Monday, June 7 Deaths 2,694 (+0) New cases 125
Our second day at the coast. As usual it was cloudy, but still we had a nice view of the ocean as we ate our modest breakfast. Then we walked a fourth of a mile or so over to the Devil’s Punchbowl, which was in fine form at near high tide. For lunch we drove down to the Newport bay front to Local Ocean restaurant. E had a crab and avocado po’r boy and M had a breaded rockfish sandwich. They were delicious and right-sized (not too big). The cabbage and fennel slaw was a new thing for us. It was very good and looked to be very simple to make. While we were eating we couldn’t help but notice a very noisy orange and white Lamborghini as it passed by, first in one direction and then in another. After lunch we drove about twenty miles up the coast to Depot Bay in search of the Spouting Horn. Alas, the tide was wrong to see spouting. We did see the Lambo again though. Hard to miss.
Otter Crest is a resort about ten miles north of Newport. E and her family had a time share there in the 80’s and 90’s. E and A both have lots of good memories of the place and it does E good to see it again once in a while.
Otter Crest is aging now, but it is pretty well-maintained and E says that the grounds are more beautiful than ever since it’s a bit overgrown with some native species creeping back.
Tuesday, June 8 Deaths 2,700(+6) New cases 307
We had to leave Otter Crest at 9:00 so as to get back in time for the Mazda’s oil change appointment at 11:00. With the Mazda delivered to the shop, we walked over to Tried and True for a coffee, then stepped into Peak Sports, which is always fun. E got sunglasses and a very lightweight Patagonia rain shell made from recycled nylon. M got an Osprey daypack. Soon we were all back home and the rest of the day was mostly quiet, though E did track down the Joe Coffee mystery. She did not lose any money, but she did have to get a new credit card number. Sigh.
M spent some time working an a more detailed posting about last Sundays trip to Valsetz and the Siletz River Gorge.
In Oregon COVID news, we’re seeing that positive test rates have been quite low lately, averaging only 2.78% over the last 21 days.
Wednesday, June 9 Deaths 2,716 (+16) New cases 269
Sixteen Oregon COVID deaths today! Where did that come from?
Lovely spring day, mostly sunny with temps in the seventies. E mowed the front lawn and worked on dead heading; M pulled some weeds and tied up the ninebark next to the clematis. The clematis is doing fine, by the way. The brown towards the bottom is the ninebark. We’re going to make them grow together whether they like it or not.
Thursday, June 10 Deaths 2,726 (+10) New cases 370
The rate of positive tests remains low, but Oregon deaths have spiked in the last few days. Not what we want to see. Here in Benton county, reports for the last 24 hours show eight new cases but no new deaths.
Another almost normal tertulia today. While M and E had been dodging potholes in the forest on the weekend, J and R had been serenely kayaking on a calm lake. Sensible people. After her tea and zen roll, E had to get back home for exercise class. It was the last one of the term, so now she gets two weeks off. After class, we worked in the garden a bit and then decided that it was time to buy more plants! Off we went to the nursery and returned with five marigolds, one coreopsis, and a pair of thimbleberries. The first six are for E; the last two for M. There they sit on the patio, as neither of us felt like running out and planting them.
E then had a HEPAJ meeting at Common Fields, a new food cart pod on the edge of downtown. The pod is on a property that used to be a transmission shop. Times change.
While she was gone, M pretended to be an electrician and replaced a broken wall outlet in the sewing room. Or was it the guest room? Whatever it is, it’s in the older part of the house, where the wiring dates from the early sixties. That wiring did not include ground wires for either ceiling lights or wall outlets. So the old outlets have only two slots and will not accept modern three pronged plugs. This is annoying, of course, when you’re trying to plug in anything newish. Generally, you can get around this in any number of fun ways. For one, you can just take a pair of pliers and rip out the third prong on the cord you’re trying to plug in. Simple and effective, but inelegant and destructive. Another method is to just replace the old outlet with a modern outlet, which does accept three-pronged plugs. The new outlet will have a place to connect a ground wire; but since you don’t have a ground wire, you just ignore it. The new fixture costs three dollars or so and is not difficult to install. (Unless you forget to turn off the power first, then it could be hardish.) One potential problem is that anyone who sees the new outlet is likely to believe that it really is grounded, which conceivably could have serious safety issues. You’d have to put a little sign on the outlet with a warning stating that it is not what it appears. That would be quite inelegant, at least until it fell off and was lost.
The best option, short of rewiring, is to replace the old outlet with a new GFCI outlet, which provides a different kind of fault protection without requiring a ground wire. M chose this option, though he grumbled about the GFCI outlet costing four times as much as the normal one. Once he got the new outlet installed he tested it and found that it didn’t work. Deadsville. Eventually he realized that it needed to be turned on.
After that, M needed a nap and E had Laughter Yoga. For TV we watched an episode of the PBS’s Mrs. Wilson. It’s good, but we’re struggling to figure out if we’ve seen it before.
Friday, June 11 Deaths 2,726 (+0) New cases 308
Rain in the morning kept us indoors for a while, but soon we were out putting yesterday’s plant purchases into the ground. Eve had Zoom yoga in the early afternoon and later on went to visit her friend P. M mounted his newly arrived license plates onto the Nissan. Dinner was tempeh, squash and sautéed mushrooms, followed by the last piece of anniversary cake.
Saturday, June 12 Deaths 2,729 (+3) New cases 285
The morning was cloudy, damp but rainless. Having given up on the too-crowded Patissier, E went to the grocery early and got some fresh kalamata olive bread for breakfast. She promptly slathered hers with peanut butter, raspberry jam, and Divina Sour Cherry Fruit Spread. She says she had to include that last ingredient because it comes from Greece and thus complements the olives in the bread. M dabbed a bit of jam on his but was more focused on the butter.
Then we did some yard work. E trimmed azaleas and M made some emergency repairs to the rain gutters, which were failing in two different places. Clearly, the gutters are old and need replacing. But M wants to try shoring up the weak spots first and see how long he can extend the old gutters’ useful life. Now if that sounds like a dumb idea, that’s because it probably is. You can’t tell M that, though; he has already ordered some 7” gutter spikes with 5” ferrules. And he’s thrilled to have learned a new word: ferrule. So we’ll see how that goes.
Rain began in the early afternoon and kept us inside. E did correspondence and M did various sorts of route planning. In the evening E spent time with her book about Ladybird Johnson, which she is liking more and more as she gets into it. Johnson was an early proponent of natural landscaping with native plants and was also a powerful force in efforts to create and preserve green spaces in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Johnson’s predecessor as First Lady had been the quite glamorous Jacqueline Kennedy. When a reporter asked Ladybird what kind of clothes she liked, she is said to have replied that unfortunately her clothes were completely unremarkable and to have suggested that they talk about something else. The biography, which is subtitled Hiding in Plain Sight, is by Julia Sweig and is based largely upon Lady Bird’s White House diaries.
Sunday, June 13 Deaths 2,730 (+1) New cases 167
We had rain off and on through the night, then a quiet overcast morning. The yard was damp and beautiful. It looked pleased with itself and asked for no immediate attention. We stayed in and did some trip planning. We’ve reserved a campsite at a state park in the Wallowa mountains. We took the first free dates we could find, which were in the second week of September.
The rain started up again around noon and continued all afternoon. We went out anyway and took a walk up to the natural area by the water tanks. The foliage is getting thick up there. Everything is leafed out and growing madly. We saw a doe with a little fawn, the smallest either of us had ever seen. It was amazing to watch it bouncing along behind its mother.
Alas, we fear that both doe and fawn could be in grave danger. A powerful predator has been seen in the neighborhood.
