Self-Isolation Day 0.5

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Detour

This was supposed to be Day 1 of self-isolation from the COVID-19 virus, but after reading a couple of things today on the Center for Facebook Control site (CFC), I decided my earlier panic shopping wasn’t enough and that we needed more of everything else that we’ve already stockpiled. Of course, toilet paper, pasta, chicken, dried beans, rice, soup, peanut butter, oatmeal, water, sanitizer, and pretty much any other soap or Clorox product is off the list, along with most bread products, frozen veggies, pizza, potatoes, and hamburger. Via the CFC network, I learned that vegan and gluten-free products were readily available, and we’d decided that we seriously needed ziplock plastic bags so we had to break our own quarantine.

I’ll admit that the whole thing was a half-assed attempt anyway: we thought we’d visit a local breakfast place and leave one of the servers a healthy tip as we’d not be back for a couple of weeks, but by 6:30 in the morning we figured we’d beat the crowds by getting out to the store early. Hah! That was a mistake. Fry’s was already out of shopping carts, and only the self-checkout lines were open as they had everyone else restocking shelves from the carnage from the night before. They opened at 5:00 a.m., and by 6:40, when we arrived, the lines were to the back of the store and reportedly 4 hours long. Nope, there’s nothing we needed that badly.

Maybe Safeway is a better bet as it’s the Dasani of grocery stores. Walked right in and easily bought more of the stuff we already had. I’ve got to say that being flexible in what we eat has made our shopping lives during the pandemic much easier. By the way, I don’t know when Dasani became associated with something negative but we’ve seen stories where water is sold out everywhere, except for Dasani. I still wanted a bit more Silk Soy Milk for my sprouted and dehydrated homemade granola (still working through our Y2K supply), so with Safeway sold out, we visited our nearby Albertson’s, where I can rest assured there are no neighbors who’d dare drink almond, cashew, coconut, soy or any other plant-based milk; I scored.

We have one more outing to make to a local Indian store where I need to replenish our spice supply, as these 20-year-old soy chunks likely need some serious seasoning to make them palatable. In nearly celebrating this culinary edgelord status, I should give my wife Caroline a lot of credit as when she went vegetarian 25 years ago; I found it to be a real pain in the ass. Now, today, I’m happy as a vegan clam that we can eat from the fringe and be happy. These days, Caroline is once again an omnivore and certainly loves her pork, but when pressed by the threat of full indulgence or getting by while we live in this self-imposed isolation until it’s forced upon us from outside sources, we know that we’ll be living it up while others are forced to eat toilet paper and Lysol wipes.

Well, turns out, local Indians are not immune to the panic shopping as the Turmeric Cash & Carry was a mob scene and about two hours away from being sold out of most everything. Signs were up everywhere, warning people that NOTHING could be returned. Caroline took a place in the line while I went and grabbed some turmeric, cumin powder and seeds, mustard seeds, coriander powder, some Kala chana, and chana dal. After I got the things I wanted, it was Caroline’s turn to run through the crowded aisles; she returned with snacks and sweets. We were still about 20 places from the register, but things moved fast.

Across the street, at the Balkan Bakery, where we were hoping to indulge in some cevapi and pick up a bottle of kefir, we found a sign in the window that they closed early because they were sold out. Needing something to eat before our last chore, we visited HEK Yeah BBQ, sitting outside to minimize proximity to people because our time at Turmeric was kind of stressful. Over to Joann’s for some thread, bias tape, sewing machine needles, and a bit of yarn. With our charcoal-lined tea towel, elastic bands, and wired ties, and the stuff we picked up today Caroline will be making our homemade surgical masks. After doing a bit of research, it turns out that cloth masks can be close to the efficiency of commercial surgical masks. While not N95 levels of protection, since when is 85% as efficient better than ZERO percent effective?

Now we’re home. Our detour away from our first day of self-isolation is complete, and now we have to hang out together 24/7.

