June 2020- How/What is everyone doing?

[Matthew Lau]

Hey everybody,

It's been a while since I've been on the forum.
I just wanted to see how everyone's been doing.

Also, I'm curious what people have been up to.
I've been growing blueberries, and making Kombucha.
Mainly, I've been focussing on reopening my dental office with new safeties in place for Covid 19.

[Peter Wilcox]

I'm being a hermit (hard to do living with wife and mother-in-law), gardening, and trying to learn to play pedal steel - 10 minutes a day doesn't produce much progress.

[Clay Schaeffer]

My friend called me "the Hermit in the Hollow" even before the pandemic so I haven't been doing anything much different. Aside from building instruments and trying to keep the shop from sliding off the hill into the creek I've been learning to bake breads and make pizza dough. And I've been rebuilding my picket fence that got run over when google rerouted people up the dirt two track we live on only to find the little bridge over the creek was out of commission. Somehow those 40 foot motorhomes couldn't figure out how to turn around without crushing my fence.
My wife started back to work last week so I am "officially" back in the "unemployed bum" category (retired).
I hope you and yours are doing well Matt. As a Dentist I'm sure it is difficult to practice any type of physical distancing. I haven't heard that robotic surgery has come to dentistry yet but that may be the coming thing. No Joy!

[Matthew Lau]

Hey Clay,

Try baking a pizza on a BBQ grill sometime.
You might be pleasantly surprised how it turns out.

[Karl Wicklund]

As mentioned in another post, I’ve been working on finishing a dedicated shop space. Also establishing our garden space, brewing the odd batch of beer, and milking logs from last summer’s storms. That’s on top of a family
With three kids, and teaching remotely. Been a strange but ok time.

[Clay Schaeffer]

Karl,
Milking logs sounds pretty onerous. You'll be doing that till the cows come home!

[Clay Schaeffer]

Hi Matt,
That does sound interesting. Pizzas like to bake at 500 degrees, which I think is possible on a covered grill. Do you use a gas grill or charcoal?
Someone gave me a little apartment size electric range. I cannibalized a medical cart and mounted the range on wheels for outdoor use. Since the weather has turned hot and sultry I cooked the last batch of pizzas outside to keep from heating up the house.

[Karl Wicklund]

You know if the cheese we make from milking logs is any good, Clay, I’ll send you some!

[Bryan Bear]

I've been working at home since mid-March. My temporary workspace is in my workshop so I'm spending more time than ever in here. I'm not doing much woodworking though. Somehow, I don't seem to have any extra time during all of this. I'm spending a lot of time with the kids who are pretty much stir crazy since they haven't been with other kids for months.

I moved last August and eventually got my shop up to mostly how I want it. Sitting in here for so long has helped me see a bunch of changes and improvements I want to make so I have done some of those.

[Matthew Lau]

When I did a pizza, I but it on a cedar plank on a charcoal grill, but gas should work fine too.

beem making pancake pizzas though.
trader joe's pancake mix. flip pancake.
Add sauce ( 2 pt spahetti, 2 pt pt tomato paste 1 pt sriracha). Add some slices of cheese.
pop in toaster oven for 10 minutes.

You'll have a nice buttery crust, and bubbly cheese.


Hey Bryan, try brainwashing the kids to doing chores for fun.

[Bryan Bear]

Ha! Did that work on you? Let me know how it works on your kids. <G>

[Matthew Lau]

No kids yet. Need a wifey first.

Heard from a number of patients who've been doing that with varied success.

[Steve Sawyer]

We’re retired so we voluntarily locked down the first week in March. Marcy is asthmatic and immune-suppressed from arthritis meds, so we were very hesitant to come out of the bunker for quite a while. I started taking drum lessons in January and have continued with that via FaceTime. Started back to studying bass more consistently last month.

By April I figured I had all the materials except the strings for my first electric bass build, so that got started. Expected to be playing it this week, but managed to turn the finishing into a disaster, and spent the last week sanding it all back to bare wood! Finally got it all stripped and re-sanded and did the first coat of epoxy filler tonight.

I too have been baking bread. I’m the cook in the family, and have always enjoyed making bread, but have been doing more experimenting rather than just following recipes.

As we all learn what to avoid to stay safe, Marcy has been doing a lot of gardening. Our niece and her partner were out of work so she hired them to do some of the heavy work to expand the gardens, so most of the time she’s as dirty as Pig Pen and happy as a clam.

I’m overdue for some dental work, so interesting to hear that you’re getting set up to treat your patients safely, Matthew. I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with that yet, but I think I broke off a piece of a crown so I’m probably going to have to suck it up and get in to see them soon!

