An additional 1,637 new cases reported here today. I'm going straight to the Ministry of Health's website. They say they've tested over 166,000 people so far with about 4,400 tested just today. Also only 163 in ICUs which is good because I came across a big medical conference that was held here in November where one paper mentioned we have an ICU capacity of about 11.5 units per 100,000 population which puts us at about half the ICUs here back then and I'm sure they've increased capacity since then.
That last sentence came out a bit garbled but we're only using half the ICUs as reported back in November.
A few weeks ago I did some very basic excel stuff and predicted that we would drop below an average of 400 deaths a day on Sunday and we in fact did so on Friday (and then again on Sunday having popped up again in the meantime). The next forecast is below 300 deaths a day average on this coming Saturday.
3: It occurs to me that Texas and Arrakis have had nearly identical case counts over time.
5- Cubic fit?
6- They generated antibodies but it hasn't been shown that those antibodies do anything to block the virus. Of course they're designed to because they use Spike mRNA but we won't know until there's either a trial large enough that you'd expect some people to get infected, or if they do a challenge trial (ethically questionable but a lot of people have been calling for allowing them.) Honestly insane how much their stock went up on a biomarker readout of 8 patients, but this company has always had a bit of voodoo skill convincing people to sign up for their tech.
Fun fact about Moderna, they're in the vaccine business because they saw immunity issues with their core platform, which is using mRNA therapeutics to replace defective proteins. So why not make antibody lemonade out of antibody lemons.
Did we make lemonade out of the word "antibody" in the Covid pickup line thread?
9.2 Forgive my extreme ignorance here but don't they generate the same/similar antibodies that do give immunity to SARS?
So generous of Spike to donate his mRNA to science. I'll miss him.
25 patients showed Ab production; 8 of them had those antibodies isolated and tested to see if they prevent the virus from infecting cells in culture and they do. But no indication of whether they actually protect people from infection- there are countless examples of things protecting cells in culture that don't translate to people.
10 No, we did not. This blog has fallen far.
9.1: how dare you sir.
No, I did this back in late March when numbers were still rising, and predicted the peak at 10 April (in fact it was a couple of days after), and then I did some simple linear extrapolation once the decline started and predicted 600, 500 and now 400 averages to within a day or two. Of course the question is whether it'll keep going like this, and I have no idea whether it will or not.
But that's why I'm doing these for my own interest in my spare time rather than as [REDACTED] for the [REDACTED] at [REDACTED] covering pandemic modelling and emergency service response for the whole bloody [REDACTED] area which is what they tried to get me doing until I pointed out very forcefully that they needed someone with considerably more PhDs than I had to do a proper job of it, and they sounded a bit taken aback and said well, thank you for your honesty, we'll try and find someone like that then.
I think the bigger concern with the Moderna method is safety not efficacy since it has never been used to make a vaccine. So I actually read the better news in the report that the lower dose didn't have any significant adverse events (I think one injection site rash). Of course AEs are notorious for only showing up in larger trials. They wouldn't pick up nasty things that happen 1/1000 times but that would be a really big problem if you want to give the vaccine to a billion people.
Can one of our resident scientists give me a TL;DR on hydroxychloroquine?
My basic question is: is this a situation where Trump is crazy* because the science is still far too preliminary and ambiguous, or because the science is painting a clear picture that it's worthless and possibly dangerous?
*ie someone who stands to profit is whispering in his ear, but same difference.
On the regular check-ins side, we're trying to decide if it's completely insane to visit my parents in Florida or not. The idea would be that we're relatively certain to be virus-free as long as we're on ultra-lockdown, and we could drive straight through, exposing ourselves (literally!) only in a few bathrooms on the way.
The motivation is that this is probably the safest moment to see them until a vaccine is out, so carpe diem.
The complete unleashing of the Texas economy in combination of these thoughts of visiting sent me into a total tailspin of stress yesterday.
Only use public restrooms to poop. Pee in the trees at highway stops.
It wasn't a crazy thing to test. There were hints of activity (in vitro again, see caveat above) and some speculation about how it could work by interfering with the pathway by which the virus enters cells. Since it was approved for use in humans it was worth running trials.
