Plague 2020 #7

[geowench]

Less than a month since my last post!  Go me!  I am back at work full time now and finding it tough.  In fact, I left at noon today, decided to take a few hours sick leave just to have some time alone in the house with nothing to do.  E will be late today and I just needed to be alone.  Which is actually kind of ridiculous since I'm alone in my office most of the day, but you know.  I need some downtime to myself.  And I'm fortunate enough to be able to take it.

At work we are hiring a new person to do my job.  This will make the 8th fulltime person on our team.  I'm part of the hiring committee and next week we interview 6 people.  We've set up a large conference room with half a dozen separate desks, and everyone will be masked.  So that should be fun, and by fun I mostly mean exhausting.

The following week we are going on vacation to the Arbuckle "Mountains."  I put mountains in quotation marks because they are ancient, tiny things. We've driven through them (they're about half way to Dallas from where we live) multiple times, but never really spent any time there.  So I found us a little cabin on 6 acres near the town of Sulphur.  We will go to some touristy spots, but hope that in the middle of the week there will not be large crowds.  We'll bring face masks, but we will probably be the only people who wear them in the middle of rural Oklahoma.  We'll probably bring most of our food so we don't have to go to local shops.  Maybe we'll get take out one or two nights, but certainly we won't be eating in any restaurants, which is too bad, because half the reason to take a vacation is so that I don't have to cook every damn night.

Eating out is what I miss most.  We used to eat out most Friday evenings and every Saturday morning.  Occasionally a second night during the week.  But I cooked every damn dinner otherwise, and I really looked forward to a night off a week.  Oh well.  I'm fully aware how fortunate we are and how good we have it compared to so many, but I still miss eating out.

Comments

Being alone

[old_black]

Being alone has a lot going for it, I reckon. I love being out on the streets in the middle of the night. It's hard to say what's so good about it when, as you say, you can have no one talk to you for hours even when there are people around at work or wherever. Maybe it's that you can really be totally in touch with your own thoughts without the distraction of having to consider the possibility of interacting with others.

I also miss the possibility of eating out. We don't eat out much at all, but the occasional visit to a local café is a treat that just isn't worth the risk at the moment. Australian cases of COVID-19 are nowhere near the numbers in the USA, but our numbers are increasing rapidly (although mostly in one state) and it's looking like the freedoms we have started to enjoy again may be taken away from us.

[fineplan]

I've been considering a run to the mountains, myself, just to get away from things! But I get nervous because a lot of people around here are being dumb. The latest thing is the governor decided last call for drinks is 10pm for the next 30 days to see if that curbs a sudden spike of cases in the 20-30s crowd. His reasoning is that people make poor decisions when they are out late drinking, though in thinking about last call rules, he thinks maybe 2pm in normal times is silly and should be rethought. But all the bars hear is that they will lose money for the next thirty days and they're pissed off and talking about suing him and saying that they're affronted that he doesn't think they do a good enough job distancing... Missing the whole point. (if he were upset at the bars themselves, wouldn't he shut them down again? They're allowed to stay open after for events and food -- right now the only bars that are allowed to be open are ones that also serve food). Anyway, just one example of the yahoos around here...

[mrs_redboots]

Fortunately, I've never really enjoyed eating out, except when on holiday. During my recent holiday we didn't eat out - the nearest we came was buying a bottled drink in a local bakery and sitting outside it to enjoy it and watch the world go by. The government is now trying to encourage people to eat out - and to lose weight, so mixed messages rule!

During lockdown we ordered a takeaway once a week to help local restaurants stay in business. I expect we'll go on doing that, as cooking six nights a week (the Swan Whisperer cooks on Saturdays) can get very old....