The day started with our normal Shabbat morning rhythm – a walk, followed by Torah Study. There was no live Shir Shabbat, but we watched the taped mini-service (I’m sure there was no actual “tape” involved, but terminology persists) right after Torah Study, and then had lunch.

Diane spent a couple of hours in a Forever seminar, learning about its editing tools and about photo workflows – while she was doing that, I was reading the current issue of The Economist (I seem to be perpetually behind in my reading, but I’ve finished this week’s issue!). And then I spent an hour or so doing some photo culling and editing – I finished 2001 (and I threw out more than half the photos I’d taken on some days, so I feel like I accomplished something).

After dinner, we watched the Mount St. Helens Institute’s livestream of Mount St. Helens Goes BOOM! with Bill Nye, the Volcano Guy (if you follow the link, skip ahead 1 hour, 20 minutes); it was interesting and amusing, but I was hoping for video of the eruption, not just video of the mountain as it is today.

We visited the mountain in May, 2017 – it was beautiful and sobering.

During the livestream (at 2:02), the host asked Bill Nye why his hair was relatively well-coiffed, and he said he’d gotten a Wahl Peanut trimmer and followed Internet videos on how to use it – and it worked. I checked Amazon and eBay and found some sellers, but then I decided to look at the actual manufacturer’s site and it’s one of the few items they say is “in stock”, so I ordered one. I hope it arrives before the webcam I ordered on Easter (at least this one is a domestic order, unlike the webcam, which is supposed to be coming from China).

Only 23 days until I tie my record for consecutive blog entries!

We made another recipe from last Sunday’s NYT “At Home” section – this time, it was Spiced Chickpea Salad with Tahini and Pita Chips. I’d read over the recipe several times, but somehow didn’t actually realize that it required pita chips, so we had to make an emergency run to get them this afternoon.

I didn’t want to go to the supermarket – actually, I didn’t want to go into any store at all. So I placed a pickup order for pita chips at BevMo. As long as I was ordering from them, I added a bottle of Wild Turkey (we have a spare lime and we may well want a Kentucky Mule), a bottle of Tito’s Vodka (in case we want a Moscow Mule instead), and a couple of bottles of white wine (we’re using more white wine than usual, and the weather hasn’t gotten warm yet). Tony & Alba’s Pizza is right next to BevMo, so we also got a take-and-bake pizza as a backup in case the recipe didn’t work out.

Once we had all the ingredients in hand, the actual cooking went pretty smoothly and we both liked the results; next time, I’ll use a little less olive oil (it’s a good thing I bought a 1.4 liter bottle on Tuesday) and we’ll make more greens (and maybe I’ll be slightly less generous with the pita chips).

Once more, the day was dominated by Toastmasters (at least for me). I had two meetings, one of my home club and one of the club I’m mentoring, and ended up being a speech evaluator at both (and winning “Best Evaluator” at both, too!). And then I worked on other Toastmasters projects for much of the afternoon.

Beyond that, we mostly walked around the neighborhood.

And I finally got back to working on photo culling and editing – I’m in August, 2001, when we went on a two-week trip to British Columbia and Washington with Diane’s brother and his wife. So far, I’ve been able to figure out where almost all of them were taken, at least to the town level – it helps to tell the story.

It was a pretty quiet day; there were a lot of people out when we took our walks – it’s a good thing there isn’t much traffic, because we had to go into the street several times to maintain social distance.

I had a routine appointment with my cardiologist, which we did online. I still had to wait for her, but I was able to put the time to constructive use by packing up electronics to send to Apple to recycle – much better than waiting in an exam room.

We had Kentucky Mules after dinner – now we’re out of bourbon! We still have limes and ginger beer, so we’ll have to replenish the bourbon supply; fortunately, BevMo offers contactless pickup, so I don’t think going there counts as a shopping trip (but I will have my mask with me).

It’s Tuesday, so we did our weekly shopping. I’m not sure that hitting four stores is quite in keeping with the advice to shop less, but at least we were able to stay out of Whole Foods for another week (we hit Safeway, CVS, Lunardi’s, and Trader Joe’s – all were pretty uncrowded and sane). We actually made two trips to CVS – after I’d checked out, I realized that the 70% alcohol wipes I saw on the counter were for sale (not just for in-store use) and went back to get a box of them; things are looking up!

Dinner was an experiment – we tried making Crispy Frico Chicken Breasts with Mushroom and Thyme from the New York Times “At Home” section. I think my stove interpreted “medium-high” more aggressively than the author intended – the cheese was blackened and so were the mushrooms. Using real grated Parmesan cheese instead of an old container of Kraft grated parmesan-romano blend might have helped, too – but the results were edible and the cleanup wasn’t too horrible.

Every day is a learning experience.