Where Does the Time Go

I have been meaning to post something for a week or so and somehow something just keeps getting in the way.  While being stuck at home should make our schedules easier, we are both finding ourselves very busy.  I've started to reread a series of books that are really engaging and when it has come time to decide about doing some reading or typing this blog - the reading has been winning.  Of course, it could also be some naps might be getting in the way of writing. 

We have started to enjoy using our new outdoor furniture by having some friends and family over for conversation and meals.  My parents have joined us for brunch a couple of times in which we area actively working to maintain the correct social distance  (the above picture aside - I'm farther back than it looks, just in case it looks like we have thrown caution to the wind) while still enjoying the sunshine.  Most important it has been nice to have some conversations with people besides each other.

Our garden is starting to produce a weekly vegetable haul that has made meal planning more interesting as we try to figure out what to make with the recently harvested goodies.  For the first time ever, we finally had a pea crop that took more than one meal to eat.  This was a nice surprise especially since I had told myself this was the last year I was going to plant peas if they didn't produce a healthy crop.  I have been trying to get a good pea crop for six or seven years back in Milwaukee.  Of course, maybe the peas knew about the threat and decided to not hold back this year.  We have also enjoyed multiple lettuce harvests along with some yellow squashes, onions, beans, radishes, and basil.  While the weeds remain an ongoing challenge at our community garden the produce is nice to have and with my parents in town we now have someone else to share the bounty with. 

Our other big outing recently was to hit a pick your own strawberry farm to get enough for a new batch of strawberry jam - well at least that was the plan (the last time we made jam was 2004 and we are still finishing a few jars of that).  As we could see the end of our jam we figured it would be good to make a fresh eight jars or so.  But as our usual when out picking strawberries we grossly misjudged how many quarts were in our bin.  So instead of making one batch of jam, we had had to make four batches of jam to have any hope of using up all the berries.  Even with that, we still needed to freeze several bags of strawberries (strawberry margaritas and daiquiris are in the future).  Even with the major mistake, we still had a fun day picking, cleaning, and canning.  That and we will be eating fresh jam - probably for years to come.

We continue our daily hikes and are starting to work in biking several times a week either outside or on our recently acquired spin bike to provide some aerobic conditioning.  Yoga is keeping us semi-limber and we have found a means to do some weight training at home.  Not sure when we will feel comfortable back at the gym especially with the current explosion in Covid cases.  Other than that, we are having fun, missing our travels, but catching up on some long delayed home activities.  And yes, Jo is still cranking out sourdough item after sourdough item.  

Doing our Bit for the Economy

While taking 1-2 hour long walks everyday since March 22 has been enjoyable and we have talked about everything under the sun, it wasn't really contributing to our overall aerobic fitness.  Although our gym has recently reopened, albeit with limited attendance and enhanced cleaning (the new buzzword for businesses), we decided given the risks being inside with people sweating and breathing hard that we just aren't ready yet to head to the gym.  So we took the plunge and purchased a spin bike to get some exercise that actually requires us to breath hard.  Of course, our interior decorating plans didn't really count on having an exercise space so we spent a bit of time reorganizing and managed to squeeze it in to a corner (fortunately spin bikes don't require a large footprint).  Fun side note, our plan was to not have any exercise equipment at home so we would be forced to go out and see people every day - even if it was just the gym.  Great plan for normal times, not a great plan during a pandemic. 

We also purchased a bike rack for our car so that we begin to take some bike trips without having to use the crowded downtown bike trails.  This also required bike trail passes and a new front wheel for Jo's bike since she had continued her 2019 trend of getting a flat front tire after every ride.  So you can see we are doing our best to pump funds into the pandemically crippled economy (copyright alert - pandemically is mine).  The addition of the bike rides (inside and out) have started to help us feel like we are getting back into some sort of shape and might have a chance of surviving the carbohydrate enhanced diet we are on due to Jo's sour dough adventures.

Speaking of sour dough, Jo's starter continues to bubble and plug away in the back of the fridge while Jo plots and searches the internet for new things to she can make out of sour dough.  Recently, Jo tackled another round of English muffins, which continue to be excellent and tasty, and added also added a new item to her repertoire with bagels.  While not as perfectly shaped as the ones from a store they came out nicely dense and the sour dough provides an interesting flavor.  So another hit for her baking skills and another hit to my waistline.  We realized we have plowed through over twenty pounds of flour since the start of our quarantine.  I really need to biking more...

The other nice change for us is that our patio furniture finally arrived.  We had ordered it back in early March but the manufacturer had been shut down for a month or so due to the Covid closures.  We can now enjoy our outdoor space a bit more and have already taken advantage of it for some lovely dinners looking at the lake and Capital.  

