328 Days, Historic Events, and Covid Relief

It has been two months since our last post from Shelter Inn Place. Like everyone else we have been hunkered down and doing our best to practice covid safety. We go to the grocery store, do our morning walks, have a happy hour gathering outside once a week and have been out to eat a couple times when we can sit outside.

See if you can find the hawk.

One morning we walked to the nearby Kiplinger Wildlife Refuge and saw all these ibis trying to control the insects.

On December 21 we drove to Hutchinson Island to get a better view of Saturn and Jupiter coming together at sunset.

It was neat to see but not what many people expected.

Another day, the same hawk in a different tree. We never tire of seeing the birds in Florida.

Our new traditional Christmas dinner is Linguine with clam sauce. It was a quiet day for us. Our New Year's Eve was a little more exciting as we gathered our happy hour group to ring in the new year. We cheated a bit celebrating at 5 PM here as it was turning to 2021 somewhere in Europe.

We drove to Hutchinson Island to see this fantastic Christmas light display.

There are over 700,000 lights in the display.

Most of the lights are on the fence and landscaping, not on the huge house.

Nanc celebrating the season with mask in hand. 

For the first time since March we went out to lunch with friends. George and Nan arrived from Connecticut and after a couple weeks we felt safe meeting up with them. We went to Twisted Tuna for a late lunch and as you can see we had no problem social distancing. It was great getting caught up with them and being with other people. A week later we did the same thing at Talk House. 

Like everyone else our age we were on a quest to get "the Shot". We had three choices here in Florida: Cleveland Clinic, the county health department and later Publix grocery stores. We were frustrated with all three checking several times a day and then having their system crash when we thought we were close to getting appointments. Finally, on January 21 Nanc checked and there were open appointments at Cleveland Clinic in Port St. Lucie for Saturday the 23. We had a 20 mile drive so we left early and thought we would have to wait. We did not. We walked in, they checked our temperature, signed us in, had us fill out a questionnaire and then go to one of a dozen stations for the Pfizer shot. All this took less that 15 minutes. We then had to wait 15 minutes to make sure we had no allergic reactions. During that time we scheduled our second shot for February 13. While the initial roll out has not been anywhere near warp speed, we are hearing from more friends all over the country who are getting appointments. We look at this as one small step back to our "normal" life.

Well, we sure were happy to see 2020 come to an end and were looking forward to a new, historic beginning in 2021. Little did we realize the history would include a terrorist attack inspired by the losing presidential candidate. Needless to say we were outraged and while the whole thing was happening I was on the phone letting my senators and representative know where I stood. It was truly one of the saddest days in American history in our lifetime. One week later we watched as the president was impeached for the second time and next week we will be watching and hoping the Senate convicts. 

Finally, on January 20 we watched the history we had been looking forward to, the swearing in of the first Black, Asian woman, Vice-President, Kamala Harris. This was a great day for America even if thousands of troops were needed to protect the Capitol.

Then, it was President Joe Biden's turn. We are so happy and look forward to some bit of normalcy returning to our government. We know the new administration has many big issues to deal with, but are confident Joe is up to the job.

On some of our morning walks we cross the St. Lucie River. This day the local rowing club was out practicing. Very neat.

In the 57 days since our last post, the number of Covid cases in the United States has increased by 11,660,024 to 26,439,473. In the same time the number of deaths has risen by 164,641 to 447,077. There is some good news as the seven day average of new cases has gone down by over 100,000. Sadly, the number of deaths has not dropped as significantly. Also, nearly 27,000,000 people have gotten at least one shot. We look forward to getting our second shot and sure hope more people are following the scientists' recommendations so we can get this plague under control by summer.