In some respects, the pandemic seems all but over. Maybe 20% of people are wearing masks anywhere you go out, except Menard's which still requires them. But restaurants are opening up again (we went to BWW on Friday and sat in the dining room with their half capacity), stores are opening up again, the roads are busy, the Greenway is busy, and some travel is happening again (some friends of ours are in Florida now). We made some plans to go camping at Clifty Falls in July; the campgrounds are opening up but things like the pools and playgrounds and drinking fountains remain closed. We're still trying to figure out what we're going to do all summer, since a lot of activities are still no-go. Our church services are starting up again on the June 14th, we'll see how it goes. The county is up to 135 confirmed cases now.....I placed a new geocache on Saturday. It's a puzzle cache of sorts, themed on the old Winona Interurban Railway. You have to read a story and check the train schedule, and deduce numbers from clues in the story to find the coordinates. I have no idea if it's too hard or too easy or too cerebral too scattered or what; I guess I'll have to see what reviews it gets. Nobody found it on the first day it was active, anyway. It's a small capsule hidden in a fake rock in the ballast of the rail segment in a park in town. Hope the first find is soon.....Ruby has disappeared. She went outside this morning and has not been seen since. Unusual for her, she always stays close to home, has never been known to jump a fence, and is usually wanting to come back in within minutes. Still no trace of her by the end of the day; I hope she finds her way back in the morning.....Beth and I got Missy hooked on "Lost" this week.....Missy also went to a birthday party this weekend, at a friend's house! So some normal is coming back.....

Memorial Day weekend was hot this year. It would have been one of those years that we can go swimming if we were camping at Potato Creek or somewhere, but not this year. The campgrounds are opening up again, as are a lot of other things, but I don't know that I would feel comfortable camping at a state park just yet. 86 coronavirus cases in the county now, so it's speeding up. We did make some reservations to go to Clifty Falls this July. If it's as hot as Memorial Day, it'll be awfully hot.....Saturday Trey and I went biking on the Winona Lake Trails. First time for me doing any serious coverage of the trails; we did the whole thing. It's about a 7-mile loop with some extra built in on the more challenging trails (like the one I scraped up my elbow on a little over a week ago). It was certainly a good day for it, and for as rainy as it was the previous week, the trails were in really good shape. I only fell off the bike a couple times (once going downhill, once going over a platform over a log) but neither time got really messed up. Overall we rode for about 13 miles including to and from there. He also rode from and to his house in Clunette.....Alex was working all day Saturday so after I got back from biking, Beth and the girls and I went geocaching down near Roann/Wabash. We were seeking the actual caches to the puzzle caches I've been working on for the past month. We found 4 of the 6 we were looking for, 2 I think we found the right spot but it wasn't there. The ones we did find were not in good shape. They have all been out there for 10 years, so surprising that they are there at all, but the containers were all cracked and broken and everything was wet. But we can claim the smilie on them all the same. I ought to keep a spare supply of cache containers ready to replace ones like that.....Beth and I had a date night at Oak & Alley that evening.....Sunday I went to Menard's and rented a power washer. Finally. I had to return it right away because it didn't work, but they gave me another one and I spent pretty much all afternoon washing the outdoor furniture, patio, concrete slab, steps to the laundry room, retaining wall, and the back of the house. It cost 30 bucks to rent it for a full day, not bad.....Monday the kids and I made a couple trips out to the storage unit and emptied it out. Basically, it's just the camper, camp chairs, and pool, now in the garage instead so we can save some money.....