Dreams of Vegetables to Come

Sorry - lots of pictures this week, so not quite the usually organized layout that I prefer.  But the good news, it is stressing me out more than you probably - but that is the fun of OCD (or as I prefer - CDO since the letters should so be in order).  Anyway I diverge, the weather is finally turning warm and with the spring rains we are starting to see some growth in our garden.  The peas are starting to climb their fence, the lettuces are getting settled in and, most importantly, the beans are starting to pop out of the ground.  It is always such fun at the start of the season to see your hard work result in green shoots.  Certainly, come late September I'm always ready for the garden to be done as I do tire of the weed pulling.  But as they say, "Hope springs eternal" every May as for now all I see is the potential of a large bounty to harvest later this year.

As Wisconsin begins to open up this week, we are continuing our home bound hibernation which means no gym visits for us for quite a while.  We are still enjoying our daily morning walks to make up for the lack of gym time and I thought it would be fun to share the social distance reminder signs that the UW has installed on several of their walkways and paths.  It is always good to know how many milk cartons (twelve) and pink, plastic flamingos (apparently four) you need to keep between you and strangers.  One scientific and cautionary note, we have not independently confirmed that twelve milk cartons, four plastic flamingos, three terrace chairs, or one Paul Bunyon rivalry axe actually add up to six feet.  So please use caution when laying out your milk cartons (or flamingos, etc.) when spacing yourself for your social interactions.

Jo is continuing her quarantine driven, culinary explorations with sourdough and this week's treat was home made, sourdough, hamburger buns.  They both looked the parted and tasted great when combined with a well grilled burger (thanks to our Christmas purchase of a food thermometer) and, of course, some good Wisconsin cheddar.  We are continuing our work on expanding our waistlines and enjoying the season by starting to make home made ice cream on a regular basis.  

Sourdough and then Some More Sourdough

As everyone else in the country is doing, Joann started some sourdough starter several weeks ago.  We have made several loafs of sourdough bread, but once you have the starter you need to keep coming up with things to make with it - since there is no way my frugal wife is going to through away starter whenever it needs to be fed again.  Therefore, we have a couple rounds of sourdough pancakes and are about to try sourdough pizza dough.  But this week's sourdough event (yes we are having almost one of them a week) was sourdough english muffins.  The good news is that they turned out looking and tasting better than store bought english muffins.  We still need to work a bit on the right stove temperature to balance cooking them all the way through without burning the outside, but I'm guessing there will lots of opportunity to experiment since the starter remains chugging away in the refrigerator.

The enforced isolation has provided lots of time to experiment in the kitchen and fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your thoughts about waistlines and blood sugar levels) many of the experiments have involved desserts.  Last week, oatmeal cream cakes were on the agenda and it was a smashing success.  Certainly one of my top favorites, but that could be the buttercream filling - short side note - sometime I think we should just make a big vat of buttercream icing and keep it around to improve various foods (e.g., apples, bananas, kale?).  We have also made two batches of home-made ice cream already including our favorite chocolate variety.  I may be shooting for a Covid-38 instead of the more mundane 19 pounds many people are talking about.

We did manage to get outside for some garden work which helped the waistline, blood pressure, and stress levels to get all of our garden seeds in the ground.  We already have a lettuces and peas coming up so now just need the weather gods to cooperate and provide the optimal amount of sunshine and rain.  

It is Snowing Outside

May 10 and there is snow coming down - and not just a flake or two, some serious snow.  Really???

 I want to be planting my garden not dealing with snow - in May.  

It Just Kept Growing

It was finally time this weekend to let Jo get out the clippers and scissors and have at my hair.  Fortunately, I keep it fairly short and my do isn't too complicated - one of the joys/challenges of having very straight and fine hair and oh yeah, being a slowly balding guy.  We didn't get a really good before photo, but here is it afterwards.  She didn't do too bad of a job although she definitely had more of a calling for HR than cosmetology.  My hair is sort of a cross between what Moe from the 3 Stooges had and a bowl cut.  Jo really needs to work on her feathering techniques.  But it is shorter and since we did it on our very windy deck no clean up was necessary.  I have been told that Jo plans to work on her skills during her next attempt on my hair - fingers crossed that salons are reopened within the next 6 weeks.

