Day 3732

It's definitely Friday the 13. We're currently under a tornado alert and we just learned that McDonald Observatory is being closed because of the coronavirus. All visitors and non essential staff will meed to leave by tomorrow morning. The visitor center has already been closed and there are no more star parties. The Astronomer's Lodge will be closed as well. Essentially, my visit is over.

I got one of those severe storm alerts on my phone a little while ago, but have no idea what I'd do if there actually was a tornado.  I"m not  even sure there's anybody in the building right now. The engineering team who is staying here is still up at the telescope trying to finish their work before they have to leave as well. I actually think the severe weather is north of us, but what do I know? My weather radar coverage is pretty spotty up here.

I did work a full day today. The three tours we did seemed pretty normal. That's why the sudden decision to close the observatory came as a surprise to almost everybody. We started hearing rumors that the University of Texas might do something like this yesterday, but I didn't believe them. I was still planning on having a star party tonight. The star party activities are outdoors and visitors aren't packed closely together. Could some of the visitors to my telescope be spreading the virus around? Possibly. I think spreading fear is even worse though. I'm sure this virus is serious, but so is mass hysteria.

I'm disappointed that my visit has been cut short. I've really enjoyed my time here. I was really hoping to have another chance to spend an evening observing with the 36" Dall-Kirkham telescope, but the situation is what it is. Pretty soon, everything in the country will be closed. Personally, I think the cat is already out of the bag. This virus has such a long incubation period that chances are high people were being infected here in the United States well before we started hearing about a pandemic.

I think the best thing you can do is try to stay healthy. Eat nutritious food. Get lots of exercise. Go outdoors and don't spend you day cooped up with a lot of other people. Basically, I'm doing this already. I can't see that a home quarantine would change my life all that much. I've been social distancing for most of my life.

I'd much rather stay up here on this lonely mountain than return to Dallas and join the ongoing panic. It's kind of ironic that they are sending us home. I have a much higher chance of catching the coronavirus in Dallas that I do here. It is what is is though. I'll be packing my bags and leaving in the morning.

The coronavirus is definitely a Black Swan event. I didn't see this coming. SARS, Bird Flu, Ebola, H1N1, HIV Aids, and many other nasty diseases never caused this type of mass panic. Either the world has gone mad or somebody knows something I don't.

I don't look forward to the drive home tomorrow, but the traffic probably won't be all that bad. Nobody is going anywhere these days.

Wyatt is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3725

I think I figured out a way that my Facebook readers can still see the blog. I created a new Facebook Group called Some Assembly Required and each night after I publish my blog entry, I take a picture of the post and upload it to the Facebook Group. There are no links and no text for the robot censors to pass judgement on. The only thing I'm actually putting on Facebook is a JPEG image. The group is private and only people who seem to like reading the blog anyway are invited. I think this is a clever plan. Let's see if Facebook can block this. If you read the blog on Facebook and didn't get invited, let me know and I'll add you to the group. I know who some readers are, but I certainly don't know all of you. If you have trouble reading the blog entry, just click on the picture and it will become larger, making everything much easier to see. I'm not sure if you are notified when new posts are added, but the Group is easy to find once you've joined. Let's see how this works. Posting this way is certainly a lot easier than convincing all of you to move to Twitter.

Today's big event was giving Dawn a bath. We took her to a self-wash place where we always used to bathe Dot and Dash. I didn't expect Dawn to enjoy the bath, but she was much better behaved than we expected. She even let the lady who runs the place clip her nails and clean her ears. Why did we go to all this trouble to get Dawn looking sparkly clean? Someone wants to look at her tomorrow and she might get adopted. Janet and I both have mixed feelings about Dawn going to a new home. She's a wonderful dog and we've become attached to her.

This is why so many fosters fail. I wanted to keep Ginny and it wouldn't have been hard to convince me to keep Hank. Basically, I've wanted to keep every Dalmatian we've had at the house. We knew this would happen when we agreed to foster dogs. The bottom line is that if Dawn gets a great home, that's all that matters. I still think that fostering is important. Janet and I don't have a dog now, which make our home the perfect place for a sick dog to recover or a scared, shy dog to develop trust. That doesn't make it any easier to say goodbye to Dawn though. She's just about perfect. We'll see what happens tomorrow. I don't think we would ever let Dawn go to a bad home. Dalmatian Rescue has an excellent record of matching the right people with the right dog.

I'm still worried that the Spring activities at McDonald Observatory are going to get cancelled at the last minute. I was shocked to learn today that SXSW was canceled this year. This is a huge event for the city of Austin. The city will lose millions and millions of dollars. Is the coronavirus really that bad or is this a case of mass hysteria? It's hard to tell at this point. If the observatory is going to cancel their Spring Break activities, I hope they tell me before I start the long drive to West Texas. I'd hate to discover that things have changed when I'm stopping for gas in Amarillo.

I think Spring might have finally arrived. Today was beautiful and I'm starting to see small flowers pop up everywhere. Crow Poison is always one of the first flowers to emerge. I wonder how this plant got its name. There are huge fields of the stuff in the park, but there are still plenty of Crows. Acording to Cherokee legend this plant was used to make a poison that would kill the crows eating their corn. The jury is still out on whether Crow Poison actually kills crows. Don't add any of the flowers to your salad though. The plants are poisonous to humans.

I bought some more socks and underwear today since I was told to bring enough clothes for my entire trip. Probably most volunteers would do this automatically. I like to travel light and would much rather do laundry every few days. I don't think this is an option.

Anne is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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