Tag Archives: Pandemic

Spring Updates

Where I work out the most has reopened, again. They closed last March, reopened in May or so, and then closed again on short notice right before Thanksgiving and have now opened again.

My wife is an exercise instructor who works at two other places and so I was able to get a half price membership at the Y. I love the Y, its great but it is kind of a mob scene. So I’m glad the other place opened up. I’ve been a member since 1992.

Looking out the windows of the Yoga Studio. March is shaping up to be a beautiful month.

I finally took my old beat up bike to the repair shop on Tuesday. My last ride was in September when some guy took a turn too fast and crashed right into me. Hurt like all get out. Nothing serious I got checked out for concussion and spine and came out fine. It hurt to go hiking or running though so I took it easy and now I can run and hike all I want with no pain. My bike was probably okay but I wanted them to check it out for me.

Have you heard about the “My Heritage” App. It is a genealogy app but what is really cool is their “Deep Nostalgia” function that animates faces. It is meant for us to upload a photo of old great aunt Bessie so you can see what her animated face looks like. Heck with is what I say, I don’t even have a great aunt Bessie. So I uploaded a bas relief sculpture of Sussana Wesley, the mother of the great Methodists, Charles and John and animated her face. I was beginning to have some great fun with the app and it came to a screeching halt at 3 uploads. Turns out that is all you get with the base membership. You want more than that, it is about $199 per year or something like that. So, so much for Deep Nostalgia for me. I didn’t really see any other apps that did similar things.

Anyways, try the app out on your great aunt Bessie, if you have one that is. I might be asking if anybody can recommend a denomination for me if the Methodists boot me out. Wouldn’t blame them a bit. I started out life as a Lutheran. Maybe I could animate Martin Luther’s face. He always seems so stern.

Now a musical interlude with the great Diane Schuur

I got a new computer a few months ago and a lot of my itunes music didn’t carry over so I have been ripping cds again and falling in love with a lot of them including Diann Schurr. Remember her? Back in the 80’s she was scooping up Grammys like crazy. She is still making music. Her voice is so pure and clear. She has perfect pitch and vocal tone. She is also blind and she is amazing.

And now a report from the world of crime her in Tulsa.

An update to something I discussed last week, I was a potential juror in a first degree murder case but didn’t get selected for the jury. After I was dismissed I did a little research and it was bad. I know murder cases are bad to begin with but the defendant is very young and a huge list of arrests and incarcerations. Anyway, they had the trial and you can read about it here. The guy was found guilty and the jury recommended life without parole plus potentially another thirty five years.

Pandemic Blues

We are in the fat part of summer now. It is very hot and humid outside so I’ve been spending more time than I am used to inside.

My trusty iphone crapped out on me. I took it to one of those phone doctor places and I think they did a good job trying to get it back to life. In the end they said it would require a new mother board and they suggested that I get another one. They removed all the new parts they put in it and just charged me not much for the labor involved, which is fair in my book. I just wanted to make sure that I needed one. So I bought an updated model just like it with 256Gb of memory. I have lots of apps, music, and photos. So I got the new phone and I am back in business.

I have been doing more running and walking since the pandemic started. I have been eating a lot more as well so I am kind of balanced out.

Here’s Lizzie the kitten showing me how to cope with all the stress.

I am linking with Our World Tuesday

Out and About

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Since the pandemic lots and lots more walkers and dog walkers in the neighborhood.

I’m still learning this whole retirement thing. One thing is trying to figure out how to structure my day.

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My trusty Subaru CrossTrek. With my cool, unused, noisy, costs me 1 mpg roof rack.

So after over 40 years of getting up early during the week and hurrying to get my exercise, breakfast, and newspaper reading in, I started going to bed a little bit later so I could watch Stephen Colbert and waking up later and doing my coffee drinking, breakfast eating, and newspaper reading.

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Saint Francis Hospital across the street from Lafortune Park

And that was fine the problem was exercising. It’s summer in Oklahoma and as usual it is hot. So by the time I got done with the preliminaries it would be like 11 am. So I’d go do my thing, run at Turkey Mountain or on the river or whatever.

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Swings at Lafortune. My 22 year old son used these when he was two. They removed the seats and chains during the first part of the pandemic, now they are back.

