The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 97 (597)

We're having a gubernatorial election today that is being watched nationwide as well as in some international areas. I don't have a good feeling which, if you've read many of my posts from a year ago, tells you which political party I hope prevails. It will be a long day, arriving at the poll location at 5:00 am and starting home at 8:00 pm if we're lucky. We're down a couple of workers, so there may not be many breaks and what breaks there are may not be long ones.

I'll tell you who wins on Wednesday assuming the margin in large enough that a winner is declared. Polls suggest that it's a dead heat.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 449

Case rates may be "going down" here in the US, but vaccination rates are "plummeting." Currently, fewer than one million people get vaccinated on an average day. This is a decline of two-thirds from the April peak of 3.4 million daily and a decline seen in every state. Twelve states including Utah, Oklahoma, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and West Virginia have seen vaccinations fall below 15 daily per 10,000 residents. Last week, Alabama had just four per 10,000. There are 13 states, mostly on each coast, that have passed the 70 percent level POTUS would like to see by July 4. Fifteen more states plus the District of Columbia are likely to meet it. Tennessee and five other states currently at 50 percent or lower are unlikely to make it. Hitting the 70 percent goal requires 4.2 million people per week, not the 2.4 million nationally seen last week.

Countries across the world have started incentive programs to increase vaccinations. Hong Kong will be giving away 20 cash prizes of $12,890 as well as a one-bedroom apartment worth $1.4 million. The lottery is open only to vaccinated residents. Registration opens June 15 for the September 8 drawings. Airport authorities will give away 60,000 tickets to city and airport employees who are fully vaccinated. Civil servants and some private citizens will get one day off from work for each dose they get. One town in the Philippines is raffling off a plot of land with a home. Interestingly, some of the vaccination incentive programs in the US are making people less likely to be vaccinated. The incentives make them more suspicious of the vaccines.

For evidence that masks worked (and still work), 11 percent of people who reported wearing a mask at all times tested positive for covid. Thirteen percent of people reporting that they sometimes but not always wore a mask tested positive. For people reporting they wore masks occasionally but not often, the percent was 18. Finally, 23 percent of people who reported never wearing a mask tested positive for covid. That's twice as many as in the always group.

Taking a quick trip around the world, Malaysia is using drones to detect people with fevers in public places. The drones can detect temperatures from as high as 20 meters above the ground. In Uganda, there was a 131 percent increase in the number of cases last week over the week before. Four African nations have yet to start vaccinating citizens--Tanzania, Burundi, Chad, and Eritrea.Norway has been giving doses with a 12-week interval but is shortening that to nine weeks. And Ontario will lessen its covid restrictions three days ahead of schedule. 

More than 100 current or former heads of state are among 230 leaders calling on the G7 to pay two-thirds of the $66 billion needed to vaccinate low-income countries. The WHO head refers to the current situation as a two-track pandemic. In six months, high-income countries have given 44 percent of the world's doses, while low-income countries have given just 0.4 percent. 

Alpha is still the dominant variant in the US and apparently disables the first line of defense giving the virus more time to multiply. Alpha has 23 mutations, nine of which alter the spike protein. One helps the virus bind more tightly into cells. Lung cells under Alpha make a lot less interferon, a protein that switches on several immune defenses. Alpha-infected cells also make some 80 times more copies of a gene called Orf9b. Orf9b makes a viral protein that dampens the full immune response. Beta and Delta also drive down interferon but in different ways.

The coffee maker is set to start at 3:51 tomorrow morning, which is about the time the alarm will go off. The Professor and I spent an hour this afternoon helping get furniture moved, plexiglass shields and marking carrels set up, and otherwise getting thing ready for tomorrow's primary election. How many people will come to vote is a toss-up. We had one single-party June primary with 65 voters in the 13 hours we were open. Several thousand people voted mail-in absentee ballots or came to early in-person voting, but I don't know how many of those might have been from this precinct. If I don't post anything tomorrow, don't think you've missed anything.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 296

I've been trying to stay busy today so that my mind doesn't wander to all the shit that may go down tomorrow up the road in Washington, DC. The police chief says everyone in the force will be on duty, and the mayor has requested National Guard troops to be on standby. The alt-right web presence is evidently full of calls to action tomorrow if the certification of Electoral College votes proceeds unchecked. The Lame Duck is saying that VP Pence can demonstrate loyalty by canceling or otherwise throwing a monkey wrench into the proceedings. No, The Duck has not read the Constitution recently or ever and so does not know that the role of the VP is ceremonial at best. I did like Nancy Pelosi's comment that "at the end of the day, which could be the middle of the night" Uncle Joe would officially be the Preseident-Elect no matter what else went down. 

The Lame Duck held a rally in Georgia last night to boost the campaigns of the two incumbent Republican Senators. He spent more time on his own electoral woes than he did on the Senate races. He promised to punish the Governor and Secretary of State for not doing as he asked or ordered. He also promised to campaign against them should they seek reelection. In terms of the weekend phone call and possible vote tampering, The Professor read the argument that central to tampering's being a crime was the intent of the perpetrator. If The Lame Duck's mental condition is such that he honestly believes he lost due to fraud, did what he was asking or ordering have "intent"? 

As for what might be coming for January 20, word is that The Lame Duck has reserved the Boeing 757 typically used by the Vice President or First Lady to fly to his resort in Scotland on January 19. It seems that the airport there is too small for the Boeing 747 that is typically used as Air Force One. US fighter planes have been doing patrols around the resort  just as they would for a planned and announced Duck visit. The Scottish government meanwhile says that Americans can't just show up there in the days of the pandemic. Of course, on January 19, The Lame Duck will still be a head of state, and heads of state are probably exempt from at least some of the restrictions on visitors. 

The pandemic quilt planning continues. Today I experimented with sewing two pieces of the striped fabric together and hiding the seam. One width of the fabric is 44 inches, and I need 46 plus whatever area I want around the chart itself. Tomorrow, I'll sew a bunch of bars of varying heights and see how they look. If they look okay, I may have no excuse other than packing and putting away for not starting on it. 

I did go through several boxes this afternoon. Two were filled with demo materials Son #1 developed and used for the semester he taught high school physics. That was spring 2012; I'm not sure he'll even remember what's in each box. If he no longer wants the stuff and there's nothing I can use, they will probably go into the trash; I don't think there's anything worth donating. I do need to figure out what to do with styrofoam coffee cups, paper bowls, and plastic utensils left over from decades of being a room mother or other organizer of social event such as going away cookouts. I think there are more plastic utensils than The Professor and I could use for three meals a day in a year, but I'm not going to count to make sure.

I did come across something yesterday that I shall use as needed. It was one of those motivational things people put up on social media. I've relocated the paper to which it is glued to the kitchen desk where I can look at it as needed.

Sometimes you just have to give yourself the pep talk like, "hello you badass, amazing human being, don't be sad, you're doing fucking great..keep going!"