Things are starting to really shows signs of creeping back to normalcy. At least one of the churches in town had their regular Sunday service at the church (but asked everyone to wear masks) this week (we didn't; the staff and elders are trying to figure out the best thing to do for everyone); my company has been seeing good comeback in surgeries going on; and of course nationwide people are holding rallies against the government "tyranny" of stay at home orders SMH. We're up to 58 cases in the county now, so it was a big week.....Natalie got 3 wisdom teeth extracted this week. She didn't have the 4th. So she spent the rest of the week hurting, icing, and eating very soft foods (tapioca is her favorite). At least they came out fairly easily, so hopefully she'll be over it soon. She has been doing better but it seems a slow process.....I decided to try biking the Winona Lake trails this week, so I headed out and just picked which way to go as I went along. ONe of the trails however seemed to be a more advanced one and I didn't see the obstacle in the trail (some sort of wooden box implanted in the ground on a downward slope so the far side made a drop-off) until it was too late to go around it, so I went over it unprepared and couldn't recover. Went down pretty hard, wound up with a nasty skinned elbow, a not so bad skinned knee, a bruise on my big toe, and another big bruise on my chest from hitting the handlebar. I was able to pedal home under my own power before I was too stiff to do so.....Beth got all her flowers and everything planted in the front garden this week, and we got her herbs planted in her new raised herb garden. I also took a bunch of older potting soil and spread it around in the middle of the back yard in a new attempt to grow some decent grass. It was about a wheelbarrow full of good dirt, and I figured I could attempt to get some grass growing next to where the pool will go as far over as the hickory tree, and that would be a good swath of lawn if it takes. For once, there was rain just after I planted the grass seed.....

The debate rages over whether lockdown should end. Honestly I haven't felt too locked down for a while except there's not much of anywhere to go. The roads are full of people going somewhere, few people are wearing masks at the grocery store (which is always crowded), and you hear the stories about people getting assaulted or shot because they told someone to wear a mask. But still no theaters, malls, non-essential shops, etc. We're only up to 41 cases in the county after 2 months so everyone is convinced this is all just a big media fraud.....school is wrapping up for Alex and Missy after this coming week. They've announced that grades are basically pass/fail, or rather A/F. They still have the AP exams though. I've heard that many other kids have done nothing for e-learning for the whole duration.....I got the replacement transaxle cooling fan for the lawn tractor (see April 26) and was able to borrow an impact driver from Bob so I could replace it myself. So the tractor is back up and running. I'm pretty proud of myself for figuring this all out and fixing it.....Nat went back to the dentist this week to have some fillings taken care of and expanded, and she's having 3 wisdom teeth extracted in a few days.....We did some Mother's Day shopping this weekend for Beth; as usual she wanted flowers to plant in the garden along the front of the house. We bought a bunch at Menard's and Owen's. For Mother's Day itself we got take-out sushi.....I've been working on a series of 13 puzzle geocaches for the past couple weeks. Solving the puzzles, anyway, we haven't gone looking for the cache. In 2 weeks I've figured out 5 of them.....

Yet another week of lockdown/quarantine whatever you call it. It's feeling like normal almost. I've been working from home for the past 7 weeks or so, and even though things are starting to show signs of reopening, it looks like I'm not going to be going back in to work for a while. The governor announced a 5-phase plan to reopen the state last week, but I'm afraid that there's going to be a big wave as soon as we do. There are still only something like 37 cases in the county, so basically it has never gotten started here but people are sick of lockdown and starting to protest. Menard's now requires all shoppers to wear a mask so I hear people saying 'I'll never go there again' blah blah blah.....Speaking of re-opening, the kids all had dental appointments last week. They had been scheduled for dental appointments a few weeks ago but they were postponed due to the virus. Anyway, they all had x-rays, and they all need to have their wisdom teeth extracted. Natalie only has 3, though. She had a couple of fillings needing fixing, too. Not sure how much all that's going to cost, but apparently it's going to happen in the next few weeks. Maybe just after school is finished.....The living room TV died on Friday. In the morning it just wouldn't show any picture. And I'd thought lately that the picture seemed to be so much dimmer than on the one downstairs. This took us by surprise, but when we went to Wal-Mart to get a new one, we found that they were sold out of TVs, except the biggest and most expensive ones. Same deal at Meijer. So Saturday we did a road trip to Rocket Science and did some TV shopping in Goshen on the way. Their Wal-Mart was also sold out, but we found the last one of a size we wanted at Meijer. I didn't expect TVs to be sold out, but I guess that's what everyone is doing all day nowadays since there's nowhere to go, and maybe the factories in China still can't operate at capacity. Don't know.....