The View from the Hermitage, Day 199

Had I thought to write about my morning walk yesterday, I would have commented on fall's approach. No deciduous tree was clad solely in green; all had some hints of color. Leaves had not really begun to fall; no raking would have been necessary. This morning told a very different story. The trees were still mostly green; however, yesterday evening's briefly torrential rainfall had carpeted the shoulder and one lane of the road with mostly yellow and brown leaves. Fall has gotten a wee bit closer, it appears.

What can I say about last night's debate? Not much because I went up to bed at 7:00, answering the invitation of the family dog. I planned to sit in bed and read while I petted her, but by 7:30 we were both sound asleep, me in my bed while she was in her bed on the floor beside me. The husband said that when he checked on us at 8:00, neither one of us stirred even a little.

Older son had not planned to watch the debate, but did. His email sent on his way to bed post-debate noted Biden's good response to the final question about accepting the results of the election. It also noted that the debate overall was "a hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck." He said that that statement was not his opinion but that of a CNN announcer, who turned out to be Jake Tapper. Even better was Dana Bash's comment that because she was on cable she could say that the debate was "a shit show." The excerpts I watched online supported those assessments. I have to say, though, that much of the blame should be placed on the shoulders of the moderator, Chris Wallace. Did he not have the means to mute one of the candidate's mic? 

As for HWSNBN's comments on white supremacy, could he have been any clearer about what his views are? He as much as invited the Proud Boys to take action on or after election day. His demeanor harkened back to his good people on both sides comment about August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville. (I used to have to tell people that I live in Charlottesville, Virginia; since August 2017, I don't need to say the state. People worldwide know of Charlottesville.) As for sending someone into each precinct as a poll watcher, as long as the regulations regarding poll watchers are met, there would not be a problem here. The precinct chair at "my" precinct is, I know, more worried about trouble breaking out outside between the Democrat and Republican contingents separated by only a sidewalk.

I saw a news note this afternoon that the bi-partisan committee that handles the debatesis looking into changing the format to keep things under at least a little control. Ideas from here include not having the candidates on stage together but in separate rooms or locations, with the other candidate visible only on a monitor. Each candidate could hear what the other one said but would be muted from making any interruption. 

Older son noted that he was impressed that despite all the back-and-forth, interrupted-or-not dialog, Biden never had a trace of the stutter with which he grew up. Older son said he thought that would have given the Republicans new ammunition in terms of trying to alter voters' perceptions of Biden. I commented that I hoped the young man who had spoken at the national convention was watching. A good example to see of someone having worked hard and overcome stuttering. 

Finally, while HWSNBN's family and staffers apparently entered the auditorium wearing masks, once inside they removed them. Jill Biden and Biden's staffers left theirs on throughout the evening. It's quite clear who is more concerned--correctly, I might add--with the seriousness of covid-19. Would HWSNBN change his opinion or action if someone close to him caught covid-19? That question assumes that he really cares about those who appear close to him.

Maybe I'll go to bed later on the night of the next debate. I could always turn in at 8:30 if debate coverage did not begin until 9:00.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 198

I just emailed the designated address about being able to retain my virginia.edu email address. It's hit or miss if they let retired part-time wage people keep theirs. I've always called part-time wage people the university's bastard stepchildren. We're overlooked when it comes to a lot of things. If I can keep the address, great. If I can't, I'll live.

I've scheduled my flu shot for Thursday, October 1. I signed up for the 10:00 slot at the local CVS drugstore. Older son took the 10:30 slot, while the husband signed up for 11:00. I hope they will view that as a good thing, being able to do three, one right after another and then have a nice break before the 11:30 appointment. I'll have to cut my morning walk short or plan on doing it in the afternoon. Finishing in time to shower and leave the house at 9:45 would mean starting way earlier or doing it was faster, and I'm not sure I'm up for either of those.

Supposedly, the base demographic for HWSNBN is white males who did not attend college. I hate to say it, but the only reason I can think of for that demographic to back HSWNBN is his racism and divisiveness. I don't think that group would view him as "one of them" in any other sense. I don't expect that any of them are put off by his paying less federal income tax than they do. They probably believe his assertions that it's his skill as a businessman that nets his taxes so close to breaking even.

So world-wide covid-19 deaths have passed the 1 million mark. The husband told me that he'd seen a reference suggesting that the million could double before we get things under control. Sad do say, that would not surprise me. Countries and states that seemed to have things under control suddenly don't seem to, and the increases don't appear to be a second, new wave. It's just the first wave hanging on. or re-surging. 

Last night I came across photos of a pink aurora, a very rare manifestation of the Northern Lights. Today, my accidental find was a photo of a rainbow through which you could see the aurora. Both made me want to take another aurora-finding trip. Damn pandemic! Iceland and Norway are no-goes. Even Canada is out of reach. We've talked about making our next such trip to Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Surprisingly, or maybe it's not, a trip there would cost more than one to Iceland or Norway. It's supposed to be the place to go to see the aurora in North America. It will probably be a few more years, especially if the husband has to delay his retirement for a couple more years no thanks to the pandemic. 

Woo hoo! I just got an email that my virginia.edu email account has been set up. I'll need to renew it every year, but that won't be a problem. I guess that means that my office did do everything it was supposed to in order to make my retirement official. To be sure, that changes nothing in terms of what I will or won't be doing or have time to do. The pandemic has taken care of a lot of that with the unpacking and putting away taking care of the rest. 

The View from the Hermitage, Day 197

Fortunately, the day got better after its beginning. The husband logged on to his email first thing to find a message thread from his department about one of the grad student lab instructors having tested positive for covid-19. Apparently, the student had recently had a meeting with the other three lab instructors, and the university would not test them. Also, these instructors teach the physics majors lab class, the only lab class being offered in-person. The husband got in on this since he is the faculty member responsible for assigning and overseeing the teaching assistants, which includes lab instructors. There were several directions this incident might take. By mid-morning, it was clear there was no real panic. The university would not test the other grad students because they were not together with the  one testing positive for more than 15 minutes. That appears to be, at least to the folks in charge here, a critical length of time. The lab sessions will be done via video for the next two weeks, just in case one of the other instructors develops covid-19. Before lunchtime, the husband said everything was hunky and dory, and all was well. 

Also on the covid-19 front, HWSNBN's new favorite advisor has been pushing for the US to go the same route as Sweden and try to hit herd immunity. Other more knowledgeable doctors are noting that because it has been demonstrated that people can get reinfected with covid-19, herd immunity cannot be attained. Does that matter to HWSNBN? Probably not a snowball's chance in hell.

We will not be watching the presidential debate tomorrow evening. It does not start until 9:00, which is when we're usually heading to bed. I have various friends planning debate bingo or some form of a debate drinking game. I suggested they take a shot of whisky every time HWSNBN misleads or lies. Several people said the problem was that they'd pass out before much of substance had happened. We will read about the debate Wednesday morning and discuss it with older son as we walk the family dog. That's about as close to the debate as I want to get. 

Last night, The New York Times began a series on HWSNBN's tax returns. In 2016 and 2017, he supposedly paid only $750 in federal income tax. He claims that that is an indication of how great a businessman he is; I would say it shows how much he's manipulating the system. It was heartening, though, to read that he has loans totaling in the hundreds of million dollars coming due in the next several years, all of which he personally guaranteed. In other words, if his businesses aren't generating enough income, the payments will come out of his own pocket if indeed there is enough spare change there. 

There was a photograph of the Bidens as a couple along with one of HWSNBN and his wife. HWSNBN was sitting on the bench of a grand piano dressed formally. Mrs. HWSNBN was lying seductively posed on the top of the piano, one leg raised, and wearing a formal gown. The Bidens were sitting on a garden bench with their two dogs sitting in front of them. I commented that what sealed the deal for me was that HWSNBN has no pets. That says a lot about his character, in my humble opinion.

I made a bit more progress unpacking and putting away. I think I have all my knitting, felting, and weaving books gathered and on shelves which likely means that this weekend, I will discover another box with enough books to require total reorganization. I have yet to find even one of the three more staplers I know we had. I still have not found certain t-shirts and sweaters. They may have been packed together in one box, but I don't recall for sure. It's probably more likely that the pandemic will pass than I finish the unpacking. Right now, finding one of the missing staplers would be golden.

 

The View from the Hermitage, Day 196

We aren't far from 200 days. The husband and I have finished one of the two bottles of champagne I was given on Friday. I told him we should open the other on the 200th day of this pandemic recounting. I don't know why I initially thought the pandemic would be over quickly. I certainly never foresaw it lasting the 28 weeks it already has. The joke is on me, I guess.

