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Breaking News!!
During the Zoom birthday party for Bob
Disher on the 26th, Annie had Charis open a "birthday" present
in Redmond, for her grandpa in Dallas, Oregon. She pulled out a
Cabbage Patch doll to illustrate a new baby joining their
family.
It was a special way to announce to
both sets of grandparents, and to Jean and Joel, that Baby
Disher #2 was due in early January. (But I'm betting on a
2020 tax deduction.)
All this stay-at-home time to ruminate
about retirement, and now this! This changes the equation.
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    Social Distancing with Reuben
It's hard to imagine not being able to meet a
grandchild in person for the first 40 days of his life. On day 41
(May 2nd), Cynthia took Reuben on a tour of the extended family. She
drove up to Lake Stevens and visited the Pastrick family, taking that
opportunity to also introduce Reuben to Randy.
She visited the Dishers and the Sittes, and
then stopped by here. Reuben is young enough to keep his
personality to himself, but he could not hide his profound cuteness.
 Cynthia brought us all a colorful pile
of vital
"PPE." She sewed five substantial face masks for each of us.
Jonathan
stayed home with Nathanael because in recent visits, Jonathan has headed
straight for Grandpa.
Each Sunday, around 1:30 PM, the whole family
has kept in touch via Zoom.
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  Work-from-Home
to Continue
Due to needing to teach my class from home, I revised all my lessons
for the third quarter in a row. Autumn quarter was due to the
change in the Microsoft exam from the MOS 77-727 (Excel 2016) to the
MO-200 (Excel 2019). Winter was because I wasn't happy with
the performance of my students autumn quarter.
Zoom meetings with students, faculty, and staff have become daily
events. But learning online was not to the liking of many of
my students as my classes went from a high of 83 students down to 59
by the withdrawal deadline, May 15th.
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  The
COVID-19 Pandemic Rolls On
On the 29th, I learned that, as expected, the
Emerald Heights Retirement Community in Redmond would not be holding
their weekly Bible study in June. In one sense, I'm off the hook,
but I still enjoy the process of preparing an hour-long in-depth lesson.
So if I teach there only in July, should I try to cover nine chapters in five
weeks? I think not.
Also this last workday in May, we learned
that autumn quarter at SPU would begin two weeks early, on September
14th, and end on Tuesday, November 24th, before Thanksgiving.
I thought that I was going to be driving into work
about once every ten days. It turns out I've only gone in
about once a month.
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  How
Does My Garden Grow?
I already bought by Father's Day presents.
Six nice 16" x 15" deep plastic planter pots from Home Depot will be
here in early June. Twenty 5-gallon buckets already arrived from
Walmart. The second planting of
tomatoes are up and will be ready to go into these pots in mid-June.
Plus, Nancy discovered volunteer tomatoes coming up in one pot that grew peppers and parsley last year.
I transplanted these "Nancy" tomatoes to their own temporary pots.
Between Zoom chats with BUS 1700
students, web work that pops up at random mostly from my associate
deans, managing three honor societies from a distance, and taking naps
at all hours, I've watched a lot of YouTube videos on growing tomatoes
from seeds, onions from seeds and ends of store bought ones, bush and pole
beans, compost, mulch, and any number of other gardening topics.
Early morning trips to Home Depot and QFC for potting soil or seeds
showed that this new avocation motivated me enough to get up in the
morning.
Daily watching seeds sprout and grow is like
checking one's stocks in the market on a daily basis. It can be
frustrating. But on a monthly basis, the changes are impressive.
Here below are a few shots of this month's progress in the garden.
What a surprise when Nancy pointed out that we
had a special box in the basement full of old seed packets. The
seeds were long expired, but the fact that Nancy had repurposed this box
of Grandma Jean's made it a special find for a new gardener.
Grandma Jean was a farmer's daughter.
By mid-month, I had 23 Oregon Spring tomato
plants in the garden and six in pots on the deck. Behind them in
the planting schedule, I count over twenty new Super Sweet 100 sprouts
peeking up on the Living Room window bench. As for the beans, I
count 48 bush bean plants. Many have gone in a north-south trench at
the east end of the tomato patch, and others went along the fence in
the old north garden. Many Kentucky Wonder pole beans have gone
into their own new plot along the north side of the tomato
patch. I will use the volunteer Cottonwood tree as part of the pole
bean supports. And why so many green beans? They are one of
the few vegetables I eat regularly, with butter and garlic salt or other
seasonings. And there are now more onions coming up than I can
easily count.
