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 125

Number play ... today is Day Five to the Third. The next perfect cube is Six to the Third, aka 216. What are the odds I'll still be doing this then? That's lots of catchy post openings and closings to engineer.

I can skip detailed discussion of the latest covid-19 counts of cases or deaths, locally or nationally, and simply repeat that we're fucked. I just read of mask-less parents with no social distance between them, shutting down a board meeting in Utah called to discuss requiring that students wear masks. The state of Illinois is suing a couple of schools, at least one of which is a "Christian Academy," that are saying masks will not be required. Their explanation? "We're not anti-mask. We're pro-choice." Can we pull out part of that and say that they actually support a woman's right to choose when it comes to pregnancy?

I am getting a wee bit tired of reading "if only" analyses or op-ed pieces relevant to the pandemic.I am afraid that by the time the next pandemic rolls around--and I'm betting it's less time than the 100 years between pandemics that we had this time--will we even recall all the "if onlys"? Can we wrap all the "if onlys" into a user's manual of how to handle a pandemic? Oh wait, didn't we have a group that was going to act like a user's manual to handling a pandemic? Didn't someone decide we really didn't need it? Wouldn't it be nice if we'd kept that user's manual up-to-date?


The floor guy came this morning to pick up the keys and get contact info for older son who will be our pipeline to the outside world. We talked things over, ten feet apart, all masked. He said the reality of the pandemic was driven home to him when one of the local hospitals called him to ask if he had some N95 masks he could sell them. You know something is up when a hospital calls a small, local, floor-refinishing company for needed equipment. He said that now, after four-plus months, the masks he can find to buy for his company cost five or six times as much as they used to and are not the same quality.

Life is getting real when it comes to the floor refinishing.  The family dog is a bit nervous but is coping well. She's not really letting me out of her sight, though. That's understandable given that the ASPCA thinks she was dumped. The last time she saw a house being packed up she might have been shoved out of a car that drove away. The family cat is hiding. I can't say I blame either of them. I mean, it does look a bit strange.

That pretty darned empty space is what passes for our living room. (Like the "accent wall"? My blog post on whether I should get an accent wall has been read by almost 800 people though I can't tell you why or how they found it.) Once I publish this post, I will take up the carpet tiles shown. The husband and older son will empty out the rest of the furniture tomorrow morning.

I recognize that this will give me the opportunity to "stage" my house, something I would otherwise never do. We started this whole process six months ago; it may take longer to put everything back in place, in a different place, in a thrift store, etc. As things have emptied out little by little, I have come to like how the space looks with less stuff in it. I intend to be judicious in what I put back where and how I plan to use it.

Tomorrow at this time, I will either be on my way off the grid or already there. I have gone on international trips before on which I heard little news of what was going on at home, "home" then being the United States. Now, I am going a mere 90 minutes driving time away, but will get only what news highlights I can get in the nightly check-in call with older son. Will the world I return to even resemble the world I am leaving? I think of The Twilight Zone or Outer Limits, with episodes in which a character (usually just one person because someone has to be on their own with no help possible), comes out from somewhere (a night's sleep, time away at a cabin in the woods) and finds the world totally changed. All the people are gone; the streets and buildings are empty. I know nothing like that will happen here; still, I have a younger son who would comment to that last thought something like "nothing will have happened yet."

Since I probably won't post anything before we head out tomorrow, I'll "see" everyone on the flip side. I don't want the world to have changed to that extreme degree in the time we're gone.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 65

One thing I am apt to remember from my time in the Hermitage is the furniture arrangement I put up with. In January, we had the interior of our house repainted for the first time since we had it built in 1985. That involved moving all the furniture away from the walls. To move bookcases, I packed all the books in banker's boxes that got put in the basement. They went to the basement since the plan was to have the hardwood floors sanded and refinished in March. I was not going to put all the books back on the shelves only to take them off again so soon. The floors got moved until May, and it seemed simpler just to leave the furniture sitting away from the walls, in the middle of some rooms, and so on. It will get moved out to a pod or truck for the week it will take to do the floors. May has become July (July 20 to be exact), so we're still living in general disarray.

In January, we moved to the guest room in the basement for the master bedroom to be repainted. When that had been done, the husband noted that we might as well stay on in the basement since we would be living there for the week in March it would take to do the floors. He liked the fact that it is darker in the basement; the master bedroom has a skylight over the bed. There are other differences as well. The guest room has a double bed; the master bedroom has a queen-size bed. The guest bathroom has a single sink; the master bathroom has a double sink. Whoever gets downstairs first in the evening or gets up first in the morning gets the sink to themselves.

On the plus side, the laundry is also in the basement, so there is no carrying laundry baskets between the basement and second floor. And as I said, the guest bedroom is darker which the husband says should help us sleep better. It may help him, but I'm not seeing any benefits in the sleep area.

On the coronavirus front, I got a notification on my cell phone from ABC News noting that besides the lungs, the novel virus can attack the brain as well. In one case cited, the effect on the brain was seen several days before there was any effect on the lungs. The patient did not get tested for covid-19 until the lungs got involved. Lungs, circulatory system, toes, brain. Is there any part of our human body that the virus doesn't like or won't adapt to? The picture gets a bit dimmer just as more states reopen or reopen even more. I know that at some point I will have to venture out into the world beyond my house or subdivision, but can I make that first time when I go out to get vaccinated?

Some weeks ago, I sent an email volunteering to participate in an NIH study on coronavirus antigens. They were looking for people who had not been tested. A week or so ago (the weeks seem to meld together) I got a follow-up email asking for some more medical info. Today I got an email acknowledging receipt of the survey I'd completed and returned and noting that I should hear very soon if I had been chosen to move on to the next stage. That may be the stage where I can go to NIH in Bethesda, Maryland to have blood drawn (not gonna happen) or draw blood on my own using instructions they'd send. Do something every day that scares you.

I worry somewhat that I am becoming numb to the pandemic's events. The footage of overcrowded hospitals in New York City, and the aerial photo of the mass graves had a visceral effect. They were shocking. It's become more businesslike. Numbers, graphs, projections, and the like just don't have the same effect, not that I want the examples I used to recur. Will the novel coronavirus become just another part of human existence, like influenza? Will it last long enough that the "novel" gets dropped?

And He Who Shall Not Be Named claims to be taking hydroxychloroquine. There's nothing so far to confirm or discount his statement. Now can we get him to inject or ingest a bit of bleach?