My kids are managing to stay safe. Older son drives a tractor-trailer out to the west coast & back, and taking good precautions. Younger son is a die maker and just went back to work and his employer seems to be taking their safety very seriously (folks who don’t follow the rules get an unpaid vacation). Daughter-in-law is an environmental engineer and is able to work from home.

I’m hoping we’ll all survive this, but it is really a PITA, no?

[Matthew Lau]

I've been trying to help out my fellow dentists with setting up safety protocols.
Here's mine:

1. All staff are temperature checked first thing in the morning. Staff with symptoms are sent home to self-quarentine.
2. Prescreen patients before they get in the office
3. Disinfect hands.  Temperature screen.
4. Remove mask, and have an 1% peroxide oral rinse for 60 seconds.
5. Check Pulse Oxygen Saturation (to avoid asymptomatic COVID 19 carriers)
6. Aerosol shield to cover patient's mouth.
7. Rubber dam (isolation drape for the mouth) or a special suction device to capture aerosols.
8. Double disinfecting all surfaces involved in the procedure.  Disposable barriers.
9. Hypochlorous fogger to disinfect the facility.
10. Swiss air purifier
11. (Not here yet) Suction device to catch fine particles from the patient's mouth
12. As always, everything is steam sterilized and aseptically packaged before it touches the mouth.
13. New gowns for each aerosol generating patient encounter.
14. Lastly, we've always tried to avoid having patients sitting in the waiting room, or crowding an area.
We value promptness, and will continue to do our best to minimize co-exposures.

ps. Here's a video that heavily influenced our protocols
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFB_Kt8fW9c&t=41s

[Matthew Lau]

Also, bear in mind that there's no 100% standardized protocol set for us.
CDC/ADA/OSHA has just copied and pasted from the OR protocols (negative pressure rooms).
AGD/WISHA has a modified protocol that makes more sense.

It's been extremely frustrating on our end.

[Mark Swanson]

Hello friends, I thought I would jump in and spark things up in this discussion... most of the posts are from the summertime! I hope you are having a good winter!
I probably had COVID in December, but I am over it now. My doctor told me to just stay home and don't even worry about a test unless I got worse, so I never got one but I did have a rough three weeks! I beat whatever it was.
I am buried in repair work these days, it does well for me... and I played a lot of music through the summer with my trio, we had a lot of outdoor gigs so I was busy there too. Over the winter we are learning new stuff virtually, we did a lot of online streaming last spring but feel that doing it now sends the wrong message because we would be in close quarters.
To keep myself sane and get up and outdoors I have been doing a lot of metal detecting, and the associated research. Getting out and digging up real old stuff!

[Bryan Bear]

Hi Mark, glad you eat it!

It is hard to believe I posted in this thread 7 months ago. Not much has changed. I’m finding that spending my work day down here I The shop/office has made me not want to spend a lot of extra time down here to do the fun stuff. I did finish one guitar I was working on and am close to finishing up the other. I started both of these before I moved and had to make a new workshop so they took about 2 years!

[Peter Wilcox]

Time flies even when you're not having too much fun.

I made 4 acoustics in the last 16 months and did some simple repairs. Now it's time to take a break and make electrics - I have a bunch of hardware, wood and pickups I need to use up before I'm too old and demented to continue.

I get my second jab this week, and then back to jamming again - that will be really nice. I haven't made much progress on the pedal steel, but I've found it's easier to play without amplification - mistakes don't sound so bad, and don't have to worry about the volume pedal.

But, I haven't cleaned my shop in 2 years - I started yesterday and it will take weeks. My main problem is I can't throw anything away, especially cutoffs (I actually use a piece of it now and again) - I have bins and boxes of them taking up space that I need to actually be able to move around in the shop without knocking stuff over.

Mark, you might think about getting a serology test. If you actually had covid, it could be reassuring and let you feel better about being around others, from a standpoint of both getting or spreading the disease.

[Clay Schaeffer]

Hey Mark,
Nice to see your post. I've often wondered how you and Ellie are doing (do you still keep in contact with her? - I always liked her funky creations)
With the threat of covid I've become even more of a Hermit than usual. I've retired, but my wife is still working, so she runs most of the errands that require leaving the "Hollow".
I should have more things done, but my natural indolence has become worse since retiring. I keep waiting for that second wind, but seem to be stuck in the doldrums.

[Karl Wicklund]

It’s been good to check in here and have one more small connection to a wider world. We got Covid in December as well - it was a miserable week or two, but no respiratory issues. Still some fatigue.

Mostly I’ve been rewriting my shop, and fixing dumb issues (like dropping an oversized breaker lug into a crack in the cement floor. Took two weeks to find a new one!) I did get three cheap ukes into playable condition for my kids, but that was mostly putzing. Waiting for the February to turn into something more pleasant.