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“Forty days and night,” it rained on Noah. I remember taking my first college class on the Old Testament and learning that the number forty was not to be taken literally, it meant a lot. For the first time in my life, I get it. Forty days and nights are more days and nights than I ever want to do in isolation or punishment. It is a lot.

While I have lived in Oregon since 1996, we have had a few brushes with forty days and nights of rain, but unlike now and for poor Noah, we could go on vacation and out for dinner and see a movie and see a show. Flooding and moss build-up being the most significant risk and ruined gardening as you watching the rain beat the seeds for your garden out of the ground! We had choices.

And there was another saying, one only at Nike and only in a small part of the computer group, “We love Fridays, there are only two more working days left in the week.” Back during the time we replaced Nike’s main systems, we worked a lot of weekends to get computer systems ready by Monday. Our director, Rick, came in on Saturday to “catch-up.” He would work a half-day and then often another half-day on Sunday after church. It was his saying and we loved him for it. We would stop at his office and chat. Rick understood.

Now, with us all working at home it is hard not to keep going to “catch-up.” The days seem to filling-up with work with life being then put on hold. Yes, Susie sees me all the time now. She sees me sitting in a chair on video conferences. It feels like we are on the ark and I say, “Let’s go look at the bow and watch the waves, again.” Susie sleeps in on the ark.

I bring some order to chaos. I get up usually about six, make breakfast, take my medications, and read my email and the news before logging in on my shoe company computer. I have to take the Nike computer, open it, plug it, and logon–this is my “driving to work.” On the shoe company computer, I try to catch-up and respond to the crisis of the moment. I send out requests and give status. I then leave all of it and shower and dress (always shaving). Video conferences and calls and emails, oh my.

I often order lunch in the middle of the various meetings in the late morning, often turning off the video at a conference so I can order it online. Many meetings are status type meetings, and once you cover your part, you starting catching-up on other work, including ordering lunch. For me, I want to support our local eateries and so I usually have nice lunches delivered from my favorite local places.

I move to a different location in the house to eat my lunch. I usually have Bloomberg running all day. The finance news is interesting and important to me (401K and retirement earnings). While eating, I listen more carefully and read more news and emails that are for my home account. I check the virus number on how the death rate and infection rate are for the USA. I wait for the numbers to down. I imagine Noah often felt the same way with his doves.

The afternoon is when Susie gets up, once in a while she will get up in the morning. I have no reason to complain that she loses her morning as we can’t go anywhere and I think I would love to sleep in too. When she makes her appearance, I stop what I am doing for Nike and get her coffee (sometimes having to make more–why are my hands shaking, I drank all the coffee!) and ice water for her pills and something for breakfast. Work goes on with me reading and sending emails and doing processes and actual computer work. I will then get out something for dinner and even start it. Again, turning off the video and listening while I work a bit on dinner.

I often take a break in the afternoon if I am stressed. I go to the bedroom and read for half an hour. Often the phone rattles a lot and wakes me if I nod off. Usually, I am “reading” for about thirty minutes at a time. The phone is very busy with messages and news. CNN and the New York Times usually are reacting to the daily President Trump statements and make my phone jump!

I knock off work when meetings are done, and my issues can be put to bed. If I hit five, I try to stop working as I need to get dinner going. When I stop, I take the Nike computer, shut the laptop, and move it aside. This is my “drive home.”

I keep mostly to this pattern, hope I did not put you to sleep, and it keeps me healthy and sane. I try to slip in a trip to the store and a walk, but of late it has been 7/24. Maybe next week I can catch-up on that too.

So we can now say, “We love the fortieth day, as we have only that many more to go.”

Today was full of panic and chaos at work. My big issues were fixed and a new set of issues surfaced. It is like the game whack-a-mole right now.

Today was the first time I got to sleep most of the night. I had my phone under my pillow and it went off at only a few times. I slept in as I had no early video conferences. Of course, my software upgrade broke and we had to ask the vendor to fix it.

I was happy to make my own lunch. Poached eggs, two, on toast with canned corned beef hash fried. As we were working the break, I was poaching eggs and trying a most excellent repast. I broke a process and ate it while working.

(here is lunch sitting on my laptop keyboard with the messages on the issue on the screen)

The day ended with a huge department Zoom meeting, more than 100 people. Everyone had interesting backgrounds, mine the Doctor Who TARDIS control room. Most of the discussion was how proud leadership is of us as we continue to keep going. There is, a questions was asked, and ETA for us to return to our offices in Nike. At least forty days was implied.

I got Papa Murphy’s Take and Bake Pizza for today. I order it on my phone. Except they lost one of my pizzas. So I had to get close, all of us masked, to show them I had a real order. They re-made my lost pizza. I watched the process from the outside. They handed me my pizzas (masked and gloved). I told Corwin and Susie I risked my life for their pizza today. Beer and pizza today.

