May 25th, 2020

BBQ

While we are nowhere near where China was today, today was an almost perfect day given the circumstances. The morning was cloudy, which lend itself to lazing around until noon. EM was super busy with school work so I spend the late afternoon preparing for a BBQ tonight – just one friendly family, socially distanced in the garden.

I chopped veggies for a salad, checked in the marinade for the steaks, cut garlic to make garlic butte, crushed an avo for guacamole, chilled the wine and the beer., sliced the water melon.

By the time people arrived at 3:45pm all was ready and I had even found some time to chill with my book in the garden. I managed to make a fire without any man helping and cook the steaks to perfection also our little Nuremburg sausages were perfect too. I think everyone had a good time and the food was nice to. It felt like normalcy had returned – and all it was, was an afternoon with another family, jointly enjoying a good meal.

In this day and age we appreciate the small “normalcies”, things we might not have given another thought to in past years. Memorial Day, normally a day spend at beaches and not socially distanced at home! We did enjoy the food; garlic bread, oven baked potatoes with garlic and rosemary, corn on the cob, and lots of salad. Probably a diet (the salad) for months to come seeing that like many others I am finding I have put on weight, much to my dismay. And this despite an exercise routine. Clearly it is not stringent enough.

I have found an article with some useful tips.  We are already eating mostly healthy and have banned all snacks, even nuts at night. Now it is about moving more and more intensely. I stepped up the exercise routine this morning and have resolved to spend time with the Taren-Uchi every day for 10 minutes – every hour on the hour.

Still thinking about travel seeing I am getting a ton of emails from hotel clubs, airlines, etc. all updating me on changes due to Corona. Like his one by Radisson for instance. l Surely regular in depth cleaning and staff being appropriately protected dis something one would have expected from a hotel generally. The only change post corona I would have expected is hand sanitizer everywhere and social distancing, and the latter is a real excuse to retrench reception staff.

Here is a summary of what to look out for in travel and what travel may look like  I might just need to overcome my adversity to Florida given one of my friends has a holiday home there. If we cannot go anywhere this may just be an alternative.

News on the virus continues to be less than encouraging. A sad but powerful reflection the story behind 1.000 of the 100.000 dead in the USA was on NYT cover page on Sunday and really cool in the animated version on their home page. In the meantime the moron in chief is of course away on one of his golf courses. Really, I have no idea how people in this country stomach it.

The numbers just keep on rising. Today the world counts 3.47 million infected people, 1.7 million of which are in the USA. Deaths in this country are just 641 shy of 100k; looks like the 100k mark will be reached well before June 1st, 2020.