If COVID-19 is a circle, we’re halfway around it.

Today was Saturday, so there wasn’t much in my email this morning: the daily New York Times and Washington Post summaries and the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day; the weekly mailings from Road Scholar and the Great Courses, and the Daily Kos Elections Voting Rights Summary. And an ad from the Mercury News’ Promo Department with this enticing subject line:

Florida Man Added This To His Diet To Help Fix His Fatigue (It Really Worked)

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I wonder if anyone in the Promo Department has heard of the Florida Man meme?

Tonight is S’lichot, marking the imminent arrival of the High Holy Days. Shir Hadash is having a Zoom service at 8pm; they had hoped to have an outdoor, socially-distanced service at 10pm but the horrible air quality changed those plans. We probably wouldn’t have gone to the outdoor service anyway, but I’d rather have been able to make the decision than have it forced on us by the pollution from the fires.

Shana Tova!

We tried another new recipe tonight, Slow Cooker Spiced Lentils with Veggies from the Mercury News. It was good, but next time, we’ll add more spices.

The hardest part of the recipe was getting to the Crock-Pot; we hadn’t used it in a while, and it was at the back of the cabinet over the oven, which was also filled with many water bottles, an RPI Class of 1975 pitcher and mug, several rarely used appliances, and various serving pieces which we’d been given as wedding gifts (just like the Crock-Pot).

Some of the water bottles had given their all and made a final trip to the recycling bin; the others, along with the pitcher and mug, got put into storage in the garage in a Container Store bin that I bought last year. The serving pieces went back to the cabinet.

And I used one of my Mom’s gifts to us for the very first time – a Sunbeam Electric Bag Sealer. I don’t know when she gave it to us, but the copyright date on the manual was 1995, so I know it wasn’t a wedding gift. I used it to reseal the bag of dried chiles we bought for this recipe – it worked great!

Thanks, Mom!