Monday, November 9 Deaths 734 (+4) Cases 51,155 (+707)
We did grocery shopping today. M went to Market of Choice and Eve to the Co-op. We know that some of the items that we buy in both these places are available elsewhere for quite a bit less, but we just don’t feel like chasing around town. Partly this is laziness; partly it is caution.
Partly cloudy today and quite cold, thirties in the morning and forties in the afternoon. M did a little yard work today despite the conditions. E did Zoom yoga and worked on her photo project. She has been planning with Andrea about how to get together on Thanksgiving.
Tuesday, November 10 Deaths 737 (+3) Cases 52,770 (+754)
Still cleaning up the garage, M made trips to Bottle Drop and Goodwill and then did some raking and lawn mowing. Lawn mowing at this time of year? Bah! E did a dog walk with a friend and had Laughter Yoga in the afternoon. Her photo project is done–500 photos sent off for scanning, six or eight albums emptied. M made stew for dinner and E had a Zoom meeting with what we call the knitting group, a bunch of old friends from work.
After that, we watched another episode and a half of Kış Günesi. Sadly, Efe is now divorced from Nisan and married to Seda. But wait, you might say, how can he get divorced from Nisan if he was never married to her? And is he really married to Seda if he married her under an assumed name? Bilmiyoruz. Farketmez. (We don’t know. Never mind.) Whatever the legal tangle, the emotional tangle is worse.
Wednesday, November 11 Deaths 742 (+5) Cases 47,839 (+861)
Tis the 230th day of record keeping here at PD, time for a new chart. The death rate in Oregon has climbed again, up to an average of of 5.1 deaths per day over the last ten days. The latest deaths bring Oregon’s overall death rate to 17.25 per 100,000. The rate for the U.S. as a whole is now 73.26.
Meanwhile, it is M’s turn to cook today, but he’s not really cooking. He’s getting a pizza and making a salad. (O gerçekten pişirmiyor. Pizza getiriyor ve salata yapıyor.)
After a long internal debate, E decided to risk her life today by visiting the seamstress. The workshop is a vast, high-ceilinged room in an old bank building downtown and generally there is only one customer in the place at one time. Plus, if you don’t stop to talk too much, a visit can be quite brief. So that’s all good. But it’s also true that, for whatever reason, appointments don’t always go off like clockwork, shall we say. So E had to deal with a bit of overlap with a mom, dad and two children who were there unexpectedly. But the seamstress shooed them away fairly quickly. After the appointment E went to reward herself with a coffee from Tried and True just down the street and on her way came across a young man talking on a cell phone saying “Yes, I’m waiting for you.” Only he didn’t actually say those words but said instead “Evet, seni bekliyorum.” He said it twice and Eve understood it both times. She was excited.
Thursday, November 12 Deaths 746 (+4) Cases 53,879 (+1,109)
Zoom terutulia today with J and R. Later, E took her friend’s dog Pepper to the vet, a major operation as Pepper lives way out in the country on the opposite side of town from the vet’s. As anyone could see from the energy Pepper exhibited running around our back yard today, the dog is not seriously ill; he just needed some shots.
Eve’s turn to cook today. She’s making minestrone soup. (Sebzeli italyan çorbası yapıyor.) Delicious.
Last night we watched episode 30 of Kış Gunesi. The situation is grim. Efe and Nissan are both having personal crises related to what they are finding out about their families’ pasts, but they are estranged due to the Seda problem and thus each must face it alone.
Friday, November 13 Deaths 753 (+7) Cases 54,937 (+1,058)
M worked today on some old work stuff. Long ago, he co-wrote an article about what language program administrators need to know about educational technology. It was published as part of a handbook used for administrator training. A few years ago, the handbook was revised and the article had to be updated. Now, there is the possibility of yet another edition of the handbook and once again the editors have requested an updated version. So there he was this morning, slaving away, thinking about things that he hasn’t thought about in a while.
In the middle of the day, we went for a visit to the wildlife refuge to see the swans that J and R had told us about at tertulia on Thursday. First we took a rainy stroll on a boardwalk through a wetland ash forest.
We finished our walk just as the rain eased off and then, while driving farther into the refuge, we came across a herd of about 40 elk, who were happily munching on new grass that often pops out in these parts when the fall rains come. Finally we went off to see the swans. They did not disappoint.
The temperatures are no lower than they’ve been recently, but the dampness got to us and we felt chilly for most of the afternoon. For dinner we had thoroughly heated leftover stew, which helped.
Another odd tweet from the President today. In the first sentence he boasted of his administration’s unprecedented success in ensuring that U.S. elections were unriggable and in the next sentence asserted that the most recent U.S. election was rigged. In other news, he has also asserted that the voting results that we now have show show him losing by just the “thinnest of margins.” He did not mention that in the electoral college his losing margin in 2020 was exactly the same as his winning margin in 2016, which he described at that time as “the biggest landslide in history.”
Saturday, November 14 Deaths 759 (+6) Cases 47,839 (+790)
The COVID situation is worsening in many parts of the country and Oregon is no exception. OHA has reported more than 10,000 new cases per day for three straight days. Test positive rates have averaged more than 10% for the last fourteen days and daily death rates have climbed to near record levels. Governor Brown has announced a two-week freeze to begin next Wednesday. During the freeze restaurants and bars will be limited to take-out service, all indoor recreational and cultural facilities will be closed, church services will be limited to 25 people indoors and 50 people outdoors and the prohibition of indoor visits to long-term care facilities will be re-instated.
Up until this week, we had no personal connection to anyone who had the virus. But now one friend has reported that her daughter and granddaughter have both tested positive. Another friend reports that one of her granddaughters is also affected.
Our activities today included Eve going out to the country to walk Pepper and Michael collecting leaves from the front lawn and taking them around back to mulch things. Dinner was take-out from an Indian restaurant, not exactly a low calorie meal, but pretty tasty. After dinner we watched TV, another hour or so of our Turkish soap. Big doings there, as Efe/Mete finally revealed to everyone that he is really Efe and that his twin brother Mete was the one who was murdered. Efe’s adoptive mother–the saintly Fatma–is ecstatic; his birth mother, Leyla, is devastated. Leyla has lost her husband (one of the guilty parties) and is also terribly hurt by Efe’s deception. And Seda, who was pregnant with Mete’s child, got so upset that she had a sad but convenient miscarriage. Efe is miserable too. He has succeeded in finding out who killed his father 20 years ago and his brother just recently and it seems that the guilty parties have been punished. But he now sees that this success has come at great cost and he just wishes that none of it had every happened. He just wants everything to get back to normal. We know, however, that this is only episode 34 of 50. There’s not going to be much time for regretting or for normal anything because his troubles aren’t even close to being over.
Sunday, November 15 Deaths 761 (+2) Cases 56,880 (+862)
Andrea came by in the afternoon today. In the morning, E made an applesauce cake for the occasion. When Andrea arrived the three of us first did an exercise walk around the neighborhood and then we sat down with our cake and tea out on the patio. The rain held off for most of the day and temperature was in the mid 50’s, so being outside was not so bad. We talked about what to do about Thanksgiving. The tentative plan is for us to go up there and have a meal on their back patio, but that’s not ideal, especially if it is stormy. We’ve also thought about doing a meal in our garage, with doors arranged to give lots of ventilation. It’s all plausible, but is it worth the stress factor? Should we just all eat in our own homes and make a Zoom connection instead? Don’t know.