#StayHome Days 54-58 I feel busier than ever

I'm working in earnest on my Google Photos book this week. I've changed the introduction chapter 3 times! But I think I'm relatively settled on the chapter topics. Now I'm getting down to the details of writing and reviewing. Reviewing everything in the old version so as to delete what isn't valid any more, and writing about all the new features and changes in general. We skipped our YouTube show last week so we better do it this week. I've set the title to "What is Google Photos and how to use it" so I can stay on topic. Here is the link to the youtube show. Speaking of YouTube, our channel passed 6,000 subscribers this week. 

Venture out

I had a mammogram a while ago, and the results were inconclusive, so I had to schedule a follow up ultrasound. I postponed it once do to Covid-19 shutdown, but I didn't want to put it off too long. I know too many women who have had breast cancer and early detection is most important. I heard back in 2 days and it's still inconclusive - they believe it's just a benign cyst. So I'm scheduled again in 6 months. Any time I venture out of the house in this dark time, it's an experience. This office set up chairs outside, only 2 people in the waiting room. Everyone was wearing a mask.

Walking

It's a simple enough thing to do. We have a beautiful neighborhood with a road that goes around in a circle. The circle is just over a mile so it's a perfect walk. Why don't we do it every day? I can tell you that I was proud of us for walking twice on Tuesday. But then I have to admit that the second time was to get ice cream at the convenience store an extra block away. 

My Yeti

I think I mentioned in here that our Toastmasters club had a special meeting called "Tall Tales" last week. Making stuff up is not easy for me and I really wanted to do it. I was inspired by last week's speakers so I told my tale this week. Since we're on Zoom, the meetings are recorded and you can see my speech here. It's just over 7 minutes.

Homeland

I'm done. I watched the final episode of Homeland. Wow. I really did like that show, and the ending was superb. I won't talk about it in case it would be a spoiler for you. But I'll just say it's worth it.

Phone battery running down

It's amazing how much I use my phone. It does everything for me. No, I don't talk on the phone. I can go days without a call, but I run all my streaming video from the phone, cast to the TV. I play music with it. I still take some photos, and I read my kindle books. I keep my todo lists with it and send and read email and Facebook. I definitely take it with me when we walk - I want credit for those steps! Unless my hands are on the computer keyboard they're on the phone. It's kind of like a TV remote - I am controlling what I see on TV with it most all the time.

Bad news

Mon Covid-19 cases 1.38 million Deaths 81,378

Tue Covid-19 cases 1.4 million deaths 83,019

Wed Covid-19 cases 1.42 million deaths 84,705

Thurs Covid-19 cases 1.44 million deaths 86,248

Fri Covid-19 cases 1.47 million Deaths 88,031

My God! 88 thousand deaths in this country in 2 months. I cannot wrap my head around that. For comparison - 2,400 died at Pearl Harbor, 58,000 Americans died in all the years of the VietNam war. Yankee Stadium holds 50,000. And, this may not be even close to over. We are SOO lucky that we are financially able to stay home, and we have work to keep us busy here. 

Less bad news

We've been getting our groceries delivered from Publix, but they've been out of toilet paper for 2 months now, so Jim thought he'd check out Walmart. They have a process where you can order and then go pick it up and they had toilet paper in stock! That was Tuesday, the pickup was scheduled for Friday. Jim got a message Friday morning that they were out of toilet paper. 

   

#StayHome Days 51-53 Music, Food, Conversation

For several weeks now, Elliott Masie has hosted a Friday afternoon Empathy concert. I've always loved the way Elliott packages his extensive knowledge with kindness and understanding. Elliott is a big deal in the Learning, Technology, and Staff Training industry, but you'd never know it just by watching him. With his success in the industry, he branched out many years ago into 2 other fields: horse racing and Broadway productions. He is nothing if not eclectic! On his Friday Empathy broadcast (using Zoom by the way) he has thoughtful discussions with people, but the best part is the music from actors in his Broadway shows. It gets me up off the couch to dance around the room, and when it's a song I know - watch out - I sing my heart out.

