Author Archives: oregonmikeruby

Well, I figure I should talk a little about work since I am more or less back to a “normal” routine, although it feels anything but normal. I guess one good thing about the pandemic is I don’t drink nearly as much coffee or caffeine drinks as I used to. I still have a cupContinue reading “Covid Journal: 91 days in (18 protest nights)”

Reap The Whirlwind Where I live we have yet to complete our lockdown due to the virus. Now we additionally have an 8 pm curfew to further instill order. Work has gone as well as it can go given the circumstances. My personal life has gone well too. On the rare instances I am outContinue reading “Covid Journal: 79 days in (6 protest nights)”

A Spectrum of Behaviors All of us who are tuning into news and/or media are seeing the photos. Depending on where our political and social views are at, some photos will make us angry while others will fill us with hope and gratitude. You’ve seen the images. On one side there are the mask-shunning, partyingContinue reading “Covid Journal: 73 days in”

Back At Work We are fast approaching a whole quarter (3 months) of the COVID-19 crisis. Now that I’ve been “back in the office” for a week, I feel I have enough perspective to write about it. Overall, it’s more or less what I expected: some things have barely changed, while other things have changedContinue reading “Covid Journal: 72 days in”

GDIDTT (Gonna Do It Differently This Time) Tomorrow I make a supply run for face masks and hand sanitizer so that my office can reopen on a very limited basis starting Monday. This is both exciting and anxiety-inducing. On the one hand, I am eager to do something that even partially resembles ‘normal’ living again.Continue reading “Covid Journal: 62 days in”

Bicycle Training and German Football (soccer) Two days ago I went out to the small town I moved from, because the paved farm roads of this agricultural area are excellent for bicycling, and the weather was perfect in the morning. It got unseasonably hot (86 degrees F) in the afternoon, but I was finished byContinue reading “Covid Journal: 59 days in”

A Cause to Fight For So, my dad has Parkinson’s Disease (PD). He was diagnosed with it a few years ago. Around 2013-14, he started having some real difficulties…he would salivate excessively, have trouble speaking clearly at times, and was just finding it tougher to get around. For a long time he figured he wasContinue reading “Covid Journal: 54 days in”

Wildlife A lot of news stories have reported wildlife returning to cities and other normally-human-dominated areas where wildlife hadn’t been seen in decades, sometimes in broad daylight. I think these show just how resilient wildlife can be after humans have moved into their neighborhoods, and how easy it would be to bring back wildlife evenContinue reading “Covid Journal: 53 days in”

Planning for the (Sort Of) Re-open Today I learned that my workplace will be tentatively re-opened in the middle to late part of this month. Two weeks at the earliest, four at the latest. It won’t be anything close to a “full” re-open. Meetings will be by appointment only, and will be remote (not inContinue reading “Covid Journal: 52 days in”

Dreams Well, seven weeks in the books. In another seven weeks it will be Summer Solstice time, and two weeks after that 4th of July Weekend. The most expensive gas in my area right now is $2.67 per gallon, about a dollar lower than at its highest in 2019. Will it be $1.67 in sevenContinue reading “Covid Journal: 49 days in”