The View from the Hermitage, Day 295

We set yet another coronavirus record here in the US yesterday with 125,544 people in hospital with covid-19. The number of people dead from covid is now over 351,000. It could get much worse in the coming weeks; it is certainly not going to get any better. Are there any national mitigation measures here as there are in some other countries? Heck, no! The Lame Duck and his Toadies are too busy committing crimes connected with The Duck's call to the Georgia secretary of state telling him to find more Duck votes. Someone should give that secretary of state a medal, especially given that he's a Republican. Not very many of those are standing up to The Duck these days. 

England is entering another national lockdown, this one until at least February 15. People can leave home to procure food and medicine, seek essential care, or escape harm. People can also leave to go to work if they cannot work from home. People can also leave their home once daily for exercise which can be done with one other person from a different household. All non-essential businesses will close. 

The Senate runoff elections in Georgia happen tomorrow, though early voting has been open for a couple of weeks. I can't say that I've seen any polls indicating who might win each race. I have read that The Lame Duck's actions in regard to the presidential election may make some Republicans reluctant to vote. I'm not sure enough of them will stay home to let the two Democrats win. It would certainly be nice for the Senate to have an edge to the Democrat side. Otherwise, the Republicans could wreak havoc with Uncle Joe's Cabinet and court nominees. Should that be proposed, I'd like to think that a couple of the more level-headed Republicans such as Mitt Romney would refuse to go along and would vote with the Democrats. Should both Republicans win reelection in Georgia, it would only take two Republican Senators to throw any vote to Vice President Harris. I guess we'll know on Wednesday just as the Electoral College certification process begins.

But enough about the world outside my door. Having collected all the data I need, today I began working on my pandemic quilt. I plan to recreate Virginia's graph of the number of new covid-19 cases every day starting on my birthday, July1, and ending at year's end, December 31. On July 1, there were 532 new covid cases; the high point, 5,239 new cases, came on December 30 followed by 5,182 on the 31st. I'm using striped fabric on which the alternating white and grey stripes are 1/4 inch wide. For 184 days, that will be 46 inches width. The vertical scale will use approximations using 100. The 532 will be as close to 5 1/3 inches as I can get, while the 5,239 will be as close to 52 1/3 inches as I can get. Running across the bar chart will be a line showing the rolling 7-day average number of new cases. At least one border will be black. I'm figuring out how to do the bars; right now, I'm leaning toward using one of the decorative stitches on my Bernina. I'll do the bars before quilting, I think, since I don't really want to do that much decorative stitching as quilting. I also want to mark certain bars, though I'm not sure if those will be the first of each month, every Sunday as in this blog, holidays, or something else that comes to mind. The nerd factor is high with this one. 

I must admit that it was nice to focus on something creative today rather than go through boxes and deal with "stuff." Perhaps tomorrow I'll try for a healthy mixture of the two. 

The View from the Hermitage, Day 294

A bit of background to yesterday's news that I found the errant kindle. I had to work my way through several horizontal layers of boxes in the basement to get to a box labeled "kitchen desk." Since that was the usual location of my kindle when it was not in use, I was optimistic I might find it there, and, indeed, I did. I also found my Amazon fire tablet that can act as a kindle as can my iPhone. Since I broke down and bought a refurbished replacement kindle, I am sufficiently kindled for the rest of this pandemic not to mention the next.

We're 42 weeks along our wayward path through the pandemic. We're also at (I-17) days and counting or just 17 days from Uncle Joe's inauguration. First, though, we have to get through Wednesday's Congressional certification of the results of the Electoral College votes. Most years this is a fairly ceremonial thing, and many members of Congress don't bother to attend. This year will be quite different. Republican Senators are lining up behind Ted Cruz getting ready to challenge the results of at least some states along with some 140 of their counterparts in the House of Representatives. From  what I read of the procedure to be followed, it sounds as if challenges can be made to each state as its results are presented. Once a state is challenged, the Senate moves back to their chamber, after which each house has two hours in which to debate the challenge at which point they reconvene in the House chamber. Even if there are only challenges lodged against Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Florida, and Nevada, it could well take into the wee hours of the next morning for things to be wrapped up. Everything I've read claims that there is no way Uncle Joe's election will not be certified. I just hope I don't have to stay up to find out.

The Gallup folks just announced that The Lame Duck was 2020's "most admired man." Michelle Obama was the "most admired woman" for the third year in a row. How some people can admire The Lame Duck is beyond me. I could see him getting distinction for being the most newsworthy man, but admired? Puh-lease. Somewhat related, The Duck is said to be angry that no fashion magazine put Melania  on its cover during her four years as first lady. 

The numbers of covid-19 cases and deaths continue to rise. The total number of cases a day or two ago was 20,427,780, 2,574,049 of them in the preceding two weeks. Can 30 million be that far away? The 32,518 covid-19 deaths in the last two weeks contributed bigly to the 350,186 total deaths. It will be a while until we hit 400,000 deaths, but that number is on the horizon. 

This morning's Guardian laid out just what the UK's "Tier 4" restrictions are. Nonessential shops, hairdressers, and leisure or entertainment venues are closed. No travel with the exception of education, childcare, or exercise. One may also travel to work if it is not possible to work from home. Households cannot mix, but one person can meet one other person outdoors in a public place. Support bubbles and childcare are exempt from this restriction. Clinically extremely vulnerable people should not go to work and should limit the time spent outside the home. Finally, residents must not stay away overnight, and cannot travel abroad. I cannot imagine the reaction to those restrictions here in the US of A. It might help but only a wee bit in the US that nowhere in those restrictions is there mention of wearing masks. Perhaps it's assumed that masks will be work outside the home. 

As the owner and occasional wearer of an inflatable, air-powered tyrannosaurus rex costume, I wish the following item were funny rather than sobering. A hospital in California say that a staff member wearing an inflatable, air-powered costume for a short time on Christmas Day may have sickened about four dozen other staffers. Such costumes have now been banned. There was no mention of what type of costume it was, though I'm hoping it might have been Santa Claus rather than a rex.

I don't know if my final item qualifies as "funny" as much as it is just plain "unusual." A small item on page A2 of this morning's Washington Post reported that a vessel carrying 20 people had disappeared between Bimini in the Bahamas and Lake Worth. I'm assuming that Lake Worth is in Florida, but either way the vessel vanished in the area known as the Bermuda Triangle. I had not thought about the Bermuda Triangle in years. The triangle is some 500,000 square miles of ocean between Bermuda, Miami, and Puerto Rico. Many vessels go into the Triangle and are never heard from again. One school of thought is that this is because there is so much air traffic over and boat traffic in the Triangle that of course a large number of disappearances is to be expected. The other school of thought has unknown forces at work. I said I had not thought of the Bermuda Triangle in years. I wonder if that is because there is less attention paid to such anomalies now or if the attention is there and I am not paying it.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 279

Keep America great! If that means breaking records, by jove we're there. Yesterday, there were 251,343 new coronavirus cases, a 19 percent increase over the last 14 days. And there were 2,805 deaths, a 26 percent increase over 14 days. Ten percent of Americans live in areas with a critical shortage of ICU beds. Critically injured in a traffic accident? There may not be room at the inn for you. There may also not be medical personnel who can treat you. When the pandemic started and New York City was the hot zone, doctors and nurses went there from other places to help sustain treatments. Now, everywhere seems to be a hot zone. Doctors and nurses everywhere are stretched thin. I did read that medical school applications were at new highs this year, but those docs won't be graduated for four years. 

