August 16 [Sunday]
Not eating in restaurants!
The idea of life post-Covid seems like a remotely distant future. That’s disappointing. I will say this, however, I don’t in the least missing eating in restaurants. I vastly prefer ordering meals online, or phoning it in, then driving for the meal’s retrieval. I do not miss the dining-in eating experience. So hey, there’s one positive Covid note.
August 17 [Monday]
I was reflecting back on my weekday lunches during the early days of Shelter In Place. Since Covid I’m home for lunch every weekday, in fact I’m home everyday, which is a nice treat compared to my occasional pre-Covid lunches while driving between work appointments. Lunches these days have me at the kitchen table reading an EBook while conducting my lunching. Here’s the point of reflection. At the beginning of Shelter In Place, back in late March, I was watching World War II-in-color streaming from Netflix. When I was lucky and overlapped lunch with [the boy]’s lunch, together we took in the joys of the Stalingrad siege, the Normandy Invasion and VJ-Day. Anyway, that was five months ago, still no end in sight, but I suspect I won’t run out of lunchtime EBooks even at my enhanced torrid Shelter In Place reading pace.
August 22 [Saturday]
A morning visit to my parents’, the Safehouse, a 35-minute drive. It’d been a month since our last visit. In the spirit of Covid-related precautions we have proven the heat cannot drive us to breaking safety protocol. We remained outside in the backyard despite a morning in the 80sF. We had the foresight for a morning visit to avoid the 90sF and an urge to step indoors for air conditioning. So, we’re still remaining outdoors and socially distancing and masks when visiting. An hour and a half marked by updates on the kids’ schooling [starts next week], the parents’ recent vacation [Pacific Grove] and the snacks [I knocked back an ice cream, two chocolate chip muffins, fruit, a macaroon and a soda. In my defense, I plead that it was my cheat day]. The question remains, at what point do we decide it’s OK to engage indoor visits with family? Then when for hugs? That discussion, a family-wide open forum, has not yet been addressed head on, but is building as we close out month five of Shelter In Place.
August 23 [Sunday]
It’s been five months and the four of us all still like each other . . . at least as far I know. I mean, I like the other three people with whom I’m doing time with Shelter In Place and I assume, I think, they’re also cool with me. But hey, that’d be rough stuff Sheltering solo. Or with people you don’t like! Holy Toledo I’m thankful.
August 24 [Monday]
The kids start school this week; [the boy’s] in his second year at Cal State Fullerton and [my daughter’s] a junior at Bonita High. All schooling will be online, at least to start. The close of last year’s online school term was lame in several respects. I sure as heck hope the instructors [mostly the high school teachers, plus one college professor better equipped to the 20thcentury] have used these last few months to step up their game on how to convey actual teaching. Coming months will tell.
I’m still working virtually from home sharing the internet with everyone. I do have a work-provided Wi-Fi tool. It’s not as good as the home network, but I’ll use the Wi-Fi tool and allow the piglets’ the bandwidth advantage of the home network.
August 26 [Wednesday]
Today’s three NBA playoff basketball games were postponed as a show of solidarity after a black man, Jacob Blake, was shot seven times by a policeman and paralyzed after resisting arrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin on 8/23/2020. I support the players’ rights to protest and I respectfully disagree with them.
My beef with protesting police is that it absolves people of their own responsibilities. [I’m not referring to Mr. Blake, I refer to the collective people, the community.] Protesting police brutality and racial or social injustice is counterproductive. It’s asking someone else to make the change being sought. Meanwhile there are actual constructive and meaningful measures that are attainable [schooling, job opportunities, government policies that reward initiative rather than redistribute assets]. Rather than scapegoating one’s unhappiness and a life unfulfilled, I submit that people would do better to seek change where their own efforts and determination can result in its own bounty. Seek to cobble together constructive and practical decisions and take action to help one’s own cause. Empower themselves to make their equality, do not settle for someone else’s vision. That’s agency of change, taking control of one’s own life, not the perpetuation of the same, expecting one’s life to change based on the machinations of a governmental entity.
I suspect we will not see a wave of restaurants or beauty salons also voluntarily closing their businesses in solidarity. They haven’t the luxury to behave in a temperamental manner. Regarding the basketballers, I hope they decide to cancel their season. I enjoy the voluntary self-destruction of luxury items.
[Note: the NBA resumed playing ball Saturday. In Major League Baseball, by vote of the players, seven of Thursday’s 15 baseball games were postponed, three more on Friday. Full play was resumed Saturday for both leagues.]
August 27 [Thursday]
A new game has emerged between me and [Wife Klem]. Our politics have diverged in recent years and the gap widens, especially with the approaching Presidential election. We try to be adults in our conversation but the banter sometimes gets sharp. The thing is, we generally agree on the end goal, the differences are on which path to take to get to that end. The game is entitled Seeking Common Ground. While disagreeing on which route to take, we will strive to identify the common ground we share and leave that as a positive lingering sentiment. I hope this works.
August 30 [Sunday]
I watched a baseball game today, my first of the abbreviated Covid season. This is a shortened 60-game season instead of the traditional 162. They’re playing the ball games, but there are no spectators in the stands, stadiums are empty. Crowd noise is ‘piped in’ when something exciting happens, plus there are hundreds of cardboard cut outs of people in the stands. It took a little getting used to, but the empty stands were not a hindrance to watching. Anyway, MLB.com was streaming all the games for free today. I watched my first place Cleveland Indigenous Peoples! But they did not win.
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