Who's zooming who

one of my quarantine projects: empty various bowls and boxes of jewelry and put it on the 6 sides of this screen in our bedroom. Still have lights on it and a few Xmas ornaments on it

I had wrapped a few necklaces around these bottles

haven't seen Josh's kids in 5 weeks

it was my birthday yesterday. Shanna made me a raspberry pavlova

Steve's uncle, a victim of Covid at age 98. A zoom funeral will be today

virtual birthday card from Allie

sunrise this morning

Zoom funeral. Who would have thought to put these words together a few months ago? But we live in a different world now. As for Zoom, excepting for a few hiccups on the learning curve, we have been proficiently zooming away, me with our weekly Happy Hours with the Moms, Steve with a zoom birthday party of his brother-in-law and another get together with some of his many cousins and aunt and later today a Zoom funeral for his uncle. This uncle has not left his house in months but care givers come and go. I came across a new term for the covid deniers: Branch Covidians. These imbeciles deny that there is any danger from the virus and all the stay at home edicts are just excuses to keep them from exercising their right to prance around with their Confederate flags and Swastikas'. Of course they are just extending the time of the quarantine. The worst is that Trump is encouraging them: they are fine people. I truly wish their demise. Too bad they will take innocents along with them. Another Trump trick: being first in line for the business bailouts. That would be fine if it were going to his employees but you know it will all go into his filthy pockets.  I assume he is encouraging his base to ensure that someone votes for him. The world hopes is that he is overestimating their numbers.

It always rains on my birthday but this year, none was in the forecast. I started out in the sun perpendicular to a very strong wind and ran south. One bright side (about the only side) of the Covid mess is that the roads are traffic free so I can actually cross a major highway during what was rush hour. As soon as I turned north, the sky darkened, the wind shifted to in my face and I was pelted with ice pellets, not sure if it was sleet or graupel. Quite a bit left on the road even though it was marginally above freezing. By the time I inched home, sunny again.

how to pass the time

We had a snow storm yesterday. April 17th. Fortunately it started after my run

I have been putting some of my photos up for sale on a stock photo site. I sold another one this week. Now I can buy 3 cups of coffee. Yay! Both photos were of New York. Above are some of what they have accepted: a mix of San Francisco, my house, Antwerp and Ghent

So week 5 of our quarantine. When will it end? Well it will last even longer no thanks to our brainless leader urging his minions to protest stay at home orders by showing up in their states' capitals en masse toting guns, blocking hospital entrances, clearly being within 6 feet of each other. The good news, such as it is, was that there seemed to be only 3000 of them. So if that's all that he can muster...And I wish there could be a law that these people will be refused treatment for putting themselves (and everybody) in danger. They do look like an unhealthy bunch, overweight, smoking...

Karma. One of those holy roller ministers who insisted on having his church open for business as God would protect them died of the virus.

It's been 2 weeks since I have been in a car. Rumor has it that gas is only $1.10 a gallon.  I have been out: running and biking. I do have my phone on me when I bike. I see that our movements are being monitored. Hopefully they can tell the difference between biking and driving and that I never seem to stop anywhere. Steve goes out to fetch food even bringing take-out one night. How small our world has become! My annual bike ride has been canceled for July. My Danube river cruise likewise.  I finished my French lessons and am reviewing German. I get very annoyed with myself when I forget things. As for Dutch all I remember is sinaasappelsap, orange juice.  I will pick up Italian again I guess.

Weird droppings have appeared on our patio seeming to be goose poop. Although there are no shortage of geese around, there is nothing to attract them to our patio. Then on an early morning run I found our local turkey flock a few houses over with the male strutting his stuff as it is spring. Apparently they are after the bird seed. I want to get a photo of the male fanning. Turkeys usually scatter when they see me but a male full of hormones probably will be less wary.

I got one of my chickadees to eat out of my hand. The snowbirds (juncos) are still here. Still winter I guess.

Steve's uncle would turn 99 this year. Would if he didn't have covid. Health care workers need to be tested but as many of them have to take public transportation, it is impossible to keep them safe.

when will this end?

we are asked to wear masks now when in stores. Maya has to go with Naomi on shopping runs. I haven't been in a store in a month

Kaya will be a year old in a month

When will we be on the beach again

Very old polaroid of my brother and me in a camera store. Camera stores in the 60s usually had a frieze of Kodak prints along their walls. My job would be to pick out the ones my father took. He entered various contests sponsored by them and usually won something

As we are all healthy and can afford food, I should not complain especially when I read accounts of inside the hospitals where workers working double shifts aren't given enough protection to do their jobs. Detroit now is death central yet Trump thinks we will be able to open up our country next month.  Every day unemployment finds some new issue to be addressed in Naomi's application. We think we finally get things settled but no, the next day a new issue.

