Ryan's COVID-19 Chronicles

We had quite the busy weekend, such that it felt even more full than the three-day-weekend I took last week. The weather cooperated for the most part, which helped a lot. My partner and I, with the help of her father, were able to make some real progress on expanding our vegetable garden and even erect a brand new storage shed. Pictured: Our daughter, the foreman, inspects my father-in-law's progress on the shed. While I was in charge of watching our daughter, I was even able to take her out on a run using our running stroller for the first time! It was really rough on my arms and definitely more difficult without being able to actually use them to keep my momentum, but she kept shouting "WEEE!" during the run so I'd call that 100% worth it. Beyond that, there was a lot of playtime with our daughter, good food eaten, and many laughs had. There were several moments of the weekend where it was incredibly easy to forget that we're...

I've gotta say that the four-day work week feels just about perfectly balanced with the three-day weekend I just had. We should really consider switching to this kind of schedule as a society sometime. The weather still hasn't quite been cooperating, unless you count that I needed it to rain for my early spring weed & feed mix to be more effective. Of course fortunately my partner and I got a lot of our big springtime outdoor work done back when it was warm for a week and it's not like we can really go outside anyway. Aside from all the beautiful and adorable growth of our daughter, the biggest news of this week is that we (but mostly my partner) painted our big hallway in the color that will eventually cover the majority of our house. We really like how it turned out, which is good because we bought a five-gallon bucket of that paint so we're pretty committed at this point. Here's a before and after photo: As far as mental states during a...

I am fortunate enough that although I'm still very busy at work, my employer has been encouraging everyone to take some time off when possible. As such, I took yesterday off of work so that I could have a three-day weekend with my family, and I'm so glad that I did. Saturday was just about perfect. My partner and I awoke from a good night's sleep feeling well-rested and ready to enjoy the day, which promised a high of 57F and sunny weather. We made homemade biscuits and gravy with cheesy scrambled eggs for breakfast. We played with our daughter for a bit, did some house chores during her impressively long hour and a half nap, had ham sandwiches using some of my parents' delicious leftover Easter ham, went to the city drop-off site to dispose of our yard waste, and then I played with my daughter outside while my partner dug out a corner of our yard to turn into a rock garden. Also, earlier that day we had talked to my parents about the health precaut...

So it turns out there's not much to blog about when nothing new happens. Go figure. Complacency is definitely setting in. Working from home, my partner not working, and not seeing people is feeling normal now. It snowed for a bit yesterday afternoon, then the sun came out and melted it all, and then it snowed again and stayed snowy overnight. So that was weird. I haven't been out for a run since my 5K in large part because the weather has decided not to cooperate. I know it's only temporary but it's a real bummer to have these cold days come back after getting a glimpse of what a beautiful spring week could be. The warm weather went a long way toward things feeling kind of okay. However, in good news: we've got a new brick fire pit on our patio to replace the store-bought metal one that rusted away over the winter! It was a gift from my in-laws, constructed by my father-in-law who's always eager for a project. He also finished constructing the ...

Well here we are at our first holiday in quarantine: Easter. In previous years my partner and I would first have brunch at her parents' house and then dinner at my parents' house. In both cases we would fill up on delicious food while enjoying the company of our family, hopefully while also enjoying some pleasant spring weather. We knew things would be different this year since our daughter is a year old, but of course we didn't anticipate a worldwide pandemic and quarantine. Fortunately we're still able to go to my in-laws' house because they're part of our 5-person quarantine group, though it will be with a few fewer guests than usual and for dinner instead of brunch. Unfortunately, although neither of my parents are working right now and are therefore not exposed to strangers every day, they're still outside of our 5-person quarantine group. We won't be able to see them or my brother and grandma for Easter, and I won't be able to e...

This week has been going pretty well so far. My partner is killing it as a full-time mom and she even used her free day yesterday (our daughter is still going to be cared for by her grandparents on Wednesday mornings) to do some room painting, cleaning, organizing, and other productive stuff. I try to check in with how she's doing mentally pretty frequently and it sounds like she's enjoying the extra time with our daughter and the opportunity to get some things done around the house. Our daughter herself seems to be growing so much and living her best life every single day. It's a real treat to be able to leave my home office for a minute to see her whenever I want to, because her joy is infectious and she makes me so proud. As for me, I've definitely had some rough moments mentally this week. In particular, I had a tough morning on Monday just worrying about everything, and yesterday's blog post was tough to write because the gravity of the situation–even this ...

With 1,927 confirmed deaths yesterday alone, COVID-19 is now the #1 leading cause of death in the United States. For reference, heart disease is responsible for 1,774 deaths per day and cancer is responsible for 1,641. That number in itself is a tragedy, but the unfortunate fact is that it's growing every single day. In fact, the total number of confirmed  deaths by COVID-19 in the US alone is currently 12,675. It's hard to even imagine or begin to sympathize with a number, which is why I'm going to share this person's story that really affected me as well: "My friend's dad died of it. Relatively healthy guy in his late 50's. Mild symptoms, worse symptoms, tested, hospitalised, put in ICU, put into a coma, dead. All in the space of 7 days. It really shook me up and made me realise how serious it is. The guy is only 25 and still living with his parents, my heart breaks for him." - SerSonett This is not just the flu. This is not going away an...