At this point, though, several of those trials have read out and aside from problematic ones from the French doctor, there's no indication of efficacy. Observational things you'd expect, like lower rates of infection in people already taking it for malaria prophylaxis or autoimmune suppression, didn't pan out either.
The potential cardiac side effects were known because there are dozens of drugs with that risk, where the benefit usually outweighs the risk. I'm not actually sure how the azithromycin combo got started other than it's a treatment for pneumonia so maybe someone was taking both- but that also has the same risk so taking them together is pretty dangerous. Not a huge risk like you'll die immediately (for that you can inject bleach) but also as noted above, small risks are a huge problem when you have a large population with other cardiac risk factors.
Then there's the politics of approval. It was given an emergency use authorization which is supposed to be temporary approval for, well, emergencies, and is only supposed to last until there's more conclusive evidence to proceed to full approval or rescind the EUA. Many argue that the number of failed trials are leaning towards withdrawal but suspect that they won't because Trump has latched onto this as the brilliant solution he came up with and the liberal scientists just want to take that away from him.
Let me restate heebie's characteristically overcareful question: is the shithead going to poison himself to death?
Ok, so there is a scientific consensus against it at this point, and if Trump hadn't put himself in the middle of it, it would have been strictly a normal scientific development of knowledge and understanding, the way it's supposed to work.
19: You mean, stand in the trees and pee onto the cars, I'm sure.
21: No. We're not going to get lucky.
Personally I think he's lying about taking it. He's scam artist but he has people whose interest is to protect him. Cavuto freaking out on Fox News when he heard Trump might actually be taking this shit was hilarious.
If is is taking it, it would be something like increasing his risk of a heart attack 4-fold, but like all those "increased risk" statements it's an increase on a small number. So say he went from a 1% to a 4% annual risk of heart attack (guessing the 1% based on heart attack models, and his weight, age, likelihood of high blood pressure, etc.)
Lots of speculation on Twitter that he's not actually taking it -- either that he's just trying to get other people to take it like your classic snake-oil salesman, or that he really thinks he's taking it, but his doctor is giving him sugar pills.
The real question is what he's getting as a placebo. Pez? Rolos? Pixy Stix?
27.last sounds plausible. Would it be more malpractice-y to lie to your patient about what you're giving him, or to give him a medication that you believe to be not only ineffective but dangerous?
Jared's main job is to hide the fish tank cleaner.
On a totally different note, listen to this awful story:
Jammies has a good student, responsible, but she missed class on Monday morning. She emailed, super apologetic. She overslept.
Apparently, on Sunday, her step-dad asked her and her siblings to go take their mom out of the house for a while, so that he could throw her a surprise party for her birthday. When they got back, they discovered that he'd cleaned out all his stuff and left.
I just feel so massively bad for the kid: working so hard to keep your mom busy and happy for a few hours on her birthday, looking forward to seeing her face when she walks in the door, and then realizing as you walk in that you were just complicit in this horrible thing, and now you have to help your mom pick up the pieces and keep going.
That is awful.
Speaking of awful and Florida, DeSantis fired a woman fit refusing to falsify the data on Covid rates.
Trump says he is taking hydroxychloroquine. That is strong evidence that he is not doing so.
18: I had to go out of town and it was frightening, used the bathroom in a grocery store and rural America is not wearing masks.
28: They are probably giving Trump pirin tablets.
32: That is so cruel. The step-dad sounds like a malignant narcissist. Perhaps the family will be better off without him? But the poor kids. At a certain age you blame yourself for what goes wrong whether you had a hand in it or not, and no amount of reassurance can overcome the guilt.
Being somewhat malignant myself, I can't help but admire the chutzpah.
Maybe it was an alien abduction and the aliens took the cake and balloons for the birthday party too.
Maybe the best birthday present he could think of was to get out of her life.
One other point Lowe makes is that Trump is taking it to prevent infection rather than treat post-infection, which is something for which there is no evidence at all.
That post also summarizes most of the studies to date that I referred to above.
