Our coronavirus statistics continue to go up at a dismal rate. We have now had 1053 cases, up more than 200 from last week. The number of deaths remains steady at 29, and 16,642 people have been tested. The rate of new cases per 100,000 population is up to a whopping 48.9. Last week, if you’ll remember, it was 15.4, but that number seemed suspicious, because it went down from the week before and the number of cases was up. Our zip code map continues to have the same mistake of showing us in the 80-120 color but having no data in the table, which indicates less than 10, so I don’t know how many cases we have up here.
Last week, we ventured out for our yearly eye exams. Well, Wayne actually hadn’t been examined for two years. The appointment part of that was interesting, because when I made the exam back in April, I assumed we would have to go to the Main Street branch instead of our usual Salmon Creek, which was closed. Salmon Creek is about 10 or 15 minutes closer to us. However, the person making the appointment told me that the Salmon Creek branch would be open with one doctor in July, which was the soonest she could get us in, anyway.
Last week when I got my appointment reminder, I just happened to notice it said Main Street. Usually, I don’t look at those that closely. I called them up to verify, and they said that the Salmon Creek branch was still closed. So, I chided them for moving our appointment without calling us. I said we might not have noticed the change and gone to the wrong place. As it turned out, they had to cram us both into one appointment, apparently because they didn’t have room for both of us. They explained to us that the Salmon Creek office is their smallest and they haven’t been able to figure out how to adjust it for distancing. In my opinion, having seen both, I thought that Main Street, which is an old office, has more problems, because it has lots of long, narrow hallways, and several times we had to walk past people. Of course, everyone was wearing masks. Salmon Creek seems to be laid out better.
My sight has changed slightly, but Wayne is showing signs of possible early glaucoma, so he has to go back in November to have his optic nerves checked. It’s interesting to me that our ophthalmologist in Austin did that as a routine part of our exams, every year, but here he has to have a special appointment for it. In fact, they gave us a lot more tests in Austin as a regular part of our exams.
When we came back from our eye appointments, we ended up taking I-5 back and got the idea to stop at Pacific Northwest Best Fish Company to pick up some lunch. This is an interesting place out in the middle of nowhere that has a fresh fish market on one side, and a little walk-up window on the other where you can order fish meals. Very good fish and chips and my favorite, fried scallops, as well as some other dishes. Fish tacos, that kind of thing. They have some picnic tables to eat at, which of course you can’t do right now, or maybe you can, since restaurants are opening up. Unfortunately, they were closed for remodeling. So, Wayne said we were close to one of our favorite restaurants, Fuel Bistro, and we could go there for some take-out. We did that, and the wait person suggested we go around the corner to a gift shop while we were waiting, and she would come get us. There Wayne purchased my newest acquisition for an early birthday present. A Day of the Dead cat clock. And here it is. I love it.
On Monday, we went in to Costco during the geezer hours to get our glasses, and Wayne was amazed because our three pairs cost about $200. We were used to paying about $500 apiece for glasses in Austin. Of course, I always picked out fancy dan frames, which I don’t feel like I should do now that we’re retired. We were the first people in Optical, which was nice.
On Friday, Maja and I went hiking in Moulton Falls Park. I was wearing a bandana so that I could put it back down when people weren’t around, but there were too many people, so it got aggravating to be putting it up and down and up and down. I think the next time I hike in a park with a lot of people, I’m just going to wear a regular mask and keep it on. We only saw two other people with masks in the park, and there were a couple of people who persisted in walking in the middle of the path. I guess we should have known better than to pick Moulton on the official July 4th day off.
On Sunday, we were supposed to go to Christine’s so she could cut Wayne’s hair, which is looking awful. He had suggested this outing, and she turned it into a lunch date. Then Sunday morning, Wayne pulled his usual, “I don’t feel good,” routine that he uses to get out of anything he doesn’t want to do. Luke and I went alone. I think Christine was a bit offended. She said, “Wasn’t this his idea?” and I told her yes and said this was what he said to get out of things. She said her husband was the same way and congratulated me for being truthful. She said that for years she just made excuses for Peter. However, she also said she wouldn’t now cut Wayne’s hair. She had made a nice lunch for us, and I had made pineapple upside down cake, and we had a good time, as always.
On Monday, Wayne and I ran errands, including picking up my new iPad from Walmart. My old one is so old that it can hardly do anything anymore. It stopped remembering passwords some time ago, but now its on/off button doesn’t work anymore, so I can’t back it up. It also has started asking me for my Apple ID, several times per session. I don’t really use it much anymore except for reading ebooks, but I have seven collected works that I bought from Delphi Classics that I still want to be able to read. Luckily, I was able to get them over with no problem, although I did get a message telling me it was unable to move over some items that were bought using another ID, the one for my old workplace that I’ve long forgotten the password for. I don’t understand, though, what the password I bought them with has to do with it. If I purchased them, and they are on my iPad, they should move over. In fact, I didn’t notice anything not moving over that I wanted.
And that brings up another confusing topic, my email. I had long kept my gmail email account on the iPad, but when it began doing everything very slowly, I logged into the gmail account from my computer. I kept that account, which is my junk account that I register for everything with, up on the computer, but I had noticed that it wasn’t syncing with the iPad, so that the iPad showed I had thousands of unread messages. All those messages came over to the new iPad, and I had a fun several hours deleting them all. I finally did a Select All and thought I had managed to unselect all the messages I wanted to keep, particularly a whole bunch of messages I had forwarded over from my work computer four years ago and hadn’t dealt with yet, but I see they are gone. I think, though, that I also have them on my sbcglobal.net mail account. What I don’t understand is that just over the weekend, I got probably twenty or thirty messages that never showed up in the same account on my computer. I know the computer interface has a spam filter, but when I look at what’s in the spam folder, it’s not those messages. In fact, what’s in the spam folder is mostly not spam. So most of the almost 2000 messages that I had to delete were ones that I never saw on my computer. I don’t understand why I wouldn’t have been seeing the same things both places.
On the gardening front, aside from picking and eating a teeny tiny tomato that was ripe at about 1/4 of the size it was supposed to be and also picking a whopping snow pea crop, I have a very odd thing. My pink dahlia, which was all pink flowers, has sprouted a white one! I never heard of anything like that before, but here’s the proof!
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