 

Some notes I took from the conversation: 

• There's freedom in not knowing what is coming next. That's the way I felt about RVing.
• "Capture your stories"
• Disasters bring us together. 9-11 brought the country together, this is bringing the whole world together.
• The power to reveal who we really are.
• A time for your true colors
• Masie concert fills our heart ❤️

More music

When the Empathy concert was over, I wanted more music. I used my Samsung phone, opened up the YouTube music app and found my Chris' Favorites playlist. I cast it to the big screen TV to get our surround sound speakers and a bonus was that some of the songs included videos. This meant more dancing, singing, getting choked up. Jim even joined in. When the music video came on for The Beatles Hey Jude, there were several closeups of the young Paul McCartney's eyes. Wow - no wonder teenage girls screamed over him. It's either scream or melt. I was one of those screaming teenagers. Who else thinks we grew up in a time of musical greatness? Have you seen the movie Yesterday? It's about how empty the world would be without the Beatles' music. 

Cooking

Jim does 99% of the cooking around here, but I do have a couple items that are mine. One is butternut squash, and it was on the menu tonight. I take a whole squash and cut it up into little cubes. This is something I learned on YouTube :-) Once it's cubed, I sprinkle a bit of salt and pepper and toss it with a light coating of olive oil and finally just a drizzle of honey. Then it goes in the air fryer for 20 minutes and comes out perfect. Me cooking! I enjoyed being in the kitchen, listening to music, washing dishes, cutting up butternut squash. I think I get why Jim likes it so much.

Conversation

Over dinner, Jim and I had a great conversation about milestones during our lifetime. Good and bad... Moon landing, President assassinated, creation of personal computer and the world wide web, terror attacks of 9-11, election of a black president. All of those were huge, but they affected us countrywide, not planet-wide. This CoronaVirus pandemic is the only worldwide event in our lifetime. World war 2 was just before we were born. Mind blowing. Magnified by wine drinking :-)

Happy hour with friends

No, we didn't break social distancing rules, we used Zoom for a strictly social purpose this time. We met Kim and Don Green because of RVing. They founded a company called Harvest Hosts (which they have since sold) and attended many of the same rallies we did in order to promote it. We hit it off right away and enjoyed their company any time we got the chance. We've visited them at their home in Prescott, AZ and they've been here to our place in Fort Lauderdale. We would love to travel with them someday as they have the most adventurous spirit of anyone I know. They had just returned from several months in South America. They shipped their truck camper there, traveled all around and shipped it back. It was great to meet up with them even if only virtually. ... actually I discovered one advantage to virtual happy hours ... you don't have to drive anywhere after so you can have as much wine as you want!

Exercise

I was so proud of us on on Friday, we did our neighborhood walk twice, once in morning and once after dinner. A total of over 3 miles. But then we didn't move at all Saturday or Sunday. We didn't even open the front door.

Sunday was Mother's day. An aid at her Assisted Living Facility offered to video chat using WhatsApp. Chat isn't really a good description, she doesn't talk anymore, and she has no clue who I am when I'm standing beside her, let alone on a little phone screen. But it was still reassuring to see her.

Bad News

Fri Covid-19 cases 1.31 million Deaths: 77,727

Sat Covid-19 cases 1.34 million Deaths 79,373

Sun Covid-19 cases 1.36 million Deaths 80,539

Dow Jones is UP - wait you say, shouldn't stock market gains be listed under good news? Although it may be good news for big companies, it does not represent good news overall and especially not for small small businesses. Read this post in Reddit and see what you think. Why the stock market is going up even as unemployment goes up. 

Good news

The pandemic is teaching us that the world has to learn to work together.

Drone planting trees - this news is not related to the pandemic, it's just good news. It makes me hopeful for the future.

Day 48-49-50 #StayHome Down the rabbit hole

Too much of a good thing? If you love learning, like both Jim and I do, this stay home time is like heaven. Endless YouTube videos to learn whatever you want.

Both Jim and I are geeks and love learning.  He has several computers and mobile devices as do I, so when we have a hankering to see what the new Google meet is like, we can each jump on a meeting with one computer. Then, so as to have 3 or 4 users in the meeting, we can use other computers and other accounts to create a multiple person meeting and put it thru it's paces. 3 hours later, we look up and say "Where did the time go?" I haven't even started on the project I hoped to accomplish, but damn! it's so fun and satisfying to explore technology and learn new stuff. Jim and I also played a bit with the new Facebook Messenger for desktop. Both Google Meet and Facebook messenger for Desktop are supposed to give Zoom some competition for the online meeting market. From our day of experimenting, and our 3 years with Zoom, we still think Zoom is the winner hands-down. That doesn't mean we should keep our eye on these competitors, there might come a time one of them is a better choice.

