Monday, March 22 Deaths 2,365 (+2) New cases 178
M shopped at Safeway this morning so he could use his ten percent off coupon. The Safeway nearest us is a big store and it took him a long time to find everything. The store was a little eerie at 8:30 on a Monday, its long aisles mostly empty of customers, very quiet. It was nothing at all like the scene at a store called Kings Soopers in Boulder, Colorado just a few hours later. Ten people were killed there this afternoon. A suspect is in custody.
E also survived her trip to the Co-op, so we are once again supplied with foodstuffs. She then did Zoom yoga and some reading. It was raining early, but just before lunch the sun came out and M went out to attach the legs onto our new outdoor table. After lunch, he broke ground for his newest hardscape project. Oh boy. Elsewhere in the backyard, our forsythia are starting to bloom and there is even an early tulip on Hummock #1. In the front yard, two fully open hyacinths have been neatly bitten off two inches above the round. Fie on the front yard.
For dinner E made spinach and gorgonzola pasta and a green salad. M supplied a cheap French red from TJ’s. Budapest is almost finished. We have only the buildings left to add. Wonder how the original builders would feel about that?
Tuesday, March 23 Deaths 2,367 (+2) New cases 316
A beautiful sunny day, with temps in the fifties. Dog Pepper spent some time with us in the morning, a lot of it bouncing around the backyard. E noticed that Pepper has the herding dog’s attitude toward playing with a ball. If the ball is moving, he’s very interested. But once it stops, it no longer merits his attention. The concept of fetching is not a part of his world.
We returned Pepper to his owner just before noon. Shortly afterward, as we were driving along, we saw our old neighbor B out for a walk. We lived near B and his wife for 17 years out in the forest, before they moved into the Stonybrook area, where Pepper and his owner now also dwell. Had a nice talk. Good to see him out and around.
From there we proceeded immediately to the The Vietnamese Baguette for a couple of sandwiches. We ate them sitting on a bench in the sun beside the river. Then it was back home to change cars and give the Porsche some exercise. We did a loop down south that took us through farmland and forest on mostly empty roads. On the way home we stopped for coffee at Randy’s Main Street Cafe in Brownsville. They had a very inviting greeting painted on their window, “You don’t have to go home. You can stay here with us.” So we stayed. As we sat in the sun with our lattes, we noticed that they had an old cookstove as part of their outdoor décor. The stove is mostly metal but the oven door and a few other bits are white ceramic. In the middle of the oven door there is a gauge labelled “Heat Indicator.” Behind the indicator needle there is a cautionary note: Temperature of oven varies with quantity and kind of fuel, flue, and atmospheric conditions. Words to live by, we’d say, a metaphor for pretty much everything.
Randy’s Cafe is in the main part of town just across the street from a newish building that houses the Brownsville City Hall, the Brownsville Fire Department, and an art gallery. You don’t see that combination much. The photo below shows just the City Hall part.
Wednesday, March 24 Deaths 2,368 (+1) New cases 879
The rain is back and we’re staying mostly inside. E spent her day working on her SMART project. SMART’s in-school reading program has been cancelled for this year, but the program has asked for volunteers to make videos to fill the gap, reading a book aloud and turning the pages just as they would in person. E foolishly offered to do this and SMART sent her a book called Jabari Salta, a book about a young boy’s jumping and diving adventures. So today she did lots of practice reading and then enlisted M’s help in figuring out just how to video the performance. After a few failed attempts and much head scratching, we set up an ad hoc camera stand and finally made what we hope will be an acceptable video.
The plan for dinner was to eat Cirello’s pizza while watching a Zoom talk about dirt. The last talk we heard about dirt was really good, so we were excited. But no. Technical difficulties of some kind caused the dirt talk to be cancelled. The bright side is that we were able to give our full attention to the pizza.
The Budapest puzzle is finished–at least as far as we’re going to finish it. We’ve done everything except push the buildings down into their foundations. Here ‘tis:
Thursday, March 25 Deaths 2,370 (+2) New cases 422
FaceTime Tertulia this morning, then more work E’s video project. We had a good enough video, but we also had an idea for better sound and a little more efficiency in page turning. So we set up our studio again and produced an improved version..
Later on M went outside and occupied himself pulling cartloads of dirt from project to prairie and cartloads of gravel from prairie to project. An hour or so was enough of that.
After lunch we went for a forest walk in search of wildflowers. It’s early days yet, but yellow violets (yellows?) and early trilliums were making themselves available. It seems, in fact, to be a great year for trilliums; they’re popping up all over.
After the forest walk, we did some errands and rested a bit. Then we uploaded E’s video to Google Drive as instructed. Whew.
Then, fools that we are, we watched more of 20 Minutes. Is Melek still in prison? Yes. Is Ali trying frantically to get her out? Yes. Is he facing impossible odds? Well, this is Episode 22 and we know there are a total of 59. So his chances of finding a happy ending in the next 36 episodes are virtually nil. The worst thing that he faces right now is that he is beginning to doubt Melek’s innocence! Ouch. Also, the bad guys have bugged his house, he owes 13,000 Turkish Lira to a loan shark, his daughter Duru is keeping something from him, and Özgür has disappeared, having likely been abducted by the bad guys. Özgür, of course, was Melek’s assistant in her cake shop. He is a pleasant young man who became a family friend and he has been keeping Melek’s business going while she’s away. (Stop me if you know this already…)
Friday, March 26 Deaths 2,373 (+3) New cases 505
We learned recently from an alert reader that chef Didier, the patissier himself, is back in action! The shop is open three days a week: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Today, by felicitous synchronicity, our favorite courier service also resumed operations. Eve returned from her early morning walk promptly at 8:12, carrying four croissants–two chocolate and two almond paste. The espresso was finished just a half a minute later. All was well. Soon, only two croissants remained, safely stored away for Sunday.
