With the radical changes our society – and the world – have experienced over the past few weeks, I have to wonder if we will ever reach a state of what we once considered normal. As data is acquired, projections of the pandemic severity are changing daily, mostly bringing more positive news. There’s still a lot of missing information and I’m sure things will continue to change.

We’re practicing social distancing, mostly keeping to ourselves. One friend here in the Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort, Ginny, is quite the seamstress. Ginny made facemasks for us. The first one she gave me was cloth with two cloth tie-straps. With the mask in hand, I drove to Home Depot, donned the mask and went inside.

I was looking for a home central air conditioning filter element. Ginny wanted to modify the face masks with a pouch to hold a section of paper filter made from a MERV12-rated air conditioning filter element. Home Depot doesn’t use the common MERV rating system for their filter elements – they have their own efficiency ratings. Their filters come with efficiency ratings of four, seven, nine and 10 – at least that’s what I found at the store I was at. The two highest levels, nine and 10, claim they will filter and trap virus carriers. I bought a large level 10 filter and gave it to Ginny.

Ginny also needed elastic to make straps – the cloth tie-straps are labor intensive to sew. Apparently elastic is in short supply right now. Donna heard about making stretchy straps from pantyhose so she donated a pair to Ginny. Ginny made us new masks with a pocket to hold a three-inch by four-inch section of paper filter material with stretchy straps to hold the mask over our ears made from the pantyhose. It’s brilliant.

Ginny, along with a few other seamstresses here in the RV park are on a mission to complete 200 face masks by the end of the week for use by administrative personnel at Banner Health here in Mesa. Cheers to them!

Donna was doing a bi-weekly happy hour Zoom call with various family members – they’ve decided to make it once a week from now on. They sit at their computers with an adult beverage and converse for an hour or so.

Donna has also been getting out on her bicycle to keep in shape. Today she rode the Usery Pass loop. It’s a 25-mile loop from here that involves climbing up and over Usery Pass which includes a 9% grade over a 4-mile stretch. It’s a fairly demanding ride.

I’ve puttered around on a few projects here. Nothing too demanding, just minor things that need doing that I’ve been putting off. Donna gave herself a project. She wanted to change the clear glass shower surround. She had a plan to install an opaque covering on the glass. She ordered a cling film material that’s semi-opaque with a small square prismatic pattern on it. She did a great job installing it and is happy with the result. The photo doesn’t capture the rainbow of colors in the prismatic pattern.

I made a batch of jerky last week and it’s the best so far. I think I have the jerky recipe down after four iterations. Donna continues to feed me well. We’ve only ordered take-out once in the last three weeks. Here are a couple of dinner plates. The first one I actually prepared and cooked on the Traeger smoker grill. It’s wild Alaskan salmon filet with a mayonnaise-dijon mustard based glaze that also has fresh squeezed lemon juice and dried tarragon.

I cooked this entree the last time we went out nearly three weeks ago to Mike and Jodi Hall’s house. That was the first time I tried this glaze and although it was good, it didn’t present all that well. I wasn’t familiar with Mike’s wood pellet smoker grill – it’s not the same as my Traeger – and the temperature got away from from me making the glaze turn grayish.

The next dish is one Donna made before, but it’s been a while and it’s a favorite – chicken Gabriella.

The weather has been warm with highs reaching the low 80s. Tuesday evening we had clear skies and watched the International Space Station cross the sky from the northwest to the south of us.

The temperature was slightly cooler yesterday and a few raindrops fell after sundown. The next couple of days will be in the mid 70s and will only reach the upper 70s for the rest of the coming week. No complaints about that – it’ll get hot here soon enough.

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