May 1^st

Yesterday afternoon, the doctor’s office called and said that I could do a telehealth appointment this morning instead of going into the office. I jumped at that chance, obviously. My appointment took around ten minutes, which is the same length it takes when I go in person, but the difference is that I didn’t have to drive twenty-five minutes there and twenty-five minutes back home. So it definitely saved time, not to mention, it means no exposure to The Rona. I did go to the pharmacy yesterday, and I’ll probably have to go back later this afternoon to pick up the prescriptions renewed at this visit. Also, yesterday afternoon I bid adieu to my hair and shaved it all off. I sincerely hope it never gets that long again! I felt like a hippie.

We are nearing the end of the semester, thankfully. One more week of “classes” and then final exams the week of the 11^th. I’ll be slammed with grading on Sunday as I have writing assignments coming in from all six classes. Originally, I had my big 1301 and 1302 assignments due one week apart to make it easier on me to grade them, but with The Rona and all, I wanted to give the students as much time as possible to work on them. It makes for a more compressed grading window for me, but that is okay. I’m usually a fast grader anyway, and I’m going to get a head start tomorrow by grading everything that has been turned in up to that point. I’m ready to get this semester over with, as I’m sure my students are too.

As soon as it ends, I’ll turn my focus to writing my third book. I know, I know. You want to read Molly’s Song. I’ll be working on edits in the afternoons while I’m writing the first draft of the third novel in the mornings. I still hope to have her story wrapped up and ready to go by mid-October. I want to stick to my schedule for writing the third book. The bright side is that Molly’s Song and the third novel ought to come out in rapid sequence, so at least there is that, right? I have my days where I wonder why I spend so much time and expend so much of my limited energies writing books that, let’s be honest here, aren’t bestsellers. I don’t have a ready answer for that other than to say that writing makes me happy (while at the same time frustrating the ever living shit out of me). I don’t write for fame or fortune. I write because it is the only thing in my life that gives me a sense of excitement that approaches that which I felt in my previous occupation. On the subject of writing, I’m wondering when I should consider bringing my Journal of a Pandemic Year to a close. Our state is starting to re-open today and so we will not be in lock down mode much longer. I might keep it running for a few more weeks, maybe through 10 installments, and then evaluate where the state and country are at that point. (I think this early re-openings are going to cause a resurgence in cases, but that is just my opinion).

May 2^nd

 The night before last, I made a new friend. I was sitting on my front porch around 8:30pm, and an orange and white cat came up and got in my lap. She looks like she is around eighteen months, maybe two years old. Her fur is in good condition and she looks healthy, so I am assuming that maybe she belongs to someone who lets her out at night. Last night, she came back to visit me again. She is very talkative. I offered her some food, and she ate a little bit, but didn’t seem all that hungry. I wonder if I’ll see her again this evening. I guess I’ll find out later.

My new friend. I call her Tatiana. 

For breakfast this morning, I had a piece of red velvet cake and a can of Ensure. My stomach has been angry with me ever since. Given my history of recurrent bowel obstructions, every twinge in the stomach is enough to send me into panic mode as it gives me flashbacks of NG tubes and weeks in the hospital, not to mention surgeries which rearranged my intestines. I’m hoping that it eases up soon. I’d hate to be in the hospital right now. That would almost certainly put you at risk of catching The Rona. Plus, I think the hospitals around me are not allowing people to have visitors, so that would REALLY be boring! And don’t even get me started on the fact that there aren’t any sports to watch either! No thanks. I’ll just hope this discomfort passes. This is a bad time to have either a bowel obstruction or The Rona given that next week is my final week of classes, and the week after is final exams and grade deadlines. I started this semester in the hospital and I absolutely do not want to end it the same way.

It’s kind of funny to think about, but apart from not going to work five days a week, the lockdown hasn’t really changed my life all that much. Other than work, I only leave the house for doctor appointments or trips to the pharmacy (and occasionally the convenience store). I’m not leaving for doctor appointments now, but I still make a once a month run to the pharmacy. Other than that, I’m in my room working on my computer while some television program mindlessly drones on in the background. At 6:30pm, I lay down on my ice packs for an hour and read while watching TV with Anastasia. I get up and sit outside from 7:45 to 9:00 and talk to my wife (and also the orange cat now). It is ice packs again at 9:00pm. At 10, I get up and have a snack. I turn the lights out around 11. I’m waking up around 7 or 730 these days, which is preferable to the 0530 wake up call during normal semesters!

