Category: Sheltering

corona times

Sheltering in April

Day 35 sheltering at home!! The weeds keep coming, Spanish still eludes me and being a rock star has not developed the way I envisioned.

At times life is very reminiscent of the movie Ground Hog Day. I get up. I drink coffee in the front room reading the days newspaper. I then read my email and delve deeper into news stories on my iPad. I usually go for an hour hike or bike ride after that, then settle in for a little yard work if it is not raining. Found a new radio station, at least for me, called Krush or krsh out of Napa which is on the internet and plays many rock, blues, acoustic tracks that are not so main stream. I am also listening to K-ZAP out of Sacrament via the internet which I grew up listening to. After some outdoor work I usually spend a couple hours on Rosetta Stone attempting to improve my Spanish. I can certainly read Spanish better but speaking and understanding spoken Spanish remains elusive. Following that, some lunch with maybe a TV show (Star Trek Discovery, Tiger King, Clone Wars, Marvel). I then move to the music room, maybe with a beer and play for a couple hours. Fender offered 3 months of free guitar lessons so I have been doing that. I chose the Blues track which has been exceedingly slow and hard to jump ahead. But, this has toughened up my fingers and I enjoy doodling for an hour or so after the lesson. I have my electric Les Paul and an acoustic/electric Ovation I play thru a Fender amp. Along with Tab from online and Spotify to play the songs I play along with Tom Petty and others for kicks. My goal is to get better with knowing the fretboard, scales, and a little bit of music theory. We’ll see, maybe more beer will help.

Hiking in the Open Space
Castle Rock

We have had some visitors. Jamie and Tim have brought Russell over a couple of Saturdays in a row. We sit outside spread out. We don’t hold Russell just watch and coo. We sit and talk for a few hours sharing a few glasses of wine and lunch. We have facetimed with Kelsi and David catching up with them and watching Ava showing off her walking prowess. We facetimed Zac and Maria but they have been working really hard (Doordash is doing exceptionally well during the Shelter) so we missed out on an online pinochle game with them recently. We will make it up in the coming week. The Alex’s are fed up with the City at this point. They have decided to move in early with us for the next number of months. Our original plan was June in preparation for Katie and I’s big trip around the world but that is most likely cancelled. So now, we will just be roommates 2020 getting to enjoy homemade pizza via Crow every Friday, maybe some cornhole contests, and more social interaction. Looking forward to that though I will need to get dressed a little earlier in the day! 

Katie and I had an excursion to Napa last week as the skies were blue and the temp somewhere close to 80. We had wines to pick up at Robert Biale and we ordered take-out from our favorite restaurant up there, Rutherford Grill. We hiked in Moore Creek Park up along a creek finding a nice flat spot to eat our French Dip and Wild Rice Salad meal. A little Biale ‘Black Chicken’ wine and the day was set. We were planning a longer hike after that but we were too full and tipsy to enjoy the long walk so we drove back home. Beautiful day 

French Dip, Red Wine

My family is in general well though my mother took a fall at the living facility she is in. She has had the unfortunate luck of being in quarantine prior to the shelter in place orders because of a GI bug going around her facility. Then of course they locked down because of the Corona Virus. Well she sat in her room for weeks. I suspect got fairly weak. Then while moving about her kitchen twisted awkwardly, fell and ended up with several pelvic fractures. She was evaluated that day but initially no fractures were found and they sent her home. She couldn’t put weight on her leg and subsequently fell 2 more times. This time they found the fractures with a CT scan. She ended up overnight in the hospital and now is in a nursing home getting physical therapy until she can get up on her own. The worst is no visitors have been allowed for weeks at her facility and now that includes the nursing home and hospital so she has just been on her own for all of this.

Oh my, look what time it is! Rosetta Stone is calling. Take care everyone. Hope all are well and look forward to seeing you all on the flipside.

Sheltering!

Just to remember this in the future, I am going to write down a little of what is going on in our world. Katie and I had a great time skiing with the Banfields on our last 2 days up in Tahoe. On our last day there were forecasts of the largest winter storm of the year coming, though the timing kept changing. We decided to drive home that night as some predictions were for chain controls to start that evening. After some hot tub, some dinner, some cleaning!!, we hit the rode for an uneventful trip back home. The following day the storm predictions kept adding feet of snow so I booked a hotel outside Alpine Meadows for the following week.. I gave some shit to some of our kids because they had to work in the coming week and I was going up for some powder. Later that day I was informed by one of the kids that the ski resorts had all closed because of the Coronavirus sweeping the world. Arghhh!

Skiing with the Banfields

By Monday, the Bay Area had begun a Shelter in Place. All non-essential businesses were to close, restaurants can do take out or curb pickup but no going in. Movies closed, bars (though some would deem essential) closed, barbers (non-essential for me) closed, etc. This has led to a week of creative entertainment. On the first day Katie and I went wild with things we had been putting off, weeding, organizing, reading, etc. On the second day we slowed down. This was going to be long trip not a quick run to the store. We did go and buy groceries which seemed almost normal except papergoods were out of stock and people did give you some distance. Nobody was wearing a mask. I cleaned out our extra room and made it into a music room with hopes of practicing the piano and guitar.

I had been getting a little down being at home all the time so it was really a thrill to have the Alex’s call up one night to ask us for a game of Liar’s dice. Crow played out of his head and dominated early but the Mrs. eventually showed her stuff and won the last couple of games. I think we are going to try and branch out with this so look out Rob/Kel, Don/Frank, Billie/Paul, kids etc.

Liars Dice with the kids. Social Distancing to an extreme

Katie and I have been able to do walks/hikes for and 1 1/2 hours on many days. The Iron Horse Trail is near us and seems much busier than usual but everyone is giving space. Even the Walnut Creek Open Space was more crowded but in such a large area you really don’t interact that much with others. Strangely, February did not have any rain and since I was away alot of it I heard that temps were getting up to the high 70’s in the Bay Area. Well not the case since the Shelter in Place. We’ve had fairly frequent rain and generally cold temps. What gives. I guess somewhat nice is that the hills were somewhat dry to begin with and any rain gets absorbed very quickly so walking/biking are still feasible. 

I’ve heard warm temperatures slow the Coronavirus down so come on Global Warming you have been showing your ugly head for several years now. I don’t think we have fixed it yet. Katie has been working more of late both because there is a need at the hospital but also our 401K’s kinda tanked so anything like real cash is good. Trying to come up with a better strategy than my usual buy high sell low but we will see how it goes. Maybe if Katie just does the opposite of me we will be good. Today I had a great bike ride with Jim. 20 miles overall with some wind at our fronts and backs. We generally stayed apart but managed to have a conversation once in a while. Miss the social contact and look forward to a ‘huge’ party at the end of all this. My best wishes to all.