Monday, November 16 Deaths 765 (+4) Cases 57,646 (+781)
Grocery shopping, Yoga, revision of the instructional tech article. We’re still pondering the Thanksgiving question. We’re thinking now that eating together with the Andees is just too problematic. Might just meet briefly on the Tuesday before and give them a pie.
Tuesday, November 17 Deaths 778 (+13) Cases 58,570 (+935)
Quite a busy morning as we had to get ready for the cleaner, fit in a Zoom exercise class, make corrections to the latest diary posting, and pack a picnic lunch, all of this before 10:00. At ten, we drove out to North Albany to deliver a small birthday cake to the B’s and walk around to see how their greenhouse is coming. Then we went back to town and got shingles shots, for E it was her second, for M his first. Then we stopped at the post office before heading south on Peoria road, searching for the picturesquely named Snag Boat Bend Unit of the Finley National Wildlife Refuge. That’s a long name for a fairly small area, but it is lovely and not much frequented. We had only vague memories of the place and we were pleased to see how nice it was. It was a damp and breezy day with intermittent light rain and temperatures in the fifties. We hiked along among the backwaters of the Willamette, past a picnic table at the halfway point and all the way to the blind at the end. On the way back we followed a flicker who flashed from tree to tree going our way for a minute or two and then disappeared. We saw some lovely tall slender trees, tops swaying in the wind. Poplars maybe?
Then we had lunch, not out in the wind and rain, but rather back in the car with the heater on. It was leftover Indian food. It was great! Once we got home we got down to the important business of taking naps and then had a cup of tea and studied Turkish for an hour. Then M made dinner while E did mysterious things on her computer. Later, there was an after dinner bon-bon for each of us and an hour or so of Winter Sun. As expected, there’s trouble. Efruz, the bright young doctor, has been fired for faking a death certificate in order to spring her long-lost dad from jail. He’s back in jail now and things look bad for both of them. Efe is jealous of Bora, the new guy in Nisan’s workplace and Nisan is jealous of Efruz, whom Efe seems awfully eager to comfort whenever she’s down. Plus, Seda knows that Nisan has not told Efe that evil Yakup, thought to have drowned, is actually still alive. Seda is plotting how best to use that little tidbit to make both Nisan and Efe as miserable as possible. And now for some vocabulary. First, Nisan means April in Turkish. We’re not sure what Seda means in Turkish, but we know it means silk in Spanish. The name Efe reminds us of the similar Turkish word Efes, which refers to Ephesus, a town on the west coat of Turkey, ancient home of the biblical Ephesians and modern site of some excellent Roman ruins. These days, Efes is also the name of a popular brand of Turkish beer. Good to know, eh? You betcha!
Wednesday, November18 Deaths 788 (+10) Cases 59,669 (+1099)
Grim COVID news today with a relatively high level of both deaths per day and new cases per day.
When analyzed by age groups, the statistics continue to show that the infection is much more dangerous for older people than for younger ones. Ninety percent of all deaths have been in the age group of sixty and above. (Eighty years and above: 50%. Sixty to seventy-nine: 40%. Zero to sixty: 10%)
This does not mean that younger people in Oregon are not getting COVID. On the contrary. People under sixty account for eighty-four percent of all confirmed cases. But when they do get the disease, younger people are less likely to require hospitalization and much less likely to die.
Thursday, November 19 Deaths 808 (+20) Cases 60,873 (+1,204)
FaceTime tertulia this morning with J and R. They are both doing well. After discussions with their family, they have decided that the best way for them to celebrate Thanksgiving is to just stay home and not try to sit down with anyone else. Instead, they will be dish sharing with the family and then having remote contact via Zoom. We have been thinking along similar lines , though it will be a bit trickier for us since Andrea and Andy are two hours away. Still, it can be done. E will make a pie for them at least and we will deliver it on the Tuesday before the holiday, when we hope that traffic will be lighter.
Yesterday E went to Coffee Culture and got us two very tasty sweet rolls. We had them for breakfast today just before our FaceTime tertulia. They were delicious. It reminded us of what we used to do when we could meet J and R in person at the café. After tertulia, M went outside to work in the yard and E had her Zoom exercise class. M raked leaves and did yet more lawn mowing–hopefully for the last time this season. E came out too, to plant her ornamental cabbage plants. It was a splendid fall day, not too cold with a mix of bright sun and light clouds. Just a drop or two of rain. It’s time to get the patio and garden ready for winter. Besides cutting back some dead and drooping stalks here and there, we also put away some hoses and put the cover on the big patio umbrella.