To make the pandemic even scarier, Boris Johnson said that the coronavirus variant in southern England appears to be 70 percent more transmissible than existing strains. It does not seem to be more lethal or to cause different symptoms; it is just more contagious. Johnson has imposed restrictions significantly stronger than any we have or will ever see here. Imposition of restrictions does not mean people will follow them. I can't imagine the police storming a residence to count how many families have gathered together. 

The Lame Duck is still tweeting that Uncle Joe stole the election from him. He's also still asking for and accepting financial donations from his base. He's collected around $200 million so far. Not all of this is going toward reversing the elction results. One-fourth, or 25 cents of each dollar, goes to the Republican party. Some of the money has gone or is still going to pay off The Duck's campaign debts. The rest is going to the Save America Political Action Committee, probably laying the ground for The Lame Duck to try to be re-hatched in 2024. 

The Lame Duck is not exiting the the White House into a welcoming world. The neighbors have pointed out that the agreement with Palm Beach to change a mansion into a private club--Mar-a-Lago-- holds that no one can live there. He faces legal challenges from New York City and State, challenges he cannot pardon his way out of. Finally, he has over $400 million in debt coming due, and it is not at all clear he has the funds to repay them. 

It is still not clear if The Lame Duck plans to issue preemptive pardons for the Ducklings and, possibly, Rudy. And let's not forget the theory that he might preemptively pardon himself. For maximal effect, he could do that on January 19 or even the morning of January 20; Uncle Joe is not inaugurated until noon. How about stealing the headlines from Uncle Joe and then making his announcement for 2024 at a rally that coincides with the inauguration ceremony. I would not be at all surprised if any or all of that scenario took place. 

On a totally unrelated front, VP Pence yesterday announced, "Soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and guardians will be defending our nation for generations to come." Guardians? Of the Galaxy? Nope. The Space Force will be made up of guardians. The inspiration was the original command motto of Air Force Space Command in 1983 which referred to "Guardians of the High Frontier." I can't imagine not sleeping better knowing that I have guardians protecting me. 

To protect yourself, I do not recommend flying in a Boeing 737 MAX when they go back in service on December 29. According to a congressional report, the FAA and Boeing "inappropriately coached: test pilots during re-certification efforts. Pilots who had gotten such coaching responded to one contingency within four seconds. Raw or un-coached pilots took 16 seconds. There are circumstances in which 16 seconds would be enough to react safely, but there may be more in which it would not. 

On the home front, the Christmas tree is standing in its intended spot. I have chosen ornaments to decorate it. Because it is shorter than we have had in the past, not all the usual ornaments will fit. I've set aside "special" ones. The Sons made some as did I; others were given to us by special friends. We will decorate the tree tomorrow. After that, I will declare us ready for Christmas. I will still have some gift-wrapping to do, but that's usual for the last minute. And The Professor traditionally purchases a present for me on December 24, a night on which I do not cook.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 274

It appears that there have been no Electoral College surprises so far. The sessions in the six states in which The Lame Duck challenged the outcome have all come and gone, going as expected for Uncle Joe. I did read something about some Republicans' wanting to try to reverse things on January 6 when the Electoral College votes go to the House of Representatives. Most constitutional law experts expect such challenges to fail. New representatives will be sworn in on January 3, so it will be the new House accepting the results. VP Pence will open state results in alphabetical order. He may end up being the person to officially declare that The Lame Duck lost to Uncle Joe. 

On the novel coronavirus front, am I supposed to worry because Virginia has not yet done the daily update scheduled for 10:00 this morning? I sincerely hope the delay is not due to any staggering increase in the number of cases. If it is, I would hope the governor would increase the restrictions. That's what is happening in Europe right now, and they're taking no prisoners. Italy, home to Vatican City and Pope Francis, is considering more stringent nationwide restrictions. They may declare the whole country a "red zone" and shut things down from December 24 to January 2. It will be interesting, should they do so, to see how they handle what must be huge crowds in Catholic churches for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. 

The Netherlands is also considering tightening their restrictions. And Germany is closing all non-essential shops, schools, and nurseries from December 16 to January 10. The government minister in charge of the economy is encouraging Germans to give vouchers (aka gift cards in the US) as Christmas presents rather than go out to shop.

Vaccinations have started in the US. Health care workers, front and center, please. OPMC, a major health care corporation in Pennsylvania, has chosen staff to get the first shots at the same time as they say they estimate that only half of the employees are willing to get vaccinated as soon as it's offered to them. Health care workers! The anti-vaccine crowd is going to feed off that fact. And Dr. Fauci has stated that health care workers declining vaccinations may discourage "regular" people from getting vaccinated. This is just what we don't need as the US death toll goes past 300,000.

In more mundane news, Major League Baseball's Cleveland Indians has announced that they will be dropping the team name "Indians" at the end of the 2021 season. No replacement name has yet been chosen. I'd like to see them take a page from the Washington Football Team and become the Cleveland Baseball Team. The proposed change in the team name did not go over well with The Lame Duck who tweeted that it was "Cancel culture at work." That was the last line of the tweet following "Oh no!What is going on? This is not good news, even for 'Indians.'" Raise your hand if you think The Lame Duck really wrote that. My hands are firmly on the keyboard. No words in all caps, correct punctuation, and using the concept of "cancel culture." There is no way The Lame Duck wrote that.

On the unpacking and putting away front, I finally found the box of empty sheet protectors and got all the loose craft papers protected and sorted. I still need to go through the recipes I've collected during the pandemic, but that will give me something to do this evening or tomorrow. 

Still no covid data updates from the state. I really hope it's a technical reason and not just that they're so effing big they want to figure out what to do before the numbers go public.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 265

And so we begin to see the effects of Thanksgiving travel, and they are not good. Yesterday's cases figure here in Virginia was the highest yet, and not by a little unless 620 cases is a smaller than I think it is. The previous record that did not come with a downtime asterisk was  3,173; yesterday we were up to 3,793. Perhaps more troubling is that the percent positivity which is a rolling average of the last seven days is up to 10 percent. And 10 percent was the number we had to drop below before anything could be reopened. I doubt, though,that they will start to close some things down if the percent positivity continues to rise.  I expect that we shall see over 4,000 new cases one day this week, and it may be earlier in the week than we think.