For our outdoor activity we have been working on our garden.  We helped lay out straw in the pathways at the community garden we are now using and have planted some lettuce, peas, and onions.  Now we just need the temperatures to warm up to get some green shoots going.  We have been struggling to get to the 50's this week.  Other than that, we continue to get a long walk in every morning and this week got to enjoy Bucky practicing good hygiene practices along with some new Canada geeselings (gooselings, baby geese?).  Quite cute, but Mom and Dad weren't too happy with us as we tried to get a photo.

Other than that, our spirits are still up and we can laugh ourselves silly at the things we are doing to stay virus free - especially the hour long sterilization process that our groceries now have to endure to move from our car to our refrigerator or shelves.  But I'm sure everyone has stories like that now. 

Enjoying the Wild Life

The wild life we are enjoying is the kind found outdoors - not our wild and crazy shelter in place life.  We continue to do a nice long walk each morning to get the blood flowing, escape our four walls for a bit, and get some fresh air.  As spring is slowly arriving we have been able to watch the birds and other wild life come out to play and do their spring things.  Today we hiked around the UW arboretum and actually managed a picture of a muskrat - remember we thought we saw one in Lake Mendota.  Also saw a beaver, sandhill crane (see last weeks post), baby ducks/geese, several turkeys, redwing blackbirds, cardinals, and a host of other small birds.  Quite the menagerie for just one walk.  As usual we discussed and debated all the problems in the world - especially whether nicotine inhalation is going to be added to the tools to fight the virus.  It would be especially ironic if inhaling nicotine from an inhaler suddenly becomes prescribed to offset the worst of the virus.

Other than that we have stayed remarkably busy inside with various stuff - including finally christening our pottery room by firing up our pug mill (pug mill = big extruder that mixes clay and water, then removes all the air and spits out nice, malleable clay for throwing pots).  So stay tuned and hopefully we start turning all that clay into something you'll find as a gift cluttering up your nice home.

Just in case it wasn't clear - we really liked the Buddha holding up the limb of the tree.  Not sure what came first - someone had a Buddha they needed to figure out what to do with, or someone had a drooping limb that they needed to figure out how to support.  Yes, that is the kind of things we are down to discussing during our walks - we have really run out of new topics (today's included: should corporations have first amendment free speech rights, is it arson if you burn down your own house but don't file for insurance and don't call the fire department, are there really beavers in Lake Wingra (yes, we checked when we got home), will there be fall sports at the University, and, of course, the afore mentioned nicotine use).

Another Week Sheltering, Another Puzzle

What's new to write about this week - frankly not much.  But that said, here's the excitement from Wisconsin.  We have been going out for a daily walk that have been slowly getting longer and longer.  We started out walking for about an hour and now we are routinely hitting two hours.  We even managed a three hour stroll last weekend.  I think it is a combination of wanting to get some exercise, since the gym is out, and just wanting to be outside for a bit.  So while the top half of us is getting ever softer from a lack of working out, our legs at least are in good walking shape.  During our walks we have enjoyed seeing everything starting to green up (well it was until this week when the powers that be decided it was time to remind us we live in Wisconsin where spring doesn't really take hold until late May, it was 20 degrees several mornings this week) and the animals start to come around for spring.  We have seen several sandhill cranes, a couple of bald eagles, a hawk of some kind (I'm going with a Cooper's hawk but I'm no hawk expert), and what we are calling a muskrat in Lake Mendota (not sure exactly what it is, but it is just off shore in the lake, it dives under the water, has a medium length tail, and isn't a duck or bird).

When we aren't out stretching our legs and avoiding other humans, we have kept ourselves fairly busy.  Jo has been working on  sewing face masks.  Well she was until the sewing machine decided it was time to break - to be fair it is a 35 year old machine that has spent most of its life in a bag being carted from home to home and promptly forgotten.  Fortunately, we could identify the missing part and with the beauty of the internet we could find it online.  After a bit of challenge finding a company who could get it quickly, we were able to get it installed and our old Singer is back up and running, at least until the next part gives out.

We, like most of the rest of the country apparently, have been working on jigsaw puzzles.  We just completed our second Escher themed puzzle and will probably start another puzzle this weekend.  Other than that, I have kept myself busy with computer games which are a wonderful time sink, reading, and driving Jo nuts - but I was doing that last one before the whole pandemic thingy so not sure if it counts.  That's it until next week and another invigorating summary of our walks and inside life.

Delivery in 2020

The University of Wisconsin purchased these cute little delivery robots about 6 to 8 months ago.  We have seen them tooling around the sidewalks as we have been out for walks prior to the whole "virus shutting down the world" thing.  But this is the first time we saw this many of them all lined up in a row next to one of UW's dining halls.  They were being loaded to make safe contact-less delivery around campus to those students who needed to still be on campus as well as to the health care providers at the University hospital.  Isn't technology just grand.