How much would it cost to get a minor Fox News guy to push saltpeter as a preventative? Asking for a friend.
Gah, 32 is just awful. What a heel.
30:
The wife is apparently now under investigation for murder.
I've also seen a few places referring to her as Fish Tank Wanda.
That story is a gift that keeps on giving.
Wait what. Lurker's wife? Jared's wife?
I'm fine. In the final run-down of getting ready for my dad to move in. Just finished a big work project - yay!
32 is just awful. Not only gutless and manipulative, but way to compound the trauma for the poor kid.
Moby, I just got an e-mail from Three Rivers Paintball that they are opening. I am bemused to discover that I am on their mailing list, and equally bemused that they are opening. Although I note that they are located in FREEDOM, PENNSYLVANIA, which I did not know was a thing.
45.last How far is it from Intercourse?
Paintball seems safe, except those little balls hurt. I didn't know Freedom, PA, was a thing either. It's way far out of the city.
I'm trying to get my son to do some fencing lessons. He needs activity and should do something where there's already a mask.
44:
The wife in the "Trump touts hydroxychloroquine and idiot drinks fish tank cleaner and dies" story.
44: A guy in Arizona died from taking fish tank cleaner to prevent Covid, except maybe not. I hadn't heard about the next part.
30 is awful, but reminds me of a story that makes me smile. A friend of mine (describing, over a beer, events that had taken place 25 years prior) went on a business trip and returned to find his wife gone and his house empty -- except for a single mirror on the wall.
He said he never asked, but he agreed with me about her intent: "You did this."
Maybe it meant he was supposed to think of himself as the fairest of them all?
Freedom, PA is an Ohio river town near Monaca and Aliquippa. It was one of the utopian communities founded by the Harmony Society, a German pietist sect in the early 1800s. Harmony, PA and Economy, PA are nearby and also have that history. But for the last 150 years it's been an industrial / post-industrial river town.
Interesting that "Harmony" still sounds like a utopian pacifist community but when we hear "Freedom" we think more of right-wing militia types.
Economy has a quaint part still. Never been to Harmony.
They have a tracking app here and they are going to make it mandatory to install it, subject to very harsh penalties if you don't. But it requires access to your media files and a lot else. Fuck that shit.
I think on an iPhone, which I have, I can refuse certain permissions. Can't do that on an Android though.
Economy sounds like an author of a book about the modern history of China.
I've only been there once, but I got on two Pokemon gyms.
Still doing fine here. We cleaned the deck yesterday, which turned out to be a lot more work than expected, but now it's ready to stain once it dries.
New Harmony, Indiana is another utopian community from that era that has been preserved more or less intact. It's a neat place to visit.
Fun thread; on the basic check in question, things are still okay. My wife has a big zero year birthday later this month; she decided a month or two ago that we should delay the big celebration until next year... but I'm still stuck trying to come up with gifts for this year.
"Do things" isn't really an option with everything locked down, and videogames were the only thing she really leaned on during the store shutdown -- none of her other hobbies engaged her, or they didn't work with her currently flaring ailments. I'd like to figure out something that is immediately nice, instead of the gifts also being delayed until the world is better, but without being able to involve travel or friends, there doesn't seem to be a lot left.
That is tricky. If you're not usually a flowers-and-breakfast-in-bed kind of celebrators, maybe that's a gentle way to kick it up a notch?
Our kids have decided to do a Secret Covid, like secret santa, within the family. It's very, very sweet. I got Jammies. Or rather, I traded with one of the kids who drew Jammies and had no idea what to do. So now I have no idea what to do and plus, Father's Day, so I guess I'm going to find two things that Jammies doesn't want to give him.
Never been to Harmony.
I've been to Harmony. But I've never been to me.
All well here. Mrs y's father died yesterday and she's still trying to work out how she feels about that. Not cvd-19; being 88 and not recognising your kids anymore, which is also unpleasant I imagine. Anyway, he's in FLA so nothing we can do.
On the upside, the best Kashmiri chef in Sheffield just brought us dinner. Ramadan mubarak, Azaad! Shukrie.