Without grandchildren around to photograph, I'm
limited to this new garden family to raise and record.
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Store-bought green onions are easily
regrown.
I'll never need to buy another onion.
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Bush beans grown from dry beans moved
outside early. Many more bush and pole beans followed.
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Toilet paper rolls
make great biodegradable seed starters, as do all those hot
chocolate cups from church.
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Growth of green onions is faster than I
can eat them. They say, "Eat more salads!" We are.
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The first batch of bush green
beans grow in this pot I see on every trip up or down the deck
stairs.
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This third set of bush beans grown
indoors caught up with those I moved out to the deck in early
May.
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Mid-month: The second batch of bush beans will
be ready to plant by Memorial Day. |
Scores of bunch green onions from seeds caught up with those
started in pots earlier. |
Store-bought yellow onions now get replanted so we'll always
have bulb onions on hand. |
Store-bought Romaine finds a place in the garden. Each new head
of Romaine means a
new start is added to this rectangular pot. |
Will the rotten branches in the trench help or hurt the south
crop of bush beans? We'll see. |
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 On the day before Memorial Day, I planted
twelve bush bean seedlings in the old north garden by the "Bunny yard"
fence.
The next day, I finished this trench for more
bush beans. A layer of rotten branches lines the bottom of the
trench (above right). Garden dirt, manure, and potting soil fill the
rest of the trench. Sixteen bush beans went in over the
 trench and a
few more went in the dirt pile further east. We'll see if the
extra work of creating the trench makes a difference.
The tomatoes planted last month are coming
along nicely.
Twenty-two Kentucky Wonder pole beans went in a new patch carved out
of the St. John's Wort infestation north (left) of the new tomato
garden, so as not to shade the tomatoes. The pots have a few green onions,
but this was before I knew how many to plant together.
Mulch from the Bunny yard keeps the weeds
down, and I'm adding more, especially around the base of the tomatoes.
As I dug tomato holes and trenches, I brought
up rocks and two large boulders. I use them to mark the west end
of the new garden.
If this stay-at-home period continues, I'll
extend the garden south as I dig down "Fort Mountain." Nathanael
says he made a start lowering that hill of dirt that's been there since
house construction in 1992-93. But he says he hit a hornets nest
and digging stopped right there. That's my main source of soil to
fill these buckets.
On the 29th, the first of my self-selected
Father's Day gifts arrived, twenty 5-gallon black buckets from Walmart.
5-gallons is about the smallest size that will grow a tomato well.
(I also got myself a new 27" computer monitor from Newegg.com because I
gave my last spare one to Susan and I have both family room and basement
offices.)
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These 22 pole beans went in the ground on the 26th in the new
patch just north of the tomato garden. |
Nancy's volunteer
tomatoes are outside on Grandma Vi's glass table, which is my
default outdoor garden center. |
These two dozen Super Sweet
100 tomato seedlings will be
more than enough to fill the buckets I've ordered. |
I
rescued these mystery flower bulbs and can't recall what flower
seeds I planted around them. |
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 Leaving
SPU this Summer
 Dr. Brad Murg, is a superstar in his field of
Global Development Studies. Students rave about his lectures.
But he will be moving from his houseboat on Lake Union to
Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He joined us in 2015 after teaching
for two years as an adjunct in Political Science. His title was
Assistant Professor of Political Science and Asian Studies, and Director
of Global Development Studies. Overqualified in many ways, Brad
speaks at least five languages, not counting English and Latin.
He was SPU's 2017 Professor of the Year. He will serve as
Senior Fellow at the Cambodia Institute for Cooperation and Peace, and
work as Senior Adviser to Future Forum, a think tank supported by the
Open Society Institute and the governments of Sweden and Australia.
But I will remember him best as an ardent Roman Catholic, and someone
who rarely kept the appointments he made because he was too involved
elsewhere.
Dr. Helen Chung joined SBGE in 2018 when she
completed her Ph.D. from SPU's graduate
program in Industrial-Organizational
Psychology.
She has made the decision to cross back across W. Bertona St. to the
I/O Psych program, accepting a tenure-track faculty position there.
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 When I heard on the 20th that
Dr. Denise Daniels would
be leaving us for Wheaton College, to become their inaugural Hudson T.
Harrison Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship, I actually cried. I
have admired Denise since she joined the business school in 1996.
She was a candidate for dean, but was not chosen, although she served
as Interim Dean. During that time in 2013, she was instrumental in
nominating me for faculty status which led to the positive vote by the
whole Faculty Senate, December 5, 2013.