Son #1 said he'd seen the minutes of some of the early White House Task Force meetings in which 240,000 was mentioned as the upper limit on the number of deaths there would be. According to the CDC COVID Tracker, we're at 277,825 deaths so far. I'm thinking we'll hit 300,000 deaths before 2021 rolls around, though I would not be surprised to see us hit that many deaths before Christmas. 

If those numbers are too depressing, ponder what it might mean that of the 249 Congressional Republicans, only 26 acknowledge that Uncle Joe legitimately won the November 3 General Election. I cannot wrap my head around those numbers. I would expect that the other 223 are not stupid; they did, after all, win elections against not-stupid people. How can that many supposedly not-stupid people be sucked into The Lame Duck's maelstrom of lies. How does one person hijack a political party that they did not start? I don't expect The Duck has dirty information (photos?) about all of those Congressional Republicans in which case they would be supporting him out of fear rather than for real.

The direction in which the country is moving scares me, and that statement has nothing to do with the novel coronavirus. I honestly think that we will conquer the coronavirus and covid-19 before we repair the divisions in our fundamental beliefs. I am lucky in that moving north to Canada is a readily available option given The Professor's dual citizenship. Do I want to move north? Not really, but then I don't want to live in a society in which there is but one true god and differences are not celebrated, nor do I want to live in a society in which the haves lord over the have-nots. I want to live in a society that recognizes the existence of the Holocaust. I want to live in a society that respects the scientific method. If we begin to drift too close to the negatives above, I guess I will be outa here then.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 257

I hope that those celebrating it had a nice Thanksgiving without too much excess in the food and/or drink department. We Zoomed with Son #2 and D-i-L Equivalent, but it wasn't the same as having them across the deck or room would have been. On the other hand, they did Act I (the call was split into two sessions) in Emma's room, Emma being their parrot. [As an interesting side comment, they have 11 animals so far--four rabbits, three snakes, two cats, one parrot, and one tortoise. One of the snakes is a Burmese python, the kind that is overrunning the Everglades because the people who did no realize how large they got have been letting them go there.] When it got to be Emma's bedtime, they moved to a different room to let her get her beauty sleep.

As for the menu, it was pretty much the usual except for no sweet potatoes. Of note is that I made the best gravy I have ever made, hands down. The challenge now will be to replicate it for Christmas dinner. Since Son #1 comes here every morning to run, I expect most of the leftovers will be gone by Sunday, with the exception of the cheesecake, which Son #1 would only be caught eating during or after an ultra-marathon. 

On the political front, The Lame Duck finally said that he would vacate the White House should the Electoral College elect Uncle Joe. The election, though, would be invalid due to the massive voter fraud still being investigated. This makes me wonder if, after the inauguration, The Lame Duck (I will need a new name for him then) will still claim to be President and present Uncle Joe as being illegitimate. How this would fly when it comes to Congress might be worth considering. Assuming the Republicans win both Georgia seats--or even one--what might the Senate do? Refuse to confirm Uncle Joe's Cabinet and any advisors requiring confirmation? Refuse to even meet given the person acting as President is an imposter? We could have one hell of a constitutional crisis on our hands. 

I wonder how people in other countries view the US, champion of covid, celebrating Thanksgiving. I'm not sure we should even be allowed to sit at a children's table. The Washington Post ran a photo taken at LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) showing a flight crew walking through what appeared to be the lobby with the entry counters at which a traveler might check a bag. Those counters are all empty. Members of the flight crew are wearing full PPE. No mention was made of this fact, so I can't say whether the crew would continue to wear the PPE while underway. How many science fiction or fantasy films have included such a scene? Seeing a scene like that associated with an Ebola outbreak in a jungle setting would seem perfectly normal. Seeing a scene like that in a modern public airport setting boggles my mind. 

The Virginia case numbers and seven-day rolling average released this morning were down, which did not surprise me given the holiday. I expect they will be on the way back up in tomorrow morning's data dump. The picture is going to become unreliable, though, when the expected shortage of tests happens. As The Lame Duck says, we have more cases because we test more people. This does not mean that we will have fewer cases when we test fewer people. We just won't know any longer how far afield the virus has spread. I read one report that by mid-December we could be seeing, nationally, 3,000 deaths per day. Per day!?!? Remember when 2,977 people died on September 11, 2001? We're on the verge of a September 11 death toll every single day. This really should upset more people than it does.

As for today's being Black Friday, I, as usual, stayed home. I did, however, make two online purchases. One was a 2020 ornament with the arms of the snowflake being the word "fuck." The other was a set of masks featuring the Bangor, Maine Police Department's Duck of Justice. I figured I should have one "theme" mask to wear if I even venture into public beyond the confines of the subdivision. 

Happy start of the Christmas season!

The View from the Hermitage, Day 250

I'd say, "TGIF!" but then it doesn't really matter, at least not to me. One day really is pretty much like the previous and the next. The Professor puts in significant office time even on weekends, so that makes Saturday and Sunday a lot like any weekday. Things may change, though, given that Monday's lecture is his last of this semester. The final exam is sometime in early December, after which he's not teaching again until February 1. He'll be able to work on his research without the distractions of teaching or office hours. He's going to get spoiled, so I will need to brace myself when he has to prepare and tape his first lecture of the spring semester. He is likely not going to be happy about it.

Was it yesterday that I mentioned Virginia could soon have a seven-day rolling average number of new covid-19 cases of at least 2,000? We made it yesterday, though I wouldn't call it something to yell in a positive tone of voice. The only positive side would be if it motivated people to take the currently prescribed mitigation measures seriously or if it motivated state or local leaders of the value of tightening them or more carefully enforcing them. 

I try not to think about The Lame Duck's persistent efforts to undo the election results too deeply or too often. I find myself shaking my head and wondering why anyone would take him seriously. I must then remind myself that the popular vote in the election was not a landslide, and The Lame Duck has many supporters. I then move to shaking my head and wondering how every Republican in the Senate essentially backs what the Lame Duck has done or is doing. How can they look at themselves in the mirror? 

My back is feeling a lot better, and I am still taking things very easy. We've had two nights of frost, though, and I wonder if this weekend would be a good time to pull up the existing plants (mostly weeds) in the bed in which I want to plant my fall bulbs. Would taking a step-stool out there upon which to sit work to take bending over out of the picture? I do not want to do something stupid and end up looking at three more weeks of involuntary inactivity.

And so ends a quickie post. I have junk to play with in search of sculptures for Son #2's garden at the cabin. Photos to come. 

The View from the Hermitage, Day 248

Continuing on the pottering front, I can report that the contents of the hair and make-up drawer were not nearly as varied or as interesting as the contents of the drawer of miscellaneous items I cleaned up yesterday. The only make-up I wear is lip gloss. I gave up mascara because I wore it so rarely that the tube of it usually hit its expiration date after only one wearing. There were a couple tubes of pinkish or reddish lip gloss that I must have bought when considering what it would take to make me look like an adult. I trashed those and kept the more neutral mocha colored one. I kept the brush I use daily as well as a couple of combs with differing densities of teeth. I put all the stray bobby pins back on the bobby pin card and tossed all the clips for holding long hair in place in a bag for donation. Actually I put them in a deluxe shower cap saved from some hotel some time ago. 

