Thursday, 3/26/2020

Another quiet day in Quarantinia. I got my weekly distribution of linens and made the bed. More reading Query Shark, and something there made me rearrange a couple of sentences in what I thought was my well-honed query letter.

I went for a 3-mile walk before lunch. I started to look at the games I had set aside in my Steam wish-list. The way to get a feel for a game is to go on YT and look for tutorials or walk-throughs. Watching a gamer play the first 20 minutes of a game tells a lot about it. On that basis I removed two games from my wish list. They’d sounded fun in the Steam storefront, but when played, they just did nothing for me.

In the afternoon, read a book for fun.

In the evening, the daily update from CH staff had the news the The Vi has 9 cases now. That’s a facility much like CH in size and clientele. They had five, yesterday. The same update had a new policy:

…effective immediately, we will be placing any resident who returns from the Hospital (including Emergency Room) or Urgent Care on a 14-day isolation/observation… If any resident on a 14-day isolation needs to leave his/her apartment in an emergency situation, they will be provided a mask which is to be worn before leaving the apartment. The resident will be followed by a housekeeper to disinfect the area of travel.

This may sound very extreme. However, after Rhonda participated in a conference call today which included updates from an Executive Director at a community in New York that is similar to Channing House, she came away even more determined to do EVERYTHING we can to keep COVID-19 out of Channing House. Our inconveniences are nothing compared to the daily battle that is being waged in communities across the country with active COVID-19 cases.

Another thing: currently every person entering the building has their temperature taken. Every afternoon about 5, a postal worker comes and spends most of an hour in our mail area, delivering all the mail. So, this:

The US Postmaster has issued a letter to LeadingAge, our trade & advocacy organization, confirming that postal workers cannot be subjected to the same temperature and health screenings that are required of all other people who enter the building. This is a nationwide policy which LeadingAge is challenging on behalf of all Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRC’s), Assisted Living & Skilled Nursing Facilities. First, we urge you to avoid direct interactions with the postal worker while he or she is here. Second, wait for the housekeeper to disinfect the mailroom before you pick up your mail.

So: a little bureaucratic cat-fight between the Postmaster General and all the County and State health agencies, with us in the middle.

 

Wednesday, 3/25/2020

Today was the inaugural of our room-service food delivery. Here’s breakfast.

As I requested on my menu form, 3 pancakes, fruit, apple juice. Arrived about 8:20, so they started in my half of the hallway first.

There was an issue with returning up the dish. The instructions were clear that we can’t leave the dish outside our door for pickup. (Why? That isn’t explained.) We have to hang about until the server arrives with a cart to collect, somewhere in the 1-hour slot following our delivery slot, hence, 9:30-10:30. That’s a pain; they hadn’t arrived by 10 and I was itching to get out and do my run. I walked down the hall with my green container and found the server at the other end, just starting.

The lunch was delivered in disposable paper containers, and nobody stopped by to pick them up. I gather I was to just trash those.

Then at supper time, I was absorbed at my computer and failed to hear the knock on the door. So there was a paper slip under the door, cutely saying “knock knock?” and giving the extension to call for delivery. That was my bad.

Late in the day, there was further CH communication on food delivery. Surprisingly, the green containers are in short supply. We are asked to rinse ours and return them. There was also a phone/email talk by CEO Rhonda, mostly responding to her hearing some residents refer to the current restrictions as “arbitrary”. She said in part,

I’d like to explain that each change implemented has been far from arbitrary. We are receiving notifications daily… from various agencies including the Public Health Departments for the State of California and Santa Clara County. We study these updates carefully, discuss … the implications of any necessary process changes, then we change our operational processes in order implement the guidance… we are also planning for practices that will be deployed in the event that we find ourselves with a case of COVID-19.

… as a reminder, Channing House is licensed by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) and California Department of Social Services (DSS). A CDPH Surveyor stopped by for an unannounced visit on Monday to ensure that we were implementing the guidance and directives that have been issued. She was very pleased with what she found. … In addition, I spoke with the Santa Clara County Dept of Health yesterday and they are also very pleased with all the safeguards we have in place.

A side note, The Vi, our cross-town rival, has gone from having two cases, to five.

