The View from the Hermitage, Day 169

Thirty-nine days and forty nights to go, and we'll regret not building an ark. It has been raining solidly all day, including when I walked six miles this morning. It actually felt nice then. When I worked out outside with SEAL Team Physical Training, I used to love rainy workouts. I never did understand why attendance always seemed to be down on those days. I felt the same way about snowy or bitterly cold days. Attendance was down on those days as well.

Needless to say, an assortment of rain songs constituted my train of thought for a good bit of the walk. "Rainy Days and Mondays," though I am not at all sure why that one popped up. NOT. "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," "Who'll Stop the Rain," "I Wish It Would Rain," "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain," "Rainy Night in Georgia," "It Never Rains in Southern California." There's also the wider- reaching "Stormy Weather." 

Book sorting continues. I have amassed a too-high stack of books I'd like to read. However, I am also boxing up books for each son, either books they left behind or books I think they'd really like. We took down a couple of small bookshelves that we likely will not put back up, meaning some books will need to go somewhere. 

The restoring the house goal of the week is to get rugs chosen for the living room and dining room. I don't want to order curtains until the rugs are in. We had a couple of accent walls put in when the house was repainted. The  rug we had in the living room would go okay with the accent wall there, but it's somewhat worn. The rug under the dining table does not coordinate with the accent wall there, to it's gotta go. We had dark blue or maroon curtains up before, but I want to go more neutral this time.

Just over 100 new covid-19 cases were reported in the regional health district since Friday. Ninety of those were in the local city or county, probably fueled by the students living off-campus trickling back. Students are supposed to submit results of a covid-19 test before setting foot on campus. So far, 17,090 results of pre-arrival tests have been submitted, of which only 51 were positive. That's a good sign, though most of those students were likely living at home over the summer and more apt not to go out for a good time than they will once they are here. I can always hope, though.

The Kentucky Derby will be run next weekend but without spectators. There was an article in The Washington Post today about a man who has attended every Derby since 1947, when he was nine years old. I read the article hoping that whoever decides such things could let him in. If they did that, though, I'm sure any number of other people would plead extenuating circumstances. Televised sports look very different with no gallery lining the fairways or surrounding the greens or sitting in the stands behind one team or the other. Evidently in basketball, the lack of a crowd drastically affects the acoustics of players commenting positively or not or hands or arms being slapped on fouls. There will probably be less of an effect for something such as golf or the US Open tennis tournament that started today. In both tennis and golf, the crowd/gallery is expected to watch quietly at certain times; that should lessen the effect of no crowds in those sports.

And I just received a text from the assisted living facility in which my mom lives. All the covid-19 tests done last Wednesday came back negative. They will do another round of testing this upcoming Wednesday. If all those come back negative, they may be able to let residents eat together at least in small groups with social distancing or enjoy some small group activities. And those would be good things.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 148

An article in today's Washington Post reports on research being conducted on whether asymptomatic covid-19 sufferers have preexisting immunity that lessens the virus's effects. In one experiment they tested blood samples collected several years ago and found that in 40 to 60 percent of the samples, the T cells in the blood seemed to recognize the SARS-CoV-2 virus even though it did not exist at that time. The question is whether previous exposure to a different coronavirus might have been the cause. Just as interesting and perhaps more relevant to the here and now is that there seem to be more asymptomatic cases in settings in which masks were worn. Did mask-wearers perhaps get fewer virus particles than people not wearing masks? The doctors have been saying that wearing a mask protects others, but it may well protect the person wearing it as well.

I could still get to test out my prediction that a cancellation of the intercollegiate fall football season will lead  the local university to go totally virtual in the fall. There has been more discussion of just how safe it is to have two strapping young men face-to-face and exhaling on each other. Since most schools planning to have football have just started or are just starting practice, this would be the week to make a decision about shutting it down. 

Some athletic conferences have been discussing moving football to the spring. The fall season usually has preseason practice in August and games running from late August or early September to December with bowl games happening in late December and early January. That's a good five months. If you use January for preseason practice, games would start in February, a month in which there can still be wintry weather in the north. Postseason games would happen in May, a month in which many schools would be running final exams. I just can't see that being all too practical, but it's another decision I don't have to make.

Putting the house back together continues. I am going crazy with the Dymo LetraTag label maker older son gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago. No more handwritten labels for the drawers in the card catalog or the DVD cabinet. We're going high-tech here! And it is a truly sorry statement on my life that I get that much excitement from making labels.