Not recognizing them due to Alzheimers? or legally not recognizing them due to Assholmers?
(either way, my condolences.)
My condolences to her. My mother still recognizes her kids, but not many others.
I probably should have skipped the pun.
On the better side of the news, Pennsylvania will soon have curbside pickup of mixed drinks.
I know my mom recognizes me, but I'm not sure she always knows I'm her son. Sometimes she clearly thinks I'm her brother.
70. Don't worry about it, that captures the spirit of the thing quite well. My BiL over there has had power of attorney for years, so that should all be straightforward, and the old man didn't have two pennies to bless himself with.
64.2: for mother's day (which i don't even celebrate!) i made a "mom rock" mix cd and collected favorite pictures of a bunch of beloved moms with their y kids/babies, made a cover collage with the pictures, customized interior shot of each recipient with her kid(s)/baby(ies), etc., and then we mailed out cds. the project provided me with immensely cheering distraction for a couple weeks (selecting and working out the play list, texting and e-mailing with kids and partners to collect the pics sub rosa, designing, assembly), and let me tell you the end product has also spread joy to all the recipients, so then we get more joy coming back to us as folks get the packages in the mail. dorky mix cd project = *highly recommend!*
72: That's very sweet, in a way. It's a little like Capgras in reverse -- the love and the feeling is there, but not the recognition, so she identifies you with a loved person from the earlier part of her life that she does remember. It must be hard; I'm sorry.
I think she doesn't think in her son because she doesn't recognize that's she's old enough to have a son my age.
It comes and goes with my mother. At the moment she's bad, and some carer had turned the screen of her Alexa device away from her so she could not see me on the latest call and didn't know where my voice was coming from. After ten minutes, she said "I never hear from my children at all these days." But who she thought she said it to I have no idea.
If she calls you "John," she thinks you are my mom's brother.
72: my grandfather was the same; kept calling me by my father's name. We do look alike, I suppose. It still wasn't easy.
Sometimes I believe she thinks I'm her heroic brother Tony; other times that I am her mad (but actually also heroic) brother Chris.
Condolences, chris and missus.
Mom eventually called anyone she recognized "Daddy." That was more jarring than being mistaken for her younger sister. It gave either a very "traditional conservative marriage" or hilariously inappropriate vibe when she called my father Daddy, though.
So, I just saw an extremely elderly gentleman that I know. He was wearing a mask and gloves, but took one off to shake my hand. I didn't want to seem cold and I figured I've been isolated enough that I was unlikely to be carrying any germs, so I shook his hand. Then he says they found him on the floor almost dead and he's barely recovered and lost his memory.
I think the guy was over 90 before he quit smoking.
I am feeling so unaccountably happy I just don't understand it.
I'm really happy too, but I just finished a to-go margarita.
I mean, I recently "went running", by which I mean I did the first week of couch25k (and because that was a little easy even in my decrepit state I did four minutes of extra running at the end), but the confusing happiness started before that.
Today I'm happy for ignoble reasons, which is that the one truly successful bestselling author from my fancy-writing-school cohort, whose position I've sometimes idly envied, is coming out with a preposterous new novel that has gotten the usual dumb media attention from the usual dumb outlets but is getting satisfyingly roasted on Twitter, especially for an excerpted sex scene that suggests there may be a Poe's Law for porn.
The Tell-Tail Heart wants what the Tell-Tail Heart wants?
I didn't have to. I just didn't know what it meant before I looked it up.
Random present ideas:
1) Use your own photos to create customized Post-It notes from Zazzle. Cheap and quick (or at least it was pre-quarantine). Great fun, you can come up with all sorts of absurd captions (I did one of my newborn nephew yawning and saying "Is it morning already?") and best of all you can use them UP. Not like a mug hat hangs around forever. Although they have mugs, if you like hat sort of thing. I've also used Zazzle to make both serious and silly business cards/calling cards for friends.
2) If the person has a hobby or a deep interest, see if you can track down a mid-level expert in that field using social media or Teh Googles and see if they would be willing to do an informal chat-and-share Zoom session for a reasonable fee. Most experts LOVE to be asked about their work and offering to pay makes it less of an imposition (and of course, if it's Not Their Thing they can just say no or ignore your e-mail).
