Ryan's COVID-19 Chronicles

We had a pretty big weekend, by which I mean we had a pretty big Saturday and then it's been raining constantly ever since. On Saturday I made two trips to the dump for free mulch, my partner finished putting together our new flower garden (aside from a few touches we hope to add later). Then we planted vegetables in our newly expanded garden on the side of the house. Followed by similarly planting a few final vegetables and herbs in our repurposed garden beds in the back of the house. Somehow during all of this we also managed to have fun with our daughter, who herself managed to be productive by helping us do some digging. It was honestly one of the most fun days I've had in a while, which was definitely needed after all the crazy stuff going on right now. While Sunday wasn't quite as exciting, my partner did manage to paint another hallway of the house while I enjoyed some quality father-daughter time, which was great! Furt...

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...

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...

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 ...

Last night I played Team Fortress 2 with two of my friends from the Vertigo Gaming Inc. team for two hours. We had been talking about doing this for a while as a way to hang out despite the distance between us, and while we were slow to pull the trigger at first, the pandemic obviously made that idea all the more appealing. As I learned, online gaming with friends is a great way to feel less isolated. Being able to talk and interact, even within the confines of a video game, felt very freeing compared to the last two weeks. Definitely give it a shot if you haven't yet. In keeping with our promise from yesterday, my partner and I still avoided the news today. We know things are bad, and reading about exactly how bad they are without being able to do anything about it isn't going to do any good. We did our best to make this just like any other weekend. My partner applied more plaster and painted the bathroom wall to finish that project, we blew bubbles for our daughter...

Today, in addition to vowing to stay away from the news, my partner and I decided to tackle some of our long-overdue house projects from the Quarantine Projects list . For my partner, that meant scraping the paint and plaster off the slightly water-damaged wall in our bathroom. Then, after cleaning up the mess on the floor, she applied the first coat of fresh plaster—the final steps will have to wait for another day. For me, that meant hanging up two strands of outdoor all-season lights over our back patio—but not before unwrapping and screwing in every individual light bulb, which was kind of annoying. Oh well, the end result looks nice, if a bit uneven (I'll fix that later, I swear). Our daughter, however, is fortunate enough to not have any house projects. She just got to enjoy some indoor bubbles. Overall it's been a pretty productive day. Plus, staying away from the news helped us keep focused and relatively sane. We'...

Here we are at the end of week two of self-isolation and it's already been more dramatic than I originally expected. So much has changed, and yet everything is the same. One thing that has been helping my partner and I get through these two weeks is  Ben Gibbard's Live From Home , a virtual concert series in which Ben Gibbard (lead member of Death Cab for Cutie) performs songs and answers fan questions online every single night. He even debuted a new and incredibly appropriate song called "Life in Quarantine" during one of these shows. It's kind of surprising just how comforting it is. Similarly, yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my favorite band, Nine Inch Nails, recorded and released for free two long-overdue sequel albums to their 2008 instrumental album Ghosts I-IV, titled "Ghosts V: Together" and "Ghosts VI: Locusts," to help fans get through these unique times. While the only thing that we've done to reall...

Wisconsin's "Safer at Home" order went into effect today. The gist of it is that we should stay home unless it's absolutely necessary to travel, such as for groceries. Fortunately, "essential travel" includes to care for minors (under definition 15b) and "essential activities" includes taking care of others (under definition 11e) so for now my partner and I are still driving our toddler to and from her grandparents' house for childcare in the mornings. It's a decision that my partner and I talk over at least once every single day and will no doubt continue to reassess each day of the forseeable future. Here are the points that it always comes down to: Reasons against: Nobody wants anyone to get sick. Symptoms take two weeks to show and some people are completely asymptomatic but still infectious. What if we're being stupid? Reasons for: All of us are taking every possible precaution with cleanliness and health. None of...

Today the governor of Wisconsin has announced the "Safer At Home" order. Basically everyone needs to stay home and all non-essential businesses need to shut down for a month starting tomorrow. This is good for helping to stop the spread, of course, but it's upsetting that there's nothing similarly intelligent happening at the national level. I'm getting sick of being embarrassed about my country. We have more resources than others could dream to have and yet our leaders repeatedly ignore them. That's absolutely unforgivable in times like this. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about the pandemic right now that I don't quite know how to express. I don't even really know how to feel about it. Should I be thankful that everything in my bubble is relatively alright for the time being or terrified that the WHO says the USA is on track to become the epicenter of the pandemic? Are the people I care about going to be okay or is that a dumb question to e...

Like many of you, I find myself with an abundance of time essentially trapped at home. This is especially difficult because spring is finally here, meaning that after an entire winter of waiting, the zoo, farmer's markets, and even going out in comfortable weather to lunch at a restaurant are still elusive activities. This isn't so bad for my family during the week because we've got a toddler who keeps us on a pretty tight schedule that hasn't changed since the pandemic. The weekends, however, are another story. We have a family zoo pass and a membership at the local children's museum, both of which we were looking forward to using as soon as spring arrived and the risk of catching the seasonal flu passed. Both are closed, along with—hold on let me just double check this fact—just about everything else that's fun. But even if they weren't closed, the fear of catching anything from anyone at this point is enough to keep us home. Don't get me wrong...