It was back to the JCC for outdoor personal training this morning. The JCC was planning to reopen the gym for indoor, socially-distanced training on Wednesday, and our trainer asked us if we’d like to move inside next week. Both of us said “No” with our first available breath, and our trainer said that had been everyone’s reaction so far.

But it became a moot question anyway this afternoon, since the Governor ordered Santa Clara County (and 29 others) to keep gyms (among many other facilities) closed because of the recent upsurge in COVID-19 numbers.

Dinner tonight was another new recipe, Priya Krishna’s Garlic-Ginger Chicken Breasts With Cilantro and Mint from the New York Times. All of the preparation happened last night and the chicken marinated overnight; the actual cooking was pretty straightforward, or it would have been if I hadn’t dropped the chicken the last inch or two into the hot oil, making a splash. And even though I gave the chicken the maximum time called for in the recipe, it was still a little undercooked when I lifted the lid, so I had to finish it in the microwave. I’m willing to try this recipe again, but not for a while.

And I finally finished editing (or at least culling) the photos from my trip to Beijing in April, 2005!

After our usual Sunday quick dash to the Farmers’ Market and walk through Los Gatos, we came home for two interesting sessions.

The first was hosted by Shir Hadash and was a panel discussion (well, three presentations) on “Medical Ethics: Rationing of Limited Resources During COVID-19 Pandemic”. The three panelists were all physician-members of Shir Hadash with well over a century of experience between them. The discussion touched on the history of dialysis (before it was added to Medicare in 1972), HIV/AIDS treatment, and, of course, COVID-19. The discussion was lively but sobering.

The second was much more fun – the Remote Shakespeare Company (two-thirds of the Reduced Shakespeare Company) took us on a quick and reduced tour of their material, including the first scene of “Hamlet’s Big Adventure (a prequel)”, which we were hoping was going to come to the Bay Area this year. Some day….

And speaking of “some day”, I got started on the first small bit of preparation for the High Holy Days. I do the data processing for the honors, but this year, we have a lot of changes to make because of COVID-19 – there will be far fewer honors (services will be online, not in person), but the Rabbi doesn’t want to lose track of what we normally would do (especially since we will have a new interim rabbi next year), so I had to figure out how to tell my programs to ignore honors we’re omitting.

That proved to be surprisingly easy – but what turned out to be hard was updating the master honors sheet to reflect what we did last year (I reworked most of my code last year, so this was the first time I’d needed to do this). I think it’s done, but I’m going to take another look tomorrow before I tell the Rabbi to go ahead.