As a follow up to yesterday's post, I did indeed run the Milwaukee Marathon Virtual 5K race yesterday and I wasn't totally alone–my partner and daughter came with me to go for a walk around the park and cheer me on! I'm proud to say that it went very well! I ended up not only running faster than I have been recently (which was my goal), but I also ran 5K in a personal record time of 25 minutes and 44 seconds! In all, because my measuring of the route was imperfect, I actually ended up running a total of 3.28 miles in 27 minutes and 10 seconds, which actually itself would have still been a personal record for a 5K run. Yeah, I'm still bummed that the full event was cancelled because of this COVID-19 pandemic, but I and my lovely, supportive family managed to make it a special event regardless. Stay healthy and sane! -Ryan

My brother was nice enough to sign me up for my first public 5K race as a gift this past Christmas. The Milwaukee Marathon 5K race was scheduled for April 11th until it was cancelled and converted into a virtual race in the early days of the US pandemic. "Virtual race" means that each racer is to pick a time and place that is convenient for them to run, run the distance they signed up for at that chosen time and place, and submit their finishing time (on the honor system) to receive a certificate of completion. I decided early on that I wanted to run my 5K sometime around when the race was originally scheduled. I also wanted to do it somewhere different than where I regularly run to make it feel somewhat special. This weekend I took to planning the details. Using plotaroute.com  I searched for areas I hadn't run before that seemed ideal. For me, an ideal route has to meet as many of the following criteria as possible: Is nearby Is relatively flat Doesn't...

As you might recall, one of the items on our quarantine projects list is to clean up the yard. Well, seeing as the sun was shining, the temperature got up to around 48F, and we don't have much else going on right now, that's the task we focused on this weekend. Basically that meant raking the lawn, clearing the patio, and looking up how to go about bringing our patchy back yard back to life this year so that it can be a safe and lush place for our daughter to play. While we were at it, I adjusted the outdoor lights I put up recently so that they hang more evenly and my partner cleaned the equipment on our jungle gym so that our daughter can enjoy it for the first time. Overall it's been another fun, productive, and mostly carefree weekend! I'm curious to see how the week goes now that my partner will be home parenting full-time. To try and make the prospect of not working sound more fun for her, I've started calling it "maternity leave part two...

This morning I came across this article  reporting on how people in Jalandhar, Punjab are now able to clearly see a section of the beautiful Himalayan mountain range from their homes 143 miles away for the first time in their lives–and historically for the first time since WWII–because of the lockdown. This echoes the story that went viral a few weeks back about the Venice canals returning to their natural clarity. Except while the Venice canals merely look prettier but are not necessarily healthier with reduced human intervention, the Himalayan mountains have been revealed specifically by the reduced amount of garbage being pumped into the air. Consider it this way: those mountains should be visible to this town all the time, but the younger residents didn't even know what they were missing because of how gradual the change has been over the last 75 years. It's stuff like this that makes climate change so infuriatingly difficult to talk to people about–few people seem...

Whether it's because things haven't peaked as quickly as I worried, or because I'm pretty good at adapting, or because the fear and uncertainty were just too much to handle, I've spent this whole week feeling pretty chill about the COVID-19 pandemic. I also feel kind of guilty about feeling chill about it. Of course, the whiplash of first getting back into our routine with sending our daughter to her grandparents' house for the mornings only to find out the very next day that my partner won't be working for a while has been stressful. However, as far as my fear of society breaking down and loved ones dying from a viral plague goes, I just haven't been thinking or worrying about it lately. As I said, this is probably because the pandemic hasn't come knocking on my door yet, or because it only took me two weeks to adjust to the new way of living, or because my brain just decided it couldn't handle the worry and decided to block whatever chemical c...

For the first time in a while, the weather forecast doesn't look very depressing. It looks like we're going to have temperature highs of at least 48F and the low is only going to just barely approach freezing a few more times, with only a few days of rain in the near future. This is much-needed, since the COVID-19 pandemic has otherwise had everyone stuck indoors. Of course it would be nicer if we could get outside and actually do things  in the nice weather, but I'll take it for what it's worth. I watched a news clip where a local police captain talked about how people are encouraged to get outside while complying with social distancing rules. "As this goes on longer and longer and people understand what it's about, we will increase our enforcement, and if people are blatantly violating the order, we will make arrests and issue citations," Zalewski said. It makes me wonder if, as the weather improves, there's going to be a point ...

I have two sad stories to share today. Last night our dog found a nest of baby bunnies in one of our outdoor planters. One was sticking out of the nest, not moving. Given the freezing nights and rain we've had recently it didn't seem likely that the others would be in great shape either. I called the humane society to see if there was anything I could or should do to help, and the person there walked me through how to check each bunny and had me send a photo of their bellies to see if they'd been fed by their mother recently. Only one seemed alive, and only just barely. I was told it probably wouldn't last the night. Unfortunately it did not. I work full-time at a tech company that provides resources to insurance brokers and my partner works hourly at an HR company on a team that handles HR for a big health insurance provider. Given the economic downturn, we've both been thankful that we work in industries that serve one that's staying busy ...