Older son took down some more boxes from the mountain of boxes in younger son's room. Several contained books on knitting, crocheting, or felting. I'm putting them on lower shelves below where I will be putting my yarn stash. I need to put something, anything, on lower shelves to deny the family cat access to my wool. One of the boxes had some notebooks I sort of remembered but hadn't looked at in two or even three decades. One was the journal I kept in Spanish for a bus tour of Southern Spain we took the summer I studied in Madrid with a group from another university. I glanced at that long enough to know that it would take me a while to read it since I would have to use context to translate a lot of it. 

Another journal I found was one I kept from August 1989 to July 1990, the year we spent in the Netherlands where I gave birth to younger son. I worked from this journal to craft weekly letters that got printed, copied, and mailed to family members and close friends back here. I kept a copy of each of those as well. Talk about a cascade of memories. It appears I was quite honest in those letters about the feelings of isolation, only having the husband for adult conversation and older son for not-so-adult conversation. He had been in day care when I was working, so that year was the first time I'd been with him 24-7. I had forgotten just how interesting he was at the age of two. It was especially interesting to read the last entry/letter, a summation of the year. Among other things, I noted the number of nights we had at least one guest in the house and, being a data nerd, the number of guest-nights reflecting that we had, at least once, three visitors staying with us the same night.

It was interesting to read my writing as something of an impartial reader. I have been told, typically in business settings, that I write well, and I usually just dismiss those compliments. They make me uncomfortable, especially while writing the next thing I write. Expectations can weigh heavily on one's shoulders. Reading that last journal entry and some of the others, I can see why people have told me that. I would tell the person whose writing I was reading that she writes well.  

Continuing in the forgotten writing vein, I also found a notebook that contained assorted poems I wrote in the 1970s as well as various essays I wrote for freshman English in the fall of 1973. I did not read the essays, but I did read the poems. I was surprised that I wrote some of them. They sounded, well, not too bad. Needless to say, many had been inspired by people or events in my late high school and early college years. Another rush of memories. I will have to spend some quality time reading more of all this found writing and get reacquainted with my younger self. 

The park was foggy this morning and seemed to get foggier as our walk there lengthened. Here's a shot on the arrival side of the visit, at the start of what turned out to be a three-mile walk.

And here's one on the other side, on the way back to the car.

Driving home post-walk, it suddenly cleared. By the time we got home, the sun was out. Mother Nature likes to keep us guessing.

And so I have successfully avoided discussion of the broader world. It was a good day, and not watching the nightly news might keep it that way. We shall see.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 195

I posted something on Facebook I'm going to repeat here. I think my favorite author is Mary Doria Russell. I picked up her first--and at that point, only--book The Sparrow at the local Barnes and Noble and read the first page. I marveled at how well it was written and bought it on the spot knowing nothing about it but the title and that it was science fiction. I follow Russell's blog, and each year at Yom Kippur, she repeats a post at the request of her brother concerning the unexpected death of his fiance. This year's posting can be found here. Each year, I take a deep breath, read the post, and remind myself to live by it for it is wise indeed. I could include an excerpt from it here, but it is more important that you read the whole thing.

I have always been big on telling the husband and sons that I love them. We typically do not end a phone conversation or a visit without trading that sentiment. I'm not sure why I started doing this. It is not something I grew up with. I am glad that the sons have picked up the habit; I am not always the one saying "I love you" first. We don't know what tomorrow will bring. Heck, we don't know what an hour from now will bring. We know that we love each other, but I can't imagine not telling them.

Mad face! I had a paragraph about HWSNBN's Supreme Court nomination and the state's and local university's covid-19 numbers. I accidentally deleted it, and the Blogger input only does one level of undoing. I am not going to re-type it now. I should probably compose posts in Word with its multiple levels of undoing and then paste them here. I doubt I remember to do that tomorrow.

I assume that I am now officially no longer associated with the local university, that all the paperwork I completed went through and is official. I am owed one paycheck which should cover the grand total of one hour of work. This coming week I get to see whether they let part-time, wage retirees keep their .edu email addresses. I've tried to move anything personal over to my personal gmail address, but after 22 years, a lot of people have the .edu one in their address book. If I can keep it, even without my alias of "jean," it would make things simpler. 

The husband and older son presented me with two bottles of champagne yesterday morning. The husband and I opened one last night; we're finishing it now. I'm typing here, and he's doing a sudoku while watching college football. There are visible signs of the unpacking and putting away I've been wrestling with. I even treated myself to some time with the felting machine. I'm trying to make a leaf design using a photo I took of a real leaf as a guide. I'll post the results when I have them.

And now I must commence with dinner preparations. But first, to anyone who reads this, I love you. I may not know you, but I love that you came here and read my random thoughts.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 194

It hardly was a stressful or backbreaking job given that I worked part-time, flexible hours from home, but not any longer. Thirteen months after I first said that I wanted to leave, I have officially left. At least I think so. I haven't heard from anyone in the office this week meaning, I hope, that the forms I filled out and returned to them were okay. I kind of thought the boss--for whom I stayed on the payroll these past thirteen months--might email to say farewell, but given that she couldn't keep straight when I was leaving, I'm not surprised. The husband and older son gifted me with champagne this morning which I will open as soon as the husband descends from his office.

There being few distractions today, I am back to unpacking, recycling, donating, throwing up my hands in despair, and whatnot. Where did all this crap come from? And where is it going now? Only time will tell.

The husband has descended, so it is time to pop the cork.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 193

I'm using writing this as a brief respite from reading a very disturbing article in The Atlantic--"The Election That Could Break America." The author, Martin Gellman, describes just how bad things might get in the interregnum, the 79 days between Election Day and January 20, when the end of the sitting president's term ends and the president-elect is sworn in for the coming four years. He points out that no matter what the vote totals are, HWSNBN will never concede. Two men, HWSNBN and Joseph Biden, could show up at the Capitol on January 20 expecting to be sworn in as president. 

Gellman describes various means by which HWSNBN might disrupt the casting of in-person votes, means such as vigilantes approaching voters and discouraging them from entering a polling place to cast their votes. His views about mail-in ballots are well-known by now as is his campaign to disrupt the postal service so as to delay those ballots from arriving at registrars' offices in time to be counted. And what if governors from the same party as HWSNBN order their state's electors to vote one specific way no matter what the vote totals were. None of it is pretty, and all of it is downright frightening. There is no honor among thieves or narcissistic megalomaniacs. 

The husband spoke with someone who knows someone suffering from covid-19. The person said that he can call his friend one day, and all is well, the man will be going back to work as soon as possible. The next day, the man can't say, in a now very raspy voice, when he might be able to go back. The man has been fighting it for several weeks, and no end seems in sight. And there are people who wonder why I am keeping myself out of circulation.

I will be interacting with the world next week or the week after in order to get a flu shot. I'll make appointments at the pharmacy so that the husband, older son, and I can go in and get our three shots in one fell swoop. I could also go to my primary care physician's office, but that would mean more people to encounter. I haven't had the flu in somewhere around 30 years, but I remember well just how miserable I was. When I said I felt as if I'd been run over by a truck, I meant it.

Today was a day when, after my morning walk (7.46 miles!), nothing went as planned. In particular, no unpacking was accomplished, and none will be this evening either. I had joked with the husband that if the mixer appeared in the kitchen having been transported from the basement pantry, he would get oatmeal raisin cookies. I came in from my walk, and there it was! Just as I was ready to head to the shower, the president of the Homeowners Association called with some questions about the budget we actually do not have. There is no such thing as a short phone conversation with that woman. I kid you not--I have seen and heard her sitting on her porch on a cell call for the entire two-plus hours I am walking. When I finally got off the phone, it was time for lunch and then a shower. I had decided that I would make a double batch of cookies since that relieves me from coming up with desserts for a while. While they baked, I set up the HOA dues notices to go out next week. Eventually, I washed the dishes, forgetting the two cookie sheets and spatula and emptied the dishwasher I'd run while doing the cookies. Now, it's time to start dinner if I want to do Mongolian beef. I'd use frozen pizza as a fallback, but that's what we ate last night.

There's always something, isn't there?

The View from the Hermitage, Day 192

On this morning's walk, I thought about how the news has changed during the last six months. When I started daily blogging 192 days ago, the novel coronavirus was often the only topic on the front page of The Washington Post. It sometimes seemed to be the only topic covered on the NBC Nightly News (the network whose news we watch since it immediately follows the local news we watch). As that wore off, we read or watched about George Floyd, then Breonna Taylor, sequeing into Black Lives Matter in all-the-news all-the-time mode. The Western wildfires might have been the only news of the day, but there's an election about to happen. I expect we won't hear much about anything else for the next month or two. We might have distractions in terms of the sports happening or not, but those won't be on the front page or on the nightly national news. 

Dr. Fauci was asked about places we should not be going right now. He cited restaurants, bars, and gyms. I might have thought airplanes would be on the list, but they probably rank lower because a much smaller percentage of people will travel by air than want to eat out. I would not want to go to a movie theater right now, and it seems a whole lot of people feel the same way. I wonder if the coronavirus along with the growing popularity of streaming videos will permanently alter theater attendance. I don't think any of our mutual funds contain studio or theater stocks.

