Pandemic Diary — September 21 to 27, 2021

Tuesday, September 21, 2021

M spent the day adding a new irrigation line to our hodgepodge sprinkler system. He reports that it was tremendously exciting.

E had to prepare for the Lemon Meringue Pie Society meeting. Lots of work there, especially trying to make the patio and yard presentable. In the end all went well. The group members were well-behaved and the weather cooperated nicely. The pie was sourced from the 37th Street Grill, which is not really a grill and isn’t on 37th Street either. But they do make a nice pie.

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

M had coffee with his friend R this morning. They met at Susan’s coffeehouse and garden supply store. Susan’s has some nice outdoor tables that have rain protection. Good thing. M and R talked a little baseball and shared some memories of living overseas. The time flew by.

E was busy preparing to host her second gathering in two days, this time a 1:00 p.m. potluck with HEPAJ. All went well, but after the party and the clean-up E was tuckered out. We had a simple dinner, watched some TV, and called it a day. 

The COVID surge continues in Oregon and there have been many fatalities in the last week. The numbers for new cases, test positivity, and hospitalizations, however, are again trending slightly downward.

Thursday, September 23, 2021

Tertulia today with J and R at their house. J made asian pear ginger upside down cake. We also got a tour of their 99.9% completed addition. They’ve added a sort of dream master bedroom with 21st century closet space, a glorious walk-in shower, and a sliding door out to the back garden. The shower is the only thing not complete; it’s lacking its glass door.

Later on M went up to Salem and paid a guy $423 to pull out one of his teeth. Well…to be absolutely accurate it wasn’t a whole tooth, it was only half a tooth. If it had been a whole tooth, we suspect that Dr. H would have charged more than a mere $423. But the other half wasn’t there to pull. Another guy beat Dr. H to it about 20 years ago. The idea now is to replace both missing halves with one whole implant, but that won’t be for a while. Dr. H says it’ll take four months for the affected area to settle down. The missing tooth is in the back, so we won’t be able to show any photos of M with a gap-toothed smile. Dang it. 

Friday, September 24 2021

In the morning E went for a walk in the OSU forest while M stayed home slaving over E’s iPad Mini trying to clear up a family plan subscription mystery. Poor M. On her way back, E got him a latte. 

Saturday, September 25, 2021

M has been having a lot of ice cream and chocolate pudding. Are these the only two things he is allowed to eat? Hmm. He isn’t sharing the actual instruction sheet that the dentist gave him. At least he is no longer using his tooth problems as an excuse not to exercise. We took a walk up the hill on 13th and were coming down Angelica when we saw a family group standing in their driveway. One of them had a black and white dog on a leash. The dog was young and nervous but friendly. It looked like it might be a pit bull mix. The guy holding the leash asked us if we knew of anyone looking for a lost dog. It turns out they had just returned home to find a strange dog loitering around their front door. They’d leashed it and found a metal ID tag on its collar. They called the phone number. They didn’t get an answer, but they left a message. We chatted with them for a while. When we left they were considering what to do next. But they didn’t have to wait long. After we’d walked just a block or so farther down the street, we saw a fellow with a leash in hand come out of his garage and start striding up the hill. Sure enough, he’d gotten the message and seemed quite relieved.

Sunday, September 26, 2021

Today we had a short hike and picnic at a place called Gordon Lakes. It’s up the Cascades in an area that M has been exploring lately. It turned out to be a very fine place. There are two lakes, an upper and a lower, separated by just a hundred yards or so. The nicest thing was that it seemed to be an old growth area, a real forest, where there were no stumps, where trees die only from natural causes and once they succumb, they just lie where they have fallen in all their glory. 

Monday, September 27, 2021

Some serious rain today, beginning in the night at around 3:00 a.m. and continuing on and off throughout the day. At around 2:00 p.m. a small flock of doves visited our back yard, giving most of their attention to Hummock #3. We hear doves often, but rarely see them walking around, pecking at the soil. They were a couple of smaller birds, each one following a larger bird. If the smaller ones followed too closely, the larger birds would turn around suddenly and bat them away.