I was supposed to see my ear doc in October for him to check on the screw in my skull (the formal name for it is an abutment, but I kinda like screw in the skull). The office called this morning about changing the date of the appointment. I suggested we wait until January, thinking the fewer things planned for 2020, the better. Even moving the appointment that far out, I had to answer all the covid-19 screening questions. Did I have any of the following long list of symptoms? Had I been out of the country in the last month? And so on. I told the person who called up front that I had been self-isolating since March, but I still was asked about whether I had been around anyone who later tested positive for covid-19. She was just doing her job, and I can't blame her. I just found it a bit humorous.

The numbers for Virginia actually looked better this morning, but then the number of cases reported on a Sunday always seems a bit suspect to me. The governor does not seem to have a briefing scheduled for tomorrow, but I'll check again tomorrow, especially if the numbers for today are headed back up. In the meantime, I shall make labels and watch the news and try not to get too depressed or too angry over the antics of HWSNBN.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 140

Twenty weeks! And I know a fellow quilter with whom I spent time in Texas in February who has been in her own Boston hermitage for 21 weeks. She's 81 and had a cousin die with covid-19 very early on in the pandemic. As for my own 88-year-old mother, her assisted living facility continues covid-free. The same cannot be said of the rehabilitation center where she spent six months before moving to assisted living. They now have five staff members and two residents who have tested positive. The story came out when a CNA quit after having been told to report for a double shift even though she had covid-19 symptoms and was going to be tested. She did test positive and is quite thankful, now, that she stuck to her gut feelings and did not go in to work. She said that were it not for the pandemic raging, she likely would have chalked her symptoms up to allergies, popped some Allegra, and gone to work anyway. She made a very good call.

There is another local senior-care facility, the Cedars, that may be setting records covid-19 records. They have had 96 residents and 44 staff members test positive. You read that correctly--140 total cases. There have been 17 deaths so far. I read things like that and offer thanks to the deities that my mom's facility has taken such good care to stay covid-free. That said, one single staff member could still come in having the virus but showing no symptoms and set off an outbreak. Here's hoping those deities stay with me on this.

I spent some pandemic-free time reading Mary Trump's book Too Much and Never Enough. It was a quick and easy read. I wouldn't buy it, but if you can borrow it or check it out of a library, you might take a look at it. Is there really any new information there? No. Did it make me more sympathetic to HWSNBN because his father was as large a piece of s*** as he is? No. The whole family is what people in polite circles might call "a piece of work." The whole book can pretty much be summed up as "like father, like son." How much might have been nature vs. nurture (or lack thereof), I would not want to guess.

Older son and I did our Sunday morning walk at the park with the family dog this morning. A church is now using one of the shelters for what appears to be a service and a social. Two weeks ago, no one there seemed to be wearing a mask. Now that the county has instituted new covid-19 mitigation measures, there were a lot more masks this morning. Not on every adult, but on enough of them to be noticeable. None of the kids were wearing masks, but the regs say kids under 10 aren't required to wear a mask.

I have been remiss in not mentioning that The Washington Post again has a daily sports section. This morning's contained an interesting article about a conference call between administrators, coaches, and some football players from the Southeastern Conference held to address concerns about the upcoming season. The players were told to consider it "a given" that players on each team would develop covid-19. When one player pointed out that while right now the teams can operate in a bubble, once all the other students return, that bubble is popped mightily. One of the higher-ups noted something I've thought all along: If those other students don't come back, there's no way football could be played.

And while the bubble theory appears to be working for the NBA, WNBA, and major league soccer, the abbreviated Major League Baseball season may be headed down the drain. The NFL has canceled all pre-season games. Will they end up doing the same for the regular-season games? Do people care? I enjoyed the organized sports I did (I helped break the gender barrier in high school cross country and tennis back in the early days of the 1970s), but I never did them with any thoughts of continuing to compete in anything but intramurals when I moved on to college. That may disqualify me from making judgmental statements about continuing organized sports during a pandemic, but I would say that the only collegiate sports that should have any microscopic chance of being held are those with limited or no interpersonal contact. Sports such as tennis or golf. Cross country could count if there are staggered starts to the races. And even with those, there should be serious discussion of are they needed. What is their purpose? If they are to be held without spectators, you can't even make the argument that they offer a diversion or entertainment. Pro sports can argue that television justifies their existence, but the same would not be true of college. At least not to me.

Time to get off my soapbox and go empty the dryer that just beeped at me that the clothes in it are dry.