On the home front, yet another first-year dorm at the local university has students testing positive for covid-19. Last night, the university put up on social media (but did not send out via email) the president announcing tightened restrictions to start at 9:00 am this morning. The maximum group size has gone from 50 to 5 for indoor or outdoor activities. Students are encouraged (I don't know how they would require this) not to leave town nor have visitors from out of town. These will be in effect for at least two weeks. The comment I haven't figured out was that some students have already been put on interim suspension due to violations of covid-19 mitigation measures. What the hell is an "interim" suspension? How can you suspend someone temporarily? Is it keeping them from attending class for long enough that they will fail all their courses? Is it temporary in that it's for one semester only as opposed to being expelled forever and ever amen? If I learn what they mean or figure it out on my own, I'll let you know.

The university president said in his remarks that what has happened so far is what they expected would happen, that none of what has happened has surprised them. So did they know they were going to have to resort to more restrictive measures three or four weeks in? If so, why did they just not put them in effect at the outset and possibly keep the number of positive cases lower? And why post only on social media? I expect that kept a lot of faculty from learning about it until after it had gone into effect this morning.

Finally, the overall university numbers look good--emphasis on "look." They only include tests done at the university, which is likely why the positive tests that came out of the athletics department have not yet been added. They may very well have been done by an outside lab contracted by athletics. I see the exclusion of all non-university tests as a major flaw in what is being shown. The numbers given do not provide an accurate representation of covid-19 at the university.

I wonder if the local news tonight will include how the first day of the new restrictions went....

The View from the Hermitage, Day 191

When the husband's mother lived in British Columbia, we tried to visit her every year or two. We would combine visiting her in Kamloops, BC with touristing. One year, we planned on taking the coastal ferry from Vancouver Island up to Prince Rupert then driving south to Kamloops stopping along the way at a restored old West town called Barkerville. While perusing a BC guidebook, I learned that by going 137 miles (one way, so 274 miles round trip) out of our way, we could visit the easternmost town in Alaska, Hyder. Hyder sits just across the border from Stewart, British Columbia. Even more exciting, we could do this on the weekend in which Canada Day, July 1, fell on Friday and Independence Day, July 4, fell on Monday. How could we not do this? We'd be able to check Alaska off the list of states we had visited. 

I explain all this because Hyder and Stewart are in the news again. When we went there, you could wave at the border patrol station and go between the two towns. People went back and forth at will. Both Hyder and Stewart are small. Hyder's population is under 100, and Stewart's is 400. There got to be so few children in Hyder that the local elementary school closed. The elementary-aged kids started crossing the border and going to the school in Stewart. 

As you might have thought, border crossing has become problematic in the age of covid-19, but it's not the US causing a problem. Canada closed its border with the US, and that includes the border between Hyder and Stewart. One person from each family in Hyder may cross into Stewart for three hours once each week to obtain needed supplies, meaning that the kids can't go to school. Stewart has asked the federal government for an exception given that exceptions have been added to a couple other towns in similar situations. So far, no exception has been granted to Stewart. The residents of Stewart may cross into Hyder with no problem; however, they must quarantine for two weeks when they cross back into Stewart.

And we're worried here about in-person vs. hybrid vs. all virtual school. At least the kids here have a school they can get to. The city schools here may move to hybrid early in October rather than wait until the end of the nine-week grading period in early November. It's not clear yet how parents and teachers feel about this. For those for whom all virtual is working well, it may not be a big decision. For people paying for a program in which their kids are monitored and connected to complete their virtual learning, it might be different, especially if they're paying for multiple kids. Some of the programs I saw mentioned were in the neighborhood of $300 per week for each child. That adds up fast.

It's becoming pretty clear that HWSNBN will get whoever he wants named to the Supreme Court. Mitt Romney and a senator from Colorado were seen as the most likely to join Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski in not supporting a decision made by anyone other than the winner of the November election. There were two op-ed pieces in today's Washington Post proposing a term limit of 18 years on justices. The justice could be re-appointed, but the proposal does away with automatic lifetime appointments. What is so scary about appointments now is that they are until death do us part. Academic tenure is one thing; lifetime appointment, another.

The local university just put up their new covid-19 numbers. They do not look that bad. The concerning thing, though, is that I don't think they've added the positive cases found in the testing done by the athletics department. And if they are leaving those out, what else might be missing. I need to do some digging and find out what the policy is for students who test positive on an outside-the-university test. Are they expected or even required to report that result to the university? This inquiring mind wants to know.

My cell phone just sent me a notification about the CDC's warning to parents about traditional Halloween activities. They warn parents not to let their kids go trick-or-treating door-to-door. They also advise not attending crowded indoor costume parties. Some localities have already banned trick-or-treating. When Los Angeles tried to do so, though, public outcry prompted them to reinstate it but encourage parents not to allow it. In skimming the article, I saw no mention of what some churches do here, trunk-or-treating car-to-car in a parking lot. That would have the advantage of being outdoors. I will likely have some candy on hand in case the few kids here come knocking as they did last year. All in all, though, another reason to be glad our kids are adults ... even if they don't always act like them.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 190

The local university continues to hold its own in the covid-19 battle. There were 29 new cases in the athletics department, but the number of cases from the first-year dorms affected is much lower ... so far. What I wonder is what is the number of off-campus cases? Those kids are very likely coming onto campus and interacting with the resident students there, spreading the virus even further. I do not envy the decisions the powers that be have to make these days. 

HWSNBN says he will announce his nominee to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the Supreme Court Friday or Saturday of this week. Two Republican senators have said that they think the winner of the November election should be the one to make the nomination. Without two more Republicans willing to buck the President and the party, HWSNBN will put a third justice on the court, meaning (among other things) that women may lose the right to make the choice when it comes to their own bodies. Some pundits have put forward that if the Senate goes Democratic in November, there should be a move to put two more justices on the court. The Constitution does not specify a size for the court, only that there be a court with member nominated by the president and approved by the Senate.

I did get things in place yesterday so that we could move back into the master bedroom last night. The husband says he slept like a log. Unfortunately, I did not. I'm hoping it was the first-night-in-a-new-bed syndrome and that tonight my body feels at home and lets me sleep more soundly. In terms of unpacking, I am now wrestling with the fact that I wanted the main floor less crowded with furniture, which means that I must find new places for the things that were sitting in places that are no longer there. I don't want to just stick them in the basement; I'd like for them to look as if they belong wherever they end up being put.

I've also been sorting through a large box of knitting and crocheting patterns. There are duplicates of some and others I can't believe I ever thought I would make. Then there are the oddities such as the Chicken Sweater. It looks more like a sweater vest than a sweater, but I guess wings aren't the best foundation for sleeves. I do know someone with chickens and am sorely tempted to try to make one for her. Fortunately or not, I have too many other things to think about doing right now.

The first day of fall is tomorrow, and the weather is welcoming it with lower temperatures and crisper air. The leaves on the trees are still green, but plenty of leaves have fallen to the ground. The husband and I have been taking the family dog for a pre-dinner walk, and today I actually was thinking that I should have worn a light jacket. And this morning I wore long pants and sleeves for my morning walk. I started with a sweatshirt over a long-sleeved t-shirt but took the sweatshirt off about halfway through the seven miles I did. Older son was running and he shed his long pants for the shorts he had on underneath. I may do that tomorrow morning, but since I'm walking and not running I can see not warming up enough to want shorts. 

Spring started this year on March 19, meaning that I've now spent two full seasons--spring and summer--hermitting. So many ways to mark the passing of time.

 

 

 

 

The View from the Hermitage, Day 189

That's 27 weeks, definitely more than half a year. Since before I started blogging the pandemic, the husband and I have been sleeping in the basement guest room due to, first, interior re-painting, and after that, hardwood floor refinishing. The husband has let it be known that he wishes to sleep in the master bedroom tonight. This does not mean, however, that he has been helping schlep and unpack and move and clean to bring the desired outcome about. I have let him know that I am not bringing his clothes and toiletries up from the basement having brought up all of mine over the last several days. He had a lecture to prepare and tape which resulted in his making the lecture too long meaning he is now re-taping it. Work remains to be done to make the room habitable, though; this includes moving still-being-emptied boxes out of the way for in-the-dark trips to the bathroom. 

That's the long way of saying that this is it for today, and I'll catch you on the morrow. 

The View from the Hermitage, Day 188

On the news front, someone who for now is unknown mailed HWSNBN a package containing ricin. If you watched Breaking Bad, you know as much about ricin as you need to. It is nasty stuff. As CNN puts it, "If ingested, it causes nausea, vomiting and internal bleeding of the stomach and intestines, followed by failure of the liver, spleen and kidneys, and death by collapse of the circulatory system." As much as I dislike HWSNBN, I would not wish that death on anyone.

