Being Tested for COVID-19

Alternate Post Titles are: "That Nasal Swab wasn't too bad" and "San Francisco Department of Health For the Win"

Now that renovations are done at the house, Onions and I are ready to head up to Seattle to see Mom, Marlene and Oliver.  Taking precautions, we went to get tested for COVID-19 to make sure that we don't bring it into the house in Seattle and endanger my Mom, who is in the high risk category.

So, we drove down to Pier 30/32 between Oracle Park and the Bay Bridge.  We entered and lined up to get checked in. To begin, the person in PPE with and iPad asked us to put our ID's against the car window.  This was an appointment site and we came without an appointment.  I didn't make one because neither of us is an essential employee nor did we have one of the symptoms, but I heard this was a site where there was minimal contact, so I decided to try anyway and see what happened.

Seeing that we didn't have an appointment, the person had us pull us off to the side and she registered us.  I'm not sure if she was nice because that's what the do or that the testing site was relatively empty as we were one of two cars in the check-in line.  After looking at our ID's, we had to roll down the window simply to provide our phone numbers.

After check-in, we snaked through the cones (no line) and were assigned to one of four testing lanes.  We got line A and drove to the front and waited about a minute until the car ahead us was done.  We pulled in and two people were working together.  The first one checked us in by asking our names and phone numbers and confirming consent.  Then the check-in person opened up a plastic bag, handed the nasal swab to the second person.  This swabber then put the swab up my nose.  I had heard horror stories of how some described the swab as "touching your brain", but in reality it went right past where it was naturally comfortable, but nothing like waht I was expecting.  It was a couple rotations of the swab, then the other nostril and done.  The swab was then inserted into a tube and I was given a card with a bar code.

Then they went over to Onions side, did the same thing.  And we were done.  Total time from entering Pier 30/32 to driving out?  15 minutes.  We will get a text in 1-3 days to tell us to go online to check our results.  Kudos to the City and County of San Francisco for making this painless and efficient.

Results exactly 24-hours later!

Renovations

Our upstairs neighbor was doing some work on his back wall and discovered that he had some dry rot.  Upon further inspection, it appeared that it extended down to our level of the back wall as well.

Onions brought in someone that he knew from his days working at Wells Fargo and the guy made a bid that our neighbor declared, "you're getting an amazing deal."

So, on June 16th (Happy Birthday, O!) commenced two weeks of renovations, starting with the back wall.

Turns out it also extended to the side wall as well!

Here's the finished product, but do you notice the big change?  And it's not the nice new paint job.

As the work was going on, Onions decided to ask our guy to do some additional side projects.  One, very minor one, was to put to the vent to our stove throught a wall so it no longer exposed running over our refrigerator and through the window.

Yeah, that was the BIG new project!  Our back door and window became a new set of French doors.

So one thing I've learned is what French doors are?  I used to think that they were double doors that opened in the same direction....but that they didn't have locks.  For some reason I always though French doors were interior doors and so they didn't have to have locks and that their lack of locks is what made them French doors.  Clearly, our doors are locked.

A last project was to extend our deck to have a bit more surface area.

The new wood is the extension, the plan is to stick a BBQ grill under the stairs there?  All design questions are in Onions domain.  I'm simply along for the ride.

Well, we had an extra door, so this is now where it's located.  I'm thinking maybe we end up cutting it in half?  Just an idea.  But things are done.  Phew.

Here's the back door now that it's all accessorized.  Curtains and rugs.  It looks like it comes from and HGTV renovation show!  It's all Onions...he's the Joanna of the family!

Scenes of the Owens River Valley -- June 2020

To get to the Eastern Side of the Sierra Nevada (Owens River Valley) one usually thinks to drive the Tioga Pass Road through Yosemite. However, in early June it was still closed, so we went over Highway 108, the Sonora Pass, which was pretty spectacular!

We weren't able to make a campsite reservation (well we had one but it was cancelled because of COVID-19) so we planned on wild camping in forest somewhere.  But we found a private campground at the far end of Twin Lakes outside Bridgeport, CA.  Here's the view at sunset as you drive west towards Twin Lakes.

The view towards the west of Twin Lakes with the Mono Village campground in the distance.

We were lucky in that right as we arrived, the campground opened up a section that was in the trees and along the river.  Secluded and quiet.  Perfect.

Just hanging out and this guy walks by to munch on some grass!

We camped for four nights and on the last night, our friend Mary (and some of her friends) joined us!

This photo taken by Mary's friend in portrait mode clearly shows that the camera on my iPhone 7 is inferior.

Here's the view towards the north end of the Owens River Valley, looking into Nevada

Post Buckeye Hot Springs....feeling h

We spent an afternoon at Convict Lake just south of Mammoth.

Of course I took a dip.  Always.

Someone loves their phone.  If I did this, I would definitely drop my phone in the water.

Over on the other side of the valley is this beautiful blue hot spring. 

No entry....apparently the water can be excessively hot and there have been deaths.

Since we LOVE to just drive, we got in the car one day and drove the three hours (one way) to Death Valley.

As we were approaching the valley, we began to see Joshua Trees.

Starting the descent into the first valley in the park...here is one of the side canyons.

And there it was....Panamint Valley, which is still at 2,000 feet above sea level.

Panamint Valley

We made it to the valley floor where it already was 102 degrees Fahrenheit with a hot desert wind.  To get to the famous lowest point in the continental US required another hour plus drive.  We heard that it's best to come back in the early spring when the wild flowers are out.  So, that's our plan.

It's kind of crazy, the lowest and highest points in elevation in the US are within less than a hundred miles of each other.  We tried to drive up to the Mt. Whitney trail head, but this is as close as we got.

One day, deciding we wanted a bit of civilization, we decided to head north into Reno.  We did some takeout Chinese and tried to go shopping, but REI was doing online ordering only and then the outlets had lines that we didn't want to wait in. So we basically drove a couple hours round trip for $40 worth of Chinese.

Dusk in the Eastern Sierra.  As always, stunning.