I spent more morning time going through a box of papers and stuff. This would go faster if I didn't have to read various things and recall from whence they came. The earrings are giving me side eyes from my left daring me to get back to sorting them. Maybe tomorrow, earrings, maybe tomorrow.

Dr. Fauci was speaking, virtually of course, at the weekly Medical Center Hour held at the local university. The Professor and I live-streamed it as we ate lunch. Dr. Fauci said nothing new or earth-shaking but gave a very nice summary of coronaviruses in general and SARS-CoV-2 in particular. He also explained what the bases of the different vaccine candidates were. He had said earlier that he would take the one from Pfizer. He said that before the Moderna results came out, so I don't know whether he would take that instead. I've said more than once that I won't get vaccinated until Dr. Fauci gets vaccinated, and I want whatever vaccine he got.

The Virginia covid-19 numbers continue to rise. The seven-day rolling average of new cases is now over 1,700. The governor did a briefing this afternoon. He was big on the fact that cases were rising in all the states and territories, but that Virginia was fourth from the bottom in terms of how quickly cases were increasing. I guess that's good news. He did not add any new mitigation measures but reminded listeners of the ones that started overnight Sunday into Monday. When he moved from the virus to the state budget, I stopped paying attention. 

It has occurred to me that The Orange Foolius should get a new name befitting his new status. If I can figure out a way to shorten it, I'd like to go with one I found on that TrumpNicknames subreddit, Lame Duck a l'Orange. That seems to capture the relevant point which is that he lost the election and is on his way out. He may have been hopeful when the board that should certify the vote in Wayne County, Michigan, home of Detroit, deadlocked over the certification.The state board will now be the entity deciding the validity of the votes. Still in Michigan, there are Republicans urging the majority-Republican state legislators to try to appoint their own electors who would, of course, vote for The Lame Duck. I'm thinking that ain't gonna happen.

The card in the mail yesterday was a Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Years card from a friend who had retired and moved from New York to Chicago. He figured that people might like the new address before they addressed their holiday cards. I was motivated, though, to bring up the Christmas card box. As it turns out, I apparently did not buy several boxes of cards at a post-holiday sale last year. I think I'll have enough, though, since I have a box of cards that could pass for Christmas cards and are blank inside. I can figure out something seasonal to write there. 

Also on the holiday front, Son #1 managed to get every item on my holiday shopping list including a fresh turkey. I should be set, or will be until I realize on Wednesday that I for got something. I'll not worry about that now and will deal with it when it happens.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 237

I popped the cork on the first bottle of champagne (the second one may wait until January 20, 2021) late this morning when Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes gave Uncle Joe a compelling lead. The Professor was dallying in his home office until I told him I couldn't wait any longer. Nevada was added to Uncle Joe's total a bit later, giving a nice cushion. I expect that Arizona will be put in Uncle Joe's total soon if it has not already. Georgia is going to a deserved recount. Anything that close given the number of people casting votes has to be recounted; it doesn't matter if the apparent winner is your person or the opponent. The Orange Foolius is, as expected, saying the Pennsylvania result is bogus and he lost only because of illegally cast votes. I read this morning that no one on his staff wants to be the person to tell him he really did lose, and that's not going to change.  

So how will the next two months play out? I liked the suggestion I saw on Twitter that The Foolius would go to Mar-a-Lago for a getaway and just not come back. No greeting the President-Elect on the steps of the White House on the morning of the inauguration. Do you remember how The Foolius left Melania hanging, not waiting for her to walk around from her side of the limo but bounding up the front steps without her? I can't remember and am too lazy to check for video, but she may have even had to open the door of the limo herself. Melania and Barron stayed in New York City in 2017 so that he could finish the year at the school he was attending. Do you think that will happen now? Will they stay in Washington so he can finish the school year at his school there? The sooner Melania and The Foolius are no longer living together, the quicker a divorce might go through. I wonder if the British bookies are taking bets on that already. 

Should I be more respectful now in what I call Uncle Joe? Would Uncle President carry an appropriate amount of respect? Nope. Too long to type. I'm sticking with Uncle Joe for now. Whatever he is called, he is going to have his work cut out for him on the novel coronavirus front. Mark Meadows, chief of staff to The Foolius, has tested positive along with four other White House aides. He's the one who said the White House wasn't going to deal with the pandemic. I guess he can deal with it on this own then. Meanwhile, the US new covid-19 case count went over 130,000 yesterday. Given the 120,000-plus the day before, that's a quarter of a million cases in two days. We are going down the toilet fast here, people.

When I checked the Virginia covid-19 case count this morning, the first words leaving my mouth were "holy" and "shit." The number of new cases yesterday was a new record, 2,103. Th seven-day rolling average also set a record, at 1,383. The governor may be ignoring this because one-third of the cases are in Southwest Virginia, and he figures new restrictions there will fix things all over the state, but that ain't gonna happen. Maybe I should email or Facebook him and tell him that we're fucked. Now, that may be the champagne talking, but then again, it may be the cup of coffee sitting next to the empty wine glass. (At one point we had "real" champagne flutes. If we still have them, they are in a box in the garage that may not be excavated until The Sons are clearing out after we've sailed on that ship with Gandalf and Frodo.)

A letter to the editor in this morning's Washington Post suggested that they should go back to putting covid-19 case numbers on the front page. Right now, they could easily replace the electoral vote tables that may no longer be needed. If that would help people focus on the fact that the novel coronavirus is not going anywhere around a corner or elsewhere and realize that mitigation measures such as mask-wearing are indeed necessary. 

Speaking of mask-wearing, will The Orange Foolius now fire Dr. Fauci just for yucks or out of spite? If so, will Uncle Joe call Dr. Fauci and offer him his position back as of January 20, 2021? Who knows? I wonder if the British bookmakers are taking bets on that one as well.

Having decided that the problem with my lower back in all probability came from moving heavy boxes on my own rather than interrupt The Professor's workday to move them for me, I spent much of the morning finishing the first pass through my earrings. I actually managed to re-unite several pairs of which I thought I had lost one. I had just managed to separate the two into different boxes or cases. I wrestle now with the question of whether I should count the number of pairs. Part of me wants to, and part of me is embarrassed to. I'll report here on what I finally decide.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 236

Come on, people counting votes! I'd really like to pop a champagne cork tonight. I know there will be recounts in several states, but I don't think those will change things.  The Orange Foolius will mount multiple legal challenges that--fingers crossed--will be thrown out due to misinformation in what is filed. 