In the middle of the day I spent more time on agent info collection. I found Query Tracker, a site specifically designed to assist authors in the tedious and complex search for an agent. I looked up all the agents in my spreadsheet and set up my Query List. I’ll be able to track the submissions and replies there. Although in truth, I could have done the same thing in the spreadsheet, if a little more clumsily. What Query Tracker has, though, is author comments on each agent, as well as aggregating statistics on how many rejections and acceptances each has and their response time. So by using it to record my submissions and responses, I’m helping build a dataset.

Something triggered my memory of boogie woogie piano, and I looked up one of my favorite players on YT. That was so invigorating (it was because I was playing boogie woogie at high volume that I didn’t hear the supper time knock) that I decided to share. I put a link to one performance on the CHBB list with the subject “Hump Day Boogie Woogie”. I got several thank-yous, so I will continue that as a weekly series.

 

Tuesday 3/23/2020

Hey, ya wanna see the prettiest little graph? From the Johns Hopkins virus dashboard.

Like that? That, folks, is what the Moore’s Law exhibit at CHM looks like. The world is entering the jet-powered vertical climb part of an exponential curve.

Here at the senior center, we got our new meal instructions at lunch. We get a weekly menu showing what’s on for breakfast lunch and dinner each day. You can cross-out any item you don’t want. Turn that sheet in at the start of the week. Your meals will be delivered to your door.

The CH Writer’s group met via Zoom at 10:30. Thirteen people at the peak, all women except me and Peter. Smart women and good writers, mostly. They had been given a “prompt” and most had prepared a short piece based on it, and read it aloud. I was a late addition and didn’t have anything to read. I made appreciative nods and noises. The meeting logistics went quite well, although the first half hour was mostly people working out how the interface worked.

Later I read more Query Shark; but I am feeling pretty sure my current query letter is as good as it can be. In the morning at the usual 4am or so — I think I have my bladder to thank for my best obsessing spells — I realized there was a logical hole, or more aptly a needless complication, in the climax of the book. And worked out how to fix it. In a semi-dream state I actually heard the characters say the dialog that would fix the problem.

I had also been increasingly aware that, since most agent submissions ask for a few, 5 or 10, pages from the book, that my opening scene needed a little tightening, a bit snappier dialog. So in the hour before the meeting, I fixed those two things: polished the opening scene, and rewrote the climactic confrontation with new dialog.

After lunch I went for a 2-mile walk. Saw maybe four other walkers. We all avoided each other.

When picking up my take-out supper for the last time, I got the detailed instructions on the new meal system. Meals will be delivered in specific time slots, for the sixth floor those being 8:15, 12:15 and 6:15. Pickup of the trays is one hour later. One must be in one’s room when the server knocks. Staff won’t enter any room; you have to come to the door and take the tray. Or it goes back to the kitchen and you can call to arrange a later delivery.

This is going to force a change in my routines, mornings especially. I can no longer go for a run early. I have to be here at 8:15 (possibly later; it remains to be seen which end of the long hallway they will start at). So henceforth I will go out for exercise more like 10am, every day I guess, to run or to walk.

So it goes.

 

Monday, 3/23/2020

Johns Hopkins dashboard: 350,563, about 10% in two days. Oh, and I’m watching a video about the virus made on 3/15, when they mention 153,517 cases. So from 3/15 to Saturday 3/21, the case count doubled. Exponential with a doubling time of 6+ days.

Of course “cases” mean people who have been tested positive. But that’s only a very approximate measure of actual infections. In the U.S. testing will be increasingly available in coming days which will accelerate the count here. But it is widely assumed that sub-Saharan African countries aren’t doing adequate, or any, testing, so likely there are many unknown cases there. But by this COVID calculator, Palo Alto alone will see 5000-8000 hospitalizations and 400-800 deaths.

Went for a run, felt fine. Then sat down to catch up with the internet and email and between them, it is almost noon! I’ve corresponded with several people and read a ton of interesting stuff, and still have the one-hour video that was strongly recommended to me waiting to play.

Quarantine, it’s a rich full life.

At 5pm I was invited to a virtual “cocktail party” on Zoom, by Betty and Jerry. Six of us, including Craig and Diane, plus Gwen and Mary. I was the only one who brought a glass of wine. Conversation was mostly about the virus, including a ridiculous, bone-headed column by Friedman in the NYT.

