The View from the Hermitage, Day 154

Should I applaud for hitting 22 weeks? That's roughly five and a half months. Truth be told, it has not been half bad. Were I a more social person, it probably would have been. I will admit to thinking about keeping this lifestyle up post-pandemic. I'd have to leave for the grocery shopping older son is doing for us, but I've managed to arrange other things to allow me to be a hermit. The local CVS is but five miles away, but they mail me my prescriptions for free. We have to support the US Postal Service after all. Ordering from Amazon also helps with that, though I have gotten an Amazon delivery or two via UPS. Amazon has been my go-to shopping spot during the pandemic with side trips to chewy.com and the King Arthur flour website. King Arthur even had active dry yeast that older son was unable to find at the grocery store he frequents. Now, the yeast has yet to arrive, but the order has been shipped.

Putting the house back together continues. Today's excavation of younger son's room yielded the clothes I removed from the master bedroom's closet. Sorting them by husband's or mine yielded a couple of silk shirts the husband got in Vietnam and has not worn in, yes, years and that somehow sneaked into my side of the closet. I'll see if he notices. There's a warm and fuzzy green flannel shirt that looks as if it's never been worn. I'll ask him what his intentions are for that one. That may clue him in that I've snatched some others, but I hope not. And, no, as far as I know he does not read this blog nor has he ever to my knowledge visited my website. 

In the novel coronavirus headlines of the day, New Zealand now has nearly 70 cases. They're still looking for the source. Given that it's a genetically different virus strain than they had previously, they know that these are new cases, not leftovers from earlier. And in Toronto, a strip club employee may have exposed about 550 people. The employee worked four shifts in early August. No information was given on in what capacity the employee worked. And on the higher education front, there have been four outbreaks (more than five cases at the same location) in three days at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, one at a fraternity house and the others at dorms. There was no word on whether the outbreaks were related to social gatherings. An outbreak at Notre Dame was linked to an off-campus party. I hope the party-goers had as much fun as the patrons of the strip club did.

The president of the local university held a virtual town hall with parents last week. He told them that the only change that would be made to the fall schedule would be to go totally virtual. They will not postpone move-in and the start of in-person classes to a date later than the current September 8. The drop-dead date for announcing a move to all virtual is August 28. My money would be on their going all virtual given what has been happening at other colleges and universities. 

As for what going all virtual might mean for football and other fall sports, I read the argument that right now, when the various sports teams are back and practicing with no other students on campus, they can basically be kept in bubbles. Once all the other students come back, those bubbles will be harder to maintain. This opens the possibility that the university goes all virtual but the athletes stay here to do online classes and continue to practice and, then, compete while housed in their bubbles. I had not thought of it in those terms before, but it seems quite possible.

And so passes another week. I should be glad that we had the painting and the floors done. Without that, I might have gotten lacking for things to do and gotten bored. I figure putting the house back together is good for at least another month or two.