A day or two ago, Silicon Valley Shakespeare told us that they’d postponed their 48-Hour Play Festival from Sunday, January 9th until sometime in the spring “out of an abundance of caution”. And today, I got a call from City Lights telling us that they were delaying their production of The Hollow by two weeks “out of an abundance of caution” and asking us to reschedule our date.

I’m not unhappy with either of those decisions – in fact, we were more than a bit nervous about this weekend’s event, so I’m glad they postponed it. But I am getting tired of hearing the phrase “out of an abundance of caution” – how about something simpler, like “to keep everyone safe”?

One of our first dates was seeing the RPI Players’ production of Sweet Charity at the RPI Playhouse. Diane and I have seen many plays together since then, and have been back in the Playhouse for a few Reunion dinners, but tonight was the first time since 1976 that we’ve seen the Players perform, even if it was neither live nor in person.

Back in November, I happened to be looking at the Polytechnic and saw a story about the Players’ production of Clue on Stage; it was their first production since the pandemic began. They made it available online for a short time, so I downloaded it and we watched it tonight.

It’s not a very deep play, but it was a good choice for an evening’s entertainment. We’ll probably watch the movie sometime and see how the two productions compare. I’ll bet the actors in the movie weren’t wearing masks!

We’re retired, so I don’t know why I should feel like today’s the last day of vacation – but I do. So we enjoyed the day before things start getting back to normal tomorrow.

Of course we took our usual walks and made a couple of favorite dishes. We also watched last night’s Saturday Night Live, which was a rerun of the one that Betty White hosted in 2010 (thanks, NBC!). And we watched TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s production of It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, which might still be available to stream for another week or so – I really enjoyed it. Some day, I guess I should see the movie, too!

We kicked off the year with a short walk before Shir Shabbat services this morning. I was Lay Leader, assisting Cantor Felder-Levy who had done all of the service prep (I was there to give her a chance to rest her voice during readings and to run Zoom). It was a good service – we looked at our predictions from last year (some panned out; most didn’t) and made some predictions/wishes for this year (some are repeats of last year’s, like the end of Covid).

And beyond that, we had a relaxed day. Well, we took another walk so we could hit our goals for the day, but that was it. And I worked on photos from our November trip to Boston and we made Soy, Balsamic, and Sriracha Chicken Stir-Fry for dinner, which was the first time I’d used the wok on the induction cooktop. I put unprinted newsprint under the wok for easier cleanup of the cooktop, and it worked – but it’s a little unsettling to pick up the wok after cooking and see a brown ring scorched into the newsprint! The wok was harder to clean, but that gave me an excuse to use the Lodge Chainmail Scrubber I’d bought at REI a few months ago, which did the job nicely.

Happy New Year!

It was Diane’s birthday today. We went to the gym early this morning, came home, talked with Jeff, had lunch, and were almost ready to clean up when there was a knock at the door. It was our mail carrier – she’d just delivered the mail and happened to notice a leak near the porch, where the water line emerges from the ground and wanted me to know about it, which was a good thing because we hadn’t seen it when we got home an hour earlier.

She even gave me the name of a plumber who was on her route in case I needed one – and I did, because our usual plumber was on vacation. I called CMS Plumbing who told me they could have someone out in a few hours, which seemed pretty good for New Year’s Eve. And then a few minutes later, they called back and said the tech had finished his previous job early and he could be at our house in 20 minutes – and he was.

The problem turned out to be fairly simple – we’d had to have a new pressure regulator installed in January, and that plumber had put the Teflon tape at the joints on wrong, so it wore out over time and allowed water to start leaking. Today’s plumber (John) took everything apart, cleaned it, put on new tape, and put it back together – no leaks. From detection to repair was less than two hours, and we probably only lost a gallon or two of water during that time, so I think we got off easy.

I made one of Diane’s favorites for dinner tonight (it’s one of my favorites, too, so it wasn’t exactly a grand gesture :-)), Sesame Crusted Seared Ahi Tuna. And then we watched Don’t Look Up; it wasn’t the most romantic movie I could have suggested. Or the funniest. Or the most thought-provoking. But it was entertaining and interesting; it definitely reminded me of Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves and of the Golgafrinchan B Ark in Douglas Adams’s The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

Shabbat Shalom!