The Corona Diaries Vol. 50: April Is the Cruellest Month

(Guess Which Month 2022)

T.S. Eliot was onto something when he wrote that poem of his.

This time around, we truly have a corona diary. April began with my Frau breeding Covid. Her test result with the dreaded positive came back a day or two before she was to leave for Montgomery, Alabama. She has family down there and, sadly, one of her aunts had recently died so she was keen on being a comfort to her dad, who was already down there. In addition, she was looking forward to seeing some family she hadn't seen in years, despite the circumstances. Alas, it was not to be.

Even after she'd been sick for a few days, I was still feeling alright. I got up one day and noticed that the white stuff was falling so I availed myself of the opportunity to stop by my favorite urban woods on a snowy morning - Acewood Conservation Park. The temperature was in the low 30s so the snow was heavy and slushy and clung to everything.

It was just lovely there. A horse-drawn sleigh would not have looked out of place.

I noticed that an area on the north side of the park had been cut back rather severely. Now, I'm no forester so perhaps this is straight out of Maintaining Conservation Parks 101, but I was sad to see so many bushes trimmed into oblivion and so many trees felled. That area was thick with greenery in the past but it looks like it'll be a different scene ere long.

My suspicion is that removing all of that brush near the path will mean that more noise from the highway will make its way to the shoreline. We shall see, or hear, rather, how that turns out in a couple months.

Making my way to the pond, I saw that it had a smattering of mallards but was rather quiet overall.

I walked out onto that little peninsula hoping to get to the tip of it so I could get some panoramic pictures. Granted, my cameras don't exactly mimic Ansel Adams, but getting out into the pond a little way would afford me some nice views.

Approaching the end of the peninsula, I had my eyes to the ground trying to avoid stepping in standing water when a shrill cry scared the living crap out of me as a Canada goose flew out of a clump of empty stems just a few feet ahead of me. She landed out in the water a few yards away and was squawking out in alarm which caused another goose some 50 or so feet down the shoreline to get excited and start honking his own goosey klaxon.

I walked ahead a little way and discovered why I had two pissed off geese nearby who were closing in for the kill.

Once again, a mother goose had built a nest at the tip of this little peninsula. I did not envy her sitting on those eggs in the middle of a snowfall. But I suppose there wouldn't be any geese in the world if they simply gave up because of a little precipitation.

I could hear dad hastily approaching and he sounded none too pleased with the intruder so I beat a retreat back to the path. Eventually the parents-to-be quieted down after having cleared the nesting area of the pesky human.

I saw only one person walking the path so I basically had run of the park to myself. Despite the din of the highway lingering in the background, it was still rather serene and I allowed myself to just spend some time enjoying the scenery.

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That night I began to feel unwell. Our half-hearted precaution of having me sleep in the guest room was a failure. Waking up needing to go to the bathroom, I got out of bed and realized that I had the chills and felt slightly nauseated. Come the morning I had body aches and a headache. I presumed that I had contracted Covid and this was confirmed a couple days later when I got my test result.

I took some time off from work and worked a few short days. When I wasn't sleeping, I got to enjoy lying around on our new couch which sat on our newly refinished floors. At some point the original owners gave up on the fine red oak planks and covered them with carpeting. When we tore up the ancient, ugly shag, this is what we discovered:

Not only was the original finish in rough shape, but it was of a fairly dark hue with a reddish, ambery tint. In anticipation of the floors getting a makeover, we (i.e. - my Frau) decided to paint the living room. The renter's white, which had been applied liberally around the house seemingly just before being put up for sale, was replaced by a light tan paint called Bauhaus Buff. Walter Gropius would have approved, right? I then figured that, as long as we're emptying the living room, we might as well get new furniture instead of stowing the couch and love seat which didn't fare too well in years past with kids jumping on them. We also tossed the old entertainment center. I rationalized the purchase by saying that buying new furniture saved me the cost of having to rent one of those storage pods.

So my Frau, the cats, and I moved into a hotel room for 3 days and returned to this:

Much better. The rooms are lighter now and I do not miss that amber glow that the old floors gave off.

