Although things are “opening up” we all know the Corona Virus hasn’t gone away. We’re at 49 confirmed cases in our county. I’m happy we haven’t seen a spike since we’ve had more people day-tripping here the past two weeks Hotels just reopened last weekend for some stays and we’ll see what happens over the next few weeks. My son is still home from work due to his infusions of remicaide making him immunocompromised. We talked with his primary care physician and are waiting and seeing for now, but we’re thinking that after Labor Day when the majority of the tourists are gone he could go back to work.

My dog is suffering a bit right now. She’s got allergies that are managed with apoquel. Well, last week she started getting irritated under her barking collar. We took it off. instead of getting better, it seemed to get worse, partially because when she’s out running her regular collar was also rubbing on the spot. On Monday I went to hook her by her collar and my hand came away with dark red on it. I took off her regular collar and rubbed the area with coconut oil. By today it looks better, but she also seems to have “hot spots” on her back. I think it’s from bug bites. We’re in black fly season in the mountains. They should die off soon. Every year they come out in May strong, then die off, then come back a little bit in August. I think we’re going to up the apoquel from once a day to morning and night for a couple of weeks and see what happens. The downside is the apoquel is over $200 for a bottle of 100 pills.

In planning what I’m doing with Thoughts From the Mountain Top, I’m still planning to focus on media since I’m not traveling at the moment. There’s a possibility of a trip to Destin in August and maybe a drive to North Dakota to see my daughter sometime in the fall, but that depends on a few factors including what Corona Virus is doing. I’m very nervous about taking him out of this area that feels “safe” in many way.

Most of what I have been posting in media have been reviews I posted on Epinions back when I wrote for them. The Star Trek: The Next Generation reviews are from those days, however I never got to review any of the other series’ like I did that one. My plan is to go back and start on The Original Series, then Deep Space Nine, followed by Voyager. Somewhere in there I’ll also re-do my reviews of the Star Trek Films. Finally I’ll hit the newer series’ like Enterprise, Discovery, and Picard. I do enjoy reviewing each episode of a series and will probably do that with several others including Babylon 5. I also want to re-write all of my Star Wars movie reviews. With media, I’ll never run out of subjects.

Books are my other area I’m focusing on. I have lots on my list that I’ve read that I can review, and I’ve been writing original reviews of books I’m currently reading as I go along. I’m currently reading Neil Peart’s Ghost Rider which is something I can relate to, especially this time of year. I have many books in my Kindle queue to get through as well.

In between, I hope there is more hiking and geocaching. I have a few trails on my list to hike this summer. The last couple of weeks I have been busy with vacation rentals and I feel myself getting out of shape, which I don’t like.

If nothing else, the Corona Virus motivated me to start a blog and start writing again. I need to keep up the momentum.