It was also a beautiful sunny day. M went outside to finish making his base stations for the Adirondack chairs. Eve went out again, by car this time, and brought home a pineapple and some Veggie Birdnests. These are frozen tempura things with soy dipping sauce. It seems we’ve been invited to supper on Sunday at J and B’s and we’re contributing bird nests. The plan is to eat outside in the folly. E then went downtown to obtain several other necessities, including a couple of books she’d ordered, a new silk jacket, and some bird food.
In the afternoon E did Zoom yoga and ran some errands to help her friend S. M took advantage of the dry conditions to mow the back lawn, certain parts of which seem to be growing with way too much enthusiasm these days.
Later we watched a bit of 20 Minutes. It was a busy episode, but the high point for us was a brief scene of Melek sleeping in her prison cell. She was nestled comfortably under a traditional Turkish style wool blanket, very similar to the one we dragged back with us from Turkey eleven years ago and which still smells of lanolin every time we use it. In fact, E suddenly remembered, hadn’t she taken ours to the cleaners almost two weeks ago? Probably time to go pick it up…
Melek’s prison cell, by the way, is pretty nice. It’s quite spacious, with a small table and three chairs plus two double tier beds. Melek has only two cellmates, so one of the bunks is unoccupied. The cell has its own attached private half bath. Plus, we can attest to the fact that those wool blankets are really warm. Presumably all Turkish prisons have these amenities; but we cannot confirm this as we were never imprisoned while we were there.
Saturday, March 27 Deaths 2,375 (+2) New cases 428
We meant to pick up that blanket today. Didn’t make it. Did take a walk, though, up Garryanna and down Rolling Green, the steepest walk in the neighborhood. Then M went out to work in the yard while E did chores of one kind or another. E got another call from S and made a quick trip to Bi-Mart to get her what she needed. After lunch we were both outside for a while. It was very sunny and warm. Dinner was take-out from Sky High Brewery. It was good, but they didn’t get our orders quite right. Eve ordered a Ceasar salad was especially looking forward to their homemade croutons. When we opened up the salad, what did we find? Croutons yok! Mafeesh! Arimasen! None! We nearly had a riot on our hands. When he opened his order, M found that they have given him a side salad instead of french fries. Now that’s a disappointment. M took it philosophically, however, saying that there was no way he actually needed a big pile of french fries at this particular point in time.
We had been thinking about Ba’s Vietnamese, but it seems they are closed for a couple of weeks making preparations for resuming inside dining and also adding an outdoor seating area. That sounds kind of exciting. The place was always on the small side.
Decided to skip 20 Minutes today. Instead we watched an episode of Tokyo Diner and then checked back in with 45 RPM to see what they were up to. Who are they, you ask? Robert is a Spanish rock and roll singer, very talented but also suffering from an incurable disease. Guillermo is the passionate maverick record producer who believes in Robert. Maribel is Guillermo’s bright young P.A. who is torn between a career in the music business and marriage to Diego, a handsome banker. Zabala is nominally Guillermo’s supervisor at the record company and is a man who despises rock and roll. His wife and Guillermo were once a couple. Clara is Rober’s twin sister, who has come to Madrid after their parents back in Alicante threw her out of the house for having become involved with a married man. Rober can’t bring himself to tell her that he is dying. But his first single has been released and appears to be a hit…
Sunday, March 28 Deaths 2,375 (+0) New cases 253
COVID deaths in Oregon have been low this week, a pattern that we hope will continue. One million people in Oregon have been either fully or partly vaccinated, including large numbers of older people who had vaccine priority. Since is it usually older people who die from COVID, it seems reasonable to expect fewer deaths even if overall case numbers remain high.
M was attacked by pollen allergies Saturday night and did not sleep well. In the morning E recommended a dose of chocolate croissant and coffee, which helped. He worked a little in the garden, then spent much of the day sleeping. (Just what is he doing out there in the yard? PD needs to investigate.)
E combined her morning walk with grocery shopping and came home with milk and other necessities. At four we got down to business and wrote out our weekly meal plan and our respective shopping lists for tomorrow. Then we prepared some food to take with us to B and J’s place where were we had been invited for a light supper out in the folly.
We arrived at 5:30, just as the weather turned really nasty with blustery winds and showers. But there was a fire in the pizza oven and the folly had its winter siding up to protect us from the wind. It turned out to be a Trader’s Joe’s feast, as J had heated up a TJ’s vegetarian pizza and E had heated up some TJ’s vegetarian Bird Nests. This latter dish, we have to say, wasn’t very good. For dessert, M had carved up a TJ’s organic pineapple to which E had added some sliced strawberries. Those were better.
Love reading your blogs!!! That puzzle is really something..well done!