I took a nap, my usual reaction to beer and wine now. I got up and watched La Traviata on the Met Opera website. I missed the original broadcast years ago. The Met is showing one of its recorded operas a day on its site for free–I used to take Susie to the theater for these. Her mother Leta would be in Michigan watching too.

I hope to finish it tonight after I post this blog!

On Easter, we took picture of a bird’s nest in our door behind the wreath. The little eggs, despite being banged by the door open and closing (scrambled?), hatched. We have our small birds, and they will fly away before we will, just like what happened to Noah!

It was reported today that just under two-thousand people were taken from us by the virus in the USA. The Lord’s Prayer seemed the right choice for today.

I was working on the upgrade of software again all through the night into the day and into the evening. Someday this software will be done!

Lunch was Chef Boyardee spaghetti from a can–I had purchased a few cans when things looked a bit desperate in the stores. I thought I should finally eat it. It was exactly as I remember it. I told Corwin I might have to donate the other two cans.

I slept through the day between running steps for the software upgrade and some meetings. It has been three days and nights, but it is almost there!

Dinner I had delivered, KFC. And Corwin and both commented on how well made the chicken was this time. Undoubtfully the manger is running the kitchen now and wants to send out only excellent KFC. During the emergency, even KFC is taking this a bit more seriously.

I ordered some more robot parts while waiting for an update on the software. I was looking for something to allow me to control it. That was simple. I found the re-use of HAM radio technology to create a small two-way transceiver: SparkFun RFM69 Breakout (915MHz). This is a break-out board of the baseboard to give easy access to the pins using old school through-hole soldering. Sparkfun is still shipping, I looked at AdaFruit, and they are still only making items for the emergency–they are based in New York City. They make and now sell masks for local delivery.

I am reading Elric stories when I can’t sleep. I am in the middle of the second book in the series from Gollancz, Elric, The Fortress of the Pearl. I know I have read it before, but I do not remember much from this book. I am enjoying rediscovering Elric’s adventures. This book has him invading the dreams to free the victim of endless sleep with a, as usual, exotic beautiful women of strange power and skilled with a blade. I am about halfway through the book.

I only went out to get dinner and the mail today with all the chaos from work.

I received a cookbook from Milk Street Kitchens today. They had a special if you buy two, so one for me and one as a Christmas gift. Yes, I am getting ready for this virus stuff to ramp-down and for Christmas to come!

The Met Opera is showing its opera for free, a different one a day. I missed The Merry Widow with Reneé Flemming a few years ago. I managed to fit in the first act today.

Today the total deaths to the virus in the USA is reported to be higher than fifty-tousand. The total deaths reported from the virus for this Thursday in the USA is over two-thousand three-hundred. This is close to the number from the day before. The hymn to remember all of these people: Breathe on Me Breath of God.

 

This will a brief update. It is also late. I was interrupted.

I have worked all night and all day, and I am headed into the next night. I grab a nap when I can.

I spent Tuesday and all night Tuesday and the morning of Wednesday working.

I am tired, and it is hard to write. I am waiting for someone to reply back to my request, so I have a few minutes to write.

Today I ordered lunch from a Smaaken Waffle Sandwiches delivered. My sandwich was more like eating a sponge around some real food. Maybe not something you should have delivered. I had slipped in a nap late morning, having only a few hours of sleep overnight, so a waffle in the afternoon sounded good. It was not.

I continued to work on the issues at the shoe company and made dinner of beef ribs thinly sliced cross-cut. I marinated them in teriyaki sauce and did them on the gas grill. Perfect. I tried to make steak fries in the oven by slicing potatoes and roasting with salt and pepper. The fries were just average and a bit undercooked.

I am back online working and trying to contact the India team to take up the issue that happened at 9:00PM local time. I have another sleepless night coming.

Our weather was rain and more normal Oregon weather. Funny when you welcome back gray weather.

I received a new book today, Digging Up Armageddon, from one of my favorite authors: Eric H. Cline. This book is the re-telling of the 1920s dig at Megiddo. I visited the ruins of Megiddo in Israel in 1994 with Susie and a church group. The author’s lectures are online, highly recommended, and I loved his previous book 1177BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed. 

For my reading, this is another 1920s story and more homework for my Call of Cthulhu role-playing game writing. What is a real dig like in the 1920s? Looking forward to reading this and using it as a model for my own horror adventure. It will go next to my copies of 1926 reports on the dig at Stonehenge.  

The market was up today. Oil was the main discussion, and it appears that the panic is over, but there were a lot of money changing hands due to options trades. ETFs were also called out for causing some of the chaos over the last week. The president of the NASDAQ said that they are experiencing a large increase in options activity. I bet!

Today the reports show that more than two-thousand three-hundred Americans died from the virus this Wednesday. One of the hymns I can actually can sing for today: Lift High the Cross.

Today was a bit more stressful at work, as various items have come together to put me on a 7/24 call and work schedule. I am waiting for India’s day to start to work some more, and thus, I will be back at it early this morning. Another issue has been escalated to “very high,” and I am the contact for that too. Thus the chances for sleep tonight are low. But those are the breaks if you are an IT professional in today’s never-ending workdays at home.

