Author Archives: Ross

I'm really enjoying my garden this year. I think part of that is due to the pandemic giving me more time to spend watering, pulling weeds, and just generally futzing around out there. It's wild how you can just grow food right out of the ground! I think I'm going to invest in a nice […]

I worked from an actual desk today and felt way less like a half-human schlub! It took 100 days, but setting up a Work From Home Zone was a good idea!

Since the coronavirus isn't going anywhere, and we're not going anywhere, Val and I thought it'd be nice to finally create a space for me to Work From Home. Up until now I've been Working From Bed a lot, which I know is not great (see this particularly helpful video from CGP Grey). Now we've […]

Bourbon and ginger beer is sooo much better than bourbon and ginger ale—like, way more better than the amount ginger beer is better than ginger ale. If anything, coronatime has encouraged me to drink alcohols other than Miller Highlife and Evan Williams Green. There's an an entire rainbow of booze to explore!

I started reading Philip Roth's The Plot Against America for some reason (who recommended this to me??), and it frequently blows my mind. This description of living in a world where an anti-semitic Charles Lindbergh beat FDR and kept America out of WWII hits way too close to home in the current Trump/pandemic/racism moment: And […]

While following the COVID Tracking Project on Twitter may not help me maintain a reasonable level of doomfeeling, it is certainly fascinating. Coronavirus cases in the South continue to skyrocket, but things have not yet progressed to a New York City Levels of Apocalypse. Still plenty of time for that, I guess, as states surrounding […]

Benadryl still works during a pandemic. Whew! Heckuva drug.

Due to the pandemic, we canceled our annual trip to Blacksburg for the Virginia Tech spring football game. It's one of my favorite family traditions, and this is one of the first year's we've skipped since my son was just a couple years old. Honestly with all of the…everything…going on, mid April rolled right past […]

It’s weird how part of my nightly quarantine routine is to wait until the sun goes down and then check Goad Gatsby’s Twitter timeline for updates on the evening’s civil unrest. Didn’t have that on my coronavirus bingo card!

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I'm having frequent coronavirus-related nightmares. They're not terrifying dreams, more like frustrationmares: I forget my mask, I'm stuck in a crowd of maskless people, I have to organize an event but can't provide proper social distancing, stuff like that. I haven't slept well in over a week due to these low-key, boringly upsetting dreams. I […]

With just five episodes of Lost left to watch, I'm positive we'll look back on these quarantimes as the "Catrow Family's Lost Era." I do wonder if we've got enough time trapped in our house ahead of us that we'll split up quarantine into its own mini eras. Era 1: Lost…Era 2: Every single episode […]

I feel weird about how my beard spreads out around the edges of my mask.

I've now been in two buildings other than my house since March 13th: The mortgage refinance place and my parents' house. My quarantine world is expanding! I think I'd have flipped my biscuits by now if not for riding my bike all over the dang city as much as possible.