Speaking of misinformation, I almost wish I had been watching last night when the three major networks (Fox is not a major network) all cut away from The Foolius's speech within minutes due to the number of falsehoods he was spouting. It is about time they did that. I know that they did it now because this country is basically on edge, and that edge is a sharp one. I fully expect some sort of rioting in the streets before all is resolved, and I think the networks knew that keeping the Foolius on the air might bring that to pass sooner. 

The local newspaper this morning carried an article saying that 93 percent of the counties with the most rapidly increasing covid-19 rates went for The Orange Foolius rather than Uncle Joe. I have not the slightest idea why that is so. Do these people not follow what is going on in their own home places? Do they believe that despite how many people are catching it right now the end really is just around some corner? Do they just not follow any news source other than Fox or the One American News Network? Or do they just not care?

As the votes were being counted yesterday, the US set a new record number of new covid-19 cases. Some 120,000 people joined the overall count of people suffering from covid-19. The previous day was in the neighborhood of 100,000. How many more will we see before Thanksgiving which, for my international readers, is in 20 days. Twenty days with 100,000-plus daily is 2,000,000, that is, two million new cases.

The Professor today swabbed himself and submitted a self-test covid-19 kit he got free from the local university. He figured that since he worked the election on Tuesday, he should check just to be safe. I didn't have the heart to point out to him that his testing positive now, after he's been home in close contact with me for several days would mean I'm shit out of luck should his test come back positive. I just keep thinking that 2020 needs another way or two to wreak havoc in my world, and this could be one of them. I'll feel better when he gets the results back and some of the uncertainty is lifted.

Remember former Foolius advisor Steve Bannon? He's been banned from Twitter forever and ever I think after posting that he'd like to see Dr. Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray beheaded with their heads placed on pikes outside the White House. When did we apparate to somewhere like Saudi Arabia where beheading is the legitimate form of capital punishment? The man who would like to see this was at one point an adviser to the President of the United States? That may be a good way to summarize the last four years under President Foolius. Sad, but also accurate.

Word on the Internet is that Uncle Joe will address the nation tonight, though I have not yet been able to find the time of that address. I also do not know if that is contingent on his having amassed 270 or more electoral votes in the eyes of multiple media outlets. I do not expect that the networks will cut away from his remarks. I expect an speech rather than a tantrum, something like the high school valedictorian as opposed to the kindergarten bully.

I moved my principal laptop back to my basement office. I'm finding the standing desk more to my back's liking than the dining room table. I have printed off various articles on treating lower back pain, and it appears that standing and moving are often much better than sitting or lying down. I just wish it would stop coming and going. It will feel fine and, then, bam, it's sore again. I think that overall it is probably better than it was when it started last week. I also know that I did not help it by walking absurd distances for three days in a row to complete a fitness challenge set by my watch. That's really stupid when it comes right down to it, but I knew it was while I was doing it. I can't blame anyone but myself.

Will we have a presumptive president-elect by this time tomorrow? Hell if I know! It's 2020 after all.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 235

And the counting continues. Arizona is now up for grabs despite the Associated Press, Fox News, and The Guardian having already awarded it to Uncle Joe. Nevada may be pivotal. If Uncle Joe gets Arizona, Nevada will give him the magic 270 electors ... as long as they all remain faithful. Uncle Joe is gaining on The Orange Foolius in Georgia and Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania would make Arizona and Nevada superfluous, good but not necessary. Georgia alone would not be enough, but Georgia plus Nevada would give Uncle Joe a nice cushion. All we can do is wait and hope. We might also channel the thoughts and prayers we would normally be using on classroom shooting incidents except that there haven't been any since around February. 

It looks as if the country will again have 100,000-plus new covid cases. That number boggles the mind. Ten days of that would be one million new cases. We could get that before Thanksgiving and the spikes that will follow it. To make things even more interesting, Denmark is killing all the minks they have in mink farms. Evidently, they have and might potentially transfer to humans a new strain of the novel coronavirus. That's all we need! 2020 just won't stop giving, will it?

Unpacking and putting away has slowed a bit. My lower back continues to dislike me. Interestingly, sitting with heat on it makes it very dicey when I stand up. Moving seems to make it feel better unless I move in the wrong manner, something I discovered going through some boxes this afternoon. I refuse, of course, to go visit a medical person in person, though if I get desperate I might try the Teladoc option I have on our health insurance. I'm not sure how much a doc could tell without seeing me, but they might at least be able to offer some treatment options. Cold? Hot? Alternating cold and hot? Sleep on my back? Side? I refuse to sleep on my stomach. 

Tomorrow is Son #1's birthday. In the old normal, we would celebrate it next weekend. Son #1 would go to Son #2's house in Richmond on Friday night. They would get up at some ungodly hour and run the Richmond marathon course backwards with the aim of arriving at the starting line about the time the marathon starts. They would then run the marathon, ending up having run some 52-plus-change miles. Then they'd all drive back here, and we'd do a family dinner at the Aberdeen Barn restaurant. Son #2 is vegetarian, but he is okay watching the rest of us eat meat. He'd get a baked potato or fries, steamed broccoli, and maybe a salad. Damn pandemic!

The earring inventory is on hold until Son #1 brings me some more tiny plastic bags into which I can put a pair of earrings. I thought I had enough, but that number only got me through one box of earrings, and I have another one to sort. And then there are the ones I was occasionally wearing that migrated into a regular jewelry box or a box with a particular necklace with which they went. Part of me wants to just sweep the whole lot of them into a wastebasket, but that would be the easy way out. I may complain as I do it, but I will feel better in the end doing it this way.

The champagne remains corked. Son #1 says we should not pop the cork until Uncle Joe has 273 electoral votes a number giving a cushion against possibly unfaithful electors. The election should not have turned out to be this close. That is did means that the division in this country is much deeper and wider than I thought, or at least wanted to think. I'm more spiritual than religious, but I find it especially troubling that evangelical Christians can and will back The Orange Foolius. I see that as an argument against evangelicalism. And I should not start down this chain of thought or the dishwasher won't get emptied nor the dryer. And the salmon in the refrigerator will hardly cook itself. Ah life! Gotta love it given the alternative.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 234

One day after the election, all hail President ... well, we don't yet know for sure just who that might be. The Orange Foolius did, in the wee hours, declare himself the victor and said he would be asking the Supreme Court to stop vote counting in the states still counting. I liked that every news outlet I checked openly declared his victory announcement as misleading, false, a lie, or words to that effect. Several governors announced back at The Foolius that their states would follow the procedures set by that state and keep counting until they'd counted every eligible ballot. 

So where do things stand at the immediate moment? Well, if the several media outlets that have projected Uncle Joe as the winner in Arizona are correct, then winning Nevada and Michigan--he is slightly ahead in each--will give Uncle Joe precisely 270 electoral votes and make him the 46th President of the United States. The Orange Foolius, though, will not go down without a fight. He has said he will request a recount in Wisconsin; the margin of victory there is small enough that he is entitled to a recount. I don't think, though, what the margin has to be for the state to pay for the recount. If the gap is too big, The Foolius and his campaign minions will have to do that.