Graupel. This is a bizarre mix of rain and snow forming ice balls distinct from hail. We were bombarded with it the other day even though it was close to 50.

Had another Zoom meeting with my friends. I have had a few outside visits with friends and family. I am getting tired of language apps. I should prepare all my gardens though the nurseries will be shut down until May. Hopefully by mid-May they will open some of them up not so much for my sake but it is a big business around here. I get depressed when I think of the fall out from all these closures and furious as you know who takes absolutely no responsibility in his part in this. All he can do is gloat how high his TV ratings are. Even the WSJ had an editorial the other day how no one tunes in to hear him but to hear Fauci. He released a series of tweets saying the WSJ is fake news and a tool of the Democrats which is hardly the case.  There was this old Twilight Zone episode in which this tyrannical child could read your thoughts. If he thought you weren't thinking the best of him, he could turn you into an inanimate object so people had to constantly suck up to him.

Ancestry keeps updating its databases. I am now more "norwegian' than before. My bad brca gene is a Norwegian founder gene. I assume it is from my mother's side but none of her many relatives will get themselves tested. I did note that my cousin's son has half the Norwegian ancestry as I do (which is what my kids would have) so it is a good chance it is my mom's side. I finally talked to my cousin, who has been avoiding me as she doesn't want to deal with this. Did she at least tell her childen, one of which has children who could be at risk?Of course not.

We have been watching Netflix and Amazon Prime at night. We just finished up "valhalla murders" which takes place in Iceland. Not even the police carry guns. At one point a police woman is going into the lair of a known killer. A gun would come in handy then. She has to call in a request to open the safe in her car trunk to get an ever changing password to have access to her gun while valuable seconds are ticking away.

Life in quarantine

Xmas in April

naomi

I've been trying to see my photos online. So far I've earned $7

crocus are blooming

I really don't see an end to this. If only we had listed to the pandemic experts....Too bad our president is illiterate. People are dying and all he does is tell everyone what a great job he is doing.

I used Zoom for the first time last week to hold a virtual Happy Hour with my friends

Fortunately the weather has been nice so lots of running and bicycling on my part. Deserted roads.

As Naomi lost her restaurant job due to the restaurant closing for the virus, she is entitled to unemployment but the server kept crashing and it wasn't clear what steps she had to take. So far she has received nothing because she didn't jump through the required hoops which were not explained anywhere. And there are no humans to call. Very frustrating.

exponential growth

the birthday girl at about 4 months

dancing with her dad at her wedding. Marriage did not last long

yesterday with her peach melba  birthday cobbler She and Josh prefer cobblers to cake

social distancing in the Costco line

her glamour shot  I assume Maya took the photo  She is a redhead here but not her true color which is in the wedding photo (and in the infant photo)

A teenager is told to do a task daily for a month. His dad tells him he gets a choice in how he will be paid: A million dollars up front or on the first day of the month: one penny, second day two pennies, third day 8 pennies etc. up to 31 days. To most people, the million dollars sounds like a better deal. Halfway into the month, one would only have  $50.00 or so. But towards the end of the month things snowball, the total is close to $20,000,000. That's exponential growth which is used to describe now the number of corona  cases. Here in Michigan, we went from 2 to 7600 cases in 3 weeks. Now they don't double every day, more like every other day or every two days but they are increasing at an alarming rate even with social distancing. I read the obituaries regularly. Most include something about a memorial service will be planned at a later date though today I noticed someone will have a graveside service tomorrow. At least it is outside.

Sometime today I will set up Zoom so my friends and I can have a virtual happy hour.

As for exponential growth (which Steve argues is geometric growth which I believe is just another word for the same thing), I have been battling it on a much smaller scale in my house. Aphids! They are sucking the life out of my hibiscus plants. An adult aphid (and one reaches adulthood at 10days) can give birth to 10 babies live a day. And they reproduce asexually So instead of an exponent of 2 as we have in the penny case, it is close to 10. They shed their skin 4 times while growing to adulthood so I see lots of white carcasses on the leaves, easier to spot than the green aphids themselves. Fortunately they are quite sensitive to soapy water spritzed on them. They prefer new growth so I know where to look. But as my one plant, which  is huge, they are easy to miss. One could quickly turn into thousands. So aphid hunting has been added to be chores.