This latter approach is what I'm pondering for the sobrinos' birthdays -- I've always taken them on field trips, but obviously that is quite out this year. Very sad face.
7 new cases, all related, and related to travel (out of state?) in the county just south. We're going to phase 2 on June 1 anyway, which suspends the 14 day quarantine for people coming here. Not looking forward to June.
Last time we made more than 6 new cases was April 18.
That's still really low, even for a small population state.
Drove from Berkeley to Elko today. I was pretty surprised by how dramatically less seriously this is being taken in Nevada than California. The people working at the sandwich counter at the gas station weren't wearing masks, no distancing signage at the hotel, and there's not only a breakfast buffet but starting tomorrow you can even eat your breakfast in the lobby with everyone else instead of having to take it back to your room. By contrast, in whatever small sierra town on the California side where we had lunch, the Taco Bell was drive-through only and the people working there wore masks and handed us our bag on a platter to minimize contact.
Nebraska is more populous, but there were 221 new cases yesterday.
Anyway, I'm glad I wasn't the only one to observe Taco Tuesday.
92: Did your program not teach why real-person slash is deprecated or the message just failed to get through in truly horrifying ways?
Heebie Geebie- I recommend against using public bathrooms at all. Get a chemical toilet if you need to travel.
They have confirmed there are live viruses in the feces of patients.
People are saying you can catch it from aerosolized fecal matter in the air in the vicinity of a flushed toilet.
And I'm so sorry, Chris y. This is such a terrible time to deal with a death.
I'm doing fine. The car damage wasn't bad at all but I needed new tires, which cost as much as my deductible would have. The basement flooded a bit, but it's resolving well and I am prepared to deal with the aftermath. Kids are okay and Nia seems to be leaning toward stability, though it's scary when she doesn't. Tomorrow I start harassing the special ed department about not having finished her evaluation during the legally required timeframe. (I should talk to my therapist, I know, before he retires in June. Somehow I put this off anyway.) Odile has started her summer language work. I'm letting the girls loaf for the rest of the month at least. I started to cut out the pattern for what promises to be a weird and unflattering dress that will take a lot of work to sew, so that might keep me occupied even though my problem really isn't lack of things to do. I still don't think what I had was the virus, but my breathing still isn't always optimal. I'll aim for an antibody test when they're more available here but that seems like all I can really do on that front. It's a weird and awkward time to be sick too because it feels so unimportant to have regular pain or even extreme pain like I've been having lately since it won't kill me. Um, I'm usually more cheerful than I sound here! Everything really is fine.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/05/scientists-isolate-live-covid-19-virus-feces-detect-rna-surfaces
106 seems a little extreme - a chemical toilet? Just drive around with an Elsan in the back of your car? Is this something a lot of Americans do? It would explain why they need such enormous cars, I suppose. Wouldn't want that in a Renault Clio.
Ask: how many times have you caught gastroenteritis from a public toilet? If this happens to you every year or so, you should probably avoid public toilets generally, not just during a pandemic. If it doesn't, then don't. Things like norovirus shed far more virus through faeces than COVID does, because that's their main transmission route. There's evidence of F/O transmission of coronavirus, and some patients have been shown to shed viable virus in faeces, but the whole "toilet plume" idea is probably not a very serious risk. Put the lid down when you flush, wear a mask, wash your hands afterwards, and you should be OK. Travelling will involve far more dangerous exposure situations than this - any time you are talking to an unmasked person, for example.
Put the lid down when you flush
Two peoples, separated by a lack of common public toilet infrastructure.
This must be related to the tiny toilet doors.
Probably. It's in our culture to cheap out on privately-owned, publicly-accessible infrastructure in any way possible, especially if it makes the user slightly uncomfortable--perhaps they'll defer using it and privatize the wear and tear. Think of all the savings.
The same article I saw about the possibility of faecal transmission just said to wait a minute before entering the stall.
how many times have you caught gastroenteritis from a public toilet? If this happens to you every year or so, you should probably avoid public toilets generally, not just during a pandemic.