May 3^rd

 I’ve discovered a new epic period drama to binge watch. It is called Love in Chains and it is free for those who have an Amazon Prime account. You can find it here. It is a Ukrainian production, but filmed in Russian. If you do not speak Russian, don’t worry…it has English subtitles. It’s a love story set in the mid-19^th Century. The landscape and the costumes are stunning, as are quite a few of the actresses, if I may say so myself. It ran for two seasons with 48 episodes total, so it’ll fill some of your days if you are finding them empty. At times funny, at times brutal, it is a worthy companion to other great Eastern European period drams. I try to watch a certain amount of Russian language programming each month to keep my comprehension skills up, but I’ve been a bit negligent in that regard during The Rona.

Love in Chains. No….it’s not like Fifty Shades of Gray, despite the name and image. 

My stomach is feeling a little better today, actually, it started to feel a little better last night. So I’m fairly certain now that it wasn’t a new small bowel obstruction, or, if it was, it cleared on its own. It could have been due to the large piece of red velvet cake I had for breakfast. Perhaps that was not the wisest morning meal. Otherwise, I feel okay, apart from the usual stiffness and pain in my spine. I’m used to that, or a certain level of pain. I only notice it if it is worse than normal. The orange cat has come by every night and she also stopped by this morning. I am calling her Tatiana. I think that’s a good name for a girl cat. (Kind of like my “little” princess Anastasia). I saw some news footage from down the bay in Galveston yesterday. It was packed with people and no sign of people wearing masks or social distancing. Admittedly, it was a beautiful day yesterday. But do you want The Rona? Cause that’s how you get The Rona. I guess some people think it is worth the risk, yet they’ll be the first ones bitching when they get sick and can’t get immediate care due to all the others who also got sick from not adhering to the guidelines. We saw this all the time in fire department. The very same people who love to talk about how much they support first responders are the first ones to complain if it takes us more than thirty seconds to get to them when they call 911. Human beings are not rational creatures, despite what we may believe about ourselves. I don’t know if I believe in aliens or not, but if they are real, then it is no surprise to me that they won’t come down and visit us. I’d stay away too.

May 5^th

 I skipped an entry for yesterday, May 4^th, because very little of note happened. It was Saint Florian’s Day. He’s the patron saint of firefighters and so it is also International Firefighters Day. That’s not really a day that I know how to celebrate though, especially seeing as how I’m no longer on the job. For my bitch session for yesterday though, my college sent out an email yesterday afternoon with a mandatory two hour online training we have to do that is due the same day our grades are due. It’s the end of the semester, and we are all swamped with everything that goes along with that, and now we get this dumped on us. The email said the training is to comply with a new bill that passed the legislature. But…..the bill isn’t new. It passed in May of 2019, and this training has been made available at other institutions weeks ago. For example, my wife did the exact same course in early April. So I’m very curious as to why we are just now being made aware of it.

Saint Florian, pray for us.

This morning, I typed a final exam for my 1301 course and uploaded it to Blackboard along with a new review sheet. That took up a few hours. Tomorrow, I’ll tackle 1302. The end of the semester is in sight and it cannot come soon enough for me! Given the way the semester started, I was already ready for it to be over and that was before The Rona. I’m looking forward to seven weeks of no emails and nothing to do school wise until it is time to prepare for my Summer 2 courses. That’ll take some work though since I’ve never taught a 5 week course online. Usually, I teach face to face in the summers, but that is out the window now. For evening distraction, I downloaded a new game for the PlayStation. I wanted to branch out and play something outside of my usual games, so I bought a hockey game. It’s been fun so far, and somewhat educational. My knowledge of hockey is limited to the fact that I know the US beat the Soviets in 1980. That was about it before I started playing the game. Now, I know what a power play is and what offsides and icing are. It kind of reminds me of basketball, but with skates. Incidentally, I have never been ice skating. In the 80s when roller skating rinks were popular, I couldn’t make it five feet without busting my ass on the ground, so I avoid any chance to ice skate since, at least to me, that looked a lot harder than roller skating. However, I will gladly defer to someone more knowledgeable about both than I am.

I did see today that my city has the third highest number of Rona cases in the county. Lucky us, right? And yet everyone here is going around congregating in public places with no masks and no gloves all because the governor said that it is okay to re-open things. We’ll see an explosion of cases in the next ten days, no doubt. Also…finally…the painters are supposed to come back this afternoon to put another coat of paint on the rails around the porch. They were supposed to be here this morning. It is now almost 3pm and they aren’t here yet, but will allegedly be here in around thirty minutes. That’s great. But…we have a strong line of storms that is going to start pushing through the area at around 5:30pm. Which puts us right back at square one.