Toastmaster meeting - Tall Tales

Our Earlybird Toastmasters meeting (at 7am) had a special format this week. We call it tall tales. I wanted to participate, but I'm just not good at making things up. I almost signed up to force myself to do it. If I'm not good at it, it just means I need to work on it right? Well ... I didn't, but I attended the meeting and was inspired by our speakers (liars) so I will give a story telling speech next week. Stay tuned - our meetings are recorded so, if I do OK, I'll post the recording next week.

Dermatologist Appt

My only health issue is skin cancer. I spent my teenage years here in Fort Lauderdale and I went to the beach every day. That was back before sunscreen. We used baby oil on our skin to get deeper tans. I'm paying for that now. I've had half a dozen surgeries on my face to remove basal cell and squamous skin cancers. So, I hate to miss a dermatologist appointment. I had one this week, they called to adjust my appointment time a bit, but they said it was ok to come in. Here's a sight you don't see very often .. an empty doctor's waiting room!

Google Photos Book

OK, I gotta get back to writing the next edition of my Google Photos book. I had promised to have it done and ready for purchase at Amazon by May 1. I missed that deadline. I've done a lot of work on it, but there's still a lot more to go. I have a need to see the big picture before I can focus on writing the details. So, I've been re-working the overall outline. Since the beginning, I remind myself about the different parts to teach of Google photos by using the acronym GEECS (kinda like geeks, get it?) G=Gather all photos E=Explore your photos E=Edit your photos C=Creations from your photos S=Share your photos. But there are a few pieces that didn't fit in there. My latest list is:

G-getting started and gathering all photos
E-explore (by date, by faces, using search etc)
E-edit (using Google Photos and Snapseed)
A-albums (lots to know about the one organizing tool we have in Google Photos)
W-workflow going forward, organize and backup
C-create and print
S-sharing
O-other (Lens, Chromebook, etc)

Anyone interested in discussing this can join the Facebook group "Learn Google Photos"

Bingeable Netflix / Amazon / HBO??

Oh no! I only have 2 episodes of Homeland left. What should I watch next? Really - I'm looking for recommendations.

Bad News

Tue Covid-19 cases: 1.23 million Deaths: 72,054

Wed Covid-19 Cases: 1.25 million Deaths: 73,667

Thu Covid-19 cases: 1.28 million Deaths: 76,421

Good news

Being forced to use technology like we are is revealing. One friend who works in IT at a hospital is now working from home, as is all the rest of the staff. He heard from his boss that the company saved SO much money because of this that it might become a permanent thing. Who knew? 

Another friend does a lot of computer coaching and is now doing that via Zoom. She says that she is finding it is even more effective than being there. She's seeing the student's screen and can coach them, but they have to do it. It's less intimidating for them to have her remote. They can easily take a break and come back. Good stuff.  

Loving all our photos displaying on our TVs around the house. Lots of memories of our travels all around us as we #StayHome

Day 45-47 Lifelong Learning

Jim takes course on Snagit and earns a certificate. I get the new Camtasia 2020 and started tackling learning the new features.

On Saturday we were booked to do a remote seminar for the APCUG's virtual tech conference. We taught how to use Chromecast to display Photo Albums from Google Photos on your big screen TV, then we showed how to use your smartphone to digitize photos from old photo albums. Of course then I'm inspired to go thru a few old albums and do just that. Here are a couple of gems from Christmas 1993. That is my sweet husband-to-be in the Santa suit :-)

When we teach, we learn. On Sunday, we had a Geeks on Tour members only meeting using Zoom. I was teaching how to make a blog, One question came up about inserting photos into a blog from Google Photos. If you then delete the photo from Google Photos, will it be gone from your blog? I hesitated on that one - it certainly used to be the case that the photos would be gone from the blog, but I think maybe that has changed. After the meeting I did my due diligence and conducted some testing. Yes, indeed, even though you're grabbing the photo from Google Photos, the process copies it to Google Album Archive. So, if you later delete the photo from Google Photos, it's still in the Blogger album in Google Album archive. It's a lot to understand, but it's actually very nice. 

