Pandemic Diary — June 28 to July 4, 2021

Monday, June 28   Deaths  2,763 (+0)   New cases 87

A very warm night, but better weather arrived during the day. Afternoon temperatures were in the 80’s leading to low 70’s in the evening. As usual E was busy today. After breakfast she did her Co-op shopping. One of her next projects was to pack up a couple of vinyl albums to be sent away for digitization. One was a record of Dame Judith Anderson reading poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The other was an album of folk music by La Tuna de la Universidad de Puerto Rico.

M had an eye doctor appointment at 8:00 a.m., which he managed to remember at 7:40 a.m. Fortunately the clinic is very near. When he returned, he used his pupil dilation as an excuse to take a morning nap. Later on, he did his half of the grocery shopping. After lunch he took another nap for which he offered no excuse whatever. 

Tuesday, June 29   Deaths  2,770 (+7)   New cases 230

E had a Zoom exercise class today, her first after a two-week layoff. The instructor took it easy on them–at least a little. While E did stair steps and such, M made tuna sandwiches and packed a traditional lunch of celery, olives, potato chips, chocolates and Oban Little Bay. At about 10:30 we carried the lunch out to the truck along with a big package to mail and a collection of bags and boxes for Good Will. Once the errands were done, we drove out to the Beazell forest for a hike up Plunkett Creek. We had our lunch down by the stream where it was lovely and cool. The hillsides and uplands of Beazell Memorial Forest are covered in  third or fourth growth Douglas fir, but down in the hollow where the creek flows the trees are are all maples and mountain cherries, as tall and sturdy and old as they naturally can be. 

Wednesday, June 30   Deaths  2,774 (+4)   New cases 196

Oregon Governor Kate Brown has announced the ending of most COVID restrictions as of today. Oregon COVID deaths in June were 40% lower than in May. The average daily rate was 3.40 in June vs. 5.71 in May. The number of new cases and the percentage of positive test results have also been low. 

Mostly cloudy in Corvallis today. We spent the morning outside, catching up on garden work that we had not been able to do in the heat. We also counted several plants that were seriously damaged by the heat wave, perhaps fatally. M’s thimbleberries and salal are looking especially bad. E’s favorites have suffered less serious damage. Could that be because she rigged up a shade-cloth cover for them?

After lunch, M went to the store to get a new hose wand and a refill bottle of windex. He took the Porsche and didn’t return for two and half hours. He says he was exploring covered bridges around Scio and Crabtree. E celebrated by going downtown to her favorite store in search of a pair of shorts. Did she find some nice ones? She did. Did she find a few other nice things? Uh-huh. At check-out, did the shop owner, who is no dummy, give E a bonus discount which encouraged her to buy one more thing than she had planned? E thinks she probably did, but is not complaining.

Thursday, July 1  Deaths  2,778 (+4)   New cases 198

E tried to keep up with her usual hectic schedule. First she dealt with a request to change an medical appointment time. It wasn’t an appointment she needed, so she cancelled instead. She then had her exercise class, and went to Bi-Mart for supplies. After lunch she got ready for a dental appointment and had M drive her over there so she could get some exercise walking home. She got the walking exercise sooner than she expected because just as they were getting started with her cleaning, there was a power failure and they sent her away.

For dinner we went to Sky High Brewing and ate at the rooftop bar. Quite a nice view there. Also an interesting system of ordering. A staff member shows you to a table, but then you’re on your own. There’s a sign on the table with a QR code and a table number. You scan the code with your phone and go to the web menu and decide what you want. Then you get up and go over to the bar, give them your table number, and place your order. You can either pay right then or keep a tab open. We just paid. After a bit, your order is delivered to the table. Easy. Eve had her favorite caesar salad and M ate himself sick with an overly elaborate burger. Hopefully, he has learned never to do that again, at least not for a while.

In the national news we hear that Donald Rumsfeld has died. The media question of the day has become whether he or Robert McNamara was the worst secretary of defense that we’ve ever had. A preachy sort of question. We are who we are in this world. And anyway– as is explained in Dream of the Red Chamber/Story of the Stone/Twelve Beauties of Jinling–the Land of Illusion and the Paradise of Truth are one and the same.

Friday, July 2   Deaths  2,781 (+3)   New cases 209

An important event took place this morning as Eve had her nails done in in honor of the 4th of July. While she was gone M did prep work for touching up the paint on the garden shed. Then it was time for E’s Zoom yoga, followed by moving furniture around to get ready for a tea time visit from E’s friend P. M opened a bottle of Segura Viudas–P is a champagne lover–and also helped grill up some haloumi, which P had never had. We served it with pita and cherry tomatoes, which eventually left us not very eager to have dinner. In the course of conversation, P mentioned that she knew someone else who got sick from a Sky High burger. Hmm.

In COVID news, Oregon has today reached the 70% target level of vaccinated adults and now stands 18th in the nation in percentage of adult population vaccinated. 

Saturday, July 3   Deaths  2,xxx (+x)   New cases xxx

We were up early today. E went off to get some croissants and M went out to do more shed painting, all this before breakfast. That came at around 8:30, and found us happily chewing on fresh pastry and sipping café con leche. Then we took a walk up the top of Garryanna. There were two houses for sale along our route. One is 2,400 sqft for $595,000. The other is 4,100 sqft with a six car garage for $875,000. M wants to make an offer on the latter. It seems like everything sells for 10% over the asking price these days, so he needs to come up with around $950,000. We’re not sure if this is a reasonable price, especially since the only thing M really wants is the six car garage. Problem is, he’d have to sells his cars to come up with the down payment.

After the entertaining part of the day, we faced the matter of refrigerator cleaning, which we had been dreading . Once we got started, we did it all–took everything out, pulled the fridge out of its niche, took it apart, scrubbed all its shelves and bins, and vacuumed and swept behind and underneath. Then we had to put everything back and re-adjust the front height so the door would close by itself. It took us hours, but it was–we suppose–a good thing to do. It hadn’t been thoroughly cleaned since we bought it way back before the pandemic.  

Sunday, July 4   Deaths  2,xxx (+x)   New cases xxx

The Oregon Health Authority is taking a holiday and we have no current COVID data. So let’s us take a holiday also, and just share some photos of the 4th of July party we went to at K and J’s in Salem. 

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