May 6^th

 The painter managed to finish in time to let everything dry before we got pounded by more storms last night. It is a typical pattern for this area in the spring. Once a week or so, sometimes more, it’ll be hot as hell all day and then a massive line of fast moving storms will blow through around sundown. Thankfully we are far enough south that the weather has usually started to break up by the time it gets to us, so we avoid the hail that often accompanies it. At least now, with the new roof, things are a little more secure. Though I’m sure that if it got damaged, the insurance would figure out another way to deny it. And on that front, still no word from them in regards to the additional documentation they submitted. The documentation was submitted on April 16^th. I emailed them to check the status and they said it was “in review” on April 28^th. (Funny how it took less than a week to deny the claim but they are dragging their feet with the review). I’ll send another email next Tuesday and tell them that if I haven’t gotten an update by the end of the week, I’ll be turning it over to my attorney. It is bullshit that I have to do all this for a $7500 claim which even their own adjuster said was wind damage. Now, I’m going to write my 1302 final exam.

I got excited earlier today because I had a call from a 512 area code. I knew it would be the insurance. It was! But all they said was that the claim had been forwarded to a different department to review and that I would have a decision in two weeks. That’ll be six weeks since I submitted the additional documentation and close to two months from the time of the original claim. I guess I should just be happy they haven’t said no yet, but I’m sure they’ll say no in two weeks. The important thing is that it is fixed. The bad thing is that I need the insurance money to be able to replace the wiring. Patience is a virtue though…or so I’ve been told.

So I finished the 24 episodes of Love in Chains. I’m hooked and eagerly went to start Season 2. That’s when I discovered Amazon’s tactic! Season Two is not free for Prime Members and instead, costs $19.99. Of course I paid it! Like I said, I’m hooked!

May 7^th

 And just like that, another week has gone by. Time is passing pretty quickly. Yesterday evening, I learned that I was nominated to be the Task Force to Re-Open the College. I guess we will come up with a phased plan for re-opening. I guess we’ll be meeting via BB Collaborate or doing everything by email. I have a sneaking suspicion that my inclusion is due to the email I sent back before Spring Break with a laundry list of things we should be doing to prepare for what ended up becoming a reality. That coupled with the fact that I am unable to say no when asked to handle something or do something work related. It was the same way in the fire department. I always ended up doing extra stuff (for no extra pay, mind you) when asked. I guess I’m of the mind that if it has to be done, it may as well be me doing it.

My final exams are made and I’m caught up with grading for now. It’s all over but the crying. I am fairly certain that, with all our students taking all their finals online, that Blackboard will crash at some point next week. My guess is that it will go down around 8pm on Wednesday when every student tries to log in and complete every final at the last minute. (The deadline is 11:59pm on Wednesday the 13^th). Blackboard is a great course delivery platform, but it does tend to be a little buggy and it has a tendency to crash during periods of peak usage. That’s the nature of the beast, but we’ll make the best of it since that is all we can do.

I cannot begin to tell you how ready I am for the semester to be over. It’s not that I have big plans for the summer or anything. I’ll still be socially distanced at home. It was a bad semester for me before The Rona, and it didn’t really get any better as time passed by. Next week will be a headache, for sure, but once I’ve submitted grades on Thursday morning, I can finally breathe a sigh of relief. I’ll take that weekend (15^th through the 17^th) to mentally switch gears, and then I’ll dive into writing the first draft of Dark Raven on the 18^th. Getting lost in Imperial Russia and swept up in the Revolution is just the ticket to put a taxing semester behind me. Who knows, maybe I’ll run into my Машка or my literary crush Aksinia. On that note, your homework assignment for the summer is to read Quiet Flows the Don and The Don Flows Home to the Sea. They are technically one book, but were published as two when translated into English. There is no need to write a book report for me though, just read them and enjoy them, as I have many, many times.

Я люблю тебя, мой голубоглазый ангел.

Until next time, Dear Readers, take care of yourselves, and each other.

While keeping a safe distance, of course!

L.H.

April 24^th

 The exterior work on the house is almost done. All they have left to do is replace the rails on the front porch and paint the new rails and also the rails on the back porch (but we aren’t replacing those). They will be here tomorrow to take care of that. So it will be a somewhat welcome respite for the noise. I have to say, the paint job looks really good. This morning, I walked out to the street to take a look. A few people driving by stopped to say how nice it looked. Even the local meth addict was impressed with it. It’s quite the face lift for the old gal. The house was built in 1932 and turned 88 this year. From outside, it looks like a brand new house. Inside…well, that’s a different matter entirely.

