This is the 3rd in my series of Covid-19 posts. It seems to be organized by date. Hunh. Not very imaginative but it’ll do.
Links to earlier posts:
My previous post, the 2nd one, begins with a nice graphic. Chris says it’s never been seen again! I thought it would be easy for them to replicate and update from day-to-day. I suppose it’s possible I don’t thoroughly understand the graphic and what goes into it, but what are the chances?
Here’s the (non)graphic for April 22: From 111 cases and 1 death in Santa Barbara County as of April 1, we have 440 cases and 5 deaths as of today, April 22 — a quadrupling of our cases in 21 days! That doesn’t sound like a cheerful way to put it!
Has our curve tipped over, flattened, etc.? (Population of Santa Barbara County is about 450,000.) If I post again in this series we’ll have a much better idea.
Grandson Mason’s high school graduation is now cancelled. Chris and I are not surprised but we feel for Mason. We’d made hotel reservations and looked into air fares — so no big deal for us.
=====March 25th
This item should have been in the previous post. Oh well. We offer baking supplies to friends, some of whom, unlike Chris and me, bake. The items are pictured below: flour, large mystery jar, corn meal, and pancake mix all at least several years old. The only dates I find on original packaging are 2010 and 2012. All but the sugar are politely declined (even after I check to a depth of several inches for wildlife). There’s more space in our pantry now and (less in our compost bin).
=====Friday April 3rd
A drive-by parade! Teachers from Franklin School, one block from here, drive slowly past our house in 10 or 15 cars in mid-day honking, yelling, and waving signs. Some of the signs identify them as Franklin teachers. Very noisy, nice, and friendly.
=====Sat 4th
Friend John suggests we’ll probably see uptick in pregnancies and divorces before long. Both he and Chris tell me that Santa Barbara County officials have recorded an uptick in reports of child and spousal abuse. Pregnancy and divorce make some sense but I’m really sorry to hear of abuse reports. I’m afraid that makes sense, too, but I don’t wanna hear it.
No doubt you’re all dying to hear what Melrose DPW did with the chemicals from Devil’s own workshop abandoned on their doorstep. If strong reader demand develops I’ll post 10-year-old Jamey’s Japanese toolbox video.
=====Sun 5th
Zoom with Andrea 
Seattle group walk couple blocks to serenade Terina on her birthday 
Formal portrait.How ’bout that guy in the chicken suit? 15 year old Lucas baked and decorated the cake he’s holding. 
Patient kitty (Inigo) 
Cheeky gopher — teasing Inigo like this
It may have been sunny in Seattle but not in Santa Barbara. Besides gloom here our temperatures aren’t even above 70 F. Time for a fire in our fireplace.
Good, gloomy day for a fire. Inigo feels he needs to keep that 6 ft. separation, apparently
Hendry’s Beach. Looks like at least 6 ft separation to me. 
Chopped-off, funky serving spoon from my mother’s kitchen works well to separate nested buckets I use in flower donations from Trader Joe’s. 
Buckets nest very nicely, but they share much surface area and don’t always un-nest very well. A twist of this spoon after it’s been gently but firmly jammed between adjacent nested buckets usually does the trick
=====Mon 6th
Trader Joe’s is very cooperative about getting their flower donations to me and still allowing us all to keep our distance. This is the first time for me to wear a face mask in public. I think Chris and I got this small box of 10 face masks from Direct Relief International a few years ago during a big wildfire. I finally admit to myself I feel self-conscious wearing mask. Not surprisingly, the selfconsciousosity doesn’t last long.
Take short walk on Hendry’s Beach on way home from Breast Cancer Resource Center. Sunshine, some beach walkers, naked tiny kid playing in puddle, dogs chasing tennis balls, and paragliders landing. Good normal stuff.
Chris helps me take series of photos showing a good use for that funky spoon from my mother’s kitchen. I’m happy to find a use for it: good for prying apart stuck, nested flower buckets. Mother died only 15 years ago — can’t throw it yet. Must say, though, ultimately I expect it’ll wind up in a 25¢ bin at thrift store! Maybe even the 10¢ bin.
=====Tue 7th
A one hour and 40 minute zoom with Sandy! Now that I think of it, I Zoomed June, too. Good for us!