In the afternoon E went to a HEPAJ meeting. It was held in P’s garage, which she has furnished with a big piece of carpet and strings of lights. Also, of course, the place was neat as a pin. How do people manage that? P had also made cookies, which everyone thought were delicious. She confessed that when she had first tasted them, fresh from the oven, she had found them to be a bit dry. Her remedy was to spread butter on them. Very sensible.
After that, E still wasn’t done. She got back in time to do her Zoom based Laughter Yoga class. The class is going on right now, actually, as M is writing these notes. The class theme for this week is Australia. What’s so funny, you might ask, about Australia? We shall see.
Tonight’s dinner plan is for M to make Haloumi pita sandwiches. Haloumi is a cheese from Cyprus, where we lived for a couple of years. Cyprus is a bicultural island, part Greek speaking and part Turkish speaking. Haloumi is the Greek name; it’s Helim in Turkish.
Friday, November 20 Deaths 812 (+4) Cases 62,175 (+1,302)
Some time ago we sent out four audio cassettes and 1 VHS video to have them digitized. E downloaded the results yesterday and this morning we spent time figuring out how to play and store the results. The cassettes were from Eve and were recorded many years ago. In one of them we hear the voices of both Becca and Andrea. Andrea was mostly incomprehensible. That seems strange for someone who is so articulate now. Of course she was only about six months old at that time.
The video that we sent was from M. It was a compendium of stuff from when he lived in Yemen in the late eighties. Boy did we get a surprise when we went to play that. Instead of an hour and half of Yemen scenes, we got three minutes and forty-nine seconds of a group of twenty contestants rehearsing a group dance segment for a statewide beauty pageant–Miss Minnesota, to be exact. The year wasn’t clear, but appeared to be in the eighties or nineties. The dancers were all enthusiastic and energetic, but somehow M was still a little disappointed.
After that excitement, we did some garden planning and research. E then called around to some local plant places, but no one had Pearly Everlasting. We ended up ordering seeds from Joyful Butterfly. Besides the Pearly, we went for some Common Milkweed. (Seeds seem pretty cheap at JB.) That done, we rested until lunch. In the afternoon we ran some errands and took an hour-long forest walk on the Calloway Creek Trail north of town. For transportation we took the Porsche, which had been sitting unused for many weeks. We’re going to have to put that car into storage for the winter, especially if we want our garage to be as lovely as the garage that Eve was invited to on Thursday.
The days are short now and by the time we had done a grocery stop and had a rest, the daylight hours were over. Dinner was what E calls the week in review, with a green salad for freshness. Friday is nobody’s night to cook, so we had to cooperate. With two of us hungry, preparation just zoomed along.
After dinner, we watched Turkish TV. (Akşam yemeği sonra Türk televizyonunu izledik.) Burak bought a diamond ring and proposed to Nadide. (Burak bir elmas yüzük aldı ve Nadide’ye evlenme teklif etti.) So they’re very happy. (Yani çok mutlular.) But a lot of people are miserable. (Ama birçok insan mutsuz.) Efe is mad about everything. (Efe her şeye kızıyor.) Kadim and Efruz feel terrible. (Kadim ve Efruz berbat hissediyorlar.) Everyone hates Nisan and now she has leukemia! (Herkes Nisan’dan nefret etiyorlar ve şimdi lösemisi var!) Only Bora is being kind to her. (Sadece Bora ona iyi davranıyor.)
Saturday, November 21 Deaths 819 (+7) Cases 63,668 (+1,493)
This is the 240th day of the Pandemic Diary curve tracker database. We use the db to generate average death rates per each ten-day period. As can be seen below, the Oregon death rate is continuing a steep rise. There have been 77 deaths in Oregon in the last ten days, for a daily average of 7.7. This has required a change to the scale of the PD chart. On previous charts the vertical scale went from zero to six. On the new chart it goes up to eight.
Our chart maker well remembers the early days, when thirty deaths in ten days seemed like a lot and when the drop down to one death per day at the end of May seemed like a such a hopeful sign. It seemed possible that the pandemic might soon end. Well…that didn’t happen.
Sunday, November 22 Deaths 820 (+1) Cases 66,170 (+1,502)
So, this person goes into a store and asks ”Are there any eggs?” (Yumurta var mı?) and the person behind the counter answers “Nope, no eggs.” (Hayır, yumurta yok.) Hilarious, right?
On Winter Sun, Nisan’s leukemia was not responding as well as the doctors had hoped, so she needed to be hospitalized. On her way to check in, however, she got kidnapped. The thugs took her into the woods and locked her into the back room of a charming little hunting lodge. She escaped by breaking a window shutter, but now she’s lost in the forest and the thugs are tracking her with a pair of bloodhounds. They will almost certainly recapture her, because how else could the head bad guy call Efe and make his demands? We shall see.