There is increasing chatter in some of the college faculty groups I frequent made up of faculty from all over the country about what the fall semester will look like. As it stands, my college has made the decision that all summer classes will also be online, but no word on the fall yet. That’s okay, since the fall is still quite a ways off and there is plenty of time to make that decision. I’d wager my college will make it by mid-July, and a lot can change in between now and then, both good or bad. I suppose it is always like that though. I quit making long term plans after I got hurt. Now, I take things day by day. In a way, it makes life a little more manageable. I don’t know. Some may disagree with me. But that’s the way that works the best for me. Your mileage may vary somewhat.

The weather was damn near perfect today too! We had a nice breeze off the Bay and sitting on the front porch in the evening reminded me of why we bought this house in the first place. (Other than the fact that at the time, it was one of the few we could afford…)

April 25^th

 Today will be the last day of work! They arrived at 0800 and got after it. My hunch is they should be finished around noon, maybe two pm. Now, on Sunday, we have to reseal the decks out front and back, but we are doing that ourselves. Rather, my wife, my brother, and my nephew are doing it and I will supervise. (Since I am unable to bend at the waist, not to mention do a whole host of other things like twist, lift more than five pounds, etc, I am useless when it comes to doing anything physical which frustrates me beyond all measure since I had a very physical job before I got hurt).

Also, April 25^th is ANAC Day. It commemorates the landings on the beaches at Gallipoli during World War One. The best book I’ve read recently about the campaign is Gallipoli by Peter Fitzsimons. You can find it on Amazon here, but I actually enjoy the audiobook which you can find here. Eric Bogle told the story of the doomed landings in a song called And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, though I prefer the cover by the Pogues. Go here and give it a listen, but have a tissue handy. And while we are on the subject of songs written about the Great War, Bogle wrote another one called The Green Fields of France. Check out the cover by the Dropkick Murphys here.

This is the roughest day I’ve had physically since this whole Rona thing started. Words do not and cannot describe the pain. My whole back is locked up solid and my knees are throbbing too. I have some medicine, but I can’t take it until bedtime since it makes me fuzzy headed, and so I’ll be suffering all day long. I badly need something to do distract myself, but the pain makes it hard to think, focus, or concentrate. I can’t work on anything writing related at the moment, since I’m not only in this pain, but also stressing over where we’ll find the money to get all the wiring in the house replaced, not to mention waiting to find out if the insurance changed their mind and will pay. I sent an email to the claims handler at 1230 on Thursday, but have heard nothing since. I don’t know if that is a good or a bad thing. Initially, the adjuster came out on a Thursday and the claim was denied on Wednesday. We sent the additional documentation in on a Thursday, and now it has been over a week. I’m not holding out much hope. If they deny it again, we’ll probably end up taking them to arbitration. In thirty minutes or so, I’m going to lay down on some of my giant ice packs. Sometimes that helps. Sometimes that doesn’t.

Well…crap. There was ZERO chance of rain in the forecast for today. ZERO. And as soon as they had the new rails built for the front porch and were ready to start painting, what happens? A fucking thunderstorm. Lightning. The whole nine yards. I doubt they’ll be able to finish today, so maybe tomorrow or more likely Monday. Damn weather guessers. I wish I had a job where I could be wrong half the time. Imagine if half the patients we touched in the fire department died. Or we could only put out a fire half of the time. Or if I entered the wrong final grades for half my students. When I was a kid, we had a local weather guesser come and talk to my elementary school. When I went home, I told my grandfather that I wanted to be a weatherman when I grew up. He said, “There’s only two kinds of people who try to predict the weather on the Southeast Texas coast. Newcomers and fools. And you’ve lived here all your life.” So to the fire department I went.

April 26^th

 They managed to get the first coat of paint on the porch rails despite the rain, but they’ll have to come back either today or tomorrow, probably tomorrow, to put on another coat or two. That said, it is basically finished and looks great. I haven’t been paying much attention to the latest news on The Rona apart from the occasional headline. In the early days, I followed the headlines about the virus quite closely. In fact, I started paying a lot of attention to it in January, long before most people here had even heard of it. We started taking steps towards managing in a potential lockdown scenario in mid-February. Thus my wife and I were well prepared. That said, I kind of got burned out with the constant news coverage starting in mid-March. It’s odd that I paid so much attention to this story to begin with since I swore off watching the news years ago. I find it better for mental health that way.

