Ross Catrow.

Got a flat tire two miles from my house on the hottest day of the year. Luckily, I had a coronavirus neck gaiter to use to keep the sun off my bald head. Silver linings.

I hugged a person that is not my wife or my child for the first time in three months.

I found a dozen really beautiful, new-to-me blocks in Highland Park today. What an absolutely perfect day for aimless bike riding on the Garbage Bike.

17 years I’ve been married to Valerie, and only one of those years have we spent our anniversary in quarantine hiding from a deadly virus. Typically we celebrate with friends, pasta, and fish at Edo’s, but tonight we’ll celebrate with…burgers? And more of the same?

Got out on the bike after a couple of days trapped inside by heat and rain—still incredibly hot outside. I ordered a couple of these neck gaiters to use as face coverings while riding, and, while they are super thin (and maybe not super corona-effctive), they are still super hot while chuffing up a hill in 95-degree heat and 1,000% humidity. The gaiter form factor is nice because you can pull it up in people-dense areas and push it back down once you get back into the sticks. Gonna be a weird / sweaty summer.

Couldn’t help but laugh at this sad little anecdote I found in the Richmond Times-Dispatch today:

Chris Morrison, a 38-year-old Hanover County resident, brought a bucket of water, dish soap and brushes to try scrubbing the graffiti from the Lee monument Wednesday…After trying for a while, he couldn’t scrub the graffiti from the pedestal. Instead, he found some chalk and began blotting out what messages he could. After a few hours, he decided to leave as demonstrators began gathering for another march.

Love to see it.

I've got such a limited reserve of creative energy and almost all of it goes into Good Morning, RVA each morning. By the time evening arrives, I've only got enough focus left in the tank for margaritas and comics and, I guess, scrolling through the Twitter timelines of local reporters. I'm in awe of folks who've spent the last five days protesting for a better tomorrow.

Every day, for the past several days, has felt like a time set aside to wait for the events of the evening to unfold. First, pain and violence, now anger and hope.

Stay well, do good, and be safe.

Listen, all of these margs help prevent scurvy.

Really feels like we’re teetering on a very, very thin edge these past few days.

The Great and Mrs. America have both been surprising quarantine delights!

I told an AI that attempts to generate rhymes to write me song about the "coronavirus pandemic" to the tune of David Bowie’s "Space Oddity." Here’s what it came up with:

To learn more about this disease or
For further assistance
Is recommended as part of the vaccine
Information program hosted by kathleen
F of purdue university.
For more information.
In order download the full video you
Will have several options that you can pursue.

😬

My parents came over for dinner for the first time since before Coronavirus: Day 1. We had Mexican delivered, sat in the backyard six feet apart, and did not hug. It was nice!

I have an entire other blog for writing about local government, but I'm real interested to see how Richmond's mayor responds to the last two weeks of the City's percent positivity data—which has become Virginia's Very Important Coronavirus Metric. It's gone up since he requested a Phase One postponement from the Governor two weeks ago and doesn't look like it's headed down this coming week. I imagine he'll feel intense pressure to make some sort of change, though. Phase 0.5?