And in the how can 2020 suck even more category, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last night, and HWSNBN and the Republicans in the Senate are already moving to name a replacement. It appears that a conservative female federal judge is at the top of the list. These are the same Republican senators who refused to even consider Obama's nomination of a replacement justice and held up the process for a year or more. Remind them of all their high-falutin' language then about how a justice should not be chosen until after an election so that the will of the people can be represented, and, well, things are different now. I am sure that it has occurred to HWSNBN's advisors that Senate Judiciary Committee hearings have the potential to pull Kamala Harris off the campaign trail. 

Covid-19 cases continue to increase at the local university. They have now found them in four of the first-year dorms, meaning that 19 percent of the quarantine rooms are occupied. So far there has been no discussion of putting in-person classes on hold or sending students home. I'm starting to think that they would not send students home but instead might try the Notre Dame solution of confining kids to dorms for virtual learning only for a couple of weeks. It does keep the local news feed interesting.

On the home front, we put down the rug tiles in the dining area. It's not a great photo, but here it is.

It's on the neutral side which  I hope will make choosing curtains or drapes a bit easier. First, though, I have to read up on how to measure for them. We have not yet adhered the kitchen rug tiles to the floor but so far this arrangement is the one we like the best. I had thought about two up against the under-cabinet wall in front of the sink and another two in front of the stove, places where I might stand for some minutes, but that looked too disjointed. I'm voting for this arrangement instead.

The nights are getting cooler, and there's actually an overnight low in the 30s Fahrenheit forecast for later in the week. As a result, we moved the plants in from the deck today. We cut a couple back and re-potted two others in the process. I hope the Christmas cacti were out there long enough to stimulate blooming. I have never managed to get them to bloom at Christmas, so I've given up and take them when I can get them.

I've been moving things around as I move us back into the master bedroom. Cleaning out a couple of drawers in my dresser was a priority. We have two many sweaters, many made by yours truly, for the chest in which I was keeping them. Last year, I kept the extras on shelves in the closet, but they kept getting hit and unfolding, and it just got to be a pain. I hope I cleared enough drawers to hold the surplus. I also have two not-large boxes of clothes to donate. I think my t-shirts have been engaged in hanky-panky and given birth to more t-shirts. There are a couple that I just could not bring myself to donate ... yet.

And now to go see if today's mail has arrived. I think it's going to contain, yes, two t-shirts. I ordered one for younger son's spouse equivalent and decided as I did so to get one for myself. I am my own worst enemy.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 187

Early voting started today here in Virginia. There were long lines at some of the offices in Northern Virginia; I expect the local news tonight will have a report on how things went here. Our absentee ballots should arrive tomorrow or Monday. Then, the husband, older son, and I will sit around a table and vote, with one person acting as witness for another. Rather than putting them in the mail, older son will use the drop box at the city registrar's office, and the husband and I will use the one at the county registrar's office. Then we sit back to wait. I may be able to tell how things went when the husband comes home from working his shift as an official. Was it close, or a landslide in one direction or the other? His face will tell me. At least Virginia doesn't wait until Election Day or later to begin to count absentee ballots.

Another White House ex-staffer, a former aide to the Vice President, has come out as planning to vote for Joe Biden. Her tales of HWSNBN's words and deeds throughout the pandemic are damning indeed. I can understand his concern for the economy; that's definitely seen better days. But his reelection should never have entered the picture of how to handle a global pandemic. Yet there were days when the coronavirus task force had to sit and listen to his diatribes on anything but the pandemic itself. Now, whether HWSNBN's base is going to believe any of that I do not know. When it comes right down to it, though, I just hope people turn out to vote. Another official and I used to thank people for coming in to vote and telling them they had earned the right to complain about the results.

 A Stephen Colbert tweet has much food for thought: The news can be depressing these days, so take a mental wellness break from reading about how the president sexually assaulted someone to read about how he tried to use a heat ray against his own citizens. This is appalling. Dispersing the protesters with no warning, before the posted curfew time, was bad enough, but if he'd used a heat ray to do so? I like to think that that would have crossed some line and made more people question his fitness to serve. I know. If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.

On the more immediate home front, unpacking the household continues. This has its ups and downs. For example, I had no idea how many effing t-shirts I have. I have put a few in the donation box, but it's hard to get rid of a shirt from one of the bigger things in my life such as GORUCK, SEAL Team Physical Training, or Myo Sim karate and kendo. Then there are the race t-shirts. I have very few compared to some people, but it's still hard. It's easier if they're too small or large for frequent wearing. I got rid of two shirts from the same race (the Montalto Challenge) because a third one fit more comfortably. I have more to go through tomorrow, so I hope there will be more than a few more headed for the donation box. And re-reading this paragraph reminds me that there were some shirts I did not try on and which might be tighter than I like. That would make getting rid of them easier. And since I just thought of it, I should go up and do it before the thought flits its way out of mind.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 186

The local university had announced plans to test wastewater from dorms with positive results meaning that someone in the dorm had covid-19. That plan paid off pretty quickly. The wastewater from one of the first-year dorms came back positive. They put the entire dorm on lockdown and were going to test everyone last night. It sounds as if they already knew of five students who had it. Yesterday, it was taking an average of 25 hours to get results back, so I'm not expecting to see any real increase in cases today. Tomorrow, though, I expect there will be an increase. 

I no longer have a friend with children of K-12 age, so I haven't really heard how the virtual school year is going. Actually, right now it's a virtual school grading period. The school boards and superintendents are supposed to announce in early October whether the second nine-week grading period will remain all virtual or if they'll be offering a hybrid option along with the all-virtual. It's not clear to me how a teacher, especially at the elementary level, would do both at the same time. It could be, I guess, that the teacher would broadcast live what he or she is going over with the kids in the classroom.

The US Attorney General compared locking down locations to slow the spread of covid-19 to slavery. Really? Slavery? I would suggest that a prison sentence is a better comparison point. It's not as if the people experiencing the lock down are made to labor during the time. They are, however, supposed to restrict their travel outside their homes. Definitely sounds more like prison than slavery.

I know that absentee ballots with be postage-paid and have tracking numbers, but I think I'll play it safe and use the ballot drop-off box that is in front of the county office building in which the registrar's office is located. I could walk inside and hand it to one of the clerks, but that would mean contact with another person or persons. Dropping it off seems easier. Heck, I could even see if older son minded dropping it off for me.

Hurricane Sally has been downgraded at the same time that Teddy has become a major hurricane. There's also a storm in the Gulf of Mexico that has a 90 percent chance of becoming a cyclone within 48 hours. And let's not forget the storm off the coast of Africa that has a 40 percent chance of becoming a cyclone in 48 hours. I don't know who or what pissed off Mother Nature, but she's paying us back with a vengeance. I seem to remember hearing this morning that they'd named a storm Wilfred, which would mean that the next one they would name would be Alpha.

The bread is out of the oven, so it's time to go upstairs and work on getting the master bedroom and bathroom inhabitable. I'm fortified by the test slice of hot bread and ready to get to it!

The View from the Hermitage, Day 185

Have we made it to herd mentality yet? No? And is that anything like groupthink? Wikipedia defines groupthink as "a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome." That description certainly fits what I think herd mentality might be. Mr. Google showed me a list of groupthink questions with answers from Psychology Today.This one is particularly relevant: 

Why can groupthink be dangerous?
        Even in minor cases, groupthink triggers decisions that aren't ideal or that ignore critical information. In highly consequential domains—like politics or the military—groupthink can have much worse consequences, leading groups to ignore ethics or morals, prioritize one specific goal while ignoring countless collateral consequences, or, at worst, instigate death and destruction.

I'd say that a global pandemic is a "highly consequential domain." As for everything after "leading groups to," that seems to me to fit like a glove our current situation. 

But enough about herd mentality. Did HWSNBN up-play or down-play the looming pandemic way back when? We've been there before: Audio or video tape of HWSNBN saying one thing that he later contradicts. Every time this happens, I want to tie him to a chair and force him to watch or listen to his saying Thing A followed by his saying Opposite of Thing A. Unfortunately, my training in psychology was not of the type to suggest how a narcissistic personality would deal with such a discrepancy. It might not be pretty.

Reading through the CNN summary of the first six months of 2020, I keep wondering if there could be a silver lining to 2020. I can't think of what a global silver lining might be, though I can imagine individual ones. My own life has certainly slowed down, though I feel bad at times that older son has taken on a shitload of responsibility to keep me safe. I don't feel guilty about walking for two hours almost every day which is a major factor in my losing so much weight. Maybe that's my silver lining. 

A notification just appeared on my phone telling me that the CDC director just predicted that a covid-19 vaccine will not be widely available until the summer or fall of 2021. It may be that my having several underlying risk factors might help me get ahead in any vaccination queue, though that might make me feel a bit guilty. How do I compare my risk factors to those presented by someone else? What makes me worthy to get it before they would?

