Pandemic Diaries Week #22 & #23

16 August 2020

Apparently today is "Relaxation Day."  We're all supposed to relax.  

 

Given that coastal New Jersey is raining, with a 75 to 100% chance of rain until late afternoon, I'd say that's what most of us will be doing with our day.  Relaxing.  Although there are also household chores like laundry and vacuuming to be done.  But relaxing is so much more fun.

I think I might make it "Reading In Bed All Morning Day."  That sounds good to me.

 

We also have rip tide warnings all day long today.  Yikes!   Between that and the shark sightings along the coast (including bull sharks in a New Jersey river!), I think I may not do much swimming this summer!  Maybe dip my toes, wade in up to my ankles.  But sharks and rip tides?  Nuh uh, not me!

 

 

20 August 2020

There are big old trees lining the streets in this neighbor-hood.  All the leaves are brown (but no, today the skies aren't grey).  I kept looking at them, thinking what was wrong?  It's only August.

Then it dawned on me.  People don't realize that in tropical storms, if the storm has strong winds but not much rain, trees actually get wind burn.  

 

Yup, we've seen this in the Virgin Islands.  Just like we humans get wind burn, so do trees.  But the leaves obviously don't turn ruddy, they just dry up and turn brown.  And fall off.

So our street looks like it's autumn already.  Brown leaves on the trees, piles of dry brown leaves on the road, and building up into large bunches under cars.

 

At the same time, we still have plenty of small flowers and roses.  I guess they're small enough or low enough to not get windburn in a storm.  Or maybe the flowers were still little buds, so they survived just fine.  And are now blooming, in contrast to the brown leaves drifting down from above.

Very weird!

21 August 2020

We've had some sunny days, and I've enjoyed my walks on the beach.  Week-ends tend to be crowded, but weekdays are less so, with plenty of distance between groups.  Most people cluster around the lifeguard towers, which the lifeguards request so they can better watch all swimmers.  

 

So for those of us who walk the beach, this means there's plenty of space between lifeguards and their boats for walking, looking at shells, watching the sea birds.

 

One thing I noticed, with the late afternoon sun, is that the bubbles and sea foam that wash up on the shore can get little tiny rainbows as they dry out!  I thought maybe the rainbows were caused by something about the salt crystals refracting the rays of the sun, some such thing.  Turns out that it's actually from algae blooms, when the microscopic algae organisms cause the sea foam and then the rainbows.  Absolutely amazing!

Someone told me that in The Little Mermaid, the sea witch Ursula tells Ariel that when mermaids die, they turn into sea foam.  So maybe the rainbows are the mermaids' scales.

So of course I tried to catch the rainbows in my photos.  Not as easy as it sounds, but fun!

 

One of the apartment buildings or condos that is right by the beach had a beach chair rack for their owners or renters.  Really, it looked like a bike rack, but colorful beach chairs were folded up and in each slot, with bicycle cables and locks keeping them there for the chair owners.  

It was a colorful surprise - not as much fun as the bubble rainbows, but likely easier to paint.  So I took a series of photos, and will try to do a watercolor painting of this.

It was a crazy windy day, probably adding to the sea foam production and the lack of people on the beach.  And possibly why so many sea birds were huddled in the sand, resting up between flights where they had to fight to not be blown away by the heavy wind!

24 August 2020

I like looking at some of the large old houses in our area.  Atlantic City goes back to 1854, though I think the big old houses in our neighbor-hood date back to the early 1900s, maybe up through the 1930s or so.

One oddity is that several houses have lion statues out front on the side of the entrance stairs.  Now, I know, a lot of large houses go for imposing entries.  Lions flanking the stairs, sure, why not.

 

But these lions have glass eyeballs embedded in the cement.  Creepy staring human looking eyeballs, with round pupils rather than the vertical pupil of a real cat.  SO weird and creepy - it make the lions look like they're watching people walking by, ready to pounce and attack us.  Maybe have us for lunch.  Just not normal statue lions at all!!!

I like the subtle ornamentation on the older houses, though.  Repeat designs in concrete, individually painted as accents.  Or a series of stained glass windows.  Bay windows about.  Even some ginger-bread on the smaller houses.

It's just a very pretty neighborhood, mostly residential with a few eating places, a hair and nail salon, and a neighborhood convenience store.  Very quiet, even on weekends.

Parking, of course, is always an issue.  Especially on weekends, people come from the mainland and spend a day at the beach.  So if we go out, parking is not easy to find when we return.  

But hey, if that's our biggest problem, we really don't have much to complain about, right?