Uh oh, we forgot to get a TV. Hah, fooled you, as we’ve not had one of those in the 21st century. Instead, we sit on our computers reading every horror story about the virus we can find so we can better secure our fear of the giant unknown. Okay, that’s not true. We did get some serious walks around the block, with me clocking in just under 7 miles (about 11km) or 14,541 steps, giving me 105 active minutes for the day. I’ve started this journal of how things evolve in our new routines where, hopefully, in a couple of years, we can look back at these notes and the global anxiety that has arrived with 2020 and be happy that it came and went.

Apocalypse Tourism

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Flowers

Vigilant about what I touch and how close I am to people I’ve taken to strolling the aisles of stores to be a first-hand witness to how this rapidly evolving apocalypse is rolling out. Being a tourist in order to see with my own eyes the behavior and effect all of this COVID-19 business is having on people can be kind of heavy-duty emotionally. Back on Tuesday the 10th, while making my twice daily visit to Costco to investigate the progress, it was the most somber day as older people had gotten the message to stock up on food since they are the most vulnerable. The achingly painful look of grief was writ large on many faces as they stocked up on supplies that were quickly dwindling. If you are over 60 or even approaching that age, staring into the face of your mortality is going to be an incredible weight on most people’s minds.

My new form of tourism has rapidly grown depressing, so I needed to go for a walk and take delight in our Arizona Desert that is stunningly beautiful, following all the rain we’ve had.

Oh, You’d Like Some Food?

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Drudge Report

The FAKE MEDIA lead by Drudge Report appears to be collaborating with CNN. How Matt Drudge came to this point in his illustrious career is baffling, but how else can anyone explain why he’s lying about how many Americans can get infected by a bug that’s no more dangerous than the normal flu? And why would anyone talk about the Fed pumping a TRILLION dollars into a market that should have the confidence that Donald Trump will turn this around in a day or two? When Obama gave $80 billion to the automobile industry there was outrage and now there’s talk about having to bail out the airlines and possibly a whole host of industries that allegedly will suffer due to a fake virus. Jeez, it was just on February 28th at a campaign rally in South Carolina that our President inferred that COVID-19 was part of a Democratic hoax and now he’s on the verge of maybe spending TRILLIONS on bailouts? Either I’m being betrayed or fake news strikes again.

Empty display at Costco in Phoenix, Arizona

First America was frightened into buying ALL the surgical masks and respirators before the media told us to hoard all the toilet paper. Then we cleaned the shelves of hand sanitizer after they gave us new instructions, followed by needing to buy up paper towels, rubber gloves, cough meds, cleaning supplies, bottled water, and some other stuff I’m losing track of. Seriously, how can any of us remember what we’re doing when the fear-mongering panic-inducing fake media tells us fake things that have real consequences? Take today, I was catching some subliminal messaging going on that was being broadcast by MSNBC or maybe even recently deceased CNN mouthpiece, Bobby Batista, because that’s how liberal propaganda is done, and it said to go out and buy all the chicken. I was able to resist the pressure of their brainwashing tactics but had to witness for myself how many sheeple listened to those socialist tools. Sure enough, ALL the chicken is now gone. I was at Costco when I took this picture and obviously the fresh chicken would be gone because that’s what those yuppy, Gen Z, Millennial, hipster freaks eat with their quinoa and avocados, but then to my amazement over at the frozen food area where I was certain good old Republican Americans were able to exercise some self-control and not give in to the media tripe, ALL the dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets and frozen pizzas were gone too. So either the liberals bought up our supplies to make us look bad or some of the MAGA faithful are growing weak from the constant attacks on our beloved President.

Empty display at Fry's Grocery Store in Phoenix, Arizona

Needing to restore my faith in my fellow white Republican brothers and sisters I left for a local grocery store called Fry’s that is located in a lower-income neighborhood and was happy to see that the Mexicans bought up all the dried rice and beans, dumb asses. Tomorrow I’ll head over to Whole Foods and report back if those whack jobs are sold out of wild-caught salmon, wheatgrass, and organic all-natural pompous bullshit.

