Life in the Age of Corona

A Daily Diary

Sunday, April 18th, 2021

Unexpected Entertainment

What a beautiful day to wake up to!

I woke up at 6:30 to a day full of sunshine. I had enough time for two coffees in bed scanning social media and the news before starting on my brunch preparations for the book club ladies.

The brunch was Turkish food only. I began by adding the final touches to the black lentil salad, chopping red and yellow peppers as well as Dill, adding some lemon zest and lemon juice. Next up were the carrots and the spinach with yoghurt one sauteed in oil with garlic, the other blanched and tossed with garlic. The carrots are served on a bed of yoghurt, while the spinach is mixed with the yoghurt. EM arranged the Baklava (bought) on a plate and rolled white cheese in yufka dough to make the cigar boerek, while I skinned the socuk and chopped onions, tomato and green peppers for the meneme. Once the vegetables were cooked I added ten beaten eggs. The socuk and cigar boerek were fried in separate pans. Lastly, I made a board with string cheese, olives, tiny cucumbers, radishes and tomato. Voila, a perfect Turkish brunch.

As I had decided Mimosas would go well with the food I asked EM to quickly run to the store to pick up some fresh orange juice. Of course, there was white and red wine as well as water (sparkling and plain) and juice. People spend two hours eating before proceeding to discuss the book. Except for one all of us are partially or fully vaccinated. We so enjoyed being together physically with not a single person on Zoom for the first time in 404 days.

The weather was on best behavior. The sun shining, the birds chirping and even Max was on well behaved, joining just for the company rather than the food. EM’s BF came over and joined the eating, but I think did not dare to show himself to the crowd. The teens kept to themselves, which was perfectly fine. The teens took off. I did make carry outs for some of the husband’s so leftovers are in manageable proportions. Enough for my lunch tomorrow.

The book discussion turned out to be rather controversial, which came as surprise. I mean it is Isabelle Allende, what do you expect beyond an entertaining well written read? B stayed well beyond - I had asked her if she would stay for a bit as I hate it when all leave at once - after other people left and we had a fun conversation, when my German – Turkish friends send a note about joining them for an early dinner.

This was an unexpected addition to my social agenda. Seeing I would otherwise have spent the rest of the day home alone, I was quick to accept the invitation. After B departed, I loaded the dish washer, tidied up the kitchen, grab a bottle of Prosecco and headed to Potomac for the next party.

Steak and salad were on the menu which suited me perfectly well. We ended up sitting out with a fire until 20:30. What fun day! How I love to socialize with my friends. We – the vaccinated – even shared hugs. A semblance of normal!

As more people get vaccinated this will hopefully become the norm again rather than an outlier.

Half of all adult Americans have received at least one shot and 30% of all residents are fully vaccinated, including myself, all in Biden‘s first 98 days in office. This truly is amazing. I am very grateful for this and hope this sets us onto a trajectory to a full life again; if only the rest of the world had the same opportunity and would be able to make the same progress.

Despite the current successes in inoculations numbers in the US continue to trend in the wrong direction, with 63k new infections reported over the past twenty-four hours to bring the total to 32.4 million. This is mainly concerning because of the risks of vaccine evading mutants emerging, which would put us back to square one.

Dedicating 1.7 BLM US$ to genome sequencing is another indication of how serious the Biden administration is in fighting this pandemic. Both Pfizer and Moderna are working on booster shots which will hopefully be effective against mutants as well. Here is hoping we can return to our old normal.

Today has given me a taste of what life was and could be like.