I submitted more retirement paperwork and wait to hear what else I might need to do. I wonder if it all would have been easier to treat it as a resignation. I would not be able to keep my virginia.edu email address then, but as a part-time wage type, I'm honestly not sure it they'll let me keep mine. I tried to ask and kept getting referred to the help desk which offered no help. Evidently the system won't consider answering such a question until the day I retire or shortly thereafter. There's always something.

In addition to the unbelievable wildfires out west, we now have Hurricane Sally potentially dropping 35 inches of rain in some spots. Pensacola, Florida has already gotten over 24 inches of rain contributing to the collapse of a bridge. The rain may still be falling there; I haven't see anything about that. Slow-moving storm clouds but no apparent silver lining.

 

 

  

The View from the Hermitage, Day 184

The covid-19 case numbers for the local university won't be posted until around 4:00 pm. Still, the husband received an email this morning from the chair of the undergraduate teaching committee in his department. She noted that she'd had a fair number of students with covid-19 in her classes and wondered if anyone else was seeing the same. The husband has not had any student tell him they had tested positive, but since he teaches virtually he can't really say if anyone in his class isn't there for a week or two or looks under the weather. I'll have to ask him if there's any sort of follow-up email. 

I mentioned that the local university's football game with its rival school had been postponed due to covid-19 "issues." The issue is or was that there were so many covid-19 cases the school could not have fielded a team this weekend. I do not know how many players total are on a college team, but they must have had a lot of cases. To cap it off, the players were fine until the rest of the student body returned. That's when football-team cases started to appear and over a couple of weeks to rise.

As for the charger to this laptop, my guess is that there is something loose inside it. It charged the computer overnight, and there is still current coming from the wall to the laptop. I'm not going to chance moving it before the new charger arrives on Thursday. I will keep an eye on the task bar just in case the cord icon disappears and the number on the battery icon starts to decrease. 

As I walked this morning, I was thinking again about how a memoir of 2020 would end or at least lead into the ending from the penultimate page. Those thoughts led to a listing of events by month. When I asked the Google about events by month in 2020, the first site listed was a very detailed list from CNN. Each month started by listing the number of  covid-19 deaths in the US and in the entire world. I did not find it hard to believe that CNN was listing events I did not remember. There have been so many newsworthy happenings overshadowed by the pandemic, the upcoming election, the wildfires, that it's hard to think of the lesser ones. 

The second round of covid-19 tests at my mom's assisted living facility yielded no positives. As a result, they're starting up some group gatherings with a maximum attendance of 10. They're also going to start letting residents eat together, though distance must be maintained. Given that I wear a variety of hearing aid, I can imagine two people, both hard of hearing, sitting six, eight, or ten feet away from each other and neither can distinctly hear what the other one is saying. It might make a good scene in a situation comedy.

Early voting starts here on Friday. That's also the date on which they will mail absentee ballots. Pre-pandemic, I had volunteered to be one of the officials working at early voting sessions. Needless to say, that's not happening now. It will be interesting to see the stats on how many people vote early, vote by mail, or vote at the polls on Election Day. The state legislature this year made Election Day a state holiday and extended the hours the polls would be open from 13 (6:00 am to 7:00 pm) to 14 (6:00 am to 8:00 pm). I told the husband I wondered how many people would show up to vote during that last hour. I may be surprised, but I'm thinking not many will. Maybe I should say that I hope I will be surprised by there being a nontrivial number of voters in that last hour. It remains to be seen whether the pay will be adjusted for that extra hour. Many people leave after voting thanking us for volunteering. Technically, we aren't volunteers in that we do get paid. On an hourly basis, that pay does exceed minimum wage, but there's no overtime for hours nine through 14.

HWSNBN held an indoor rally in Nevada, a state limiting indoor events to a maximum attendance of 50. Older son said that HWSNBN can get around such restrictions by saying it is not a rally but a peaceful protest. When asked about the lack of masks or social distance in the crowd, HWSNBN remarked that the lack of masks and distance was not a problem; he was a very safe distance from the crowd and had no one standing near him. Yes, it really is all about him. 

The World Health Organization yesterday reported a record one-day rise in the number of new covid-19 cases, 306,857. The biggest contributors to that total were India, the US, and Brazil. Make America great? Hey, we're up in the top three here. There were also more than 5,500 deaths, taking the global total to 917,417. How soon will we hit one million? Too soon, I suspect, too soon.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 183

The newspapers use little boxes to inform readers of errata, things that were presented incorrectly in an earlier edition. A couple of days ago, I noted that the Board of Visigoths voted to reconceptualize Thomas Jefferson and his relation to the local university. An astute reader asked if I had really meant to say "recontextualize." The astute reader is correct. I went back and checked the original source, and it's "context" rather than "concept." Thank you, astute reader!

I have discovered that there is a lot of paperwork associated with resignation or retirement. Things such as a Knowledge Transfer Template and an Offboarding Checklist. I wonder what they'll say when I responded to the question about returning computing equipment with the fact I did that just over a year ago. One difference between resignation and retirement is that retirement lets you keep your university email address. I hope that applies to part-time, wage staff as well as the full-time real people. Most people use my gmail address, but there are advantages to having a .edu one. Fun fact: I had to email the office manager who sent me all the forms and ask what my Position Title is or was. Answer: Information Technology Specialist II. Now you see why I always just told people I was an "Analyst."

University covid-19 numbers from the weekend are encouraging. Both Saturday and Sunday showed fewer new cases than on Friday. I guess I'll find out tomorrow if they were down because pstudents don't go in to get checked on a weekend. It might, after all, get in the way of their party time. State numbers were also down a bit. In general, though, they're still higher than the weeks when reopening had just started and the limits were still very strict. 

On this morning's walk, I played with a variation of an admissions question the local university used to use and may still use. Applicants were asked to submit page some-number-in-the-hundreds page of their autobiography. Believe it or not, the admissions office occasionally got contacted by parents who said their kid was writing as fast as they could but probably wouldn't get to that page in time to submit the application. My variation was the penultimate page of your memoir, specifically, a memoir that ended some time in 2020.

Unexpectedly, I may have a problem charger; at least the power is dropping even as I have the cord plugged in. So, I've ordered a new one to be delivered on Thursday. In the meantime, I'm going to keep things short and have Twiggy (I have a very thin laptop) powered off unless it's in use. Right now, I'm going to investigate outlets. Twiggy was almost dead this morning but did charge to full power during the day. Now, though, she's on her way down again. Grrrr.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 182

Twenty-six weeks, six months, half of one year. My hair is six months longer and a wee bit darker without the trims and highlights. My body is 15 pounds lighter, though that's not directly coronavirus-related. My mood is probably more variable than it was before the life shut-down. The number of days on which the lows seem lower probably outnumber the days on which the highs seem higher. I expect that part of that is the general disarray that accompanied all the work we've had done on the house this year. It's going to be a while longer before I feel as if there's not something major still to be put into place.

Speaking of the house's still being re-assembled, I promised photos of the new rugs. We've only put the one in the living room down so far. It needs to sit until tomorrow before we put down the adhesive squares that will hold the rug tiles together. The faint lines you see here will disappear once we've done that and it's all relaxed a bit.

Once this rug is finished and the one in the dining area is down, I can start thinking about curtains in some light neutral shade. Given the 35-year-old sofas, our house will never resemble anything staged. I think of what our house looks like as immediate-post-graduate-school chic. I don't think we'll ever have what looks like an for-real-adult house. 

We took the usual Sunday morning walk in the park. This week's walk along the river was punctuated by older son's turning around and telling me to stop and back up. He knows my almost-phobia of snakes, and there was a snake lying at the side of the trail. It was not clear what kind it was, and I did not want to look closely enough to find out. I backed up and went around some bushes to go around the snake's snoozing spot. Older son noted that this was the first snake we had encountered, and we've been going there almost weekly in the last ... yes ... six months. I'd be okay with not running into another one for another six months. 

The Western fires continue seemingly unabated though some are at least partially controlled now. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be there. One of the news shows noted that atmospheric effects had been noted as far away as Ohio. I'm waiting for smoke-polluted air coast to coast, not that climate change's being a major contributor will register at all with HWSNBN. He is supposed to visit the fire zone tomorrow, and I almost dread seeing and hearing how his visit goes. In reshelving books, I came across the storybook that Stephen Colbert's staff put together in the wake of Hurricane Florence, Whose Boat Is This Boat?: Comments That Don't Help in the Aftermath of a Hurricane. Maybe the sequel can be whatever he says about the fire. Speaking of hurricanes, Sally is aiming right at Louisiana. Do they really need another cyclonic visitor?

I'm making another one of my found-during-the-pandemic recipes for dinner tonight, Fresh Corn and Tomato Fettuccine. You can find the recipe here. I need to try it using canned or frozen corn since I'm not sure how much longer the corn on the cob will be usable. I've lost track of how many times I've made this one since I found it several months ago.

