Pandemic Diary — December 21, 2021 to January 3, 2022

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Christmas soon, but four whole days to prepare. And we already did the grocery shopping–mostly. Must solve the problem of M’s prescription.

Wednesday, December 22, 2021

Making sure to take a walk every day.

Thursday, December 23, 2021

How can it take so long just to wrap a few packages? New prescription still not approved. Renewed the old one.  

Friday, December 24, 2021

The Andees came bearing gifts this Christmas Eve, accompanied by the valiant Frankie. For dinner, one of the A’s contributed mushrooms Logroño, the other A brought frosted sugar cookies plus several bottles from her wine-a-day advent calendar, E made besugo al horno, and M made millionaire cake.   

Saturday, December 25, 2021

It was rainy on Christmas morning, but somewhere in the midst of stockings and presents and breakfast, we noticed that the rain turned briefly to snow. It wasn’t for long and it didn’t stick, but it was nice. It also gave us a preview of what was to come. The snow started for real at about 10:00 in the evening. 

Sunday, December 26, 2021

Five inches of snow this morning, which is a very unusual occurrence in these parts.

For the first half of the day, we just sat back and enjoyed it. Then, around 1:00, we noticed a neighbor out clearing his driveway. Oh yeah, that. He was using a tool called a snow shovel. You don’t see those much around here. Do we even have a snow shovel? We think maybe we do. But where is it? (Ten minutes later) Ah yes, there it is, down there under that pile of stuff.

Monday, December 27, 2021

Three more inches this morning. Wow! No time to shovel though. because we’d arranged to meet our friend El over at the coast at 10:30 and we needed to allow extra time to get there. We didn’t know what to expect on the roads. There have been times when relatively small amounts of snow have paralyzed traffic on that road. But today wasn’t bad: a packed snow surface, mostly sanded and only rarely icy. We took it slow and did fine. We met El at South Beach State Park. It was a joyous reunion because we hadn’t seen each other in 10 years! We did a loop up the beach to the south jetty and back down on the inland trail through the trees. We met a friendly local guy with a very energetic border collie and talked to him for a while. Then it was off to lunch at Local Ocean. El wanted to try a number of things, so boy did we have fun. They weren’t too busy, so we got lots of attention. We feasted on scallops, crab, rock fish and black cod–all locally caught. Yum. 

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Spent the night in a loft room at the Embarcadero, an old condo development that overlooks part of Yaquina Bay. Considering that the place is 40 years old, everything is in pretty good shape. Our unit had new floors, fixtures and furniture. Only the carpet sample coasters were vintage:

The Port of Newport has a considerable fleet of fishing and crabbing boats. The latter are having their busy season now. Newport is also the home port of several ocean research vessels, one operated by Oregon State University and several owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The calm waters of the bay give no hint of the dangers of crossing  the Yaquina Bar, which has claimed many lives over the years. 

Before heading home, we stopped to see the seals. 

Wednesday, December 29, 2021

We have been out and about a lot lately, and we were exposed to at least one person who was exposed to a known case. It doesn’t seem very likely that either of us is infected, but we decided to get tested anyway. We went to a drive-up place called WVT, which is located in a small building that once housed a Baskin-Robbins. Talk about sad transitions. When we arrived, instead of going inside to look at all the flavors in the freezer cases, we just stayed in our car. WVT has you register with LabDash before you go, which takes care of a lot of formalities.  A staffer came out and scanned our LabDash QR codes and then gave us long swabs to stick up our noses and a couple of tubes to put the swab tips into once we were finished. After swabbing, you have to put the tip of the swab into the tube and break off the handle part, leaving only the cotton tip inside the tube. That last, of course, was the hard part. In order to see the one place where the handle breaks off easily, you kinda need to have your glasses on…  

We were told that the results would be on LabDash within 24 hours. 

Thursday, December 30, 2021

Friday, December 31, 2021

A rare sunny day. We went for a walk in the OSU forest, which was lovely. But the trail surface was icy in places and we had to take care. We saw that last weekend’s heavy, wet snow had broken off thousands–or millions–of small branches and also brought down a few large trees. Here’s a downed fir just beside the path.

As is our tradition, we spent New Year’s Eve with jigsaw puzzle and a bottle of champagne. It was fun to get several new year greetings by text from friends in other time zones. First came a message from Germany at 9:30 a.m., then one from Spain at about 3:15 p.m. on Dec 31. 2021. Then it was a message from El at 12:30 am on January 1, 2022.  Did we manage to stay up till midnight our time? Yes, we did.

Saturday, January 1, 2022

Except for a few bedraggled remnants, that old 2021 snow is mostly gone. 

Sunday, January 2, 2022

Tree down, lights and decorations packed away. As our Turkish friend Umut told us: Bir yıl daha geçti yine göz açıp kapayıncaya kadar. (Another year has passed in the blinking of an eye. )

He also wishes us a year of sevgi (love), hoşgörü (tolerance), neşe (joy), mutluluk (happiness), huzur (peace), sağlik (health), and sevdiklerimizle doyasıya  güzel zamanlar (good times with our loved ones). We wish the same to all of you.