Our river boat cruise down the Danube in May is cancelled. We can reschedule with a 25% bonus in the next 2 years or get a full refund. We have to wait to see what is happening .

Yes the Orange One really messed up disbanding the pandemic team, refusing to listen to warnings about the virus. claiming everything was a Democratic hoax and now liberally pats himself on the back on what a tremendous job he is doing. And his base is still loving him.  Our divide now is greater than ever with his supporters deep in denial that this is occurring. The mega churches (3000+) are still meeting in defiance of local laws. And not just the so-called Christians, ultra Orthodox Jews still hold services. However I am not sure that more enlightened countries are doing that much better. China now claims that everything is under control now but won't let in reporters to see for themselves

I still have a fewTrump lovers on Facebook though they make me cringe. One recently fell out of love with Trump because Trump actually seemed to be taking things seriously (better late than never) and the stock market tanked which my acquaintance thought totally unnecessary as the virus is 'not all that bad'.  Another started a fundraiser to protest trans athletes being able to compete in races as a sex different from the one they were born with and her daughter, should she decide to be a runner (she is 8) won't have a fair advantage. Really. With the hospitals not having supplies and overworked health professionals not having masks, you are worried about 'girls' with too much male steroids.

We were good friends in the past. She really is a sweet lady. Fortunately her daughter (friend of my daughter) has a good head on her shoulders though unable to convince mom (a scientist at that) what is right.

Sigh. Such times we live in.

Dying for the Dow

Maya taking a break from homeschool All the Maya photos are from Naomi

on a sunny day

making slime on the stoop

finally a sign of spring

Of all the stupid things that come out of Republican mouths, none has been so inane as what the Lt. governor of Texas said recently that the elderly should be willing to die if they love their grandkids ensuring said grandkids a healthy economy. He is assuming that businesses have shut down only to protect the elderly from the corona virus and that only the elderly actually die from it. It vaguely reminds me of the Facebook scam on many posts "if you support people with cancer (substitute Autism, Down's syndrome..)you will share this post with all your friends (while we capture all their names). If you don't you are clearly a heartless bitch."

I guess I am a heartless bitch even though I did have cancer and I give support (money) to various groups that help them.

And no, I am not willing to kill myself so my grandkids will take pride in a healthy stockmarket, if they even know what that means. 

It is not clear if I am to actively kill myself or just expose myself to the virus dining in restaurants, travelling, spending money so that I would catch it and then be turned away at the hospital when I could no longer breathe on my own. Or may be government agents will just come to gun me down.

And what is elderly? Recently a columnist who is still a world class athlete at 63 offered to fly across the country to visit her grandkids(this was a few weeks ago before the self-isolation edicts) and was surprised when her adult kids said no because she is elderly and at great risk for the virus.  She was taken back as she definitely didn't see herself that way being able to outperform most young people.  I am no world class athlete but I suspect even as slow as I have gotten, I could still outperform most young people.

But the biggest fallacy the lt. governor makes is assuming that our hospitals are only tied up with old people.

Michigan has gone from only 1 case to 2400 (as of yesterday) cases in just 2 weeks.The Detroit Metro area hospitals are filled to capacity (still room in our neighboring county). Meanwhile our southern neighbor, Ohio, which started off with more victims and has a higher population than Michigan, now has only a third as many victims. Are we just testing more? Could be. But some say the biggest difference is that we had gone ahead with our primary two weeks ago. True the elderly (including me) could use mail-in ballots but up to election day, it wasn't clear which candidates were left so I voted in person. And I admit, I found the few masked people and the lady who insisted on putting gloves on to open the door (but used bare hands for the communal pens) over the top. At the time I was lead to believe we had only one person in the entire state who didn't even live near me. How was I to get sick? If only we had an operational CDC and tests to have better tracked this beast..  But you know what happened to that and he doesn't feel the least bit responsible.

BLACK SWAN VERSUS GRAY RHINO

Recently I heard the virus described as a 'black swan' meaning totally unexpected with even more unexpected consequences. Now I would have thought of a black swan as the evil side of the Odette/Odile battle from the Swan Lake Ballet (cue the black feathers sprouting from Natalie Portman's back)  But it turns out it was a Roman poet Juvenal 900 years ago writing how hard it is to find a woman with suitable virtues to marry, a 'rara avis' (in crossword puzzle world, this term comes up a lot) or a black swan, a creature not thought to exist such as a unicorn.

At the end of the 17th centure, a Dutch explorer (whose name looks like it is pronounced as if you were expelling corona viruses ) encountered them in Australia where they were common. I have seen some of their descendants at a bird farm near my former house.