#SARCASM!

Uh Oh

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Toilet Paper is sold out in Phoenix, Arizona

The madness at Costco here in Arizona for the past week has resulted in this sign on my local store, announcing at the door that they are OUT OF STOCK ON ALL TOILET PAPER. I was on my way in to buy our 15th 144-pack of triple-ply ultra-soft toilet paper which would have taken us from our current stockpile of 2,153 rolls to 2,297 rolls. At only 76.5% of our objective of keeping 3,000 rolls on hand in case of emergency I think the writing might be on the wall that we’ll fail in amassing enough to have us feeling secure that we’ll be ready for any type of poopsplosion that might occur.

I was considering raiding McDonald’s bathrooms but even if I were to recruit Caroline to help me pilfer toilet paper from the women’s rooms I’m now thinking the effort might not produce the results I’d hope for. With only 212 McDonald’s in the entire state and calculating that we might only get 3 rolls per store and some may have only a few sheets left on nearly depleted rolls, we’ll have to drive thousands of miles for what kind of payoff? Plus, we have a Kia and while it’s a hatchback I can only squeeze in so much TP before I have to bring it to our storage unit, our apartment is already full. That’s a lot of driving and raiding Mickey D’s Johns but then again, what’s the price for peace of mind?

Then I see that there are 726 payday lenders in Arizona, so with this in mind, I’m thinking I’ve struck pay dirt. After visits to nearly a dozen payday lenders though I find this is a bust; because apparently while they are willing to lend me money at ridiculous interest rates they don’t seem to believe that people who are about to get a really shitty deal deserve to use a public toilet for the 10 minutes they are visiting their establishment.

Hah, I’ve figured out how to game the system during our crisis and instead of waiting for the stores to resupply their stock and fighting the horde who are resorting to violence in order to secure their own emergency supply, I’ve gone to nearly every Joann’s, Hobby Lobby, and Michael’s in the greater Phoenix area and bought out their supply of yarn. Caroline will start knitting us a supply of toilet paper in the morning and we’ll sell all this real toilet paper on eBay and be rich. Booya!

Weaving Workshop

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Caroline Wise Weaving at a Workshop in Mesa, Arizona

If there is any question that the Brillenschlange smiling at me in this photo is an uber-nerd, let this serve as proof that my wife has geek cred that flies off most every chart. You might remember that back on September 9, 2019, Caroline took possession of her Baby Wolf loom. Since then she’s been off and on again busy making stuff on it but this is the first time she’s been able to lunk it out of our place and drag it across town to Mesa, Arizona, so she could join a 3-day workshop.

All last week Caroline toiled after work to wind the warp which is the process of winding off the requisite number of weaving threads in the length that the project calls for. Next, you sley the reed. This means that she pulls all of the threads of the warp through a toothed device that keeps everything separate and aligned. Time to thread the heddles where she pulls each strand of yarn through a wire with an eyelet attached to a shaft controlled by treadles that are used to open a shed. Sheds are the opening of patterns of warp combinations where the weft (the thread that goes across the warp) is beat against the accumulating other wefts thus making cloth. Before that can begin though she has to beam the warp meaning she has to roll the warp on a beam in the rear of the loom that will feed to the front of the loom where she’s tied those warp thread ends to the cloth beam, allowing weaving to commence.

Woven Samples at a Weaving Workshop in Mesa, Arizona

At the workshop, the Mesa guild known as Telarana Fiber Arts Guild has invited Denise Kovnat from Rochester, New York, to share a technique called “Deflected Double Weave” with the group. Workshop teachers are often from out of state and are likely renowned in the Weaving World which helps guarantee the success of the workshop as they need at least 10 attendees to make the event financially viable. (As a non-profit organization the guild just needs to break even when it is all said and done.)