New university covid-19 numbers tomorrow. Will we start seeing the effect of Labor Day gatherings?

The View from the Hermitage, Day 181

The breaking news around here, at least for a lot of people, is that the local university's traditional rivalry football game has been postponed and possibly cancelled. The rival university supposedly has "covid issues," which one source says is 600 cases. Rival is a larger university than the local one, and the local hit 276 yesterday; the 38 new cases is the highest daily number so far. If the conference has to reschedule too many games, they may just punt. I should apologize for that but spending the morning in a Zoom meeting then dealing with a homeowners' association issue this afternoon should give me license to do lame puns.

The morning Zoom meeting was with the board of the local quilt guild. As webmaster, I am not officially on the board but since each meeting generates changes I need to make to the guild website, it's easier to be there in person, though Zoom makes it in virtual person. The covid-19 pandemic continues to generate lots of changes. Cancel this, postpone that, and so on. The big thing was cancelling the biennial quilt show scheduled for April 2021. Assuming 2022 is closer to some sort of new normal, we can try again then, and just move the shows from every odd-numbered year to every even.

Refurnishing the house (from the furniture stored in younger son's bedroom or the basement) continues. We may actually be able to move out of the guest room and back into the master bedroom soon. When we can get out and go shopping, we need to get my mother a new bed. I told the husband we're getting a new mattress and box springs for the guest room. I am embarrassed to say that the bed in the guest room is one he had when we got married 35 years ago, which means it could well be 40 or more years old. The carpet tiles arrived today, too. We decided to put off putting them down until tomorrow. I'll post photos when that's done. It is interesting how nice the finished rugs look given they're made from squares.

The size of the wildfires out west is staggering. None of the people I know out there have had to evacuate ... yet. Some of the photos they've posted of orange skies look as if they're out of some fantasy movie. Dozens of people are missing. I can see how they'd be more worried about containing the fire. Not to make light of the situation, but I did read one humorous post about the fact that the number of fatalities on one location was one less than had been reported because one of the bodies was determined to have been an anatomical skeleton. I'm glad they checked and didn't accidentally give it the name of a missing person who might show up later. 

The local university's Board of Visigoths, er, Visitors met this past week. One continuing issue has been the number of buildings, monuments, and the like named after people who enslaved people or otherwise promoted white supremacy. The university does not bear his name, but it was founded by Thomas Jefferson, an owner of enslaved persons reputed to have fathered several children with one of the enslaved women. They can't take Jefferson's name off the institution (check out what's happening with Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia; the "Lee" is Robert E., Confederate general), but there is a statue of him prominently placed at one of the entryways to the university. The Visitors decided that what is needed is to "conceptualize the statue." Here's how one of the news reports put it:

The Board passed a resolution authorizing University leadership to work with historians and other experts to contextualize the statue, which stands on the north side of the Rotunda. While the resolution acknowledges the accomplishments of Jefferson as both a founding father and the founder of the University, it calls attention to his ownership of enslaved people, usage of enslaved labor to build the University and other “contradictory writings and actions.”

“The life of the founder of the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, is a complex one,” the resolution reads. “It is apparent that crucial to improving the racial climate is to reframe the historic landscape to tell a broader story about all of those who contributed to building and operating the University over its 200 year history, including recontextualizing the monuments to its founder Thomas Jefferson.”

The BOV did not specify a timeline or further details for contextualizing the Jefferson statue.

 Your guess is as good as mine how they will end up actually doing it.

What with Zooming and wanting to get in a morning walk (made it 5 miles before I ran out of time to shower before Zooming), I did not actually read the front section of either daily paper. Maybe there will be more news worthy of comment tomorrow.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 180

As if I didn't spend days going through and reorganizing everything in my sewing room/studio after the floor refinish, I have now moved in multiple cartons of fleece and other needle felting supplies that were in the storeroom. The goal is to open a clear path from an exterior door to the storeroom that holds the furnace as well as the area around the furnace. I was working on it now because they were going to do the job Monday and Tuesday. Guess what. The phone just rang, and they are now coming on Tuesday and Wednesday. Fortunately, I left enough room in the studio that I can still do some things over the weekend now that I won't be moving and clearing as much.

I noted on Facebook that I had resigned my job and had been officially connected with the university for more than half my life. One of the comments was to remind me of one of the many humorous episodes those 34 years contained. My third year in grad school, I was employed as the statistical consultant in the Academic Computing Center. Students and faculty would bring in their data analysis questions, and I would confirm that what they were doing was correct or try to steer them in a proper direction. One client--I cannot recall if student or faculty--proposed doing a certain analysis. Looking at his data set, I noted that his sample size was not large enough to make that analysis meaningful. He ended up out in the user area duplicating his data punch-cards (those were the days, my friend, I'm glad they came to an end) to make his sample size large enough. 

On the novel coronavirus front, Fauci says it may well be late in or the end of 2021 before life gets back to normal. HWSNBN said we've turned the corner, but Fauci begs to differ. The fall months will not be easy given the confluence of the coronavirus and influenza. There won't be a covid-19 vaccine before 2021, at least not one most people would feel comfortable taking. And even if a reliable one is approved in early 2021, getting it out to enough people who will take it will take a while. One suggestion I saw was that they vaccinate people over 70 first. Works for the husband, but I won't be in that group.

All of last week's covid-19 tests at my mom's assisted living facility came back negative. It sounds as if next week they will let small groups of residents eat in the dining room. I imagine that they would not have more than two at a table; I would not be surprised if there were one per table, but that would hardly provide the social connection people have been missing. Bingo in the doorways may give way to bingo in the library as they used to do it. That would probably depend on the number of people who show up, because I imagine they will continue social distancing. And given the possibility that a staff member could bring the virus to work, they may do more testing. They're not going to open up to outside visitors. That would defeat all the work they've done to keep residents safe so far.

I read today that the campaign committee of HWSNBN is considering holding a political event at the White House right before Election Day. I really wish someone would take the Hatch Act seriously and do whatever they would do such as fine, indict, etc. all the federal employees who assist in staging such an event. They say the president and vice president are immune, but whoever sets up the folding chairs isn't nor are the technical types running the sound system. And if that's not possible, how about a drenching rainstorm?

And this weekend we hit 26 weeks of hermitting aka six months or half of one full year. When all this started, I did not want to admit it could go on this long. Unfortunately, it has, and it would not surprise me if it lasted more than the full year we'll hit in six months.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 179

I have submitted the "default letter of resignation" that my soon-to-be-former office sent me. The boss signs and submits it, and then puts everything in motion. I was professional--and nice--and set the dates so that it looks as if I'm giving two weeks of notice. It's somewhat numbing. With the exception of August 1989 to October 1997, I have had an official connection to the University of Virginia since August 1978 when I arrived for graduate school. That's more than half my life at least for a couple more years. I've had over a year to get used to it, since I originally said I wanted to quit at the end of May 2019 then used the months following as leave before saying in August that yes, I wanted to quit. I agreed to stay on in a consulting role to answer questions as my colleagues took over doing the projects I'd been doing. Now that we're through more than 12 months, and all the projects have been done once, I'm outa there. 

It is likely that the office will want to mark my departure in some way. I hope they don't mind when I say that I'm not doing social gatherings these days. And truth be told, there are really only a couple of people there that I feel any real connection with. And given that my job was part-time, flex-time, and outside the walls of the physical office that I'm not sure any "celebration" is in order. Maybe I'll tell them we'll do it post-pandemic by which point they'll have forgotten about it.

I have been boxing up our collection of vinyl records that I removed form the master bedroom closet for the repainting and floor finishing. I don't want to put them back in the closet, though. For now, they need to be somewhere other than where they are. We're getting a new heat pump on Monday, and the LPs are partially blocking access to the storeroom that contains the furnace. I need to move some other boxes as well to clear a path from the door.

I'm having a bit of a hard time believing that the aides around HWSNBN actually let him do 18 on-the-record taped interviews with Bob Woodward. It seems, at least in retrospect, not to have been a good idea in terms of his being up for re-election in the near future. Mind you, I'm glad they let him do it given the "dirt" (for lack of a more polite term) he dished. Self-control is not a skill he mastered along his way through life. His base, though, will likely not care that he downplayed the novel coronavirus, contributing to the deaths of so many more people and basically putting the US on the world's pariah list. A stanza from "Blowing in the Wind" keeps running through my stream of thought; to play on something HWSNBN recently said, you know which one.

Also according to HWSNBN, the US has a new weapon or weapons system. Will details come to light soon? The anticipation will be tangible. Something explosive, perhaps? Chemical or viral is out, or should be. We don't need to be any more of a pariah nation than we already are. 

We interrupt this typing to report that the new university covid-19 numbers have been posted. There was an increase of 24 students testing positive. I know that the Labor Day or move-in parties likely haven't hit yet, but could it be that the students here will pull off the responsibility not shown at a lot of other schools? I'll believe it in about two weeks. 