Uncle Joe's winning in Pennsylvania is evidently still within the realm of possibility. The votes yet to be counted are expected to lean Democratic, though it may be several days before all of them are counted. Nevada is expected to announce its final results this evening. I think Michigan may have its counting done tomorrow. I have my fingers crossed that Michigan and Nevada will end with Uncle Joe victorious, making Pennsylvania icing on the cake but not the cake itself. The more electoral votes, the better, though, since The Orange Foolius will, I expect, challenge anything he can, and probably a thing or two he can't technically challenge.

The bedroom curtains continue to be an enigma. The Professor was as mystified as I was by the number of curtain panels left after the two single windows were taken care of. Since The Professor is currently taping his Friday lecture, we will not address the curtain issue before this evening. As a result, I began a task I have been putting off over and over again, going through my earrings. I am not going to count how many pairs of earrings I possess; let's just say that I could probably have made it this far into the pandemic wearing a different pair every day. So far, I have four "piles." One is earrings I want to keep but which need a small repair such as a replacement hook. Another is earrings that are still in good shape but that I know I will never again wear. Those will be donated. There are some that I will simply toss; they need some repair that is not worth doing. Finally, there are the ones I think I want to keep. Those will get at least one more review.

News flash: As I've been typing this, two news outlets, CNN and NBC, have projected Uncle Joe as the winner in Michigan. If they follow the outlets that have projected Uncle Joe the winner in Arizona, Uncle Joe could hit 270 if Nevada announces their totals tonight. I must not get my hopes up, though, because even with Uncle Joe's 270 or more electoral votes, The Orange Foolius will not stop charging fraud or miscounting or whatever else he thinks might change the results in his favor. 

Finally, note to self: Make sure that The Professor turned off the alarm on his clock radio after it went off at 4:00 am on election day. The Professor was sleeping in the guest room so as to sleep in, but his alarm woke me up at 4:00 am. 

Finally finally, note to others: The champagne is ready for cork-popping as soon as enough media outlets are declaring that Uncle Joe has the 270 votes needed to make him number 46 and to make Kamala Harris our first female VP as well as our first VP of color.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 233

Election Day! I have turned on the television, but it's playing reruns of Law and Order. I will probably turn to some form of election coverage but not until early evening. There will be a bottle of wine involved, I can assure you. I do not expect any network will project an outcome, though it is entirely possible that The Orange Foolius will declare victory while I am still watching. That watching will likely end when The Professor returns home and has showered and joined me. I may be wrong, but he typically refuses to watch anything such as the State of the Union address or candidate debates. I was surprised when he wanted to watch Lesley Stahl's 60 Minutes interview with The Foolius.

Dropping The Professor off at the precinct at 5:00 was hard and not because I have not driven in the dark in over six months. It felt strange not to be getting out of the car myself. I felt as if I were letting the team down despite the Precinct Chief's telling me I was doing the right thing by not being there. I don't like feeling afraid, but that's pretty much what it comes down to. My 88-year-old mother can get covid-19 with no symptoms. I could get it and end up on a ventilator or worse. That's frightening.

I've tried to get a few unpacking type things done today. I managed to rehang a metal design we had over the fireplace. We had two similar ones on each side, but those flummoxed me. The two are basically the same, but there was one picture hanger on one side and two on the other. I also wanted to rehang the curtains in the bedroom. There are three windows there, one with two panes and two with one pane each. When I unpacked the curtains, there were three valances. Fine. There were two types of curtain panels, four of one type and six of the other. I used the four of one type on the two narrower windows, but six panels for the wider window? That seems excessive. I have no memory of using those curtains on the one-pane window in the walk-in closet, which is the only other window there. I did consider using one pair on the wide window and then use the other pairs on the two one-pane windows in the master bathroom. I wasn't sure what The Professor would think about that.

I do want to get curtains for the bathroom soon given that one of the windows looks out to the driveway. I found some I liked and in looking for those, found something I liked for the wide window in the dining room. I showed them to The Professor and got a very "meh" reaction. I'll spend another morning looking, I guess, which is about the length of time it took me to find the first sets I liked. If he's still "meh," he may be the one choosing curtains. He has wanted to put up the ones we took down despite the fact that they will no longer look good with an accent wall and different rugs. I know, though, that if those go up, they will not come down easily.

Back on the covid-19 front, the number of new cases in Virginia yesterday was back up. The seven-day rolling average went up as well. Every increase is to a new record at this point, and it's been rising for over a week. I can't find any notice that the governor will hold a briefing in the near future. I certainly hope that the powers that be are considering some sort of mitigation measures. Things are looking worse now than they did when everything was locked down to begin with. The local university has been touting their low numbers, but they only count tests that they give. What will be interesting are the numbers a week from now. There were photos from Friday night showing a crown of university students waiting to enter a local nightspot. They were shoulder-to-shoulder, with nary a mask in sight.

I just did my first election check of the day, calling up cnn.com. It appears that The Orange Foolius has neither an acceptance now a concession speech ready for tonight. If you believe that, I've got some swamp land in Florida I'd like to sell you. Do I think we might have a possible winner tonight? Only if it's an avalanche as opposed to a mere landslide.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 228

We were expecting rain and wind from Zeta this afternoon, and darn if Zeta didn't split apart and leave us in the sunny weather in between the two halves. It did rain like the dickens overnight and this morning, but now it's wet out there, but nothing new is coming down. I did get a little bit of walking in. I find that if I spend some time on the heating pad, I can walk around for a while with no pain. I've also been ferrying things from the boxes in the basement to the other floors of the house. I still have not found my kindle, one of my cameras (which was, I think, last used by The Professor), or our newest heating pad. They have to be out there somewhere. It's going to be touch and go if I make the 304.2 miles walking set as my Apple watch's October challenge. I'm not going to hurt my back further by going overboard on that.

My mom has a week to go in her two weeks of quarantine. The facility did another round of point prevalence testing yesterday but did not test the people who tested positive last week. If any of those people tested negative this week, it would not be clear which test--last week or this week--was a false one, which means there would be no change to the two weeks of isolation. Mom still has no symptoms, which I hope continues as the virus runs its course. I should see if there are any statistics on how many people have had someone they know personally come down with covid-19. Until Mom tested positive, I had two degrees of separation with someone who'd tested positive, that is, I knew someone who knew someone who'd had it. Six degrees of Kevin Bacon, anyone?

I verified that the absentee ballots belonging to The Professor and me were processed and counted. They won't be downloading any results from the scanners until election day. They will process absentee or early ballots before election day, but they will not download the data from the scanner until election day. And for those who like trivial things, each of the scanners operated by this county can process 10,000 ballots before a new scanner is needed. As of sometime last week, nearly two scanners had been filled by people voting early in-person. I'm looking forward to The Professor's report on how many people actually come in to vote on November 3. It could feel like a primary in terms of how few people show up. 

