Wednesday, September 1, 2021
COVID statistics in Oregon–including cases, hospitalizations and deaths–were all pretty discouraging in the first half of August. In the second half of the month, they got worse. Here’s how August 2021 compared to previous months of the pandemic. The Delta variant now accounts for over 98% of all new cases.
Thursday, September 2, 2021
Tertulia this morning with R and J, then E had her final exercise class of the term. Now she gets three weeks off.
We moved the old couch today to make room for the new one. You never know what you’ll find when you move an old couch. In this case we found not one but two unexploded cannon balls. We reckon they were fired from a Russian T-90 main battle tank, the one that was shootin’ up the place a few weeks ago.
But now the old red couch is history. It was fine in the basement of the old place, but it never looked quite right in the living room here. Instead…
Friday, September 3 2021
E made pisto and ambled screggs for dinner. Nice. It’s the time of year for pisto; the weather is right and the local vegetables are ripe. In case you haven’t heard of it, pisto Manchego is a green pepper and tomato dish from La Mancha region of Spain. M cut up a little cheese to go into the eggs. As instructed, he made the pieces about the size of front teeth. Some people cut cheese pieces the size of molars, but that’s just lazy. Clearly, E should write a cookbook.
We’ve been watching Ted Lasso this week. The first few episodes of the new season were pretty blah. Last night’s episode, however, seemed a little livelier. We’re wondering if the new couch had anything to do with it.
Saturday, September 4, 2021
Watched two(!) episodes of TL last night. Either the writing is getting better or the new couch is really working. E has now watched 3 entire episodes without falling asleep.
Went back to Eugene today, dropping off fabric samples and picking up wine. We also stopped at the egg place on West Hills Road on our way back. Net proceeds of trip: 12 eggs, two bottles of Martin Codax albariño, and minus five fabric samples. We will count this as success.
There are two medium sized forest fires burning in the region, the Bull Complex fire about 65 miles northeast of Corvallis and the Middle Fork Complex about 70 miles southeast. Fire officials are cautiously optimistic about the Bull fire; it’s headed for the same area that burned so intensely last year. It won’t find much fuel there.
Air quality in Corvallis has been quite good, just a little hazy at times in the morning. Every evening we get fresh breezes out of the west that clear things out. As we went south today, however, we very quickly got into a grayish haze that smelled of woodsmoke. Air quality was reported to be in the ‘unhealthy’ range from Halsey down to Eugene. We put this down to smoke from the Middle Fork fire.
Sunday, September 5, 2021
M went off on forest tour today. He did a quick and easy loop in an area of the Cascades that’s currently fire free. Of course that area happened to be directly between two areas that are not fire free, so the route was noticeably smoky. For more on this, see M’s Road Trip posting.
Monday, September 6, 2021
While he was out in the forest, M picked up an old log for the garden, which he installed this morning. It’s vintage and so has patina in lieu of its original bark.
Inside the house, two new chairs were delivered today. (On Labor Day? Whose idea was that? Not ours.) They are not vintage; they are new and are a big change for us. They may turn out all right in our little room. Or they may be a hideous mistake. We don’t have time to decide which, though, because we are too busy planning for our camping trip to Wallowa Lake. The idea is to plan today, prepare tomorrow and leave early on Wednesday. So, no more blog writing, got to get planning.
Glad to see you continuing the efficacy of one of my ancestors! 🌿
oh the new couch is lovely!!! I want to see the chairs, too..how exciting to have new furniture!!
Nice bar graph. Well, no, not nice at all, but quite revealing. But a bit more information please (another bar graph would do): among those new cases, what portion are hitting the great unvaccinated, as compared to those already poked?
There have been a total of 13,166 breakthrough cases in Oregon. 2.7 million people have been vaccinated. The first number is scary, but if my math is right–and someone else could check this!–that means that less than one half of one percent of vaccinated people have developed COVID. –M