I finished Season One of The Sopranos yesterday morning. It was pretty good and definitely well written. Still, as I mentioned in a previous entry, mafia movies/shows aren’t really my thing. Instead, I’ve turned to Boardwalk Empire. I’ve seen the first season before. The fashion and period music alone are enough to highly recommend it. Did you know that Steve Buscemi was a New York City firefighter before he became an actor? He spent four years with Engine 55 in Little Italy. And then, after 9/11, he returned the day after the attacks and spent two weeks working at Ground Zero recovering remains. He wouldn’t let the media take any photos of him, and so a lot of people at the time didn’t know about it. Once a firefighter, always a firefighter.

I’ve seen some people talking about how you should spend the time in quarantine learning a new skill. I’m learning how to colorize black and white photographs. As you can imagine, most of them are of my history crush, Mashka. But I’m also doing some old school firefighter photographs and even my grandparents’ wedding photograph. It is kind of fun, though some photos lend themselves better to the addition of color than others. Although honestly, I think there is something hauntingly beautiful about old black and white photos.

There are a lot of period dramas on Netflix and Amazon in series format. You have period crime dramas like Boardwalk Empire and Peaky Blinders. You have period family dramas like Downton Abbey. You have alternate history dramas like The Man in the High Castle and The Plot Against America. Not to mention the myriad of period war dramas such as The World On Fire and many, many others. Do you know what we don’t have any of? Period firefighting dramas! Imagine, you could combine it with a crime thriller (arson, perhaps) and have it set in late 19^th Century with horse drawn equipment, or, for heightened drama, in the late 1910s as horse drawn equipment is phased out and replaced by motorized apparatus. If you look across the whole scope of television (including Amazon and Netflix), there haven’t really been all that many firefighting dramas, mostly because of the expense. Or at least, not all that many when compared to police/crime dramas. And, historical dramas are even more expensive due to sets, costumes, etc. But it would be really cool to one day see a period firefighting piece. Don’t look at me though. I’m not a scriptwriter. I just do books and blog posts and shit.

April 27^th

 The painters haven’t show up to do the second/third coat on the porch rails. I guess I’ll have to call the contractor this evening. But it’s nice having a day with no work going on. Yesterday, my wife and my brother did a bunch of yardwork. I had another electrician out today to give me a second estimate (it will be emailed to me later) and I am having a third come out tomorrow morning. That’s the government employee in me…get three estimates before you make a decision! For example, when we had our HVAC replaced in 2017, the first company to quote the job quoted me a price of nearly 13K (for a 900 square foot house)! My neighbor suggested another company, and their quote was just below 8K. When I asked that company why their quote was so much lower than the first company, the technician took a look at the original quote and said that the first company wanted to replace all of the duct work which wasn’t necessary. So you can guess who I went with!

I think our governor is supposed to be giving a public statement at 1430 hours talking more about his plan to re-open the state, despite our issues with testing. I’ll give it a pass. There are lots more interesting things on TV to watch at this point than another self-congratulatory press conference. Politicians standing in front of the cameras talking about how good a job they are doing every time there is a crisis gets on my nerves. That would be the equivalent of me giving a news conference and praising myself every time I grade something. Or the firefighter me giving one and singing my own praises every time we ran a call. Speaking of grading, I think I may be behind on some of that at the moment.

April 28^th

 We had another electrician out today. He gave us some slightly better news. He said that we don’t need to get the panel replaced and to rewire the house would cost around $7500. That’s not a bad price and is doable IF the insurance reimburses us for the roof. He said it would take around three days. The bad news is that he thinks that they would still have to cut patches in the sheetrock to run the wire. This would mean that eventually, we’d have to float it and paint the inside of the house, which we will do at some point in the future anyway. Until then, it isn’t like we host lavish dinner parties or anything. The only people that ever set foot in our house are relatives or very close friends, and that is a rare occurrence anyway. So we will probably go with this company IF the insurance pays. I did get an email from the claims handler this morning and she said that it is “in review,” but I guess it has been in review since April 16^th or 17^th. So that’s a lot of reviewing.