I'm bad about cataloging where I catch my gastroenteritii from.
And with so many geeblets throwing stuff everywhere how could you even tell?
cataloging where I catch my gastroenteritii from.
something something dookie decimal system
or something something library of egress
But you can normally have a guess - if no one else in the house had it first, you got it somewhere else.
98: I'm still waiting on my mask order from Zazzle from a month ago - estimated delivery May 8-18th. Different production for post its, of course, but they might be slowed down for other things too.
But you can normally have a guess - if no one else in the house had it first, you got it somewhere else.
It is true that I can narrow it down to whether I acquired it from an active case in the household, or an external source. Is that all we're claiming here? My journal notes on what food I ate and what toilet I inhaled dangerously deeply around are shoddy.
This is over thinking it. Just do like the radio contests say, "Void where prohibited."
They only difficulty is pooping issues
The only difficulty is pooping outside if it is raining.
1,491 new cases here today. Still only testing about 4,000 people a day.
That's a really high percentage of positives unless they are only testing the very sick.
The point in 109/110 has bothered me for years. The only toilets I encounter with lids to put down are the ones in private homes.
The pit toilets in state parks sometimes have lids, but they don't flush.
I know! Scares the shit out of me. Maybe I shouldn't have done a big shopping this morning. How does it compare to, say, NYC at the height of its outbreak?
If it scares you, pee behind the outhouse.
Anyway, I think the hard hit counties in Nebraska were reporting something like 25 percent of tests being positive, but I can't find that now.
1,491 new cases here today. Still only testing about 4,000 people a day.
1791 here, in the state. But we're testing almost 22K yesterday. So you guys are doing much worse. Also I don't know the population of Arrakis.
The Emperor has no idea either.
I thought people in Arrakis never have to pee.
The whole concept of a stillsuit makes no sense. If you somehow do condense sweat back into water in something touching your skin, you don't cool the body at all and you will die from heat exhaustion.
The motion of walking supposedly was harnessed to drive some kind of recirculation system, so it was actually a kind of skintight airconditioner. Which I'm guessing the physics wouldn't add up for either.
Yeah and it's totally unrealistic that a skin tight AC unit would work while riding a giant worm using a metal hook.
And Texas has about 29 million so actually we're doing better. Teach, please check my math.
When you're on the worm the slipstream makes the heat exchange more efficient, plus you ride mostly at night. The unconvincing part is hiding motionless under sand in daylight.
It turns out the deck cleaning solution I got is kind of terrible and left a bunch of residue even after pressure washing, so I think I have to sand the whole thing again. Oh well. It'll look nice eventually.
Today I'm going to do a small controlled experiment to see if more sanding or more pressure washing will work better, but I'm pretty sure the answer is going to be more sanding.
And Texas has about 29 million so actually we're doing better. Teach, please check my math.
Welllllll...better at testing for cases.
Something that is either characteristic or I dunno: In Minnesota, we've ramped up testing and can now, in theory, do about 13,000 a day. How many are we actually doing? Anywhere from 5500 to 8000. Why? Because people aren't going to the testing centers. The narrative is that tests are only for the very sick, so people aren't getting them.
Years ago, there was a flu vaccine shortage and we ended up with a surplus because everyone here decided that they themselves could do without - they ended up begging people to come in.
~~
But in other news, we're opening up the state! Like a bunch of crazy fuckers. Even the governor literally predicting that at least 30,000 people will die doesn't do anything to move the needle on this. And they're reopening the malls, with lots of photos coming out of a bunch of stupid, venal people standing around waiting to shop, no masks in sight. No one is wearing masks! Why are Americans so dumb?
When I was a bullied kid, I hated my fellow humans and just assumed that they were all stupid, reckless and selfish and would hurt me by mistake if not by intent. I worked pretty hard to overcome this, be more likable, get a better attitude, etc, and now I wish I hadn't. I would have lived my entire life differently (probably on a subsistence farm with lots of fences, guns and supplies) if I'd understood how people really are.
