Another Week with Covid-19 Stay at Home, More DIY Projects, July 21 - 27, 2020

A quick and easy project was putting up another shelf in the garage.  This is where I can store pieces of wood to be used in future projects - a good use of space, I just have to remember to not block the vent above the doors for the room with the hot water heater.

After success with the guest room closet, it was on to the master bedroom joint closets.

As with the guest bedroom closet, there was only one shelf and one rod on which to hang clothes.  Each side had the light switch built into the door frame so that when you open the door, the lights come on.

After removing the shelf, there was a lot of patching that needed to be done, in some places four coats of joint compound.

But the joint compound did the trick.

 

After a single coat of paint, it was time to install the shelves and move the clothes back.

The Flagstaff CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) not only allows us to get a bag of locally grown produce every other week (we bought a half share for the summer), but also has a store.  Patty bought an order of produce and it included carrots with this interesting character.

After some trimming to fit the frames, I used the Amboise photos that Ben and Martha had sent me for my birthday and now have it on the wall in our master bedroom.  We plan to regularly change the saying.

And all that work makes us hungry for a snack - chips for me, cheese puffs for Paulie.

And so another week passes - the numbers of infections and deaths seem to have plateaued in Arizona, but hospitalizations, ICU usage and ventilator usage all remain high, in the 80% or higher range.  We have resigned ourselves to no travel in 2020 and maybe not even in 2021 (at least we will not be making any reservations any time soon).

Another Project While We Stay at Home due to Covid-19, July 11-20, 2020

The bedrooms do not have walk in closets.  Instead, the master bedroom has two five foot wide closets and the guest bedroom has one five foot wide closet.  All three closets have double doors and a switch in the door frame that turns on the light when you open the door.  There is only one shelf and one rod for hanging clothes, about five feet from the floor.

I started with the guest room closet.  Step one, remove the shelf and the rod.  They were firmly attached to the wall.

Step two, patch and paint the wall where the shelf had been.

 

Step three, hang the new shelves from the Closet Maid kit and put clothes in the closet.

When I go shopping at Safeway, I see many sections where things are sold out - here it was liquid hand soap.  I ended up going to WalMart and got the last bottle on the shelf; we buy the large bottle to refill the small bottles at our four sinks.

We continue to go on more hikes, this week at Buffalo Park and Walnut Canyon National Monument.

With the recent rain, many more wildflowers and cacti are in bloom.

 

 

Arizona is no longer number one with Covid-19 cases - Florida, Texas and California have overtaken us.  While numbers of confirmed cases have leveled off, Arizona hospitals continue to be at or near maximum capacity and schools are not reopening.  So we continue to stay at home, except for local hikes and occasional trips to the store or now, the doctor's or dentist's office.

A Fun Friday, July 10, 2020

Friday morning, we went to Warners Nursery and got some flowers to brighten up our yard.  After all the food and fun of my birthday, it was time to burn off some of those calories.  The soil here is not as hard as desert caliche, but it took a good 30 minutes to dig each hole 18 inches in diameter and about a foot deep - it required my pick axe and shovel.  But the work was worth it, as we now have two new additions to the front yard, one red and one yellow.

After loosening up the dirt and rocks, the bottom of the hole had to be emptied by hand.

After adding potting soil under and around the plant, and putting the mulch back, our plants will hopefully thrive - one is ground cover.

And one is a bush.

For now, the zinnias are in a pot on top of the metal panel that is access to the water shutoff for our home.

Patty also replaced the annuals in one of the buckets in the front yard.

After lunch, we drove up to the Arizona Snow Bowl ski area on Mount Humphries.  The chairlift was running for those who wanted to take a scenic ride.  We did not do that, but on the way down, we stopped at appropriately named Aspen Corner - there are thousands of aspens growing here and the area is famous for fall foliage.  In the parking lot, we saw this decal that we liked - we need one for our car.

The whole area is part of the Coconino National Forest and there are multiple trails, lots of Aspens and Ponderosa Pines, and still plenty of wildflowers.

Both the bees and the butterflies were enjoying the flowers.

The pine cones are huge, at least 8 or 9 inches long.

And then it was back home for a cool drink - Arizona is experiencing a heat wave with expected record high temps this weekend.

I'm not 70 any more, July 9, 2020

Last year, we celebrated my 70th birthday in France.  I was speechless when leaving the Royal Chateau in Amboise to find that Ben and Martha had joined Helen, Laura, Tammy, Patty and me.

This year was much more low key, what with the Covid-19 pandemic and Arizona leading the USA in infections (and the USA leading the world) - travel is not happening for most people.  This year it was phone calls and zoom sessions.  Martha and Ben sent me prints of photos from Amboise, all of which made me smile, plus a nice new hat from Street Roots.

There were many other thoughtful and fun gifts and cards.

Harking back to our childhood in the 1950s, my sister Helen sent me a large bag of Tri-Sum potato chips - they did not last long. 

As I recall, they used to come in metal cans - but when I checked on their website, Tri-Sum.com, they don't have those for sale any more, but they are proud of their history.

We also had fun planning and creating a card and gifts for Martha and Ben's 15th anniversary (it was nice of them to get married on my birthday - that way I cannot forget their anniversary).  As with the smiles and laughter on our end, they had fun on their end.

We Continue to Stay at Home due to Covid-19, June 30 to July 5, 2020

We continue to see wildflowers as we walk the dog and go for hikes.

 

There is some nice wooded land west of us, meaning it is closer to the NAU campus than we are.  A developer is trying to get changes to the zoning regs from suburban commercial on one lot and townhomes/condos on the other lot to allow apartments on both.  We submitted comments opposing it, as one of the issues is that the city fails to require enough off street parking.  For example, Rio Homes behind us is 153 townhomes, but many are rented to students.  Even though they have added more parking spaces twice, residents have to park several hundred yards away outside of the development and only cars with parking permits are allowed to park in the development - there are no parking spaces for visitors.  So now Rio Homes is again adding more parking spaces.  It still will not be enough.  The developer for the proposed project will not have enough spaces either, as the number parking spaces is based upon the number of proposed apartments, rather than the number of bedrooms - since each bedroom will have at least one student, most of whom will have cars, the number of parking spaces just for residents needs to equal or exceed the number of bedrooms, plus you need spaces for guests of the residents.

Here is some of the work on Rio Homes being done to create more parking spaces - the second photo shows how they marked areas with white lines to remove the strip between the sidewalk and the street, and replace that strip with parking spaces in the third photo.

We continue to work on do it yourself projects at home.  This one is a storage space for the window for our new combination screen/storm door - it is 30 inches wide and 74 inches tall - the frame is one and one half inches thick and will be behind some of the shelves we have in the garage.

Patty has started painting - first some samples, then a quart of the almond latte for the downstairs half bathroom.

As we have since March, we continue to stay home, wear masks and use hand sanitizer when we go to stores, and avoid restaurants and any place where people congregate.  We talk with neighbors from a distance, and sometimes with masks when they come too close.  Numbers of positive Covid-19 tests, hospitalizations, ICU use and ventilator usage all continue to hit new records for Arizona.  Below is the latest from the local Phoenix news outlet.  We are going to be in this mess for a long time.

Arizona COVID-19 cases surpass 100,000 as weeks long spikes continue

Arizona's total case count passed 50,000 on June 21 and doubled to more than 100,000 in two weeks.

Here are some of the major case milestones by date reported: 

• First case: Jan. 26
• 100 cases: March 21
• 1,000 cases: March 30
• 10,000 cases: May 8
• 25,000 cases: June 6
• 50,000 cases: June 21
• 75,000 cases: June 30
• 100,000 cases: July 6