Forgot to mention that I was leaving town last week. Not my idea.

Mrs. Dave and T-Rex were worried about her getting the semester started and wanted me on hand just in case. I'm conflicted. While the work from home gig makes it 100% seamless to transfer from my dining room to my Dad's basement in Idaho, I prefer my own set up. The bathroom is a few steps closer and I have a much better view at the trees through the window. Worse was probably that the old TV serves as my second monitor. I worked Friday with just the laptop and I was less of a fan than I even thought I'd be. Fortunately the future SIL had an extra HDMI cable at his apartment and Dad had a TV in the basement that he doesn't use. So, except for the view things are OK now. I do miss being able to pop into the kitchen four steps away for a snack whenever I feel like it.

There has been one "just in case" incident. The day after T-Rex got here she complained about a clunking noise from Cosmo (her car). Clunking noises are rarely good in the automotive world. This one was from somewhere in the front end. Had my brother give it a quick look and he didn't see anything serious, but I took a look myself on Saturday. The noise had stopped, so she likely had a rock or chunk of ice get caught up in the wheel for a few miles. I noticed that my repair on her sun visor wasn't holding up well, so I fixed that, although I didn't like the way it turned out. A replacement on the old machine from the interweb was anywhere from $40-150. Then I thought I'd try a salvage yard. The first one wanted $30, but the second one only $5. Well within budget. Honda uses pretty 2 colors for their interiors - tan and gray. If I was lucky, I'd find one in tan, if not, gray would look at least as good as the black I'd used for the repair I'd done last summer. Armed with a couple of screwdrivers and pliers, I wandered through the yard, looking for the six 2001-05 Civics they had. #3 had a couple that were in good shape, but in gray. So I kept looking at all the others, hoping for the tan which would give Cosmo an original look. No luck on that, in fact the others were either gone or looked nastier than the one I was trying to replace. So I went back to #3 and took both driver and passenger side - $10.58, including tax. At least they matched each other.

I have two brothers who live in/near Rexburg, and one of them has a big garage and a bucket load of tools. Not that I'd need any for what I had planned. At this point it seemed wise to take advantage of the facilities and have a closer look for the source of the mystery clunk. Didn't find anything that would clunk, but did see that she needed new front brakes. That took a trip to O'Reilly's, $30 and 20 more minutes. Guess it was a good thing I came out here. Sure, the bros could have changed her brakes, but this way I'm the hero dad and I could use the street cred.

Checked on the weather for eastern Idaho before I left and most days were forecast to have highs in the low to mid 20s. With snow on the ground and not much in the way of sidewalk where I usually run when I'm up here, I was a little reluctant to plan any mileage for the week. Plus there was a space issue with my single carry on. Since I'm not training, I figured I'd just take the week off. I did get 3 runs last week before I left MI. And there's the running part of this post.

I'm conflicted just being here. I see the Covid numbers around the country climbing and climbing and wonder why no one seems to care unless they work in healthcare or have a close family member who died or is dying from it. So many pictures of people who gathered with family for Christmas and New Year's, took trips to Mexico or the Carribean or wherever. I still have antibodies from my own bout last spring, so I'm reasonably confident that I'm both safe and not likely to be spreading anything, but I sort of feel hypocritical, judging everyone else for what seems like cavalier behavior relative to the pandemic.

Funny, I had just mentioned Wednesday morning to a friend that every time I felt like things couldn't get any worse, something else happened. By Wednesday afternoon it wasn't funny anymore.

God help us.