So today is like, okay Colbert is not the funny without an audience. I like to read more than watch television and I hate to say it but I may be a natural early riser. So today I got up and went to Lafortune Park and run/walked my three miles and then went to the gym and used their hot water and towels to clean up.

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Our lush patio. Thank you to Mrs. Bates

So I am going to try this a little while. I think it might work out until the weather changes. It’s kind of like my friends that go on mission trips to Tanzania. One thing they love is that when you are over there, when it gets dark you go to bed, and you get out of bed when the sun comes up. They love the simplicity, among a bunch of other things.

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The Tiki I had in my office for years is thriving in its new digs. We both retired.

And talk about simplicity. My antique Iphone crapped out on me. I tried everything I could do and ended up taking it to one of those store front phone doctor places. Wish me well. Just to have some thing I went to Target and bought a $20 burner and 30 minutes worth of time. Just talk and text, no internet, no nothing. Remember those days? Don’t you worry though I’ll be back in business in two days with either my antique or a brand new one.

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Who says I am not any good at gardening?
Oklahoma Covid-19 New Cases per day.

On the pandemic side it kind of looks like due to a lack of interest in doing anything about it by our national and state leadership, it is skyrocketing. New cases per day in Oklahoma have gone up by a factor of eight since early June.

So I’ll be socially distancing and isolating for the foreseeable future. What about you? How are you doing?

Skywatch Friday – an Epidemic of Walking

The family is together all the time during this pandemic. I am one of the lucky ones who is working from home. Logan, our son, is home from school and continuing his classes online. (Poor kid, one of his history teachers loves to talk, and not constrained by class time he has talked on his subject for over two hours!!!, Nobody is there to tell him that it is time to go.) Heather is an exercise instructor, and the gyms she works at are closed. So we do lots of walking and our dog is loving it.

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One of our favorite places to go is Lafortune Park. It has a nice, paved three mile track that wraps around two golf courses, baseball diamonds, playgrounds, and a library. Their is a sculpture garden behind the library that I think has to be one of the best kept secrets in town. Their is Peter Rabbit above.

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And Mother Goose, with a gosling on her back. There is Logan checking out Peter Rabbit.

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I turn 90 degrees and this is the view. Lafortune Park is nicely landscaped.

Lafortune Sycamore trees

And continuing around the park, here is a tree on the golf course. The golf course is shut down but they are still mowing it and maintaining it. Personally I think that they could open it with modified rules. Maybe, only one person per cart unless you have pull cart or something like that. Sorry, I’m diverging, I tend to do that. I don’t play golf any longer but I am worried about keeping the course workers employed, if it can be done safely.

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Another golf course scene. As I was taking this a guy said “Dang you take lots of photos.” Huh? It was a friend of mine, who retired in 2018. It was nice to see him. We kept our distance and didn’t shake hands or anything. It was nice to see him. I see all sorts of people now while out walking.

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Close to the end of the walk. A combined Redbud and Whitebud tree. They seem to be fused at the trunk.

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And to end up, we had a Pink SuperMoon this week. It’s a little hazy because the ranchers north of Tulsa are doing prescribed burns on their pastures so it looks a little hazy. I didn’t care, I just love moons.

So that is it for this week. Everybody stay safe!! Come join the party at Skywatch Friday

Sources of Covid 19 Data for the World, Nations, States, Cities

Image from page 343 of "Anatomy and physiology : designed for academies and families" (1847)
Courtesy of Flickr Commons

I started tracking data for Oklahoma by using the State Health Department web site. That’s okay but it is just a fixed point in time every day. It would be like trying to figure out what is happening in drag race by measuring the speed a hundred yards out of the start. The sites below track the spread of the virus in real time.

If you have your own credible sources of data let me know and I’ll consider adding it.

Johns Hopkins University might be the gold standard. Reportedly some government agencies use it.

Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)

1point3 acres has a great site focused on the US and Canada

Covid 19 in US and Canada

Here’s a site bopping around on Facebook that seems legit. It says “Use at your own risk” so I am passing that info along as well.

GIS Surfer 2.0

Worldometer has a great site with lots of data and curves. Lots of ads as well but not too bad.

Worldometer

GitHub, somehow related to the New York Times is a great source of data if you want t o create your own visualizations. It’s kind of a nerdy site but worth checking out.

GitHub