The Pittmeister's Parade Around America

Yesterday, I posted a picture of my backyard before weed whacked it and here is the after picture that I just only a few minutes ago this evening. You can see quite a difference. I'm confident I will need to do it again before the end of the monsoon rains.  As I was taking the the after photo the backyard weed whacking, I saw this thunder cloud forming off to the east. It's quite blurry in the picture above, but here's a better shot of it. I love the monsoon season in Arizona! We get beautiful shots like this one with the western setting sunlight reflected off the cloud. In my opinion, simply stunning  I did some more yard work today in the front yard; more weed whacking actually. I then went to the Fig Tree to see if any more were ready for picking, but none were ready for picking, so I took a drive through Old Mining Town's historic & touristy part, then to The Town Too Tough to Die, and made a loop back home again. All told, I was gone for the better part of 3 ho...

Wife and I did not plan on growing potatoes in our garden this year, but the area where I buried our compost apparently had some potatoes in it so I left them alone to grow and this was the result!  These are Yukon Gold potatoes, which you may remember we planted 12 plants last year. A lot of them are small, but that's okay, I plan to eat all of them because potatoes are full of vitamins.  This is what our backyard looked like this morning before I took the weed whacker to it. The summer monsoon rains are in full swing (and much better than last year) and I had let the back yard kind of get away from me. I'll post an after picture tomorrow after giving the cuttings a day to dry out so I can rake them up and put them in a garbage back. 

The total number of COVID cases in Arizona is approaching 1,000,000.  As of today, per the AZ Department of Health's website, Arizona has seen, 923,204 cases of COVID 19, with the number of reported deaths at 18,200. More worrying though is the number new cases reported yesterday, which was 1,759 because this seems to be an increase in the number of daily cases from just a few weeks ago. The total number of cases in our county is now up to 12,346, with 9 new cases reported yesterday. The total number of deaths is now 295.   In our county, they have administered 115,000 vaccines, but the vaccination rate is only 49%. Certainly not the percentage goal and benchmark President Biden set when he took office in January.  I have started shaking the hands of students again when I greet them and call them back to be seen. I always felt awkward calling their names, then turning around to walk back toward my office with them in tow. I am making sure that I use hand sanitizer af...

I have neglected this blog for the past 2 months because here in our little corner of southeastern Arizona, life has been returning to normal. Mask mandates have been lifted as vaccination numbers have increased. The long lines of cars to the local Thursday morning drive-thru vaccination site have been diminished and really no longer a public nuisance. When the vaccine first became available, there was a station set up across from our local hospital every Thursday morning, which required our local police department to set up a traffic control system to allow people like me to drive through it all and get to work. Now that those people who have gotten their vaccine shots, there no need to make a fuss about the weekly vaccination site. As I mentioned in previous posts, both Wife and I got our shots at events offered for students and employees of the community college I work for.  Traveling in the pandemic has been interesting and between the 2 of us, Wife has done more than I have. I...

 It has been nearly 2 months since my last posting. In that time, Wife and I have both received our 2nd vaccine shots. Wife had more of a reaction to the 2nd dose than I did & experienced a fever for ~36 hours which forced me to come home early from work and take of her that day. I on the other hand, barely felt a blip. I wen to bed feeling strange & tired, but woke up the next day feeling great and went to work as usual. One of my co-workers who received her 2nd dose the same day I did, was out of the office for 2 days with side effects. But I am fully vaccinated.  Another recent development is now that the CDC has stated that fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear masks, my employer is no longer mandating masks be worn in public areas. I'm still going to wear a mask when I have students in my office and I will continue to use my plastic shield, but otherwise, I will not have to wear my mask when I'm out in the public areas of the school. Wife feels that it is...

 I realize that I have not posted in 2 weeks and I  think that is a record for this blog since it changed. I think the previous record was one week and all I provided was a digest of the week. This is what Wife and I have been up to over the past 2 weeks:  #1: Camping - March 16-19 we went camping at at nearby state park that had a tiny lake on it. Our friends from 1.5 Mile High City actually reserved the spaces, which were right next to each other, and invited us to join them. The day we arrived was so cold and windy that we chose to sleep in our car, but that wasn't very successful or comfortable, so we slept in our tent the next two nights.  #2: Covid Vaccine - By some strange stroke of luck, I was able to get my 1st COVID vaccine, the Moderna version, on Monday, March 22nd. A Safeway pharmacy in Benson, AZ reserved 100 doses for employees of the community college at which I work and I was able to reserve an appointment on the morning of March 22nd. I'm scheduled ...

 In Arizona this morning, there have been 832,094 cases of COVID-19. There have been 16,546 deaths. There were 262 new cases reported today and there have been 27 new deaths reported. In our county, there have been 11,402 cases with 274 deaths. There were 9 new cases reported and 1 new death.