They navigate completely independently including moving across several really busy streets - how?  Not a clue, especially for a multi-lane road - they must be able to read street lights or something.  They are even able to steer around students trying to block them including being able to nicely say to the person - get out the way.

Too fun and made one of our morning walks enjoyable, plus gave us something to talk about that wasn't the virus.

Another Week - Still Virus Free

We managed to get through another week without exposing ourselves - or at least not catching it if we did - to the latest viral scourge that humans are having to fight.  It continues to amaze me what havoc a few strands of viral genetic stuff can do, especially its ability to turn our own cell machinery against us.  During our many recent walks we have come up with all sort of fun and goofy ways to combat the virus - fortunately, none that you will be seeing soon at a pharmacy, doctor, or hospital near you.  My personal favorite one is to create an inhaler with a chemical that irreversibly binds to the spikes on the virus (the ones the virus uses to bind to our cells) and thereby inactivate the binding mechanism.  Of course, that requires finding a chemical you can inhale when you are symptomatic and doesn't actually cause more lung problems than the virus.  Still some kinks to work out - but I'm working on it (without a lab, ability to conduct a clinical trial, or any true knowledge of the binding mechanism for the corona virus).

But anyway, we are trying to maintain a positive outlook and find things to occupy ourselves.  We have been getting out for a long walk everyday, since the gym is no longer an option, and have certainly enjoyed the first indications that spring is just around the corner.  From the daffodils starting to flower, the warmer temperatures producing some beautiful foggy mornings over the lake, or even the first tulips buds.  We are using our copious amounts of indoor time to continue to work on some of our favorite recipes, like deep dish pizza, as well as try a few new things - sourdough bread is up this week (which makes us like most of the rest of the world at least according to the Wall Street Journal, apparently everyone is trying to make bread all of a sudden).

Fortunately, we have long been big jigsaw puzzle fans so have a great collection to work our way through.  We did decide it was a good time to tackle some of our more difficult ones in our storage that came to us from my Mom as a result of Mom and Dad's relocation to Madison.  Many of these are Escher themed and certainly can occupy a lot of time, which is a good thing right now.

The weather also cooperated the last few days, being warm and relatively dry, that we were able this morning to get out and start preparing our community garden beds for some planting.  Didn't get anything planted yet, but it did feel good to be outside, working in the soil, and not feel like you are about to get infected.  Already dreaming of freezing some beans this summer.

Time to Come Back

I haven't posted anything for many, many months as the fun after years of weekly posts just wore a bit thin.  But there have been a few requests for this to come back from friends and family, so here I go again.  Also, in this time of "sheltering in place", "self quarantining", or my personal favorite from our home state - "safer at home" - it just seemed right to reconnect with everyone.  Especially, since as a strong introvert I really needed to reach out to others to be happy and content during my seclusion - oh, that isn't right.  As I have said before, introverts really rule in retirement - well you can add introverts ruling in self quarantining to that list.  Gee, the president of the US and the governor of WI want me to stay home by myself and not see other people.  Well, I'll try to make do - especially since I have books, computer games, and a comfy couch to do all that with - as it actually sounds like heaven to me. 

We are healthy and, so far at least, virus free.  Unless of course you consider paranoia and becoming a major germaphobe an unhealthy behavior.  In which case, we are fully infected.  We are doing our best to maintain social distancing and being good little rule followers we have expanded the recommended six feet to somewhere around 20 feet or so.  We are going out for a daily walk just to get some exercise and a plot of our walks looks like a drunken zig zag home from the bars.  If we see anyone within a block of us on the same side of the street we are rapidly moving to the other side, turning a corner, or moving into the actual street.  A straight line, one mile walk might take us anywhere from 2 to 3 miles with all the zig zagging we are doing.  Anything to not come within any distance that we think the virus could jump - I mean have you seen the legs on those virus particles.  As our attempts at social distancing have gone on, we find we are looking for ever more distance as it seems to feed and grow our natural paranoia - pretty soon we won't go out without the entire city of Madison being kept inside.

Anyway, we are really having a fairly good time laughing at our attempts to stay virus free (yes, we quarantine the mail, newspaper, and packages for days - don't ask we are just nuts), tackling some chores around the house, getting a jigsaw puzzle going, and the aforementioned computer games and books. 

Anyway, I will try to be diligent in posting for now - and to enjoy a little shot of spring the photos are of our blooming orchid (it blooms on some unknown cycle and despite anything we do to it) and the lake Mendota looking particularly fetching this morning.