Friday, December 4th, 2020
Today marked my final trip to go grocery shopping in the USA in 2020; assuming we will fly out next week that is. Even though I purchased bare necessities only I ended up with a US$260 bill. I have no idea how that happened. We should have enough food to see us through for the next eight days, with ideally no leftovers. I may start moving cheese and other items I generally just have in my fridge just because to the freezer. I hate wasting food!
Tomorrow is our last day of social interactions before locking down for a week. My invitations are staggered. Never more than eight people at any given time. Mask wearing enforced. The weather god seems to have responded to my requests – it shall not rain! Or so says the forecast.
I am hoping I can set up all the goodies on my outside table, have the couches uncovered, cushions on the chairs out, firepit roaring and outdoor heaters blazing. In the morning I will pick up sand for the luminara walk on Sunday, then head to the park for practice and go for a swim before making my New England Clam Chowder and arranging the cookies etc. It will be a busy morning.
Today was another rather frustrating day workwise. I have this guy who keeps making changes to the proposal I am working on and I am seriously loosing my composure and my patience. He neither understands the mechanics of operations nor the content, but seems to think he needs to correct and second guess me. Mansplaining at its best.
I am rather fed up and have now escalated to put an end to this nonsense. I have been super careful to not offend as I can be a bit abrasive, but maybe I should just have put my foot down earlier. He clearly has an agenda, I just have no clue what it is, which makes it hard to respond to it. I am, at the moment, mostly fed up. The fact that my contract has been extended for twelve months does not help. I am taking it as a one year notice and am starting to make plans for the next phase in my life. Clearly I need a break and a change of scenery will be very much welcome, even if life in Germany, like here, is under severe restrictions. But seeing mum and the family should be nice.
I will of course not host my usual friend group between Christmas and new year. Though I do hope to see most of my friends, even if just for a socially distanced walk. Everything will be so different this year. We will be in Europe for four weeks. As I was entering my telecommuting and leave requests, I realized, that a large chunk of what seemed like an abundance of time will be spend quarantining. I am in a good mind to change our return flight to February!
The only worry is Max. Without Jennifer in residence I need to figure out some cat sitting scheme. All my preferred candidates have fallen through so I have asked the fabulous Listserv and received a number of volunteers. Now I guess it is mainly about the money. One of my neighbors, three houses down has a sister visiting, maybe she is the best option. Am waiting to speak to them. Max has never been home alone with no one sleeping at the house and with us being home all the time I think he has gotten used to company. I feel like I need someone to either be around in the mornings or pop in every few hours to let him in and out. Am I crazy to worry? He is a cat after all.
At least I think I finally managed to procure that data sim for our quarantine house. I needed to cancel my original order and have now bought data in mum’s name, so much easier! Gosh, I hope all of this travel, quarantining etc. will work out. Life in the age of Corona is rather complicated; at least as soon as one wants to leave home.
Speaking of, the virus is spreading like crazy in the USA. Now that Thanksgiving is over testing and reporting is coming back to normal levels. 216k new cases were reported over the past 24 hours, bringing the US total to 14.7 million of the global tally of 65.7 million. Hospitalizations are up, deaths are up with 2.857 people having passed in the last twenty-four hours, bringing the US total to 285K and change.
The vaccine is not even here yet, and already there are discussions about black markets and how to skip the line have ensued. As always, the wealthy will find a way to get what they want, regardless. Why are most people so completely unethical?
Meanwhile, in the UK elderly are given priority over health care workers, surely that is not very helpful.
The CDC seems to feel less threatened as it issued new guidance on mask wearing, recommending mask be worn inside when not in ones own household. The new guidelines also suggest to postpone travel, but if travel one must they suggest a testing regime suggesting people test 1-3 days before and 3-5 days after travel. I think our regime with 5, 3 and 1 day as well as upon arrival is stringent.
I hope we will be able to keep mum safe.