However in the midst of the party I checked my email and there was a Channing House announcement: starting Wednesday, the present system of take-out meals will be dropped in favor of meal delivery to each room. After all the work staff went through to set up and run the current system,  I’m surprised. And disappointed, because there’ll be no more choices to make; the menu will be fixed.

 

Sunday, 3/22/2020

Breakfast (Keto Chow and my last <sniff> cinnamon-raisin muffin) in the room.

Fixed the iPad video, uploaded it, and sent the links to Betty. Suggesting that her husband Jerry could do a better job and I’d help. (I know he has video editing experience.)

On behalf of the grocery shopping email-conference, I went to neighborhood.com and found the names of grocery delivery services people had commented on. Then looked at each site and wrote some notes. To me instacart looks best, unless shipt.com, which charges a membership fee, is more reliable.

And that brought me to 10am. I did some classifying at Zooniverse. After fetching and eating my lunch, I went out for a walk, again around my 3-mile jogging loop (I have no imagination) (or car).

Following a short nap I set up my big computer to work with Boinc on Rosetta@Home, helping to figure out the shape of virus proteins. Like ten years ago I had my larger Mac doing that. High time to put that big CPU and GPU back to work on something other than a screen-saver, where it spends 23 hours of most days.

Then read Query Shark some more, and then read more fun stuff until time to fetch my supper box.

 

Saturday 3/21/2020

Per the Johns Hopkins dashboard, 316,652. If the current, nice exponential curve fit continues with a 6-day doubling time, then 3/28 should see ~650K.

With no events on my google calendar, nothing makes the days different. Wasted time in the morning. Picking up lunch, Betty asked me to help Kiki learn to use Zoom conferencing on her iPad. Betty wants to use Zoom for various committee meetings, but finds some residents struggle.

Later Betty got Kiki’s iPad and brought it to me. I shot some video showing the process, and the same on the Macbook. Later, took the iPad to Kiki’s room and stepped her through the process to join a little meeting. Then I went back to my room and joined the same meeting, and Jerry did from an Android tablet.

In the afternoon I edited the videos. Had an issue trying to upload to YT from iMovie, which used to work perfectly. Converted to .mp4 and manually uploaded, and then found that somehow I’d lost a key edit in the iPad one, so I need to re-upload that tomorrow.

Late in the afternoon came an email from Channing House, saying in part,

First, a plea from our nursing staff. Please do not go to the grocery store, the pharmacy, the doctor or any other outside location unless you absolutely have to. COVID-19 is in Palo Alto and the surrounding area and the numbers are against us. Each time you encounter others, you risk exposing yourself. Some you encounter may be carriers without showing symptoms.

In response to that, Mary M. invited me by email to join a group planning how to do group orders of grocery deliveries. You never realize how often you stop by a store for some little thing, until you can’t stop by the store any more.

The CH email also said,

Effective Sunday, access to the garages will be restricted. If you are parked in the garage now, you will be able to leave. But, you will not be able to access the garage upon your return. Please park in the lot outside on Webster Street. Or you can park on the street. Parking restrictions are not being enforced by the City at this time.

The reason for this change is to limit access to the building to one entry point, in accordance with guidance from California Department of Public Health (CDPH). This change will be in effect until further notice.

The response to that has been less positive. On my floor, Patty has been quite vocal in complaining about this. She suggests that if they want the single point of entry, that we park in the garages and walk up the entry ramp and around to the front door. IMO that’s a non-starter; the vehicle ramps are steep and present an obvious physical challenge to some, and a fall hazard to everyone, plus mixing vehicle and pedestrian traffic with poor sight-lines.

So what am I going to do? The next time I take the car out, I will have to leave it on the street, exposed to the elements (and to catalytic converter thieves). OK, I have no urgent need to take the car out just now. I will defer it as long as possible. However, I am loath to use my normal alternative, Lyft. Get into a closed vehicle with a driver who may be contagious? Nunh-unh, baby.

 

 

 

Friday, 3/20/2020

Today’s big adventure was to drive to Safeway in Menlo Park to pick up my online order (for laundry detergent, peanut butter, and lo-cal sodas). Following a cheerful, clear email from Safeway, I looked for a “Drive up & Go” parking space. There were none; no such signage.

I went into the store (noting big posters advertising “drive up & go” service) and found the customer service desk. The person there said she was sorry but due to demand “all the on-line stuff has been canceled.” Thanks, Safeway, for letting me know.

