Our Escape Pod

Members from our USA Dive Club made arrangements for a day trip to the keys to paddle kayaks around the mangroves. Sounds like fun, let's go! We decided to make a trip out of it, put some food, clothes and computers in the camper and took off a couple days before the kayak day. It's only 2 hours from our house to the Tavernier Elks lodge that has RV hookups. We've been there before and loved it.

Mostly, I felt the need for scenery to photograph. I'm getting tired of Iguana photos around our neighborhood, and there's just not that much of interest to photograph around the house. Sunset did not disappoint!

We are just so comfy in our little RV, our Escape Pod. We've missed it. We also worry about it a bit. It's not good for it to sit for months on end, who knows what will stop working during its sequester? We were quite happy to learn that the air conditioning worked great! It's a good thing - I don't think we could have survived the 100 degree heat otherwise. 

The Elks lodge was open for food and drink, so we took advantage. Jim was happy to get a couple nights off from cooking duty. They were requiring masks, and it was not crowded, so we felt quite safe.

They even had decent Wi-Fi, so we sat out in the porch area for our Friday morning zoom meeting.

Saturday was kayaking day. We stopped at Florida Bay Outfitters to check in and pick out our rental kayak. We had reserved a tandem kayak, thinking it would be more relaxing to have both of us in one boat - relaxing for me anyway. I could let Jim paddle while I sat back and took pictures. Well, it didn't work out that way. It was a big, wide, stable kayak with foot peddles as well as paddles. Not the best choice for the kind of kayaking thru the mangroves. It acted more like a barge than a boat. Jim's foot peddles were broken, and it just didn't move well enough to make do with just the paddles, so I was peddling AND paddling most of the time just to barely keep up. Then, we started down a narrow path thru the mangroves that turned out to be a dead end. We had to paddle backwards all the way back to the opening because there was no amount of 3-point, 4-point, or even 5-point turns that could get that barge to go the other way.

Are we having fun yet?!

Oh yeah! We were outside, we were on the water, we were with friends, we were getting exercise. We even had a bit of a challenge. It doesn't get any better. We stopped in the shade for lunch and had lots of conversation and laughs. It was a great day. Thank you Ryan for making this happen!

#StayHome day 86-95 - week 13 the novelty wears off

It's getting quieter around here. Just not much to talk about. We always used to discuss where were going next and what had to be done to prepare. It's been over 3 months now that we've been shut in. The novelty is wearing off and the reality is weighing me down. 

I'm still eating well though! Jim asks me, what do you want for breakfast and I jokingly say, "French toast with strawberries." Here's what I get.

It's hard to get motivated for my work. I have spent a few days working on my book, and we held 2 workshops on Google Photos over Zoom. The workshops were good. Real teaching - just 6 people in a class. That's what I really love to do. I hope this is just the beginning of a new way for me to do my teaching. 

Feeling low?

Talk to a friend, listen to music. It helped me. Then I got a good night's sleep and I felt better the next day. 

Black Lives Matter too

I love the word that Elliott Masie is using in his Friday zoom concerts - Empathy. I think about it a lot. I grew up in a segregated society. I think there was one black person in my grade school, and not that many more in school or work ever since. I've never had a close black friend. Some acquaintances, sure, but no one close. I know that I don't understand what it's like to be black in our society, but I try to empathize. This video of Amber Ruffin, a black woman on Seth Meyers show, relaying some stories is instructional. We all need to be learning. 

Trevor Noah - in the Daily Show has also been very eloquent. In this episode Black Americans in the Workplace he shows a study: if you have a black sounding name on your resume, you are 50% less likely to get a call back. "Racism never takes a day off."  "Black people are asking for equality, not charity. They're not asking for companies to hire black people just because they're black, they're asking for companies to stop not-hiring black people just because they're black."

All lives matter? Duh, of course all lives matter, but when someone says that, what I hear is that they believe it is unfair to say that Black lives matter when that leaves white people out. Of course All lives matter - that's just the point. When black people are perceived as equally valuable to whites, then ALL lives will matter. Here's a page that explains it more clearly than I can. We need empathy.

