Shelter-in-Place Journal, Day Thirty-Four

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?

Shelter-in-Place Journal, Day Thirty-Three

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!