My main computer at home was a 15-inch MacBook Pro from 2010 until last year. Actually, I had two 15-inch MacBook Pros for most of that time – but I replaced them both last year, one with an M1 Mac mini and the other with a 13-inch MacBook Air.

I’m very happy with the Mini, but the Air is a bit underpowered, and the 13-inch screen is small. So I was looking forward to today’s Apple announcements.

As rumored, they came out with a 14-inch and a 16-inch MacBook Pro; the 14-inch is the same size as the Air but has a bigger screen; the 16-inch is the same size as my old 15-inch, but with a bigger screen. And even the base model of either of them is much much faster than this Air.

But I’m not sure the new machines are really what I need. The bigger screens are very attractive – but the new computers are heavier than this one (¾ pound for the 14-inch and nearly 2 pounds for the 16-inch). And, if I’m being honest, I rarely need more computing power than this Air gives me – and if I did, an M1 Air is the same weight as this one and quite a bit less expensive than the new Pros.

I may change my mind when I actually see one of the new machines in person – but so far, my wallet is safe.

Local salmon season has ended, and our fish market contact didn’t have any halibut this weekend, so we decided to try something unusual for us – Pacific sea bass. I didn’t have any recipes which specifically called for sea bass; the New York Times did, of course, and we tried Bass Fillets Baked With Ginger and Sesame Oil.

We weren’t terribly impressed – it was ok, but uninspiring. If we make it again, I’ll try doubling the amount of ginger-garlic paste and sesame oil. The recipe also only calls for cooking the fish for 7 minutes; fortunately, I read the comments before cooking the fish – they were unanimous in suggesting 15 minutes, and that was barely long enough.

On a brighter note, it’s raining! Not much rain, but it’s the first we’ve seen here for months and months!

The truly observant among you will have noticed that tonight’s “Pandemic Journal” number is two more than yesterday’s and might be wondering what happened.

I usually write these entries in Day One on my Mac, then I copy them into WordPress and publish them on the blog. Day One doesn’t have an automatic numbering feature, so I look at the previous day’s entry and add one when I write the new one. But I made a mistake on May 12th and just copied “Day 421” instead of incrementing it.

I might never have noticed if I hadn’t opened up the journal on the iPhone – the iPhone version of Day One shows the number of consecutive days you’ve created a journal entry, and today, instead of the 578 days I expected to see, I saw this:

Now I have to decide whether or not to fix the incorrect titles. Day One doesn’t have an API that would let me access the entries directly, but I can export the journal as JSON, figure out the fine details of the format, write code to fix the problems, re-import the journal, and do the same thing on WordPress so that the blog is consistent with the journal. Or I could just fix the numbering starting with today’s entry, which I’ve already done. Decisions, decisions….

I made pretzels again today – it was the easiest batch yet. I didn’t make a big mess around the mixer and almost all the flour was properly incorporated into the dough, which wasn’t very sticky (I didn’t even need to put extra flour on my hands or the paper when I rolled and shaped the pretzels!). I didn’t even have to fight the usual boil-overs for the last couple of pretzels.

That last improvement may have come with a price, though – I couldn’t use the double burner that I usually use for the pretzel bath. I couldn’t turn its knob – and when I looked more closely, I saw that the knob was sitting lower than its mates. I’m just glad that the switch failed in “off” position so I can use the other elements until we can get it fixed.

I found out that one of my classmates brought home bedbugs from Reunion; she stayed at the same hotel as we did (the Westin), so I guess we got lucky in our choice of rooms. Before the pandemic, I had started to use a hair dryer to heat up the bed and make sure nothing came out before unpacking – I think I’ll get back into that habit for future travels!

A typical Thursday – Toastmasters in the morning, then the chiropractor, then shopping, then the allergist, and finally Trivial Zoom in the evening. After we got off Zoom, I turned on the Giants-Dodgers game (it’s the first baseball I’ve watched this season); as I write this, it’s 2-1 Dodgers in the top of the 9th.

While we were on Zoom, a friend suggested going out to see the Moon with Jupiter and Saturn, so we did; I got a better photo with my iPhone than with my camera!