Denise was both SBGE Teacher of the Year and
Scholar of the Year multiple times. Like me, she is an ISTJ, very
direct and careful in her conversation, with a quick wit, and a loving
heart. The whole university will miss her service.
Mr. Gene Kim, Executive Director, Center for Integrity in Business; Executive
Director of Global Programs came to us out of retirement from his
successful business career. With master's degree in business from
the University of Virginia (MBA) and Stanford University (EMBA), he was well qualified to take over
leadership of our Center for Integrity in Business from my friend Dr. Al Erisman.
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Jean
and Luna Visit Our Half-Acre Dog Park
During this
stay-at-home month, Jean has visited occasionally with Luna to get
her some outdoor exercise time. Luna doesn't romp like she
does at Marymoor Park, but she seems happy to enjoy our shy half
acre.
Jean and Joel's roommate Tanner has moved
out. And Luna patrols their apartment at night.
Little by little, Jean continues to clean
out her bedroom in Bellevue.
I wonder if we should present it to Charis in late June as her new
happy place. Charis has so many books and toys, I'm hoping
that they will not migrate (much) from the second floor to the
first.
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Bits and Pieces
   Shadow
seems more of a constant companion than usual these days. But I'm
sure that's just my imagination because I am home. She
sleeps in my recliner when I'm in my basement office, and she sleeps on
any part of my body that she wants when I crash. Here's a picture
of her (1920x1080) when she putters in the garden with me.
On Mother's
Day, we had one of our Zoom chats with the family. Nancy joked that the
Mason Bee house I got her was really for "my" new garden.
My
BUS 1700 students will get an exam of my design that they will have 75
minutes to complete and email back to me. My dean, Dr. Stewart,
thinks we'll be teaching online in the Fall.
 This
month, I bid on some more Victorinox Swiss Army knives. I had
gotten a few
back in 2018, also on eBay. One particular lot included 15 knives
which I acquired for $6 each. If purchased at full price, this
collection would have cost over $500. I will clean and polish these
new ones. I like the mid-sized models without the more esoteric
tools that don't get used and drive up the price. When I was in
the Scouts, I loved my Spartan model. Today, my favorite is the Tinker
or Small Tinker.
The black Tinker models and the Super Tinker share duty
as my EDC (every
day carry). I may substitute the 3.3" Small Tinker or Recruit
models for the 3.6" models. Too much of a good thing?
Probably. But there are worse collections I could have acquired
here in this COVID-19 stay-at-home Twilight Zone.
Despite
the brief market downturn in the last two days of May, my investments at
TDAmeritrade and Charles Schwab combined are up from $123.7K to $167.9K
since March 22nd. (This is not the bulk of my retirement funds.
Those in TIAA, Transamerica, and elsewhere are conservatively invested.)
I continue to make about three times my salary by paying attention to my
investments a few minutes each morning. If a stock is in the red,
I wait to sell. If it's made a good run up, I typically sell,
because there is great volatility, and in many cases I've been able to
buy back in at a lower level. (This is not normally a successful
strategy, but I am an anxious investor.) So far, my methods have been well
rewarded. This will not last once the markets returns to their
pre-virus state.
Early
June will involve wrapping up spring quarter, and preparing the house in
earnest for the arrival of the Dishers.
 I
doubt that cooking will become a passion. But what am I to do with
all the onions I intend to grow? I've been thinking about the
25-pound bag of lentils I see outside the pantry whenever I go to my
basement office. So on this last day of May, I cooked up two cups
of lentils, which expanded to 5 cups. I added a diced whole onion,
a can of chicken broth, spices (garlic, garlic salt, parsley, and salt.)
Ninety minutes later, I had a pot of simple yet tasty lentil soup.
All the recipes I'd read online were far too complex. At least
today, I'm eating healthy. What new variations will I invent?
And what will I call my soups?
Early
June will involve wrapping up spring quarter, and preparing the house in
earnest for the arrival of the Dishers.
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| My
Quote from May |
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Sethi:
I loved you, reared you, set you before my own
son...
because I saw in you a worth and a greatness above
other men.
Moses: No
son could have more love for you than I.
Sethi: Then
why are you forcing me to destroy you? What
evil has done this to you?
Moses: The
evil that men should turn their brothers into beasts
of burden, to slave and suffer in dumb anguish, to
be stripped of spirit and hope and faith only
because they are of another race, another creed.
If there is a god, he did not mean this to be so.
What I have done, I was compelled to do.
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from The
Ten Commandments (1956) |
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Work-from-Home
to Continue
