Dreaming of the beach

Like everybody else, the pandemic is "top of mind" 24 x 7 for me. I'm writing to help myself not internalize all of it. You can find other posts in the series at https://odonnellweb.com/pelican/tag/coronavirus.html

I just wrote about 1000 words on an issue then decided I didn’t like it. I did that yesterday too, which is why yesterday’s blog post was 3 pictures and about 10 words. Today we’ll try an old-school rambling blog post.

I’m walking about 5 miles (ca. 8 km) most days, 1 mile (1.61 km) at lunch with the family and 4 miles (6.44 km) after dinner with an audiobook. I’m currently listening to Notes From the Apocalypse by Mark O’Conner. At night, I’m reading the memoirs of a Polish Jew who narrowly escaped capture by the Nazi's (they got the rest of his family) and ended up in the Polish Resistance before eventually emigrating to the US and becoming a successful real estate developer. I might want to do something about my reading choices.

It’s pretty obvious most of my neighbors have given up on social distancing. Today I had to dodge a roving gang of about 8 kids as I tried to navigate the suburban streets. Along the way I saw groups of 3 and 4 adults who were obviously not cohabiting family members hanging out in close proximity to each other on lawns or in garages.

The other night I dreamed that we decided we needed some beach time this summer, so I brought 8-foot lengths of clothesline and 4 tent stakes with us to the beach to stake out our socially distant territory. That would work, right? I read a long thread on Twitter today about what contract tracing is telling us about how we catch Covid-19. The short answer is we catch it from extended exposure indoors to somebody that has it. It seems highly unlikely that you’ll get it from short term exposure outdoors just walking by somebody that has it. That makes sense given that the R number on it when we were not doing anything to slow the spread was probably about 3. If you could catch it from walking by somebody on a sidewalk for 2 seconds I think that R number would be a lot higher, closer to 15-18, like measles. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m working on convincing myself that beach time might be doable this summer.

Grocery shopping was uneventful this morning. Everybody except one dumb-ass was wearing a mask, and I was able to get everything on the list except sugar-free Popsicles. Also, our shipment from Omaha Steaks arrived today, so we’ll have steaks and steak burgers for the next 4-6 weeks, no matter what happens to the beef supply in the stores.

To close. Enjoy this flashback to 1985 - my senior year.