Five weeks down, how many to go?

I spent most of the day working on code – for fun, of course! The weather was not conducive to walking, but we took our usual two long walks anyway (and got drizzled on for our troubles).

We felt lazy at lunchtime, so we ordered from Panera Bread; I was going to have it delivered, but the quoted time was 45-50 minutes versus 10 minutes to pick up the food ourselves – we drove. They brought the food out to the car as soon as we pulled up – nice and smooth.

The sewing light on Diane’s sewing machine burned out last week; needless to say, Sears no longer carries it. But someone on eBay named klanddj has a good supply of NOS (new old stock) bulbs and now we have two in hand. Our friend Sarah also sent Diane some bias tape and it arrived today – there are more masks in our future.

And it’s been more than two days since I’ve seen a dropped packet; I hope I can safely give Comcast back their modem, which is still in its shrink-wrap. I just have to figure out how. But that’s for tomorrow.

The Farmers’ Market was open and doing a fairly brisk business – they’ve gotten better at marking places for people to wait and stay properly distanced, but there are still people wandering around not paying attention. We picked up fish (as usual) and were happy to find Penny Lane Farm selling tomato plants (she’s only at the market a few days a year). We picked up four varieties of cherry tomatoes and planted them right after lunch – wish us luck!

Diane runs Shir Hadash’s book club, so she’s on the mailing list for the Jewish Community Library’s brochures. They were going to have an interesting-looking lecture in San Francisco on March 26: A Slippery Slope: Jews, Schmaltz, and Crisco in the Age of Industrial Food with Rachel B. Gross – but it wasn’t interesting enough to drive up to see it. But thanks to COVID-19, the lecture was postponed to today and put on Zoom, so we went – and it was worth it.

It would have been even better if it hadn’t been Zoombombed! I do have to grudgingly admire one of the trolls – she kept suggesting that the host press Alt-F4 to solve the problem; it had been a long time since I’d been on Windows, but I was pretty sure that was the way you close a program. Fortunately, the host didn’t fall for it and they were able to get rid of the trolls fairly quickly, and Professor Gross kept her cool, despite the obscenities and other hassles.

And so ends another week. Or was it the beginning of another week?

We had Torah Study on Zoom (as usual for a Saturday).

We hired a new landscape maintenance person (our previous one vanished back in October). Hopefully, he’ll be able to start work soon!

Diane finished her first mask and we mailed it to Jeff (the Post Office was surprisingly crowded, but we had masks and I was able to use the Self-Serve Kiosk to print my Priority Mail label, so we didn’t actually get close to anyone!), then we took a long walk through downtown Los Gatos and avoided people. :-)

Lunch was takeout from Armadillo Willy’s – tasty, but I probably won’t need to have any fries for a while. Dinner was balsamic marinated chicken breast (recipe from EatingWell, July/August 2011 issue).

And other than that, I’ve spent the day playing with code. At least I haven’t been watching the news!

We started the day with a little light exercise – refreshing the soil in our raised beds. I’d ordered 10.5 cubic feet (7 bags) of soil which was delivered yesterday; I thought I’d have some left over for the EarthBoxes, but it was just enough.

Of course, we had to weed and till before we added the new soil – luckily, it was cool this morning. I was disappointed, though, that my Apple Watch didn’t give me credit for exercise – I was sure breathing hard, especially when I was schlepping the bags of soil!

Diane continued working on the first face mask; the second one will be much easier (she hopes). She also says that she’s sewn straighter seams in her life (but it was probably in high school).

The only time I ever tried sewing anything was at a “Sewing Machine Safety and Basic Use” class at TechShop, probably in 2010 or 2011. I made a small bag, which has been sitting in the cabinet of our sewing machine ever since!

We attended two Shabbat Evening services today through the miracles of timezones and Zoom. Dina, a friend from Florida, had been scheduled to read Torah for the first time tomorrow, but the lockdown stopped that; instead, she gave the D’var Torah at her congregation’s service and invited friends from near and far to join her. A couple of hours later, we Zoomed to Shir Hadash’s first live Shabbat Evening service – it was nice to see and chat with friends we haven’t seen for a while!

Shabbat Shalom!

Let’s start with the good news:

• United refunded our tickets for Taiwan/Japan! I called them on Saturday; the agent told me that it might take ten days or more before the refunds department did anything, but this morning, I saw a refund for our tickets had been posted to my Chase Sapphire Reserve account.
• The Humanscale Freedom Saddle Seat that I’d ordered on March 25th from 247ergo.com arrived yesterday – not bad for an item that quotes 30-day delivery times under normal conditions. It was in a huge box, which I took apart on the front porch and just brought the chair inside. I think doing that reduced the chance of contamination; it certainly was easier than dragging the whole box in.
• We ordered 10.5 cubic feet (7 bags) of potting soil to refill our raised beds late last night, and it got delivered this morning. Much easier than going to the garden center, even if I did still have to haul it into the back yard. We have to weed the beds (we haven’t planted anything for a couple of years because travel – not a problem this year!) and then we can plant some veggies for the summer. I also have EarthBox refills on order, but they may take a week or so to get here.

Diane has started to make masks; she thought it would be easier if she had some bias tape, so we walked to RiteAid and looked in their sewing section. No bias tape, but they did have a pair of sewing scissors and some hair elastics.

Both my Toastmasters meetings went smoothly; people are getting comfortable with the tools.

And Passover is over for the year; pizza tasted REALLY good today!