Chris is out getting cashiers checks for Jamile and her cellmate Nicole to send to the Oh-triple-C (OCCC — Oahu Community Correctional Center) (i.e., jail) for commissary funds ($80 each). Nicole has never had anyone send her money. When Jamile told her what Chris was going to do Nicole apparently ran out of wherever they were yelling “I’ve got a new white mom, I’ve got a new white mom!”
My kind of guy 
I’ve seen it three times! 
A seasonal beer and the season is over!
=====Wed Apr 8
I pay our property tax. Barely remembered! Even after my big public announcement in previous post!
=====Thu Apr 9
Box Tunnel entrance, Box, England
I would like to think he knew what he was doing, he’d done it correctly, and that was enough for him. My kind of guy.
Lake Cachuma, Santa Barbara’s main source of water, is at 78.5% full.
I discover True Memoirs of an International Assassin is on some reviewer’s list of the worst Netflix films ever so don’t even think of watching. Hey! That’s one of my favorites! To borrow some words from a review of a Jack Reacher/Lee Child novel: Totally unrealistic — loved every minute.
My annual purchase of Stone Brewing’s Xocovesa has run out. Very sad.
=====Fri Apr 10
Graphs appear on Edhat site. A little hard to explain — it’s sort of like the sun is shining somewhere so don’t give up.
In today’s grocery run Isaac scored 14 of 14 (he finds all 14 items on our list).
Now the milk story. It reminds me of the I-thought-you-made-a-yummy-sound gag from the movie Young Frankenstein. Isaac had plunked a gallon plastic jug of milk on our front porch along with the other groceries he’d just bought for us. C & I both saw it and each assumed the other must have had some reason for putting it on the list at the last minute because we seldom deal with cow milk. As we were putting items away we pretty quickly got to the I-thought-you-ordered-a gallon-of-milk routine.
We smile, too, roll our eyes, and call Isaac who returns within a couple minutes and then presumably takes it to the appropriate party.
Grocery delivery is more expensive than doing it yourself, it’s gotta be. We expect that. We’re not considering changing from using Isaac. I’m not sure it saves much time because the list we send to Isaac is pretty carefully spelled out (1st choice of an item, 2nd choice, or no other brand will do …). Maybe after 5 or 10 times you’ve got a good, useful list worked out that Isaac can work with.
But how do you tell the Isaacs of the world tricky things like get the cheapest kind but only if …, and only …; Or those items you spot in the store that didn’t make it to the list; Or what about that item that’s usually out of your price-range or is in season suddenly to your surprise; Or you see something that looks good and you’re in the mood for a little experiment.
We Zoom with our volleyball group. Nice. At some point Chris & I are asked what we’d be having for dinner. I pipe up up and calmly describe a typical “browse” dinner I assemble for myself: frozen chicken breast, handful of peeled, ready to eat baby carrots, piece of bread. I think I see our group flinch?! Did I forget to mention I was gonna thaw the chicken breast? Someone (not to mention any names) in each of the other groups actually cooks! Imagine.
=====Mon Apr 13
The Daily Extra — Pun of the week from the Non-sequitor calendar: A four-foot-tall fortune teller escaped from prison. He was a small medium at large.
Keep feeling we’re friendlier than we’re used to being. By “we” I mean myself and all the other random folk I interact with (at socially acceptable distance, of course) — seems to be a we’re all in this together feeling, which I like.
After Roasting Company delivery and my beer-to-go pickup at BevMo I feel like a wealthy man.
=====14th Tue
Zoom with B; Nice surprise how much difference the video makes on the communication. During the Zoom more Xocoveza arrives! Nice surprise! Thank you Chris!
Shoreline Park. A sun-is-shining-somewhere shot. Downtown Santa Barbara is the white splotch in the distance. 
Photos of Michelle Higa and kids with note from me 
Bobby announces Frog Box meals. He’s shed his chicken suit for appropriate executive chef duds
=====16th Thu
Get letter from Michelle Higa thanking me for sending the pictures of her kids I pulled off her Facebook page. We of the older generation (or MUCH older generation!) really appreciate thank-you notes. A couple days earlier I actually speak to her for a couple sentences during a Jamile call to Chris. She calls me uncle (typical Asian way of showing respect, C reminds me) and thanks me enthusiastically.
