Shelter-in-Place Journal, Day Sixteen

During our Trivia Zoom call on Tuesday, there was a lot of discussion about the dangers of shopping and how the various families on the call were minimizing their store visits. I’d been thinking we were doing pretty well to only go to the store three times a week instead of our daily-or-better visits in the olden days, but clearly there was an opportunity for improvement – and Diane pointed out we could buy a lot more at a time if we drove instead of walking.

This morning, we dusted off the car and drove to Lunardi’s with a paper shopping list (so we wouldn’t have to play with the phones in the store). I sanitized the hell out of the cart handle and we set out to get what we needed and get out – $199.13 later, we had most of what we need for the next week (we’ll have to get more fish between now and then, and I probably should have bought some chicken breasts to freeze, but I’m new at this bulk-shopping business).

We don’t do much shopping at Trader Joe’s, but it is our go-to place for chocolate, cashews, and coffee filters, so we walked over there in the afternoon (it was a lovely day for a walk!). We had to stand in line outside the store for about 15 minutes, since they were limiting the number of customers in the store, but we were fine with that. As we were waiting, an employee came out and told us the new rules: no quantity limits on anything but toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and flour, and they were out of toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and flour! We’d brought our own bags, thinking we’d shop into them, but he asked us not to do that – they had plenty of wipes for the cart handles and they sprayed sanitizer on our hands, both entering and leaving. We left with two fairly full bags – lots of chocolate of various kinds, two pounds of cashews, a box of coffee filters, and a container of hummus (even though it hadn’t been on the list).

I have a Wyze camera in the garage whose sole purpose in life is to let me make sure the door is closed; it hasn’t led a very fulfilling existence of late. Wyze sent me an email yesterday with instructions on turning it into a webcam (which would be handy) – all I need is a spare microSD card to flash the firmware and a USB A-A male cable. I’ve got plenty of microSD cards, but no USB A-A male cables, so I ordered some adaptors from Monoprice so I can convert one of my far-too-many regular USB cables into an A-A male connection – the shipping cost as much as the adaptors (the total was about $6)! With luck, they’ll work and we can set up the webcam in the family room and do Zoom on the big TV next week.

I went to another Toastmasters speech contest this evening; I wasn’t a functionary, so I tuned in a little late and missed most of the reading of the rules – that made the evening more pleasant (in ten years of Toastmasters, I must have heard the rules read at least 25 times – they’re not designed for excitement). Members of my club won both contests and will advance to the Division Contest in a few weeks.

A few weeks ago, I was rearranging the components in the A/V system and had to make sure everything still worked. When it came time to test the Fire TV Stick, I didn’t want to play anything that was on our queue, so I picked a random Amazon suggestion: ”¨“Classic Movie Bloopers Uncensored”. I watched just enough of it to make sure everything was working, and then went about my business. But every time I turned the TV to the Fire Stick, I saw “Classic Movie Bloopers Uncensored” waiting for me – last night, we were looking for something undemanding to watch, so we picked it. “Undemanding” is definitely the word – it could have used a lot of editing. Watching actors blow lines and say “shit” and “Goddammit” gets old fast – but when they react more interestingly, it was funny – so we watched the whole thing. I’m not sure I really recommend it, but I don’t mind having seen it, and I’ve developed a new respect for Ronald Reagan as an actor.