fun, once or twice just a little too fun. Sakinol, M, sakinol.
Still to come today: Laughter Yoga, another episode of Chicas del Cable, and possibly a start at watching Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, a DVD lent to us by a friend.
Over the last ten days the Oregon Health Authority has reported the results of 47,793 COVID tests, of which 2,181 were positive. For that period, the ratio of positives to the total is 4.57%.
Friday, September 4 Deaths 475 (+5) Cases 27,601 (+265) Daily test rate 4.78%
Another 5-mile hike today, but this one a lot closer to home. We went into an area of the OSU forest very near where we used to live. We started out at about 9:00. It was a lovely, cool morning. The temperature climbed slowly as we hiked, but we were always in the shade and quite comfortable. The parking lot at Peavy Arboretum was quite crowded, so we spent the first hour on a route we knew would be less traveled.
We took Road 510 almost to the end and then went up the Road 516 spur. From the 516 cul-de-sac we bushwhacked steeply up to where the Section 36 trail passes by a couple of wolf tree firs. Slow going in that stretch as we had to keep a sharp eye out for poison oak as we waded through the undergrowth in our hiking shorts. What a dumb idea! One of us should have thought to think. Needless to say, we didn’t meet anybody on that route. So that was the bright side–no masking. Anyway, we then took an older section of the 36 trail up to the top of the little mountain. The old log bench, though partly broken down these days, still serves its purpose. We sat to rest a while, remembering all the times in past years when we used to hike up to that same bench early in the morning, carrying kibble and water for Lucy’s breakfast, coffee, bread and olive oil for ours.
Saturday, September 5 Deaths 480 (+5) Cases 27,856 (+255) Daily test rate 5.65%
E went out to the country to help her friend by again taking her dog on a walk. A fairly cool day today, a nice time to be out walking. M stayed in and finished another of the crosswords from his book of London Sunday Times Jumbos. These are hard puzzles and M works has to work off and on for days and days to get one done. This time, when he looked in the back of the book to check his answers, he found that he had been right about every clue except one. The same thing happened the last time he did a Jumbo. Sigh.
It was Kentucky Derby day. Usually run in May in front of thousands of spectators, it was delayed four months this year and took place with only owners and staff on hand. The winner was Authentic, trained by Bob Baffert and ridden by John Velazquez. Tiz the Law, a Saratoga-based horse that E was rooting for, started the race as a heavy favorite but faded down the stretch. Thank goodness she hadn’t put her money down. Authentic is Baffert’s sixth Kentucky Derby winner. In the winner’s circle after the race, the horse bumped Baffert and knocked him down. What was that about?
Sunday, September 6 Deaths 481 (+1) Cases 28,044 (+188) Daily test rate 3.54%
The pandemic has gone on for a long time. The hot days keep coming. The ground is parched. And of course it’s not our country’s most shining hour. We’ve both been feeling in the doldrums lately.
Was that why we broke our relax on Sunday rule and worked on our house project for much of the day, despite the heat? Anyway, there we were, out in the sun, overdosing on Vitamin D. The idea was to hang shade cloth on the outside of our two big living room windows. The windows face south and the sun hits them hard this time of year. E finished making the two shades, hemming the sides and making rod pockets on top and bottom. M mounted some hooks above the windows, and while he was up there he removed about a dozen old hooks and brackets leftover from things the previous owners had done, probably to address the same problem. This left lots of holes in the siding and window frames. M filled those and also did a little scraping in places where the paint was bad. Once the hooks were up, E got on the ladder and measured where to put the mounting loops onto the shades. We are using the little-known fishing line method to enable easy mounting and dismounting. So now the shades are up, but there is still priming and painting to be done in all the areas where M made a mess. Hm. Maybe sometime next week.