Ukulele in the Time of Coronavirus

Martinlover

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What is everybody doing during this time at home? I’ve been cleaning out the junk drawers and finally got to my strings drawer. Really wish I took a before photo because it was a mess. And what am I supposed to do with all these Oasis humidifier syringes?

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Finally going to get around to changing strings on my ten string charango.
 
On the 13th, work handed me cell phone and a laptop, and said "You will be working from home."

I'm a secretary.

I've been spending my days going through requests from parents asking for Chromebooks so their kids can participate in the remote learning program, emails telling us that they got the wrong chargers, the login won't work, they can log in but the software won't load... And 2-3 on-line meetings, using Zoom and Google Meet, both of which have their own learning curves...

Oh, yeah... I work for a school district.

Tomorrow, I will be going into my office to check for mail, timesheets, bills that need to be paid, and see if the supply chain is back so we can order more Chromebooks...

And bringing my mom to radiation therapy last week, that was fun. Had to sit in the hospital parking garage for a couple of hours - patients only in the hospital.
And grocery shopping and pharmacy runs for my parents

I think I've played my ukes for a total of about 1 hour in the past week. (And had two paying gigs cancelled, but I knew that was going to happen at the beginning of the month.)

I really want to go back to work in the office.


- Kurt​
 
Finally going to get around to changing strings on my ten string charango.

I once heard mandolin player Avi Avital telling about a joke going around among mandolinists, that they spend half their time tuning their instruments and the other half playing out of tune. I guess the same will apply to a 10 string charango :)
 
What is everybody doing during this time at home? I’ve been cleaning out the junk drawers and finally got to my strings drawer. Really wish I took a before photo because it was a mess. And what am I supposed to do with all these Oasis humidifier syringes?

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When I was a nurse, I would have paid you a dollar each for those!
 
And bringing my mom to radiation therapy last week, that was fun. Had to sit in the hospital parking garage for a couple of hours - patients only in the hospital.
And grocery shopping and pharmacy runs for my parents

All the best to your mother Kurt. I hope everything works out for her. And for you.
 
Meantime I wrote a song, the Ballad of Lady Marigold and Mr Fox, based on the fairy tale about a serial killer, Mr Fox. Not a masterpiece as it turns out. :biglaugh:
 
I once heard mandolin player Avi Avital telling about a joke going around among mandolinists, that they spend half their time tuning their instruments and the other half playing out of tune. I guess the same will apply to a 10 string charango :)

That’s how I feel about my 36 string harp. :)

Jan
 
Cooking lots of low sodium foods because since gaining weight, my blood pressure is up. Playing my new bamboo uke and my new converted electric mini bass. Also spending a lot of time helping the leader of my seniors uke group get going on her Zoom paid account to conduct online meetings twice a week. There have been three so far that went very well.

Also cleaned out closets and cabinets to make room for all the things that have been sitting around my music room, very happy with that. Plus doing much more Facetime calls to my family, especially my cousin in New Jersey who's a teacher in the synagogue that had many cases of the virus. Her family is under house quarantine for three weeks, but gladly no one is showing any symptoms. I watched the CBS Sunday morning show that a had segment saying that if you are diagnosed with the virus but show no symptoms, your body built a resistance to it and don't need to isolate yourself.


This is Michael Kohan in Los Angeles, Beverly Grove near the Beverly Center
9 tenor cutaway ukes, 6 acoustic bass ukes, 12 solid body bass ukes, 14 mini electric bass guitars (Total: 41)

• Donate to The Ukulele Kids Club, they provide ukuleles to children in hospital music therapy programs. www.theukc.org
• Member The CC Strummers: YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/CCStrummers/video, Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheCCStrummers
 
First week of January my Doctor upped my meds for blood pressure to bring it down a little more. Same time I thought that I would go on a diet, not because of my blood pressure, just because I thought that I could lose some weight. Ten or fifteen pounds, that's all, nothing drastic. So last week I was sixteen pounds down and feeling a lot better. I went back to the same meds as before January. Dr. told me to if it went down too much. I'm not just doing it because I think I should.

Musically I've been learning to play the guitar, which I started a few months ago but got waylaid with some ukulele stuff I was going to do. But that is all cancelled, so it is back to guitars for now. I've also been working and I work from home, so nothing new there and it has nothing to do with ukuleles.
 
CBS Sunday morning show that a had segment saying that if you are diagnosed with the virus but show no symptoms, your body built a resistance to it and don't need to isolate yourself.



What? BS, you're still a carrier! Gotta love MSM....
 
Pretty much what I do normally. Watching TV, playing my various instruments. Only difference is the kids are here too because the schools are closed.
 
"My Charango"... loved that song. Oh wait, that was "My Sharona"... :p

You beat me to it, Bill. I was gonna use that one. On the plus side, now I know what a charango is. I googled it, after seeing Oldtoolie's post. Live and learn.
 
CBS Sunday morning show that a had segment saying that if you are diagnosed with the virus but show no symptoms, your body built a resistance to it and don't need to isolate yourself.
What? BS, you're still a carrier! Gotta love MSM....

I just read this on a medical web site. "The main way the disease spreads is through respiratory droplets expelled by someone who is coughing. The risk of catching COVID-19 from someone with no symptoms at all is very low."
 
I just read this on a medical web site. "The main way the disease spreads is through respiratory droplets expelled by someone who is coughing. The risk of catching COVID-19 from someone with no symptoms at all is very low."

I'm sorry, but that is simply NOT true.

Any time you breathe or even speak, you also expel droplets. So, yes, coughs and sneezes spread droplets farther, but you absolutely can be exposed to the virus by somebody who is not coughing. In a recent study in Science magazine (link below), they suggest the "lion's share of transmission" has been by people who didn't even know they were sick because they were largely asymptomatic. While these people are less contagious, they are great in number and were not careful because they didn't know they were sick.

Second, the virus can survive in the air and on surfaces for hours to days, depending on the surface. So you don't even need to be around somebody with COVID to catch it -- can get it from their droplets on surfaces or in the air. This is why they are asking people to keep six feet and also why they are asking anyone who recently left NYC to self-quarantine.

People who are highly symptomatic are likely shedding more droplets, but again, they need not cough or sneeze near you to expose you to the virus. See this article:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/01/health/us-coronavirus-updates-wednesday/index.html

While there is no reason for panic, there is reason for an abundance of caution.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/24/science.abb3221/tab-pdf

 
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CBS Sunday morning show that a had segment saying that if you are diagnosed with the virus but show no symptoms, your body built a resistance to it and don't need to isolate yourself.

What? BS, you're still a carrier! Gotta love MSM....

I didn't see the segment, but there is a key point missing. If you were diagnosed (and then whether you ever had symptoms or not) and then you have recovered as demonstrated by at least two successive negative tests, you have recovered and therefore you have resistance.

This is THOUGHT to be true but not known for certain yet insofar as I have read. It is thought to be true because it is the case for most similar viruses. However, there have been a couple of cases where people appeared to be recovering, still in the hospital but had negative tests who then suddenly after a day or two died. However, these people could have had cytokine storms (as I understand it, the body goes into overdrive to fight the infection and but overdoes it and causes fatal pneumonia -- lung inflammation and fluid build-up). It could also have been that the negative test was a false negative.
 
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