Attendees such as Caroline are given a list of requirements they need to prepare prior to the workshop and then upon arrival, there may be handouts or options to purchase additional materials that could further enhance their knowledge or SABLE. This popular acronym stands for Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy and most every member of the guild is guilty of this hoarding disorder.

Caroline Fabric on her loom at a Weaving Workshop in Mesa, Arizona

Through it all, these highly skilled and very sociable women gain between 18 and 24 hours of hands-on experience, collaboration, and gossip over the typical 3-day workshop.

The image above shows an example of Caroline’s effort where the colors and pattern decisions were part of her pre-work before arriving on Saturday. What you are looking at is the front of her loom in closeup. In the background is the reed and behind that, out of sight, are the heddles, shafts, and warping beam. The warp are the threads going from the pattern upfront to the reed in the background. Sitting on the cloth is the shuttle that is used to throw a thread through the sheds to be opened to lay down the emerging pattern.

Now consider for a moment that not all too long ago every strand of thread had to be handspun and dyed before they’d find their way to a loom and the more fine threads packed in per inch would typically mean a finer fabric. Should you ever wonder why certain cultures never developed cloth or why people right up to the industrial age had only one set of clothes, it was due to the intensive amount of labor involved with simply making sheets of cloth before they’d ever be cut up to be sewn into shirts and pants.

Mythical

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Mythical Coffee in Gilbert, Arizona

I’m set up at Mythical Coffee in Gilbert, Arizona, for a morning of writing. Thirty-eight miles from home at a place that’s new to me happens as Caroline is over in Mesa for a three-day workshop. This past week has seen her frantically winding a warp and dressing her loom so she could be out this way early to hang out with about 15 other weavers and engage in learning something or other about weaving.

For me, this is a break from a part of my routine as I’m out of my neighborhood, trying a new coffee, and for the few minutes, I work on this blog entry I’m not exploring the past. What I mean by this is that if you look at the handwritten notes on the left, they are from 13 years ago when Caroline and I were on a 16-day road trip along the East Coast. In the ongoing effort to rid ourselves of the physical stuff we really don’t need to drag forward, I’ve been digitizing, scanning, or transcribing these things into the digital realm.

Over the years Caroline or I would keep notes about some of our travels, I cannot say what the criteria were that we would or wouldn’t write things down but I wish we’d journaled our thoughts on every trip we made. Working from these often cryptic fragments, a selection of photos we’d taken, the itinerary on a spreadsheet if I find it on my hard drive, and the help of Google Maps I’m mostly able to flesh out a considerable amount of detail that brings our adventure back to clarity.

This exercise also allows some of the 174,639 photos we’ve taken to escape digital purgatory where bits hidden on a computer may or may not exist if they are never seen. While thrusting them into the light of the WordPress page I concede that they’ll still remain mostly hidden as I don’t honestly expect anyone to go back to May 14, 2007, on my blog to read about our day at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut. For Caroline and I, we now have an encapsulation of that particular day that reduces the images from 125 photos on my computer to 19 photos that highlight what we did with 1,112 words that tell us a story from out of our own lives.

The importance for me about this is not some dumb idea where others think this is a window allowing us to live in the past nor is it a tool for us to find nostalgia in something that would ever be considered the “Good Old Days” unless we are in the late stages of life and are unable to venture out anymore. It is the mechanism to align our memories with reality so how we’d like to remember something isn’t allowed to skew the truth. In the course of our travels, we needn’t candy-coat events as we genuinely enjoy the unfolding of things and relish our experiences with astonishment that we were so lucky to have been present in the face of novelty.

I estimate that I’ll need a couple of months yet to finish the remaining notes that cover roughly half a dozen vacations. I might also have some digital notes that are hanging out somewhere buried in the depths of directories filled with schedules and various musings that need review.

A wonderful side effect of this effort is finding most all of the memories alive and well still in our heads though I have to give it to Caroline for having a mole burrow mind where the smallest of details emerge after the larger trigger brings her back into any particular day of our travels.