Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/14/2020
/Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….
Here are the unique activities for yesterday:
Hearing the Carolina Wren in the early morning. It’s generally too dark for pictures when I first hear the Carolina Wren. It was singing again around 9 AM and I managed to follow the sound and get a picture.
Catching up on a Charles Cockell’s Life in the Universe Pandemic Series:
When will humans explore Mars? (interview with Darlene Lim from NASA Ames)
Do microbes fall in love? – A fun segment summarizing the novel about microbial mats by Charles Cockell: Brunsfield Brook. I liked it enough to buy a Kindle version!
Noting that it’s 3 days past the COVID-19 model’s projected peak for resource use in Maryland! The peak for ‘deaths per day’ is still 4 days away. So far the downward trend has been bumpy….hopefully it will look more definitive over the next few days. I also read a thought provoking article “This is what it will take to get us back outside” from MIT Technology Review.
Cooking sweet potato custard. I baked a sweet potato for dinner recently and had half of it leftover so I made a small custard with it….using the same recipe as for pumpkin custard. I used 2 eggs, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ginger, and 1/4 teaspoon cloves. After that was thoroughly mixed, I added the milk to make it the right consistency. I decided to add chopped pecans once I got it into the baking dish for ‘crust on top.’ Then baking: 425 degrees for 15 minutes and 350 degrees until it was done. My husband and I each ate half as an afternoon snack. It was a big success using a leftover!
Getting a 3rd grocery delivery. I scheduled the deliver for 3-4 in the afternoon so the shopping was done between 2 and 3…I made sure I was at my laptop so I could participate in the decisions when the item on my list was not in-stock. I am trying to go for a bit longer than a week between deliveries, so we had a porch full of stuff. We put the non-perishables in the back of my car for a few days and the refrigerator items were put away…followed by thorough hand washing and wipe down of surfaces. The unloaded plastic bags are bundled up in the back of my car to return for recycling next time I go to the grocery store – even though I have no idea when that will be.
Participating in a Zoom session with other volunteers. A little virtual socializing.
Getting a request to present in a Facebook Live session in May. When they asked if I was available on a date, I realized that my calendar was completely empty! I didn’t have to look. It’s good to have a milestone like this; it isn’t a ‘back to normal’ because we are still maintaining social distance….but coming out a little from the ‘stay at home as much as possible.’
Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts here.