~~
I made a really very good lentil/pasta/greens soup the other day and have read eight Terry Pratchett books in the last week.
65, 74, 98: Thanks for the ideas -- I like the custom post it notes idea, for exactly the "they get used up" factor. She has many many hobbies, but her hands and shoulders have been acting up, and her focus has been poor, so she hasn't been able to tackle music or electronics projects. Programing never makes for good gifts, and that's now what she's having to do (slowly and repetitiously) for the store, so it's out.
I'll check out Zazzle and see if I can get it started; if I have something concrete even in transit, that's better than something further out into the ether.
https://www.afp.com/en/news/15/super-cyclone-amphan-batters-bangladesh-india-doc-1rx5sf6
Also, Michigan flooded. Hope the locals are all O.K.
145: There are some wineries shipping things they normally would sell only to members/at their physical shop. Also, I keep getting ads for what look like totally amazing take-out options from nice restaurants (not local, sadly, in real cities a couple hours' drive away). We're quite fond of food and drink presents for the same reasons above - they don't hang around very long.
147: Safe and dry in my corner.
142: Have you considered just buying lumber and starting over? We refinished ours a few years ago, and it was just an awful project. It took three adults three very long days to get it sanded and prepped. I swore to myself we would never do that again. If the deck isn't something on a second story, it might be worth considering.
Have you considered just buying lumber and starting over?
We have, and the worst-case scenario is to just hire someone to replace the whole thing with Trex composite decking. That's a pretty extreme option, though, and I think it's pretty unlikely that's what we'll end up doing. It is a second-story deck, so replacing it entirely is a highly non-trivial proposition.
I really do think sanding it again is going to be sufficient to get it prepped for staining, though.
Unless you find a really big tree, all decking is a composite.
There's a really big groundhog that lives under my neighbor's deck, but a different neighbor's deck than the one before. That little asshole stole the big paper bag and I used to hold the raked-up leaves. Just ripped the bag, dumped the leaves, and took the bag.
I thought your leaf strategy was just mulch-in-place.
I need to be able to walk to the grill without getting my shoes all gunked.
Maybe you should build a deck for that.
We've decided to drive to Florida on Friday and see my folks. I think we're thinking rationally through all this.
If not your own portable chemical toilet, which (I have to agree with ajay here) might be a wee bit extreme.
Get one of those antimicrobial touch/door-opening tools so you don't have to touch anything in Florida.
So: this week I decided that I was part of a secondary, somewhat wider, family COVID-19 bubble, because my sister really needs me, she really needs a bit of help.
My (super-smart, and creative, and drop-dead gorgeous) sister is about to lose her goddamn mind. She has a job, that she really does have to attend to during the day, while working "remotely," which is to say, from home. Her husband is also working "remotely" from home, though his hours are more flexible. They have two boys, aged 6 and 8, who require/demand a lot of attention throughout the day. They're doing their best, but they've pretty much given up on "remote learning" for the boys: it just doesn't work, there's just not enough time in the day to homeschool while working full-time, and anyway, neither my sister nor my BIL are professional educators.
Turns out, teaching is NOT just one of those things that "anyone can do:" turns out, it actually requires some skill and expertise and practice to effectively teach: who knew?!
158 just outfit everyone with one of those Trucker's Friend contraptions like Burt Reynolds used in Semi-Tough
I thought "trucker's friend" was just amphetamines.
1,554 new cases reported here today. They've at least gotten just over the 5,000 tested daily threshold.
Classify your critter, Barry!
167: We had 1,411. And 25K tests. You guys are winning/losing.
Hey, heebie, can I ask you for some parenting advice? I remember one of your children had behavioral problems, and you were able to get him proper medication that helped him. My son has similar problems, but 1/100th as bad. The quarantine has been hard on him, so it's exacerbated his problems. If absolutely nothing goes wrong, then everything is fine, but any time he encounters any obstacle he completely melts down. We think his underlying problem is anxiety. We are trying to get him seen, but it's obviously extremely hard under the circumstances.
Do you have any parenting advice for how you coped pre-medication?