I was going to make Mongolian beef for dinner last night but got distracted so frozen pizza, it was! I'm making Mongolian beef for tonight's dinner but need to pack a few more boxes of albums first. Then the husband can weigh in on just where we will put them.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 178

Well, it's not morning, but I'll see what I can do about staying focused for a while. I did move my laptop to my former (work) office in the basement away from the dining room table. I actually did that after this morning reading a new email from a problem neighbor about a new issue for the HOA to consider. After reading it, I yelled, "Fuck you, (insert name)!" Older son came in from outside and asked if he'd just heard someone shout "Fuck you!" I told him he had. We then looked at each other as I realized that the husband was in his second floor office Zooming with some of the students in his class. When he finished and opened the door to come downstairs, I yelled an apology and told him I'd relocate to out of hearing range. It turned out that he had not heard me and none of his students reacted as if they'd heard me. The only problem with operating out of the basement is that the Internet connection can drop unexpectedly. I'm hoping that we can fix that with a signal extender.

I had told a friend over the weekend that I would post the Mongolian beef recipe I'd discovered. If you've read the last couple of posts, you know I failed miserably at that little task. The link above should correct my error of omission. I emailed the recipe to my friend last night, but just in case anyone else was wondering. I've lost track of how many times I've made it in the last 178 days, but it's worked its way onto the frequently-made list. In fact, I just received an email from the husband that when given the choice between chicken fried rice with not much leftover chicken and Mongolian beef, which would he prefer, he would prefer the "Mongo beef." Blazing Saddles, anyone?

The news is out that HWSNBN admitted to Bob Woodward that he downplayed the severity of the novel coronavirus in February and March. At the same time, though, he was telling reporters that no one cold have foreseen the pandemic. He also insisted multiple times that the virus would just go away. "Virus, virus, go away! Come again some other day!"? I'd think that, but I don't thing HWSNBN ever enjoyed nursery rhymes as a child. Admitting he had would be akin to admitting a weakness.

Older son says that there's a rumor that should HWSNBN loses in November, he will resign so that then-President Pence can pardon him, just as Ford pardoned Nixon before any charges were ever filed. I think, however, that a presidential pardon only works for federal crimes. While that would take care of anything being investigated by the Southern District of New York, it would not cover anything being investigated by the NYC district attorney. I wonder what color his hair will seem when paired with an orange jumpsuit.

And the West is burning. A friend in Vacaville, California posted some photos taken at 10:00 am. The sky is a dirty orange (orange is becoming a theme I guess). Having asthma, I do not want to think how bad the air might be. Another friend staying with her parents in Oregon wrote "breathing the air burns and ash is floating everywhere and gets in the eyes." They're staying inside with a stack of jigsaw puzzles. The local (here) paper's website includes a photo taken in Oregon at 5:00 pm. The sky is a bright red.

Back on the covid-19 front, the local university is hanging in there though they have not updated their covid-19 dashboard yet today. Note: They just did. There are 24 more students cases than yesterday. The two local K-12 school systems survived the first day yesterday. The YMCA, at least one other non-profit, and a local fitness center are running a combination of school and day care. They will supervise kids as they do their virtual learning and supplement with extra activities such as art, music, or physical education. These programs don't come cheap, though some do offer financial aid. 

Okay. I managed to get this written with minimal interruptions. I kept my train of thought squarely on the tracks. It's good to know I'm still capable of doing that.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 177

Today's Washington Post contained the winners in the photo contest the Travel section holds every year. I've never entered, but the sons have. Older son won an honorable mention in 2009 with his shot of a woman at the Alhambra. Seeing the photos, several of which including the winner were taken with phone cameras, made me wonder when we might feel safe traveling again. I'd love to go back to Australia and visit my quilting friends there; the husband would love to go to Australia to dive the Great Barrier Reef. But 15 hours in a plane from the west coast of the US to the east coast of Australia is more than I want to think about now. Not to mention that Australia would not allow us to enter right now and probably for the foreseeable future.

The husband and I have taken a quick winter jaunt to Iceland three times in search of the aurora. That's the main activity of the trip, though we've also ridden Icelandic horses, toured a lava tube cave, and visited the Blue Lagoon. (Note: Once was enough on the Blue Lagoon.) We've never gone on any of the scenic day trips or even the experiential ones such as riding snow mobiles. We enjoy walking around Reykjavik, especially if it is snowing or has snowed. Needless to say, we won't be doing that this winter. Maybe it will at least snow here. 

I am not sure when I will feel comfortable getting on a plane even for a relatively short flight. Notice that I did say "when." Using "if" would have been too negative. We will get through this. I am also not sure when I will feel comfortable going to a restaurant, especially if it were to be indoor dining. I think that our last indoor meal out was February 28, for our 35th wedding anniversary (the anniversary proper was on the 23rd, but I was at a quilting retreat then). I don't think we've had take-out since before then. There's a certain pizza place I miss ordering from, but I read a review that implied they were not taking great care with masks and related mitigation measures. 

I do not feel comfortable going to a gym or fitness club yet. I'm not sure when I might feel comfortable doing that. I'm fine with walking not to mention spoiled in not having to pack a gym bag with clothes and toiletries and the worry I might have forgotten something. 

This post was so memorable that when the phone rang with a call about a homeowners' association matter that required I look for several things in the recesses of the county's website after which it was time to start making dinner, I did not remember I had even been writing. I'm thinking that tomorrow I'll give morning writing a try. Or not.

 

The View from the Hermitage, Day 176

It's Labor Day not that I have been laboring. I did get several more shelves of books finished though I abandoned sorting in the process. I will soon have to venture into younger son's bedroom and start rescuing more of the random things we put in there almost two months ago. Now that the husband is back to teaching, reorganization and replenishing have pretty much become a one-woman show.

K-12 education starts here tomorrow. Yesterday's Washington Post had a couple of articles about the travails that some families have encountered in K-12 education elsewhere. In one case, an early elementary school student was expected to sit and watch a screen for six hours with only one break, for lunch. In another, a grade 9 student needed to use the bathroom during geometry class and came back to find himself locked out of the class. Older son suggested that it might not have been the teacher who had done the locking out but the software being used to deliver the class. The software might have been programmed to lock should a viewer leave the screen. Either way, teacher or software, that is not what should have happened. I know that here elementary students will not be expected to sit for a whole day. Each class will be split in half. The teacher will hold a synchronous session with one group each morning and with the other each afternoon. When not in the session with the teacher, students will have assigned work to complete and submit. 

I've said it before, but I would just have pulled the sons out and home-schooled them. Younger son has always been a bit more social than older son, but there would have been extracurricular activities such as Scouting to provide social connections for him. I do realize that home-schooling is not an option for everyone, especially people who must work full-time and not from home. I would not have wanted to use what is supposedly becoming quite popular but which is also closely linked to one's socioeconomic status, the learning pod. In a pod, multiple families combine kids and hire teacher(s) to instruct them. I guess you'd call it formal home-schooling. The sons were very independent students and disliked group projects or, at times, even learning along with other people. I expect they would have likened the pod concept to The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, for which I'd give them points for creativity.

I ordered rug tiles for the living room, dining room, and kitchen this morning to take advantage of a 25 percent off sale ending today. A company called Flor sells carpet squares, just over 19 inches on each side. The squares are held together by adhesive units that don't harm the floors. We usually get a couple of extra squares so that if one square needs cleaning (pets do have accidents), that square can be swapped out for a clean one. You can also get the squares cut in various ways. What we have in the dining area is an octagon made using four squares cut diagonally. And in the kitchen, we're just putting a couple of squares down in front of the stove, in front of the sink, and under where the pets' water bowl sits.I hope that this is the last major expense for a while, though we have yet to pay for the new heat pump being installed next week. I blame the new rugs on the painter who suggested we try an accent wall or two. Without those, we could have just kept using the rugs we had. 

There have been articles comparing the "Pandemic 15" to the "Freshman 15," weight gained while sitting at home as opposed to moving off to college. About three weeks into my time in the hermitage, my weight hit a number that I've seen before but never liked, so I decided to be serious about lowering it. For the first while, I used the ancient Nordic Track ski machine every morning; eventually, I moved to walking, which I greatly prefer. I also started using the MyFitnessPal app to log what I ate each day. As of this morning, I achieved the "Pandemic -15," which means I have lost the weight I gained in the aftermath of my knee replacement two and a half years ago. Right now, I'm walking six or seven miles each morning, which takes up a nontrivial amount of time. Fortunately, I have that time to spare, so I don't have to wrestle with the guilt monster. All my clothes but one pair of jeans still fit, though some pants look better when paired with a belt. 

