Thursday, May 7 has been my favorite day in quarantine. Seriously.
6:30 a.m. Awake.
7:00 a.m. Meeting of the Thursday Bible guys on Skype. I had been going to the Tuesday BGs, and still am. But the Thursday guys use the lectionary, so it’s different from reading the Bible as published. And I had a muffin that one of the guys named Bob had dropped off at my house the day before.
8:15 a.m. Breakfast.
9:00 a.m. I make my two daily phone calls. One’s to a guy at choir and is fairly brief. But I end up speaking for more than an hour to a woman from my church I’ve known longer than almost anyone there. We shared stories of technology challenges, among other topics.
11:00 a.m. I had arranged a Zoom meeting with one of my choir buddies, but it was unsuccessful on her side.
11:30 a.m. Empty the dishwasher and tend to miscellaneous tasks.
12:30 p.m. Eat lunch with my wife.
1 p.m. Finally work on a blog post that, annoyingly, was no writing itself.
3 p.m. HEARTS! Back in the late 1980s, a coterie of us would go over to Broome’s house and play cards. There would be a game three or four nights a week with a rotating cast of players. Sometimes Broome wasn’t even there.
When he moved to the country, the games ceased. For my 60th birthday, I decided to have a card game at my house, and that became a nearly annual tradition. But as coronavirus began its spread, there were only a handful at the game the weekend before everything got shut down in New York State.
Card party
I had started playing a free online game at PlayOK with random strangers. Sometimes, there was no one to play with at all. Why not invite my old hearts buddies? So I did. Then someone suggested we should set up a Zoom meeting simultaneously so that we could actually see each other. I made it so.
As one of us noted, “I think we enjoyed it so much because in so many ways it felt NORMAL! A hearts game with the old crew.” There were some technical glitches – if you wait too long the game ends – but it was an inspired event.
4 p.m. Watch some TV with my wife, notably a segment CBS This Morning Saturday about Kent State. My bride was too young to remember it clearly.
5 p.m. Mow the lawn for the first time. It’s a nice day. I have to do this when the sun is low in the sky so that I don’t burn too easily – the vitiligo, y’know. And before the forecasted rain/snow. It DOES snow in March. Wait, it’s May! I did the back lawn but the smoking man who lives next door was standing and puffing at his usual post, so I passed on doing the front.
6 p.m. Take a shower.
6:30 p.m. Eat a lovely dinner of zoodles, plant-based sausage, and tomato sauce.
7:15 p.m. Google Hangout with my wife and her family – her mother, her two brothers and their wives, and two of the nieces.
8:30 p.m. Watch the evening news, much to the chagrin of my daughter, who had settled into watching one of her programs.
Then the evening routine, and bed. A splendid day in quarantine.