=====18th Sat
First thing today Chris finds email from Amazon saying her item will be delivered on the 28th. Her computer made by Acer will be delivered to an address in Santa Clara, California on the 28th. WHAT COMPUTER? This turns today into sudden headshaking and gut-clenching round of phone calls and computer logins: which credit card; cancel card; cancel order? Call Amazon and ask what they can do and so forth. Chris changes her Amazon password.
Used in the headshaking: 2 cell phones and a land line; pair of hearing aids (with Bluetooth); 2 tablets; 2 computers; 2 sleepy, empty, stomachs; and 2 awake, reasonable, competent, human beings (Amazon rep in India, C thinks, and credit card person in U.S.).
I mention hearing aids among all those 2s because Chris had set up an Amazon person to call but C’s phone wasn’t fully awake yet, so she’d given Amazon my number and I gave Chris my phone. Amazon did indeed call but the sound was directed straight to my spiffy new hearing aids so Chris couldn’t couldn’t hear a thing! So we straightened a couple things out and Chris had Amazon try again.
Music teacher creates a song to address online teaching issues related to Covid-19 changes. If you can’t commit to watch for all 27 seconds, it’s probably best not to click!
Some things don’t change
=====19th Sunday
Lake Cachuma is now over 80% full. This assures water for us for at least several more years. A couple years ago level was 7% (yes, SEVEN PER CENT).
Chris’s Catalina blog starts today. This is her imagined blog of our cancelled trip. We’ve done a Catalina trip with this group 5 or 6 times in the last 10 years and she has hundreds of photos to choose from to construct an imagined trip.
As soon as she tells me she’s gonna do it it sounds like a terrific idea to me — you know, an idea so good you wish you had thought of it yourself! As I expect, her blog is a big success!
Here are Chris’s Catalina posts. Click on thumbnail to be transported to Chris’s post for that day.
=====21st Tue
Our Trader, Joe’s 3 blocks away, is the photo of the day on our hometown website. Well yeah, you don’t actually see the store but I immediately recognize the sidewalk and wall. Yes, it’s a beat up sidewalk and boring wall but it’s MY beat up sidewalk and boring wall. The queue shown represents about a 10 minute wait. The point Edhat intends to illustrate is that we Santa Barbarians are doing pretty well in our social distancing.
We encounter a drive-by birthday party on our block for Laura (maybe Leslie)! I actually have what it takes to ask if any of the young women participating is Laura! I’m promptly told and I even wish Laura a happy birthday. That is so not like the Paul I usually know!
=====22nd Wed
Amazon email tells Chris that the ill-gotten computer is delivered, and our credit union website tells us they’ve charged us for it. I call credit union again and are told their fraud department is working on it. At this point we don’t know for sure if we’ll get our money back. They didn’t exactly tell us that.
In another email, to me, some <pejorativenounofyourchoice> is trying to blackmail me! Phony looking but still disturbing! The perp has my email address obviously and prominently displays my password (from at least 5 years ago) and will be releasing video of me watching porn or masturbating (or both?) unless I pay him/her/them $2000 in bitcoin by tomorrow. If no bitcoin then him/her/them will be randomly choosing 3 entries in my email address book as lucky recipients.
A friend tells me he’s received many of them in the last few years. I feel better.
=====And so it goes
On return to more normal life, I will miss driving on empty streets.
Breaking news: Credit union website informs me of “adjustment” (dated April 19th) and won’t charge us for that computer delivered in Santa Clara.
To me, the sun still shining somewhere is a useful meme or trope or metaphor (maybe Chris can explain those terms to me): things are normal somewhere right now, some people are able to run around in chicken suits, the sun is actually shining somewhere, there are occasional graphs on Edhat, I can build a fire in my fireplace if I want, we’re all being friendlier, paragliders takeoff and land, dogs chase tennis balls, many of us find good reasons to smile.
If there is another post in this series it may include comments about a self-inflicted haircut (using fingernail clippers?), a grandson and his switch plates, stats updates, Japanese toolbox video, …
Our internet connection? Our TV streaming, email, web use is all smooth, and trouble free — haven’t really thought about it for a couple of weeks. For me it’s been like water from the tap and electricity from the wall — it’s just there, however much I want, and I don’t even think about it. Just the way it should be. Wonder what Chris would say?
Where’s all this extra time I’m ‘spozed to have on my hands?
Compared to much of what’s going on around me, I still feel fortunate that life has changed as little for me as it has.
=====END OF POST