My next thought was to go ahead and buy the stuff, but looking around the huge store, I saw many, many people, not observing any kind of “distancing”. So I decided to go instead to a store I trust, Piazza’s. There, I found people who were taking some pains to keep apart. The queue for checkout was nicely spaced! I couldn’t get the Tide detergent I wanted but got another brand. No bread, no paper products of any kind. No Skippy PB but I got a jar of another brand.

As I had planned and prepared, I wore latex gloves while shopping. Still gloved, I took each item out and wiped it down with a bleach solution I had prepared. And wiped the door handle and steering wheel and discarded the gloves.

Back home, there was a new cheerful email from Safeway with details about my pick up order, how they had substituted some things and some things were out of supply, and the total was $36.10, and my pickup time was now. Just as if there was no problem! So I called their customer service line, where I sat on hold for 55 minutes before it told me there was a problem, please try later, and hung up on me.

Safeway — boo, hiss.

Next was more work on an agent for the novel. I found another directory of agents and added a couple of names to my spreadsheet. Two of these said they want a “synopsis” as a different item than a “query letter”. Hmmm. Not sure about the difference so I need to research that. But I set out to do a chapter-by-chapter synopsis, and in the course of that, noticed that some chapters were longer than others, so did some breaking and joining.

That killed time until 4pm when I dialed in to Rhonda’s conference call. Here are the notes I took as she (the CH CEO) talked and took questions.

Since 2/28 we’ve been dealing with a vast quantity of guidance from Santa Clara county and many other agencies including our licensing agencies. As a result we have in 20 days, changed the way we do just about everything. Staff reorganized in management teams. Two from each department are splitting the schedule so one manager for each team is on site 24/7 (facilities, housekeeping, communications, business etc)

We’ve acquired a supply of “personal protective equipment” PPE supplies (masks, googles, gloves, gowns) and we have set up isolation rooms. We have set up a room with rollaway beds for staff napping if staff needs to sleep over. We are planning to deal with COVID if it gets past our barriers.

Staffing: we have staff shortages, staff who are self-quarantining with various symptoms, and staff with child-care problems. We ask you to not visit staff in person; our offices are closed and we can handle most things by email or phone.

Facilities: have been very busy with things like the new washing facility. Some projects on hold.

Fitness: there will be a schedule later today for virtual fitness classes and a method of checking out fitness equipment.

Hand washing. Tired of hearing about it? It is so important that we do a weekly training with staff again and again. Leave the water running; scrub for 20 seconds including your fingernails. Get one paper towel, use it to turn off the water, discard it. Get another paper towel and dry. If you get a tissue out of your pocket to wipe your nose, wash your hands again.

Meals. The new process: it takes one full-time and one part-time person to tally the menus each day. Just turn in one menu per day, by 2pm. Don’t bring back your paper bags, recycling is nice but returning a bag to the dining room is an infection control issue. The bags can be composted with your meal trash.

Housekeeping: staff is concentrating on public areas, e.g. disinfecting wherever any stranger enters the wellness wing.

Finally: plan on change. The one thing we are sure of, there will be more changes. Facing shortages in paper products like paper bags. All facilities like ours are serving food in disposable products and there are shortages. Some types of food are going short, like fresh fruit, which comes from California where nobody is working. We expect more staff shortages. We expect we can adjust to these things.

In the Q&A: Kim Krebs is now our question czar, direct questions to her by phone or email.

What will change if we get a case? Rhonda: decision will be made by SCC health. At a guess, we will start delivering your food to your apartment. You may be able to leave the building but not visit any common rooms.

Deliveries: when UPS and Fedex arrive, they leave boxes outside. We then spray them with a disinfectant spray before bringing them into the building.

Debate about whether it would be good or not, to have volunteers who make runs during the early hours, to grocery stores, on behalf of multiple residents. Fewer people going out to stores but exposes volunteers to multiple exposures.

Food delivery from a store or restaurant? In a box we’d spray the box. We’ve not been spraying bags of food for fear of spoiling the food. Later: SCC health has issued guidance to restaurants, doordash, uber, on how to handle food delivery, so it should not need disinfecting.