But others say the situation is more like a gray rhino coming at you. Predictable with deadly consequences unless evasive techniques are quickly practiced. Not a whole lot of rhinos out there, but if one happens to be barreling down on you, you know what to do.

Monday night, we got the social distancing order. Fortunately my runs and bike rides are not in violation especially as we live out in the country though I am encountering much more dog walkers. And they actually seem happy to see me. We also can take food out of restaurants which we might try tonight. Other than seeing my friends and family much much less, not a lot has changed.

Funny corona postings:  The Corona sutra: an illustrated guide to sexual positions that include social distancing. What does Corona and Romeo and Juliet have in common? One is a Verona crisis and the other is a Corona virus. And finally from my German speaking page: here is the US we stockpile toilet paper and handwipes, in Germany it is sausage and cheese:

IT IS CLEARLY A WURST KASE SCENARIO 

Pandummic

Nice sunrise

Part of a collection of nose cone art taken at a Hawaiian Air Force base during WW2 by a friend's father. How many of these planes were shot down?

baby bantam chicks at a farm supply store

My title is not original. It is a different spelling of a Daily Show skit which is a tape of outrageous, ignorant things Trump and Pence have spouted off during the last month denying the seriousness of the issue. Well they have finally seen the light much to the chagrin of some of their supporters who were so happy about the stock market and now have turned on him for finally doing the right thing..  Occasionally I watch the daily corona updates he gives. A lot of time patting himself on the back on what a 'tremendous' job he is doing. Meanwhile it is the local governors that are making the big decisions, ours especially though Trump had the nerve to criticize her for not doing enough.

When I last wrote in this, only a week ago. Michigan had only 3 known cases. This has now blossomed to 500. Somehow our Upper Peninsula has been spared though according to the map, 3 remote islands in Lake Michigan each have at least one case. Of course hardly anyone has been tested. Some think this virus was here 6 weeks ago disguised as the 'flu'. Half of the kids in Maya's class were absent. (her class has a very large Chinese-American population) despite having had flu shots. At the time we were told that this year's shot didn't cover the strain they were getting. One of Maya's classmates went to the doctors to be tested for various flu strands. All negative. If the CDC only had sufficient funding (need that wall!!)we'd have enough tests.

Who should be tested? Anyone involved in patient care regardless if they have symptoms. As it is. if you have symptoms which are not severe enough to require hospitalization, you are not tested and told just to isolate yourself. Now they are able to test a few of the people showing symptoms (thus the jump in numbers) but not the people who show no symptoms but are around vulnerable people. My mother-in-law's nursing home has not allowed visitors for a month (Seattle). Who comes and goes? The staff. A resident just was removed with the corona virus. Who gave it to her? Not enough tests to test the healthy appearing aides.

So a week ago was arranging care for Maya during the 3 weeks she was out of school so Naomi could work. Two days later, her job was gone though she has a paper saying she will be rehired. She spent 3 hours trying to connect to the Unemployment Server as it kept crashing due to high volume. Eventually she got through so she will have some income. All  of this will lead to a huge depression world wide.

My appointment at the airport with the TSA office so  I could get a Clear card enabling me to go through customs so much faster was canceled. We had planned to fly to Germany May 6 but I suspect that won't happen barring the miracle Trump says is going to happen. Germany is under strict quarantine. Maybe it will do the trick but still they could bar Americans from coming due to our health policies being so deficient.

Elective surgeries have been cancelled. There is a severe blood shortage. Routine dental care has been suspended though  just had mine in the nick of time. So far Michigan residents are not restricted to their houses as in the harder hit states. We are out in the country and fairly isolated. I am not allowed at Josh's house. Not sure if that is to protect me or them though Josh and I did take a walk together. I assume socializing outside is a bit safer than inside. No movie theaters, sporting events, concerts, eating in restaurants or bars..a whole new world.

It is spring though. My mini irises are in bloom. I ran very early this morning in shorts. Initially it was sunny and calm but when I was the farthest point from home, the sky turned black and it poured. The wind suddenly became very strong but at least it was on my back by that time. Sunny again by the time I got home. The temp will drop from 62 this morning to 20 tomorrow morning. I have been biking too. The peepers in the wetlands along my route are peeping; the tom turkeys are fanning their feathers to impress the females. I should have stopped to take his photo. Turkeys are normally very skittish but sometimes when they are infested with mating hormones, they won't back off and will face down if not attack a person.

Such strange times