So I’ve starting reading (actually listening on Audible) to Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy by Max Hastings. He is an esteemed historian of World War Two, though he has written on other subjects, including the Korean War. It is interesting to hear the story from an outside point of view, as most of the Vietnam War books that I have read are written by Americans. Hastings did spend time in Vietnam as a reporter during the War, but he notes in his introduction that the book contains none of his own personal reminisces as he wants the book to be a full history, not a memoir. Fun Fact: Many years ago, I had the pleasure of befriending a veteran of the French Foreign Legion who had fought at Dien Bien Phu. I actually find the French War in Indochina fascinating, though it doesn’t get much coverage in American books. If you are likewise interested in the roots of our involvement in Vietnam, check out Street Without Joy and Hell in a Very Small Place by Bernard Fall. The first book was written in 1961 and, if our own government would’ve headed the warnings contained therein, might have prevented our own debacle in Vietnam. Fall covered the French war as a reporter and returned to cover American involvement. He was killed by a landmine in 1967. Fall was dictating notes into a tape recorder when he stepped on the mine, which captured his last words.  “We’ve reached one of our phase lines after the firefight and it smells bad—meaning it’s a little bit suspicious… Could be an amb—”. I don’t know how I ended up here, but to return to my original point, check out Max Hastings’ book. It’s very good. (And read Falls’ books too, for that matter). And if you are interested in the full history of the French Foreign Legion, check out The French Foreign Legion by Douglas Porch.

So I finally got the quote from the company that came out yesterday. 17K which is completely ridiculous for a 900 square foot house. I’m okay with a plan to upgrade the wiring now and wait until later to do the panel, but honestly, I think if we are going to do it, it might be a bigger cost and inconvenience up front, but less down the road if we get it all done. We have decided to go with the first company which quoted us 11K, but that is conditioned upon getting the insurance reimbursement and securing the funds to pay the remainder ourselves. If the insurance doesn’t reimburse us, then there is no way we can afford it and we will just have to take our chances.

April 29^th

 It’s a good thing that we got the roof fixed. We had a strong line of thunderstorms move through around 0500. Very high winds, lightning, and heavy rain. Thankfully, we did not have any hail. (How messed up would that be? Get a new roof and then have it damaged a week later). I didn’t sleep all that well last night, I guess I was nervous with the knowledge that we had storms inbound. Funny…I never worried about the roof when we had the old one, but now that we have a new one, I do. That makes no sense, but human beings aren’t necessarily rational by nature, so there’s that. I’ve mentioned before that the college has made the (correct) decision to move all summer classes online. We are waiting for word on the fall semester, but I image it will be a few months until we find out. For the time being, I’m not making any advanced plans for the fall until I know for sure.

I’m still not planning on getting out of the house any time soon, apart from my doctor appointment on Friday. I fear that the governor’s rush to re-open the state in order to ingratiate himself with the political leadership in Washington will lead to dire consequences for a lot of people. Our per capita testing ranks in the bottom five in the country, so acting like we don’t have many cases (when we are still adding over 800 new cases a day) is gross negligence, in my opinion. Sure, the economy is suffering. But it’ll suffer a whole lot more if The Rona really blows up and reaches the dire predictions in the death toll made in mid-March. The reason why the hospitals in this state haven’t been overrun with patients is because people have followed the stay at home orders. Lifting them, while perhaps giving a short term benefit, may have serious consequences in the long term. But I could be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. Time will tell.

April 30^th

 Today is hair cut day! I ordered a set of clippers from Amazon when I realized I wouldn’t be going to the barber shop any time soon. I last got my hair cut in mid-January, right before the semester started. Normally, I get it cut every 8 weeks and I had planned on going to get a trim on the Saturday before we returned from Spring Break. As we all know, that didn’t happen. So now I am at 14 or 15 weeks since my last cut and my hair is longer than it has been since the 1980s. Since I normally keep it short, it is interesting to see what color it is. It’s actually lighter than I thought it was, though there is a bit more gray in it than I’d like to see. The gray hairs come from being married to a redhead. I have an outing scheduled today too! It is a quick trip to the pharmacy drive thru to pick up my acid reflux medication. Unfortunately, I’ll have to make another trip after tomorrow to pick up the prescriptions that come with my doctor appointment, but I need the acid reflux medication for tomorrow morning before the appointment, so I can’t wait.

I still haven’t heard back from the insurance company about reimbursing us for the cost of the new roof. It is amusing, in a way, that it took less than a week to deny the claim, but it has now been two weeks since we submitted the additional documentation and they haven’t said a word. Normally, I’d say that no news is good news, but that usually isn’t the case with insurance. The longer it takes, the more likely it is that they are coming up with more reasons to deny the claim. Whatever. At least the roof is fixed. That is the important thing.

Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

From a proper distance, of course.

L.H.