The View from the Hermitage, Day 302

Yesterday I said I would have some photos of my infamous (well, to The Professor and Son #1) pandemic quilt. Here's the inspiration:

The Virginia Department of Health updates this chart by 10:00 every morning. It reflect numbers reported by each health district by 5:00 the evening before. I check the numbers every morning. Somewhere along the way I decided that this should be a quilt. There are limits, though, so I decided I would just do the six months between my July 1 birthday and December 31. That's 184 days, so I decided to do four days to one inch. That means the bars will take up 46 inches. The counts range from just over 500 to a ways over 5,000, so I decided to go with 50 cases to one inch. My bars will then range from 5+inches to 50+ inches.

I knew that if I tried to just sew lines, they would not be straight and while I can handle a bit of wonkiness, that would be too much. I found striped fabric with quarter-inch stripes on Etsy and have been playing around with it. Here's the current model: 

I wanted to see just how difficult the lines were going to be. I tried straight machine stitching, hand embroidery, and, finally, fancy machine stitching. The Xs above worked best. I need to go slow and not stop along the way since that bunches two Xs together. I've got a few more lines to do here, after which I'll add the yellow line that represents the seven-day rolling average number of new cases. I'll then add batting and backing and see if my idea of quilting the outline of each bar works. I also want to figure a way to mark select dates such as the first of each month and holidays. 

It may end up looking like crap and not be at all noteworthy, but it will remind me of checking the counts every morning and seeing just how much we were going to be fucked. I'll hope that the quilt names itself without using the f-word. This is unlike anything else I've done, so it will at least be an interesting challenge.

Speaking of the state health department (well, I did up near the beginning), there is now a registration system for covid vaccinations. Both The Professor and I will be in the 1C group; the health department will let us know when that is beginning locally and how to make an appointment. In terms of underlying medical conditions, asthma was listed but with the detail of "moderate to severe." Since mine is not in that range, I went with hypertension or high blood pressure. There was nothing to indicate how I would prove that, but I could always show them the prescription drug I take for it.

In news of The Lame Duck, the PGA has moved its 2022 PGA Championship (one of golf's fouir major tournaments) to somewhere other than New Jersey's Bedminster Golf Course owned by The Lame Duck. The business organization bearing The Lame Duck's surname is, as expected, upset and threatening to sue for damages to cover the work they say they've done to get the course ready. I'm glad the PGA was willing to take the risk of doing this. Once The Lame Duck flies out of office, the less attention he gets, the better.

Two oddities with which to end this post. I'll start with the coronavirus one. The covid relief bill passed in December included a clause that gives US intelligence agencies 180 days to tell Congress what they know about " unidentified aerial phenomena" otherwise known as UFOs. The article in which this gem was included ended with "A spokesperson for the Office of National Intelligence confirmed the news to the fact-checking website Scopes." So, yes, this is real even if the unidentified aerial phenomena might not be.

They found a fossil that suggests baby megalodons (giant prehistoric sharks) were as big as human adults if not bigger. There was also evidence that the species practiced oophagy, in which embryos get stronger by feeding on the unhatched eggs of siblings in the womb. "Oophagy" is pronounced oh-OFF-schwa-jee. I wasn't sure how to use the upside-down-backwards lower case e that is the character for the schwa. Besides megalodons, great white, thresher, and mako sharks practice oophagy. I now pronounce you ready to make small talk at a future social engagement.