The governor yesterday touted Virginia as being one of the states not seeing a rapid increase in cases of covid-19. Put the emphasis on "rapid" there. We are seeing an increase albeit a slow one. The governor says that it's Southwest Virginia that is driving the increases. Having gone to high school and college in Southwest Virginia, I am not really surprised. In many parts of the region, pretty much nothing has replaced the coal mining that used to drive the local economies. There are large areas with no hospital at all, suggesting that there may be lots of people dying at home, having been unable to get treatment of any kind, let alone of the types The Orange Foolius got. 

I'm still feeling pretty much numb in the absence of news reports on the candidates' goings-on, but it's a good numb. I do read the newspapers and some online outlets, but I don't overdo it. There are moments I feel guilty about intentionally ignoring so much of the news, but it's in the interest of maintaining my mental health as well as that of The Professor. I think a slow walk would be of help in maintaining that mental health, and as The Professor has been sitting most of the day, it would likely help his physical health as well. And I will turn us around should my back start complaining.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 227

I wish I could say that a week from today, we will know just who will be inaugurated on January 20. I think the odds that we will are long indeed. My bigger hope is that the Supreme Court doesn't need to be involved in the decision about just who will be inaugurated. At this point, I would accept even a general tradition being in place that a justice does not rule on an election issue involving the President who nominated the justice. Of course, even if there were such a tradition, it would likely be broken just as so much else has been broken in the last four years. 

I should be keeping track of the number of text messages I'm getting from Uncle Joe, his running mate, his campaign chair, his wife (there has been only one from Jill, I think), the Democratic National Committee, and many of the friends of all of the above. We've gotten very little campaign literature via snail mail. I wonder if the campaigns are cutting their use of snail mail to save paper or to free up snail mail channels for the return of mail-in ballots. Of course, the USPS is now telling people who still have mail-in ballots not to mail them. Instead, they should take them to a drop-box or the office of their Voter Registrar. I find it hard to believe that there are people out there who have not yet made up their mind about the candidates. Are they waiting for one (or more) more October surprise?

Today's Washington Post has a very interesting article, "On election's edge, many see an abyss." There are people on both sides of the candidate issue who see an electoral victory for the other side as being something akin to the end of democracy or of the world as we know it. Can you say "apocalypse"? I would like to think that whatever outcome comes to pass, it can be accepted without violence? I considered making sure that the ammunition magazines for my handguns were full and ready (yes, I am a gun owner, one who greatly enjoys shooting at paper or vinyl targets), but decided that we're far enough out of the city that were violence of some sort be on its way, there would be time to load the magazines then. I am sad that I could not help but think about firearms as a possible post-election need; I hope this does not become a permanent mark of the new normal.

Moving away from public health and electoral issues, the ache in my back comes and goes depending on whether I have recently been making the acquaintance of a heating pad. No outdoor walk save the very first with the family dog, and that was a painful one. I've been alternating between sitting with the heating bag reading and doing what I can until it hurts again. I managed to cut the number of bankers' boxes in the basement family room by three, though I accomplished that by combining the contents of four almost-empty boxes. While sitting with the heating bag, I have been reading the latest edition of National Geographic, a special issue on the novel coronavirus. Fascinating and, so far, only a wee bit pessimistic. 

Putting on my t-rex costume and sneaking up on neighborhood children who come to the porch on Halloween? Yay or nay?

 

The View from the Hermitage, Day 215

The Professor and I didn't go to bed until 9:00 last night, but we spent the hour from 8:00 to 9:00 watching an old rerun of Perry Mason rather than either town hall. We did read various reports about the town halls over breakfast this morning. The winner was the columnist who noted that changing the channel from the Orange Foolius's town hall to Uncle Joe's was like switching from Ancient Aliens to PBS NewsHour. Most reports were complimentary of the way Savannah Guthrie handled the Orage Foolius town hall. One said she was better than either moderator of the two earlier debates.

I find it interesting that even though the case numbers now are, in many cases, higher or almost as high as they were in March, when the pandemic was first declared, people seem to be so much more lackadaisical about it now than they were then. Instead of picking up restaurant food or having it delivered, too many people now want to eat inside the restaurant. Even with tables widely spaced, there's likely a nontrivial risk. And I cannot at all imagine going to a gym right now. I know that the looming cooler or cold weather will be a deterrent to working out outside for many people. Even with exercise-induced asthma made worse by working out outdoors, I still prefer that to a gym right now. I walked just over eight miles this morning, or 96 laps of the small indoor track at the gym I was going to most frequently. Ninety-six laps? Fuhgeddabout it!

As for schools being virtual or in-person, I can see both sides there, at least a little. Most kids would, I imagine, learn better in person than online. Both Sons did several online classes that counted toward their middle or high school graduations, but then the Sons are, shall we say, a bit different. The courses they took were also designed to be delivered online, which I am sure had a real impact on the quality of the finished product. Given my hermitting, I have not spoken with any neighbors who have school-aged kids about how their kids are doing. This morning, Son #1 and I watched a school bus deliver a large ziploc bag of materials to a neighbor's child who is, I think, in first grade. I did not know the schools were doing that, but I like it.

The Sons did sign up for a 2021 ultra-marathon. It's in mid-March and is the last one they ran before everything shut down in 2020. As Son #1 said, if this one ends up cancelled, we're going to be in pretty deep shit then. The advantage of ultra-marathoning is that the runners naturally separate into solo runners or very small clusters. It's not like the local Ten Miler that has a gazillion entrants meaning that it's pretty much a steady stream of runners the whole way. There are also few spectators lining an ultra-marathon course, unlike a road race in a city. 

 I'm not working as an election official this year, but The Professor is. As such, he was sent a link to a map showing potential absentee ballot action across the state, by precinct. At the local precinct, 37 percent of voters have returned or requested absentee ballots. There are several local precincts over 50 percent. It is shaping up to be a totally new type of election. The Professor said he might have a slow day; they've extended the hours the polls are open from 6:00 am to 7:00 pm to 6:00 am to 8:00 pm. They've also made election day a state holiday which may or may not affect turnout. I expect that The Professor's face when he walks in the door will tell me how things went in our home precinct. The totals he would see, though, are only for the people voting on election day at the precinct. Absentee ballots get counted as if they are a separate precinct, the Central Absentee precinct. 

The Orange Foolius has refused disaster aid for California's 1.9 million acres of wildfires that destroyed over 3,300 homes, and killed at least three people. I'm willing to bet that if the governor of California were a Republican, aid would have been forthcoming quickly. The Orange Foolius at one point blamed the wildfires on Governor Newsom. I can feel my blood pressure rising as I type that. How do people vote for the Foolius? Do they see him as a god who can do no wrong? I do not understand it. 

Given the eight miles I walked this morning, tomorrow and Sunday will be recovery days. I will walk both days, but I will not be compulsive about how far or how fast. I earned that right this morning.

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?