I also learned something about Google sites from one of our members. Jack explained how he uses Google Sites to embed Google Photos albums into a web page. I tried it and, yes - it is really slick. It replaces about a half hour of work, to a couple of minutes. You can see what I mean on the 'Our Photo Albums' page here in this blog. For all the albums before 2020 I hace to manually grab one photo and link it to the album. If you click on 2020 photos, it takes you to a Google Sites page which only took a few minutes to put together. 

Bad news

Saturday Covid-19 Cases: 1.15 million Deaths: 66,766

Sunday Covid-19 Cases: 1.18 million  Deaths: 68,040

Monday Covid-19 Cases: 1.21 million Deaths: 69,921

Good News

Tough times bring neighborhoods together. There are 4 units - townhouses - in our building. One of our neighbors, Keith, is a party planner by profession. Understandably, all his work has been cancelled for the foreseeable future. That could be why he arranged a sidewalk socially distant happy hour for our building. It was fun, reminded me of many a happy hour at RV parks.

Days 41-44 #StayHome Escape

Jim has gone out in the car a few times since this lockdown started. He was using his dive neck wrap as a mask. I had nothing, so I made one out of paper towels, coffee filter, and rubber bands based on some YouTube videos. You can tell it's been a while since our haircuts too :-)

My first time in the car since this started! I finally made contact with someone at Mom's assisted living facility. Someone who cares for Mom. I asked the front desk to have someone call me - there's no direct number to the memory care wing?!? Sofia called me back, I've met her before. I asked if there was anything Mom needed and she told me shoes and socks. I ordered them from Amazon and they arrived on Monday, so Tuesday was the day to deliver them. I dropped off the shoes with someone who came to the door - no one is allowed in the facility except residents and employees. Sofia used WhatsApp to send me a photo:

Jim drove and after Mom's we went to the Grocery store. Still no toilet paper! Luckily we had a good supply when this all started, but that was 6 weeks ago. Jim succumbed to an impulse buy of pizza dough. He said that making a pizza has been on his mind ever since reading Nick's blog the other day. We also both fondly remember a neighbor inviting us to pizza a while back and they cooked it on the grill! So, here goes nothin' ...

The crust got a little blackened with the nice hot fire, but it was mighty tasty. He can try that again!

Thursday started out with our normal 7am Toastmasters meeting via Zoom. And Friday started with our normal 8:30 am zoom meeting with our technology mastermind group. We don't feel isolated at all. But, everything should be in moderation. One of our toastmasters members said she would be in Zoom meetings for 7 hours that day. Yikes, too much.

What the hell is a pile of quarters doing on the floor at the top of the stairs? It's an idea I got from reading a book, many years ago, about Charles Darwin called The Origin by Irving Stone. You'd think, in a book about Darwin, the most memorable part would have something to do with the voyages of his ship, the Beagle, maybe the part where he studied species on the Galapagos islands? No, all these years later, what I remember is a story about Darwin at home. He liked to walk around his garden. It wasn't that big and he would decide to walk around it a certain amount of times. This is where he did his thinking, so he didn't trust himself to keep count of the laps. What he would do is pick up stones, 20 stones if he intended to do 20 laps, and put them in his pocket. Each time he passed the beginning spot, he would take a stone out of his pocket and drop it. When he was out of stones, he knew he had accomplished his 20 laps. I just thought that was such a brilliant idea ... I tucked it away for someday when I wanted to do laps somewhere. How about 10 "laps" up and down the stairs? Who needs a stair master machine when I have the real thing. 

Bad News (source)

Wed 4/29

US Covid-19 Cases: 1036652 Deaths 60,475

Thu 4/30

US Covid-19 Cases:1.09 million Deaths 63,538
Fri 5/1
US Covid-19 Cases: 1,119,253 Deaths: 65,138

Good News

Some see this global pause as a historic opportunity to brainstorm and think of fresh new solutions to seemingly insoluble problems. The story of Isaac Newton's year off is instructional. Isaac Newton Changed the World While in Quarantine From the Plague