Unfortunately, being ill meant that I missed out on a lot of fun. With gathering and mask restrictions being lifted and life continuing to return to normal, I had a busy April planned. First, I was unable to go see the band Nektar in concert. This disappointment was followed by missing all 10 or so movies at the Wisconsin Film Festival that I had purchased tickets for. I was to again judge processed meats at the product competition at the Wisconsin Association of Meat Processors convention but I was in bed cursing whoever it was that gave my Frau Covid instead of sampling bratwurst and large diameter luncheon meats. The day after that was Palm Sunday and Madison's Polish Heritage Club was holding their Easter bazaar for the first time in a couple years. Again, I was an achy mess huddling under a blanket when I could have been having fun, enjoying kielbasa and good company, in this case.

Speaking of Polish things, we celebrated Fat Tuesday with not only pączki, but also pączki beer.

Hinterland, a brewery up in Green Bay, brewed a beer that mimicked a raspberry pączki. While the pastries were tasty, the beer was gross. They started brewing it in 2020 and used 1,200+ of the tasty bundles of fried dough goodness in the brewing process. I don't know if they actually added the pastries to the brew kettle for this year's batch but I sure tasted a lot of raspberry flavoring.

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Last autumn I heard that the rock band Jethro Tull, of whom I am a great fan, was soliciting tales from fans for a book that tells a history of the band from the fans' perspectives. I submitted a piece and a few months later I was told that it had been accepted for publication! And so a short essay of mine will appear in this book come September.

A brief excerpt:

"The next step for me on my journey into Tull was to return to the source of many a musical discovery for me – my older brother's tape collection. Eager for more flute-laden proggy goodness, I scoured it and eventually found a tape with 1982's The Broadsword and the Beast on one side and Thick as a Brick on the other. I immediately took to Broadsword with its loud guitars sharing space with synthesizers plus the flute and occasional mandolin. Thick as a Brick took longer but I eventually fell under the spell of its bouncy folk melodies and crazy time signatures."

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Back in February, a friend came up from Chicago and ran a game of Call of Cthulhu. It's a pen and paper role playing game like Dungeons & Dragons but instead of a medieval fantasy setting with dwarves and elves fighting orcs, Call of Cthulhu is all about regular people trying not to succumb to madness when faced with cosmic horrors that remind them that mankind is but a puny, insignificant speck in the grand scheme of things. Storylines generally feature eldritch gods and the cultists who worship them along with the odd squamous half-man, half-fish hybrid thrown in for good measure. Oh, and all manner of unspeakable evils are loosed upon us poor humans.

We played a scenario that took place in the 1970s and I played the captain of a mission whose purpose was to land a crew on the moon to investigate a research station near the Shackleton crater which has stopped communicating with NASA.

Curiously enough, our shuttle craft looked just the like one in the TV show Space: 1999. Hmmm...Since it took place in the 70s, we made sure the men had very wide ties on at the conference they attended and I think most of the characters were smoking in the shuttle en route to the moon. One of the astronauts was Canadian and brought an ample supply of freeze-dried poutine on the mission.

My friend spared no expense in setting the right mood with a fantastical light show when we entered the cavern at the bottom of the crater, met the strange, unearthly creature there, and descended into madness.

My friend had also been a friend of my brother. After our game finished, we hung out for a spell and chatted.

About 10 years ago, he ran a Call of Cthulhu scenario called White Leviathan which was based on Moby Dick. It takes place from 1844-1846 onboard a Kingsport whaling ship. He, my brother, and crew were play testers.

My friend said that he'd been in touch with the game's creator. Since my brother had been one of the early players, he will be immortalized in the final version of the game. Likely his name will be that of a whaling captain on the wall of a New England tavern next to a harpoon. A fitting way to memorialize my late brother.

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Bonus photo: we got a new ottoman that holds the cat toys and is in front of the picture window so Grabby and Piper can sit on it to watch birds and catch the evening sun. Here's a photo of Grabby enjoying it and it also features our lovely new floor.