Making two weeks and one day of the lockdown, which was extended today until early May – I hope it ends before the Omer does!

I spent most of the day staring at the UPS “Follow My Delivery” map – in addition to the wine that didn’t get delivered on Saturday or Monday, they also claimed they were going to deliver the LED cans from Home Depot. The two packages had different expected delivery times but the maps showed the same truck – and it was just two blocks away from our house at 9:30am!

So Diane and I went on separate walks to be sure someone was home. And then we did it again between 2-4pm. And I kept checking my phone throughout our Trivia Zoom party. And the truck kept circling our house.

We had dinner. No truck. Finally, at 7pm, the doorbell rang – and there were packages on the porch! I was on the phone with a doctor (he was following up on a routine matter, but he had a horror story he wanted to tell about his trip to the ER at Stanford the previous week, fortunately not COVID-related) and I couldn’t hang up on him, so Diane brought in the boxes and then changed her clothes for safety – we’ll let the boxes sit for a day or so before opening them.

Tomorrow, FedEx is supposed to deliver wine – they don’t offer a “Follow My Delivery” map, so maybe I won’t obsess quite so much. Sometimes, not knowing is better!

UPS was supposed to deliver the wine they didn’t deliver on Saturday; according to their maps, the truck got within three blocks of our house before going back to home base, and they’ve rescheduled for tomorrow. On the other hand, Muns Vineyard had told us they’d be delivering tomorrow, and they brought our wine today, so we broke even on the day.

I was able to use United’s Twitter account to verify that our flight to Japan had officially been cancelled. They aren’t giving refunds (despite DOT regulations) but the agent helped me find the least bad alternative for credit (one which, in theory, will generate a refund in November) – in the meantime, I’ve asked Chase Bank’s Twitter account how to dispute the charge. More on this if something happens.

Other than that, it was a day like every other day recently – a couple of walks, a little TV, too much time watching Twitter and Facebook for news, and cooking at home. We found an easy recipe for lingcod – then we discovered we didn’t have the all the spices it called for, so we improvised, and it came out just fine.

And how was your day?

It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon…I mean Los Gatos, and today was no exception.

We started with a quick trip to the Farmer’s Market – the weather was just cool and threatening enough to make social distancing easy, but the fish seller had already run out of tuna. I bought some local lingcod, so I’ll have to figure out how to cook it. Again, I had to use cash – this time, I got some bills back and stuffed them in my wallet (while wearing gloves) – any coronavirus will degrade before I have to touch cash again, so I’m not too worried.

Last week, the Los Gatos Creek Trail was uncomfortably crowded, so we decided to walk the sidewalks instead – once we got out of the immediate downtown, we had the world to ourselves. I’d rather be walking in greenery, but not having to dodge bicyclists was nice!

Lunch was Indian takeout (and wine); I waited outside for my order – while I waited, the skies opened up, but the restaurant’s awning kept me reasonably dry.

Beth Lee of OMG Yummy! led a “Pantry Cooking” class for Shir Hadash on Zoom; the focus was garbanzo beans. We have no garbanzo beans in our pantry – I think I’ll fix that next time we go shopping.

Dinner was leftover steak (and wine), then a quick walk, and that did it for today.

UPS claims they’ll deliver our wine tomorrow – we’ll see.

The paper was slightly wet when I picked it up this morning, and the weather didn’t improve much all day. Fortunately, we didn’t have to go anywhere.

We’re looking at the parashah of the week during Torah Study this year with an attempt to tie it to the writings of Mordechai Kaplan; this week, we started Leviticus and went straight into a discussion of sacrifices and their relationship to how we pray. We didn’t get very far into Kaplan, but we’re going to continue along the same track next week. People are getting more comfortable with Zoom, too.

It wasn’t raining (much) after Torah Study so we went out for a walk before watching the Torah Service from Shir Hadash – it was the only walk we managed today.

We had to stay home in the afternoon because we were expecting a wine delivery from Tobin James Cellars in Paso Robles – UPS said it would arrive between 3-7pm and we didn’t want to miss it. While we were waiting, we called two of our local favorite wineries, Silver Mountain Vineyards and Muns Vineyards and ordered wine from them for delivery next week. Then we made dinner (a balsamic and fig chicken meal kit from Nob Hill Markets); no wine arrived, though, and UPS’s map shows the truck back at their depot in Sunnyvale. Oh, well – we’re not out of wine, so delayed delivery isn’t a problem.

I worked on my photos some more – I’m up to October, 2000 and a trip to England and Germany. Progress!

We ended the evening by watching the Ring Cycle – well, the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s The Ring Reduced (23 minutes). If only we’d watched that last week, we could have watched the Metropolitan Opera’s free stream of the entire Ring Cycle this week! Sometimes, you just get lucky.

Today dawned chilly, with frost on the roof, so we decided to postpone our morning walk until it warmed up a bit. Instead, we talked with our son in Boston – he’s doing OK and staying busy at work (in his room, of course!). He’s been doing movie watch parties in the evening – I didn’t know that was a thing!

We decided today was the day to do “big” shopping, so I warmed up the car and we hit Nob Hill and Lucky for sale items and things too heavy to carry home by foot. The Lucky shopping center has quite a few restaurants, most of which were open for takeout (although Yogurtland is closed for the duration); we decided to pick up another take-and-bake pizza from Tony and Alba’s and had it for lunch.

Earlier in the day, Diane’s ophthalmologist had let her know that they had submitted a refill for one of her prescriptions; it was ready right after lunch, so we walked to CVS to pick it up and then got a few smaller items at Lunardi’s.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced that they were not going to start the season until September, so I spent the afternoon cancelling our hotels for our June and August trips to Ashland.

I’m still waiting for United to officially cancel our flight to Taiwan so I can get a refund instead of a credit – I think that’s what is required, and even then, I’m sure I’ll have to do a chargeback with Chase. If anyone has gotten United to cough up a refund, please let me know how you did it!

We took yet another walk this evening and stopped at Safeway for salad fixings; the store was pretty empty, which made me happy – it was easy to maintain social distancing. Like the other stores, they now will only bag into new bags, but since we only had three items, doing it ourself was easy.

And then we came home and sang along with Friday Night service from Shir Shabbat.

Shabbat Shalom!