CuRVWander

 I last left off with our Covid-19 test kits as having been tagged as received by the testing laboratory and wondering whether they would get the analysis done before before Christmas Eve.  I had little doubt that we were going to test negative but taking the test and getting results back were crucial to our kids allowing us to come to their house and being with them and the grandchildren. Christmas Eve was the 14th day of quarantine but that alone was not enough to satisfy our kids, getting negative test results were part and parcel of the deal.  To our relief the tests were completed on time and the expected negative results were confirmed in writing.  We were on for a Christmas family gathering.  Well, sort of.  It would just be Cyndee and I and our daughter's family of four.  Our son, an essential worker in telecommunications, could not quarantine at all.  So he took his truck camper and pointed it south for a holiday long weekend in the Everg...

 My last post we were in day 4 of quarantine.  Boredom had set in but now in day 9 we are starting to get a little stir-crazy.  400 sq ft of living space in our 5th wheel is pretty roomy as far as RVs go but not so much for extended periods of confinement.  But we do what we must and yesterday that meant we did our covid-19 test. To stay in quarantine and get tested without breaking quarantine we ordered a home sample collection kit.  One has to go online and request the kit, we used a company called EverlyWell.  The kit is sent to you by United States Postal Services.  It should arrive in 1-3 business days but with all the shipping/mailing services being overwhelmed our kits took eight days to arrive.  That had our kits arriving on Thursday the 17th of December.  On Tuesday the 15th, EverlyWell sent an email telling us that we had to get our samples taken and sent back to them no later than 5pm the 18th.  Between shipping delays and a b...

 Well, the post-Thanksgiving covid surge is happening exactly as predicted if people didn't stay diligent.  The whole country is experiencing positivity rates, hospitalization rates and death rates well above the peak surge in the summer.  As I write we are losing in excess of 3,000 souls a day!  More, day after day, than those we lost in 9/11.  So, here we go again with shortages, closures and restrictions. The county we are in in Georgia, Bartow, is spiking as a hot-spot and that's not good because access to advanced health care is minimal.  They are pretty much shipping covid cases to counties closer in to Atlanta.  The county I grew up in in Texas, Hutchinson, had been relatively unscathed until now.  Since this was home for both Cyndee and I our first thirty years of life we watch the local news and are in close contact with family and friends still there.  One of the things Cyndee keeps close tabs on is the obituaries.  There are t...

 There was a period in the early part of the pandemic when everything was in lockdown that a lot of folks got pretty shaggy looking and even now, eight months later, there are changes in hairstyles that reflect less frequent access to barbers and beauty shops.  Our daughter and her family are pretty serious about isolation so they have taken to cutting each others hair.  From the pictures we have and the FaceTime we do I'd say they do a pretty good job, everybody looks nice and tidy. For me there has been no change whatsoever in my hair cutting.  There has only been one person touch my hair with a pair of scissors since 1973, and that's Cyndee.  However I can't return the favor.  I'm scared to death of getting anywhere near her head with anything that could chop chunks out of her hair.  I'm comfortable with doing things that require precision but in the case of hair cutting I must have a block or something, I just can't do it. I tipped my hand a little...

 June, July and August, a pandemic summer spent in semi-isolation on an "island" called Volunteer Village.  We are in about a 40 acre compound comprised of 10 well-spaced campsites, a meeting room/weather shelter with full kitchen and everything you need to prepare a banquet, a screened-in pavilion with BBQ pit, and a garage/shop loaded with power tools and grounds maintenance equipment.  In fact, that has been the big thing to do all summer, mow The Village.  All this behind a secure gate about a half-mile away. Being where we are, staying isolated does not take a lot of effort but like everyone else, it takes a lot of patience to go from day to day with little to no variety in our routine.  We did pick up one of the summer routine jobs as a volunteer though.  One night a week we are radio dispatchers and help-line operators.  With the campgrounds open there are rangers on duty until 10:00pm and we are their radio dispatchers from the time everybody e...

 By the end of April 2020 the Corps of Engineers in the Mobile district had decided to open campgrounds, albeit with covid-19 restrictions.  The campgrounds were to open in May with shields over the registration windows, just a small slot at the bottom for the gatehouse attendant to pass the camping passes through.  No reservations were done at the window, every camper had to pre-register online and pay in full by credit card, in advance.  The gatehouse attendants had already gone to credit card only transactions last year but this year they were instructed not to even do that.  Paper work would pass one way, from inside the gatehouse to the outside and that was it. Normally this would be a very busy time for me as I provide tech support for all the gatehouse attendants use of the reservation system.  But with their interaction with the reservation system being little more than checking a box to check people in and check them out, I am not getting any calls...

 In my previous post we had just been told to self-isolate in the Volunteer Village here on Allatoona Lake.  The United States Army Corps of Engineers district headquarters in Mobile, Alabama had initially gone into full lock-down mode, closing all public interfacing operations.  At the beginning, Rangers were still reporting to work but then there were some virus outbreaks at some projects (for instance the whole staff at Lake Lanier) and they soon switched to staggered office hours and teleworking.  Us volunteers were again instructed to keep our distance from each other and stay put in The Village.  And for twelve weeks that is what we did, almost. While the campgrounds were going to remain closed beyond their traditional opening day there was still preparation work that needed to be done so that when opening day did come the gatehouses would be ready to operate.  And that was lucky for Cyndee and I.  We had been assigned to install all the computer...

On Monday, March the 16th we were carrying on with our duties as usual but we could tell there was a tension in the Operations Management Office.  The routine Monday morning managers meeting was taking longer than usual and when it broke up the people we saw returning to their offices seemed in duress.  There was no normal greetings or friendly banter that we were accustomed to. We finished our assignments for the day and headed to The Village trying to decide whether to eat in or go out for something.  Turning on the news we heard information that cinched the decision.  The covid-19 virus was upon us.  Our nearby community had confirmed cases and one hospitalization while the next large community south of us, Kennesaw, already had a death. Later that evening, around 8:00 pm, both Cyndee's and my phones alerted that there was new email.  It was a group distribution to all the volunteers in The Volunteer Village from our supervising ranger.  It read...

January of 2020 has found us in an above normal warm, wet weather pattern.  So much so that we are having tropical-like rain and occasional storm conditions that would make you think it was late spring. Good-size branches turned spear. We had one of those spring time storms visit us in the first third of January.  Torrential rain and howling straight winds plowed through the Allatoona Lake area late in the afternoon and did a number on a slew of trees.  The Volunteer Village was not spared.  There were large branches separated from their trees and whole trees snapped off 10 to 15 feet above ground. Snapped off high up. This tree, in the center island of the The Village loop, held firm at the roots but succumbed to the wind's force at a week spot high up. It was a tall, spindly pine and the part that broke off stretched across the island, over the road and into the trees on the opposite side.  Chainsaws were on it in a matter of minutes and the ...

The last post was getting a little long so I'm breaking this "catch-up" into more than a single post.  When I last left off it was late March, 2019 and we had just attended our daughter's baby shower.  The newest grandchild is just days away from arriving.  To get to that baby shower we first had to remove a tree that had fallen across our one and only road in and out of The Village. The baby shower was a success but days later I began to experience intense itching with red whelps.  Some of the whelps even developed small blisters.  A hasty appointment was made with a local dermatologist where it was confirmed I had a raging case of poison ivy.  Ten days of  steroids plus a healthy-sized injection of steroids to kick it off was the (slow) cure.  That old dead tree that we moved out of the road a few days ago was covered in ivy vine, it just wasn't obvious since it was winter and there were no "leaflets three let it be" to warn us.  You can ...