CuRVWander

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 ...