Thursday 3/19/2020

I intended to go for a run this morning. Then I realized I had filled out the menu form for a breakfast today. (The alternative, if you don’t want a meal, is a big X through that meal’s panel on the triptych menu sheet.) Which meant I couldn’t, as I usually do when I run, eat a meal replacement shake in my room and head out the door at 7:30. I would have to wait for the assigned 6th floor slot, 8:15.

Well, I can be flexible in a national crisis. I stayed around, finishing my read of the internet, until 8:15, then went downstairs, meaning to pick up the breakfast box, go back and eat it, and then run. But there had been “a disaster in the kitchen” of unspecified type, and they were running half an hour late.

So I just headed out the door on my run. Which went great. Felt good. Passed maybe 5 other people. Back at CH, I went through the hand-wash ante-room and there was my breakfast box, not quite the last one on the table.

The staff continues to implement changes. Today at lunchtime they were setting down a trail of footsteps, 6 feet apart, for us to follow on emerging from the elevator, on the way to pick up our meal boxes.

Also, Wanda, my housekeeper, had left off my bag of fresh linens. As I noted a couple of days ago, housekeeping is now only cleaning rooms monthly, because of staffing shortages (people needing time for child care, and extra sanitation of public spaces). So here’s my linens and my lunch.

So after lunch I made my bed, and returned by bagged used linens to the collection point in the lounge. We are very self-sufficient here.

At supper time the meal service was finally operating on all cylinders. You come out of the elevator during your floor’s time-slot. You queue up on the happy-feet symbols. As you get near the washroom, a staff member grabs your menu selection page from a pile and hands it to someone who takes it to the kitchen. By the time you come through the hand-wash room, or a short wait later, a server comes out of the kitchen with a paper bag containing your food order, and the hot foods are still hot. Here’s my supper.

Jicama and cherry tomato salad, barbecue turkey breast, mashed potatoes, 2% milk, some kind of cobbler.

All of the containers are compostable. When done, you just put everything in the box, and the box into a biodegradable plastic bag. When full, put it out in the hall for pickup and transfer to the composting dump. The amount of planning that the CH staff and the Sodexo crew have done in a few days is just staggering.

 

 

Wednesday 3/18/2020

Today was the last time to enter the dining room for breakfast, and only to choose takeout. And to pick up the menu form for tomorrow’s meals; please return to your lounge by 2pm.

I idled away a lot of the morning; then went for a walk. At lunchtime they implemented the first meal of the new system. You go to the lobby in your floor’s appointed 15-minute slot; you wash your hands (full hand-washing replaced the little bubble-sanitizers three days ago — a monitor puts a sticker on your shoulder as you exit the washroom); you stand around with others (maintaining 6-foot distances, and yes, a staff person is watching to enforce it) until they call your name and hand you your takeout box, packed with what you asked for on the form yesterday. Back to your room.

So that was another day of alternately reading Query Shark (my gosh that is a deep archive, I’m starting to skim) and fiddling around on Zooniverse.

At supper time there was a surprise. Over the last three days the facilities gang has converted what was a small, rarely-used staff dining room into a full hand-washing station, with counters, plumbing, and four basins with soap and automatic paper towel dispensers! To pick up your meal now, you go into the hand-washing room, and exit from it directly into the (sadly deserted) dining room, where to-go packages are arrayed on a table and yours is handed to you.

Have I mentioned how proactive and imaginative our staff has been? They’ve completely upended the dining service to make an assembly-line takeout system, they’ve installed a completely new washing facility, they’ve organized pre-printed menus, they’ve got the temperature-taking station at the front door staffed full-time. It’s quite amazing.

 

Tuesday 3/17/2020

I started the day with a run. Didn’t time myself, but went the usual pace and felt good.

For most of the rest of day I alternated between reading bad query letters at Query Shark, and further polishing my own.

In mid-afternoon came the email from Rhonda: further interpretation of the county’s shelter directive shows that we can no longer have the dining room open for eating, even with the current restrictions. Tonight you will select what you want for takeout. You will also get a menu form to fill out for tomorrow’s meals; please leave it in your floor lounge by 11pm.

In the tab next to my email I have the Johns Hopkins Corona virus dashboard, showing confirmed cases worldwide and by country. Top left corner, the total, which only updates if you refresh the page. I try to refresh it only once or twice a day. Today, 187,000.