Progress is being made. For example, after the George Floyd murder by a police officer kneeling on his neck, Minnesota has banned chokeholds by police. While this is a step in the right direction, even massive policy changes won't fix the problem. The problem is that racism is baked in to our culture and,  "Culture eats Policy for breakfast". Only when we change the culture will we have hope. There are signs of hope these days.

Bad news

Sun 6-14 US cases: 2.13 million Deaths 117,000

Tue 6-16 US cases: 2.18 million Deaths 119,000

Thu 6-18 cases: 2.22 million Deaths 120,000

Fri 6-19 cases: 2.26 million Deaths: 121,000

Wed 6-24 US cases: 2.43 million Deaths: 124,000

Good news

We're getting the RV ready to roll. Just for a couple days. We're going to the keys, renting a kayak and joining a few of our Dive club members to paddle around. 

   

#StayHome Days 81-85 Learning Empathy

I'm a happy person living in an unhappy time. We're in a global pandemic, thousands are marching in the streets, risking their lives, to bring our attention to systemic racism. And, oh yeah, the country is in lockdown which deprives hundreds of thousands of people from earning a living. It is a depressing time.

I'm semi-retired, I have Medicare, I collect social security as does my husband, and we earn an income doing work we love online with our website and a community of paying members. We are both white, with all the privilege that entails. Life is good. We understand that others do not have the same lives as we do, but how do we relate?

I've been watching

Trevor Noah on the social contract

Masie.com Empathy concerts

I've been reading

Dessa Rose a novel depicting realities of being a slave

Give People Money making the case for a Universal Basic Income to lessen the gap between haves and have nots

Bad News

Mon 6/8 US cases: 2 million Deaths: 113,000

Tue 6/9 US cases 2.02 million Deaths: 114,000

We'd 6/10 US cases: 2.04 million Deaths 115,000

Thu 6/11 US cases: 2.06 million Deaths 115,000 DOW -1,500

Fri 6/12 US cases: 2.09 million Deaths 116,000

#StayHome days 74-78 Blackout week

Blackout Tuesday is an initiative to go silent on social media, reflect on recent events, and stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. With day after day of protests, deepening awareness of our systemic racism, police brutality, and rising death toll from the virus, it felt more like blackout week to me. I have bad-news fatigue.

We did all our normal things this week. Walked around the neighborhood most every day, 2 Toastmaster meetings via Zoom, one mastermind meeting via zoom, no happy hours this week. Still working on book, sent out our June newsletter. Finished reading Give People Money - some kind of Universal Basic Income system makes so much sense to me. It was a very well researched book, and surprisingly readable. 

Bad News

6/1 Mon US Covid-19 cases: 1.82 million Deaths: 106,000

6/2 Tue cases: 1.87 million, Deaths: 108,000

6/4 Wed cases: 1.88 million, Death: 109,000

6/5 Fri cases: 1.93 million  , Deaths: 110,000

Military Police used against Peaceful protesters

Good News

NFL On Kneeling Players' Protests: 'We Were Wrong ... - NPR

Police and Protesters are on the same side

#StayHome Days 70-73 The best of times and the worst of times

We are still very content staying home. We walk around the neighborhood for exercise, and I hike up and down the stairs when my fitbit buzzes at me to move. 

Sign of the times - face mask at the ready

My Book

I'm working diligently on my Google Photos book. I hit a roadblock one day. The one where I think I can't do this, there's too much, it's too hard, I'll never get it done, I should write better, who am I to write this book, I should give up and wait for someone else to do it. But I persevered, first I took the evening off and drank more wine 🍷, the next day I kept my nose to the grindstone and succeeded at not drinking any wine, just to prove I could, and I focused on just one chapter - the Sharing chapter. 
I think this will be a good book.

Food

I am so lucky that I live in the best restaurant in town. Jim is still making delicious, healthy meals every day. In addition to being a computer geek, he is a cooking geek. He uses a Sous Vide to cook the steak. That's a device where you seal the steak in a plastic bag and immerse it in water. The Sous Vide device gets the water to the specified heat and you program it for the proper temperature to make the steak rare, medium, well-done - however you like it. It cooks the steak perfectly, through and through. Not rare in the middle and well-done on the outside. It takes a bit of time because it's low and slow, a couple hours maybe, but it's no work - he sets it and forgets it till it dings that it's done. Then he takes it out to his Kamado Joe grill with special charred wood instead of charcoal to finish it off. He also has an Instant Pot, and an Air Fryer, but they weren't used for this meal.

