Every indication points toward the governor starting his “Phase I” plan this coming weekend. Assuming that is the case, Friday will mark the end of this specific project. I love the idea of posting some kind of daily photo, and my intention is to keep posting daily. I’m hoping to get out and about a bit more and would like to take photos of something other than things inside my house! I’ve been unearthing some lovely “gems” from past years as I work on processing my old unprocessed photos, so I may post some of them as well. I’ll probably also continue to to supply a stream of drivel as we go along.
Forty days and forty nights – seems we might have been able to sail around the world in that time (oh, that was 80, sorry)! The good news is that not spending money on travel means that we have more money to spend on future travel. The bad news is that the markets have eaten some of our travel money!
We’ve had a number of conversations lately about when and where we’ll be able to go when the time comes. We were supposed to be on a Southwest US road trip right now. We have 17 states plus Hawaii left, and have routes mapped out to catch all of them. The current hope is that we can head to a family birthday/wedding/July 4 blowout in Ohio then extend on into either the Northwest or the Northeast, saving the Southwest until fall or next spring.
Our big issue now is not so much fear of the Coronavirus itself, but what I am calling “Pandemic Panic.” It’s all the ‘stuff’ that people are going to feel like they have to do to either comply with health department requirements or the expectations of the Perpetually Paranoid. I’d prefer to not have to wear a mask into a grocery store in North Dakota (not that they are requiring it, this is hypothetical) or a museum in Oregon (again hypothetical) but if the choice comes down to going with compromises or staying home, I think we’ll figure out a way to go.
The October cruise we have booked? Another story completely. It depends on many factors: Are the ports in Canada going to open (they are currently closed until July, and the cruise season only goes through October)? Is the port of Boston going to allow cruise ships to take on and discharge passengers? What is the onboard experience going to be like? We need to send them our money by early July, and I just don’t think we’ll know enough by July to make that kind of commitment. So October might be the perfect time for another road trip and get our 49th state. We’ll see! 🙂
Our bartender buddy dropped off his latest creation the other day. It’s a strawberry syrup made from fresh strawberries, sugar and 100-proof vodka. It makes a yummy addition to a gin & tonic, and would also be good in just tonic or soda water, probably in ginger ale or cola. He recommends it with vodka, rum or bourbon. I may try a few things to see how it goes. I used some of the Old Fashioned syrup in a salmon glaze, I wonder how this strawberry syrup would taste on pancakes or waffles. Hmmmm…. 🙂
Our stay-at-home orders are set to expire on Friday, when we will hopefully begin a phased approach to re-opening businesses. Haircuts are still probably a month or more away, but being able to get back to the malls (that we don’t go to) may ease some of the crowds in other places we do go to!
What if they had a protest but nobody came? A Facebook group attempted to have a “Reopen Meck” demonstration in uptown Charlotte yesterday, but more people from the press showed up than demonstrators. And it sounded like most of the demonstrators were driving by in their cars. I guess that’s better than the gun-toting crowd that showed up in Michigan, but not much better, IMO.
Some of the parks have reopened and the malls are supposed to reopen next week. Hopefully people will start going back to work soon so us retired folks can have our weekday grocery store and farmer’s market runs to ourselves again. 😉
We put a whopping 152 miles on our car during the month of April. I walked 51 miles in the month. If it wasn’t for the 3 times we went for a “ride in the country” I might have walked farther than I drove! I think some of my neighbors drive more than 50 miles in a month just going to Walmart and back. 🙂
One of my main goals for our unplanned “sabbatical” has been to complete processing of all of the unprocessed “picks” in my Lightroom catalog. I’ve been chipping away at the backlog since we retired almost 2 years ago (time flies!), and at the beginning of March had just about 2000 photos. As of today I am down to just under 700 in two years plus a few stragglers from my current photo-a-day project: 2007 (477) & 2008 (167) and 2020 (47). There are another 1000 or so photos that are frames from attempts at HDR or Panorama, and I’ve found that current software tends to do a very good job even with old files, so I may play around some with that later.
Finishing those photos won’t mean anything to anyone but me, but it’s a place I’ve wanted to get to for a long time. I may write in more detail about my organizational structure some other time, but I’d be surprised if more than a fingerful of people really cares about it. 😉
In a cruel twist of irony, an organizer of a North Carolina group calling on the state to ease its coronavirus restrictions was unable to attend two rallies because…she has tested positive for the disease. She (thankfully) is “asymptomatic” but still. Irony is irony.
Kathy & I drove into town yesterday for a doctor’s appointment, and were surprised by the number of cars on the road. Traffic was lighter than usual, sure. But it doesn’t seem like people are actually staying home, rather using their “free time” to venture here and there. It will be interesting to see what things are like when stores start to reopen.
For those who don’t know, What the Duck was a photography-oriented comic strip that ran from 2006-2016. It is now published by Universal Press Syndicate under the name W. T. Duck. There are a number of sources, but one is GoComics. I bought this plush W.T. several years ago, and he sits on my desk in this mini beach chair. He has a twin that hides in a closet somewhere in the house.
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A New York Times article (yes, I read a lot of the Times and the Washington Post) about the reopening of restaurants was interesting. It’s worth the time, as it delves into a lot of the strategy and planning that goes into re-opening a restaurant under strict virus guidelines. The article states that a restaurant in Atlanta is planning to open Monday, and that “it intends to sell what will likely be America’s first dry-aged porterhouse steak served by a waiter at a white-tablecloth restaurant in the midst of a global pandemic.”
The article goes on to talk about all of the precautions that restaurants will need to take in order to operate safely. I don’t know about y’all, but that’s not the restaurant experience I want to return to. I’m getting along just fine without restaurants, thank you very much. And if going out to eat means “an experience that is more like a trip to the dental hygienist” I think I’ll keep cooking at home, thank you very much!
All this good eating has resulted in a 10 pound weight loss – the last restaurant meal we had was 6 weeks ago today. 🙂
I’m constantly amazed by the images produced by the Hubble Space Telescope. It’s even more amazing to realize that Hubble has been orbiting the Earth for 30 years. Here is a link to a recent NYTimes article about that history, along with a stunning “Birthday Photo.” Also be sure to follow the link to the 2015 article where various astronomers talk about their favorite photos.