There were no new university covid-19 numbers this morning. It's legally a holiday, but the university is still holding classes for students while giving staff (except for faculty teaching Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes) a day off. Who knows what numbers I'll see tomorrow morning. New cases from social gatherings held over the long weekend probably won't show up until next weekend. Now if students tied one on at home before coming back to campus, those numbers could show up at any time. 

On the covid-19 front, I did go ahead and watch the official video I was supposed to have watched by tomorrow. It was pretty lame but fortunately was only 11 minutes long. There were no questions at the end to verify that I'd watched it. I could have done any number of things while the video played, but I was good and actually watched it. I also went ahead and watched a data security video I'm supposed to have watched by September 24. With my luck, I still won't be terminated by then.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 175

We approach being halfway through one full year. Truth be told, it would not surprise me at all to be sitting here at the one-year mark and typing "The View from the Hermitage, Day 365." I do think that by that time, there may well be a safe and reliable vaccine available and safe and reliable treatment(s) that can be used should the vaccine not take. As I typed "safe and reliable treatment(s)" the thought ran through my brain that of course a treatment would be safe and reliable. These days, though, in the wake of the short courtship of covid-19 and hydroxychloroquine, wanting a treatment to be safe and reliable makes takes on new meaning.

Students are now back pretty much in full force. Someone on the local university's subreddit asked when the university would suspend in-person classes and send students home. The first reply was that based on what the respondent had seen in two popular student areas the night before, it would not be long. The usual debauchery stretch is what on any other campus would be called Fraternity Row, but the student group overseeing Greek activity cancelled all in-person social activities at houses and put forward losing official status as a penalty. Sounds as if that may have been taken seriously.

The university does not update its covid-19 dashboard on the weekends, so tomorrow's numbers may be enlightening. The ones that come out during the coming week may be even more enlightening. I expect they will shed some light on what the timing of any decision by the university might be. Let's forget politics for a week other than how they might relate to the pandemic.

I checked off every item on my weekend to-do list save two. One is easily done in that it means opening a box in the basement and pulling out a specific sheet of paper. The other was the one "me thing" on the list, further play with my new needle-felting machine. Unfortunately, that's the way things usually work for me or, so I've heard, many other women. We occasionally or often have a tendency to do for others before we do for ourselves. Nice in theory but now always in practice. I think I'll put needle felting play at the top of tomorrow's list.

Also this coming week, I may well hear from the local university Tuesday in a continuation of my job termination, a process that started over a year ago. I heard last week from someone official that I had until Tuesday to watch some coping in the age of covid-19 presentation that all university staff had to view before they could be allowed back on campus. I emailed the boss who had said she wanted to keep me on the books until the end of the fiscal year, which was June 30. I somehow slipped through the cracks, and they are now "looking into formally ending (my) assignment." That somehow makes it seem a lot more complicated than it should be. People at the university come and go; it should be clear how to handle someone who has quit. I will have to think tomorrow how to respond should I get another email on Tuesday telling me to watch the presentation. As for being on campus, the last time I was officially there was about a year ago, when I delivered my computing equipment and paper files and sat down with the boss to go over my annual projects. I did go back for the retirement celebration of a colleague, but since I didn't put that down as time worked, I'm not counting it. How does this all relate to the pandemic? Without the required viewing of some covid-19 video, I might have thought my departure from the university was not an issue. 

Not a stellar blog post, but it's my fault for not getting to it until the post-dinner, pre-bedtime couple of hours. Notes to self: Use needle-felting machine tomorrow, and write earlier in the day.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 174

I did promise to divulge how the saffron and pistachio ice cream turned out. It turned out to be too damn good. I will definitely make it again, though probably when there is company coming so that the husband and I don't eat it all. You can find the recipe here.

And that's it for today. Back to shelving books. The end is not yet in sight but may be by the time I finish today.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 173

Like it or not, we find ourselves in a global pandemic. The last such pandemic was just over a century ago, in 1918. While there are certainly people alive now who were alive then--I have even read of a woman who suffered and recovered from both the Spanish flu and covid-19--most of us weren't. That makes this a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Granted, there could be another global pandemic, but given the 100-plus years between the last two, it's not overly likely.

Pondering this, I began to think of what my other once-in-a-lifetime experiences might be. Halley's Comet, also known as Comet Halley, appears every 75 to 76 years. The last time it was visible from our third rock from the sun was in 1986. Its next visit is projected to be in 2061. Did you see Comet Halley on its 1986 visit? I did, and since I probably won't be alive for its next visit, seeing it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. There are certainly people who will be able to say that they saw it twice, but for most of us, it's a one-and-done thing.

I go back and forth whether the arrival of a new millennium qualifies as a once-in-a-lifetime experience given how rarely it happens. The arrival of a new century, though, seems as if it would qualify. Some people, but not many, will live through the arrival of a new century twice, but it seems to me to qualify as another once-in-a-lifetime event. 

The husband suggested the 1969 lunar landing, which I had thought of and discarded. Why? Because there were more than one lunar landings, with more being planned, and the first lunar landing in 1969 was a one-shot deal that can't be repeated. That takes it out of the running at least for my list of once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

If you're from the US of A and around my age, do you remember how you heard about the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963? Given that the other U.S. presidential assassinations took place in 1865, 1881, and 1901, I'd say that a presidential assassination is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Obviously, that would not be true for someone born in 1855 who died in 1905, but for folks  alive now who were born before November 1963, I'd say an assassination counts. 

The question does arise if a once-in-a-lifetime event counts if you weren't old enough to remember the experience. Good question, and the answer I'll say is in the eyes of the beholder. Obviously, the ones I've thought of are ones I was there for and remember. Someone more elderly than I might want to count a British royal abdication in 1936. Given the length of Elizabeth II's reign (so far), a royal coronation could for some folks be once-in-a-lifetime. I expect it will be a while before another British monarch serves as long as Her Majesty has. 

Once I post this entry, I imagine that I will think of another one or two once-in-a-lifetime events I could have added. That's just the way things are these days. My mind wanders in one direction, sees a butterfly or something shiny, and is off in a new direction. As for once-in-a-day experiences, I have a pan of no-churn Persian saffron and pistachio ice cream in the freezer. I was late getting it made, so we may or may not be sampling it tonight. The recipe says to leave it in the freezer for 6 to 12 hours or until very firm. For now, here's what it looks like:

Tomorrow I'll let you know what it tastes like.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 172

I promised a report on yesterday's naan. It was quite good; the recipe will go into the notebook to be used again. I made whole wheat oatmeal bread today. We buy bread only when life's surprises keep me from making our own. Tomorrow is the ice cream I mentioned yesterday. The recipe says to let it freeze for at least six hours, so I'll be making it in the morning for dinner dessert.

As I walked this morning, I was thinking of the toll the pandemic has taken on relationships, not relationships of the heart, but plain old friendships. I have two friends who had surgeries this summer, in one case a knee replacement. I was able to loan her some of the post-op requirements--high toilet seats, a bath chair. a shoe horn that is somewhere between two feet and three long. We passed those off at a distance. It would have been nice, though, to go see her when she went home. We've traded messages, but it's not the same as relaxing together over coffee or tea. Another friend had back surgery last week. I would have liked to have been able to help her husband out after she came home. They're both in their 80s. I wasn't able to help celebrate her new grandchild with her either. 

And now a friend from my Internet quilting group, the woman in Boston who I mentioned had been hermitting for a week longer than I had, went into the hospital for appendicitis which led into gallbladder infection, which led further. After several surgeries, her kidneys are failing, she's been on and off a ventilator, and they're arranging palliative care. I saw her in February; our biennial gathering was right before the virus publicly erupted. Even with no pandemic, I couldn't really do anything for her or help her family, but the pandemic makes it cut a bit deeper. It hurts more than it would have under normal circumstances. The helplessness I feel about so many things gets amplified with something like this.

Should the FDA give emergency approval to a vaccine that has not finished a complete Phase III trial? I agree with those who say that if doing so backfires, the case for vaccines against anything is set way, way back. Saying that has nothing to do with getting it done before the election. It has to do with wanting them to get things right. I would support having laid out a plan for vaccine distribution by the end of October, but I would not want to see that plan enacted until a vaccine or vaccines had finished successful Phase III trials. When Dr. Fauci tells me a vaccine is ready, I'm willing to look into getting it. 

In the meantime, I messaged my PCP's office and asked whether I should get a flu shot if I planned to continue playing hermit. They said I should, so come late this month or early next month, I'll break out and go to CVS for a shot. I could go to my PCP's practice, but that would mean exposure to a host of people whereas at CVS, it might be as few as three or four if I time it away from the early morning, mid-day, or late-afternoon rush periods. 

More books are on shelves now than were there this morning. I may possibly have brought up the last bankers' box containing books from the basement, but I would not guarantee it. Keeping busy helps me not to dwell on the bad stuff, something I've been fighting on and off. So does repeating the mantra "we're fucked," as long as I don't do it too loudly if the husband is Zooming with students with the door to his home office open.