 

We did give Jim a break one day, we broke down and ordered pizza online, oops Jim slipped and clicked on the chocolate lava cake as well. The Dominos website shows you when the pizza goes into the oven, when it comes out, and when it's in the car for delivery. We ordered at 5:42 and it was promised by 6pm. That seems awfully fast. We figured it would probably be more like one hour. Jim started getting irritable when we passed the hour point and still hadn't heard anything. It was delivered at 6:50, and it wasn't very hot. But, the air fryer fixed that. I think Jim prefers to cook instead of going thru the aggravation. I do like the thin and crispy crust Pacific Veggie pizza though. I didn't like the chocolate lava cake at all. 😋

Space Launch

For being stuck at home and having nothing going on in our lives, it was amazing how exhausted I felt by the end of the day Saturday with all that was going on in the news. First - the good stuff - Spacex and Nasa's first manned rocket launch in over 9 years. It was so emotional - both Jim and I were crying as we watched that massive rocket rise up above the flame, take to the sky ... and make it. Then the unimaginable feat of the Rocket coming back to earth and sticking the landing on a drone ship named "Of course I still love you". 

Memories flooded thru me. I remember being a 10 year old girl huddled around the TV with my parents in 1962 as the United States launched a man into orbit, then again in 1969 when we put a man on the moon. The wonder of it all, the feeling of invincibility, the proud knowledge that I lived in a country that could do this! Also the memory, in 1983, huddled around a TV at work to watch the Challenger launch with a teacher on board, and the horror of watching it blow up. My last space launch memory is in 1998 when Jim and I went to Cape Canaveral with our friends Chris and Richard to watch John Glenn go back into space on STS-95 when he was 77 years old. It was another tear-filled moment as we watched the rocket lift, then waited a few seconds to hear, and feel, the thunderous roaring sound. Our hearts were in our throats with the fear of seeing it blow up, then exuberation as it made it to orbit perfectly. 

All of these feelings combined as we watched the launch on TV this Saturday. Jim and I cried and cheered and poured some champagne.

Then ...

then ... with the TV still on, we started watching news of the riots in the streets protesting the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The video, played over and over again, of a police officer kneeling on Mr. Floyd's neck as he says, "I can't breathe." Reports say that the officer kept kneeling on his neck even after he became non-responsive. What? How is that possible? If it was necessary to take such extreme measures to subdue someone (and by all reports it was not) wouldn't any normal person be poised to let go as soon as possible? Reports are that the officer kept kneeling on him for nearly 3 minutes after he became non-responsive. 3 minutes is an eternity. How is that not cold-blooded murder? 

Then the protests began in Minneapolis, at first peaceful, then turning ugly, breaking windows, setting cars on fire. So horrible. Then came New York, Chicago, Los Angeles. Wow, this is historic. It's encouraging to see that many, if not most of the protesters are white. Could it be possible that this is a turning point in the country's history? We're on such a razor's edge though. Seeing protesters turn angry and facing rows of police with full military weapons, how does it not turn into a war? On the TV Saturday, the coverage was on protests in Miami. Crowds started at the Friendship tower downtown and walked thru the streets toward I-95. Then they streamed onto I-95 (the primary freeway in S Florida) and stopped traffic. What a sight. Many people in their cars, rather than being upset and trying to get through, got out of their cars and joined the protesters. Another very emotional sight. All very peaceful as far as we could see.

Bad News

5/27 Wednesday US Cases 1.73 million Deaths 102,000

5/28 Thursday US Cases 1.76 million Deaths 102,379

5/29 Friday US cases 1.78 million Deaths 104,000

5/30 Saturday US cases 1.81 Deaths: 105,000

More bad news: Riots in Minneapolis after police murder a black man: 'A riot is the language of the unheard': MLK's powerful quote resonates amid George Floyd protests

Good news

We have liftoff! Heart-stopping, Tear-jerking liftoff. And, even better was that the reusable Dragon Rocket stuck the landing on the drone barge.