This was contrasted by a card I received from my cousin’s daughter, Grace Bailey, and her soon to be husband. I had received a wedding invitation and was thinking of going to Michigan in June to attend. With the virus messing with all my travel plans, canceling trips to Australia and Florida, I had completely spaced the wedding! The card stated that the reception was postponed. The computer problems paled to this. My niece cannot have us there to celebrate her wedding.

I found a Christmas card, The Twelve Days of Oregon, crossed out Christmas and wrote in “Lockdown” and wrote a short note that I sorry about the virus canceling their event and that I was still working for Nike here in the center of the virus. I then wrote a decent check to Grace and sent it–I always write the check out to the gal. I hope the card, silly as it is, and the money will make her and Jeffrey happy and help with any expenses. I feel terrible that I had forgotten them with all the chaos.

And then to remind me of how silly I was, I fell out of my work chair. I dropped a pen on the floor and leaned over and the chair tipped and landed me on the floor and into a sharp edge of my desk. Yes, the computer architect of Nike cannot handle a pen and a chair.

It was so unbelievably stupid. I took a selfie sitting on the floor.

On the subject of stupid, the stock market is still going down, about three percent, as a reaction to oil prices. It seems, eyes-in-full-roll-mode, that oil is still being pumped and that there is no way to stop pumping it. Since we are not driving much and winter is over, the gas and heating oil use is down–I thought we knew this. Well, oil is still being loaded into tankers and pipelines, and there is no real way to store it. The price of oil is now about the cost of the barrel to put it in, $7USD, or so. And of course, that answer is not to shut down production but to give money to the oil industry to make up for the low prices they are getting. I think I should fall out of my chair again.

So the song for today is from Bob Dylan: I Used to Care But Things Have Changed. Bob’s most cynical song.

Lunch was from Wild Buffalo Wings, “Asian Zing” traditional wings and a kid’s cheeseburger with fries for Susie. I had that delivered. I made spaghetti and Italian sausage with Vodka sauce, from a jar, for dinner. We opened a bottle of wine from Purple Cow Vinyard, I said to Corwin and Susie, “We need to improve the quality of our drinking,” so we did. It was a 2010 bottle, and it is perfect. And that reminds me of this movie moment: This takes the sting out of being occupied.

The report is the worst so far in the USA. Over two-thousand eight-hundred people passed away from the virus today. I went with an Irish hymn: Be Thou My Vision.

 

 

This will be my shortest update.

I was up at 2AM and 6AM working on a computer problem.

This was followed by meetings all video conferences.

I am very tired.

My books on Elric are here today. I have already finished the first part of the first book. I forgot how much I liked Michael Moorcock‘s writing. I will go back to read some more soon. My favorite Doctor Who book is by Michael Moorcock–Pirates sailing solar sail ships in space: The Coming of the Terraphiles.

I had soup and garlic bread for dinner. I ordered from La Provence a Tuna Melt sandwich. Susie is having the French Onion soup that came with the sandwich for dinner. It was delivered.

I managed a walk today. The flowering apple trees are always bright in the spring. The apple trees here are very old and from the original farm that became all these houses. I have one, partially fallen, in my backyard. We would call these cider apples when I young in Michigan. Here is one near our street. It is planted in a straight line with the other Apple trees, a memory of the original orchard.

The Reedville Elementry School will not open until the fall. I walked by and miss all the noise and bustle of the school that is just a block away from our home. April should be the beginning of wrapping up the school year. The school wrote on their sign that they miss the families. They have food boxes for pick-up on Monday’s for folks who need help.

Tonight was also Dungeons and Dragons 5e online at Roll20 and the continuation of The Tomb of Horrors with my four players with eight-level characters. We played for just an hour and a half as I was so tired, and the adventure has a false ending that I managed to fool them with. We will start next week with them no longer fooled and a bit wiser (and ninth-level). Actually, Bill, one of the players, said he was happy that his imagined character did escape the legendary adventure with loot. Next Monday, the adventurers will again descend into the Tomb, knowing that they have the deadliest parts to come.

Oil did an unexpected thing today; it went to negative values. There is no storage left, and they are pumping it still and not refining it. According to the reports I watched, you cannot store oil for long and refined products age fast. Oil is priced by contracts, and apparently, investors sell the contracts before delivery except for today. There were no buyers this Monday, and the price crashed. Literally, you cannot give oil away, you have to pay them to take it. Once again, the price war and the virus at the same time have brought ruin to oil producers.

The stock market fell a bit today. At first, the USA market was fine and Europe closed up. The sudden and unintelligible stupidity it took to drive oil to negative prices confused the USA stock market, which fell more than two and a half percent. Just head shaking from me.

The reports show the virus took just short of two-thousand American lives today. There was also a mass shooting in Canada. We remember who we lost with an old hymn: Sweat Hour Prayer.