Unmedicated Pokey: the biggest things are to make sure he's eating food regularly. Our worst times were definitely when he was hungry. He was always a good sleeper, but otherwise I'd put that in the same category. Five minute advance notice before transitions, especially advising him to look for a good stopping place.
When there was a pattern, I'd take him for a walk on some totally unassociated moment, and try to get him into a reflective mood on the pattern. We developed some "poke-moves" that he could try "in battle" with his teachers - like being a statue, for example, or making your face like a sad puppy dog. Things that would hopefully buy him some time and get a different part of his brain to kick in. (In those cases, though, the enemy was the teacher and I was on the same team as him.)
One thing I say to him a lot, when I smell a tantrum brewing but he and I aren't in opposition, are things like: "Remember, intense emotions are like waves. They crest and then they fall again" and then use my hand as a barometer and get him to indicate where on the wave he is. Or where on a 10 point scale. This is both to get him into the habit of noticing and labeling it when he's feeling intense emotion, and also to get him to internalize the notion that intense feelings are not a permanent state - you can trust that if you can buy yourself some time, you feel a little less intensity.
Pokey is now 9 1/2 and medicated, and the meta-conversations work pretty well. It was a whole 'nother thing at age 5 and 6, though.
Emotions are like waves and if you wait until after they crest, you'll be much less likely to get caught letting the air out of someone's tires.
If I am in opposition to him, it's important that he feel heard, like it's most effective if I pause and say his side back to him, and confirm that I know how he's feeling, before stating my side. At that point, if he spins out further, he's usually ravenously hungry.
We wait until after breakfast to give him his meds, and he's a royal PITA during the first hour of the day every day. It's a nice reminder to be so, so grateful for modern science.
To jms: I guess I'm about to take a week off from MLR as we go visit my folks, although I suppose I could take the sheet music just in case.
However: the first two pages-ish are getting to a place where it's pretty fun to play it, and sounds recognizable, if slow, and I'm so pleased. Then today I got to the TRIO part, and was like wtf key are we in now? this doesn't look like B (or A flat minor, I guess. I guess I should google.) But maybe that's a good stopping place until I get back.
How's it going for you?
I'm also finding the Trio section challenging! It's been helpful to me to listen to the Joshua Rifkin recording, to have a reference for what it's supposed to sound like (although in truth the Rifkin sounds so different from the piece when it's played at my suuuuper sloooow tempo that sometimes it doesn't sound that closely related).
I'm glad we're playing this one. I forgot how pretty it is, especially the Trio and the final section.
Btw, I recently learned how to determine the key of a piece from the key signature. Obviously it doesn't matter for this piece, but for the past four decades my only means of figuring it out was to play up or down the keyboard with all the flats or sharps in the key signature until I hit eight notes in a row that sounded like a full scale. This took forever and also looked dumb when I was with a group of people, so I'm pretty happy about my newfound knowledge. Anyway, you just count up the number of flats or sharps and then move in fifths up (for sharps) or down (for flats) from C, that number of times. So, there are five flats in the Trio section, five fifths down from C is D flat.
I'll try the barometer thing.
We always gave him time for transitions, but he's older, so he's caught onto it and he finds it irritating.
176: I had to dutifully memorize all the key signatures as a kid. But I never knew there was a mnemonic device!
171: It's too late for me to contract out the raising of my children to heebie, but I think it has to be a consideration for other folks.
Up at the ungodly hour of 3 am for a walk with my friend on the marina boardwalk at 4.
If she suggests a long walk, don't go to a short pier.
183: Phew. I read a lot of these threads backwards, and I was afraid we were still talking about pain indexes. Get well soon, Walt!
Should I stock up on edibles during the break between this and the next shutdown? The not drinking is getting old.
I suppose it's better to give alcohol a second chance.
That was a good two hour walk on the boardwalk. We discovered that it's a lot longer then we thought, we thought it ended at this corner but there's at least another mile and probably more of it when you turn that corner. Saw the sunset. Fishes. Glorious.
It's Eid week here and we have the whole week off so our plan is to go there every day around 4 am.
Saw the sunset.
A much longer walk than expected.