Day #27

Cleaning out the Mental In-Box on Day 27 of self-isolation.....

Easter sure was different this year.  We did take in Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil masses and services from our parish via live streaming on our home devices.  Poor acoustics sort of lessened the impact, but it was a good feeling to take part.  

One thing we avoided was the traffic jams in the church parking lots after Easter Mass due to the presence of all of the "Easter Only" attendees.

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Thanks to the dining services of the Diamond Rub Golf Club, Marilyn and I were able to enjoy a tasty Easter Dinner - roast turkey for Marilyn, leg o' lamb for me - yesterday afternoon.

Many, many thanks to our neighbor Dede, a member of DRGC, who shared the menu with us, placed the order, and made the pick up and delivery for us.  We are very grateful for that.  And, it was delicious!!

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Marilyn and I continue with the almost daily games playing.  So far, our favorites have been Poker's Wild (a board game played with a deck of  cards where you score points by building poker hands - pairs, full houses, straights, etc), and gin rummy.  It has probably been over twenty years since we last played gin, but, hey, any port in a storm, right?  We've been playing for money, too.  A dime point in Poker's Wild, and a penny a point in gin.  It's an effort to rebuild our crumbling 401(k)'s.

We actually saw a touring production of this play in Pittsburgh many years ago that did indeed star Charles Durning and Julie Harris.

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I don't believe that I have mentioned it on these pages, but way back on March 12, we bought a new car.

After seven and a half years and 74,860 miles, we said good-bye to our Chevy Equinox, and bought a new 2020 Chevy Equinox, which you see pictured above.  Why mess with the  good thing that our first Equinox was, we reasoned.  We love the car, but the excitement that one normally feels over such a purchase sure has gotten lost during these Days of COVID-19.  A month later, there is only a little over 200 miles on the new car, and I have only had to buy gas for it once.

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The "27 Days" you see in the title dates back to March 17, which was the last time that we have had company in our home, and that is the yardstick that I am using to measure our days of Self-Isolation.  Since that date, we have ventured out only for doctors' appointments and grocery store trips.

On one of those grocery runs last week, I swung by one of our favorite entertainment places here in our part of the world.

Yep.  The Cinemark North movie theater complex, shut down and with a completely empty parking lot.  It is a desolate site that brings home what we are facing today every bit as much as empty ball parks and shut down schools.

How will the movie going experience be different on the other side of all of this?

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Then there is sports, or rather, the lack of sports.  Despite how badly the Pirates broke my spirits in 2019, what I wouldn't give to be able to head out to PNC Park one of these evenings.  I still read the sports pages, and I wonder how much longer the sports scribes and radio talk-jocks will be able to churn out copy and conversation when nothing is going on.

Well, the NFL Draft is still going to take place, albeit in a highly reduced state.  Thirty-two teams making picks remotely via Zoom.  None of the over the top hypefests of recent years, so at least THAT'S something positive to come out of all of this.  Seriously, I get it that the NFL needs to plan for a 2020 season and move forward, and it does give us something resembling real sports about which to talk, but what with the entire world shut down, am I the only person who finds it a bit unseemly to be vigorously debating the merits of whether or not the Steelers should draft a wide out or an edge rusher when their turn comes around in Round 2?

I also give credit to the Punjabs of Major League Baseball for continually throwing different scenarios against the wall in an effort to come up with some sort of a season in 2020.  If it happens, and that is one mighty big IF in my opinion, it will be a season that will be so radically different from anything that ever came before it that it should be great fun to observe, and also to listen to how the Purists and Traditionalists will drone on about how this is truly the End of Days.

I also laughed at a headline that said that the NHL would still want to finish the "regular season" before beginning Stanley Cup Playoffs when and if they are able to resume play.  Are they kidding?  "Regular seasons" in both the NHL and NBA are done and should not even be considered.  If, and again, that is a mighty big IF, hockey and hoops can resume, it has to go right into Playoff mode, and it should probably be  truncated versions of the traditional playoff structures of the sports.

One already known sports casualty of the COVID-19 shutdown is the XFL.  When they suspended their season a few weeks ago, I mentioned on a Facebook post that this could be a possible killer for the League.  Any momentum that the XFL might have been building would surely be lost as a result of suspending the season.  Last week, the XFL announced that they were done, finished, kaput.

I believe I had that.

Actually, it's easy to make jokes when a sports league fails, especially one that wants to co-exist with the 800 pound gorilla that is the NFL, but it really isn't funny.  The eight teams in the XFL provided employment and advancement opportunities for hundreds of players, coaches, and football executive types, not to mention the people that are employed and earn livings surrounding such ventures - stadium personal, hotels, bars, restaurants, etc.  I may not feel bad when a shyster like Vince McMahon flops.  He'll bounce back and be fine, but all those other people? Not so much.

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So that's it for now.  Stay well, everyone.

Reflections on Isolation, Week 1

Random thoughts after a surreal week......

As readers know, I love a good cliche, especially when writing about sports, but I generally eschew them, or try to, in normal conversation, but I am going to use one here.  New Normal.  Don't like that one, but it is one that Marilyn and I have been faced with on more than one occasion of late, and this past week of isolation, quasi-quarentining, and social distancing (the latest new buzzword)  has been surreal to say the least.

Hey, we're retired, so it's not like we have a job to go to, or classes to attend, or kids to raise, so what else are we going to do all day, right?  However, when you are, if not ordered to do so, then strongly advised to stay home and do nothing, you find that it's HARD HAVING NOTHING TO DO!!!

So far, this has been our week....I have finished two books and have started on a third, Marilyn has read at least that many, we are halfway through a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle (pictures to follow upon completion), and have brought out the board games (Parcheesi and Poker's Wild so far).  Lots of naps, never a bad thing, but strangely enough, not a lot of television watching.  I did watch a 1971 Lt. Columbo TV movie called "Ransom for a Dead Man" (Lee Grant was the special guest killer.  Man, she was pretty!), and on Monday I watch four episodes of "Family Guy" on TBS.  "Family Guy" is rude, lewd, juvenile, and totally tasteless, but,  God help me, I can't help but laugh uproariously every time I watch it.  I'm not proud of that, but there you are.

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Sports are gone.  No  sports to watch.  While I didn't often plant myself in front of the tube and watch four solid hours of sports every night (with some exceptions, of course), it's remarkable how much you miss by not being able to watch a couple of innings of a baseball game, or a half hour or so of a basketball or hockey game, or spend a Sunday afternoon watching a golf tournament.  Life's pleasures are often taken for granted, and we are certainly missing those sporting pleasures now.

I did watch, and you read about it here a few days ago, a DVD of the complete telecast of the Steelers win in Super Bowl XIII in 1979.  That was fun, and there are five other of those games that I can watch at some point in the days ahead.

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There are two sports in the news.  One is the National Football League, so far unaffected by COVID-19 postponements.  The NFL "year" began this past week with a splash of free agent signings.  The biggest of which was the severance of the twenty year connection between Tom Brady and the New England Patriots, and his signing with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  It is almost inconceivable to imagine Brady in anything but a Patriots uniform, and the odds are that this second act will not end well for him.  True, an aged Peyton Manning left Indy for Denver, and took the Broncos to two Super Bowls, winning one of them, but the odds are that the many tropes posted in the last week (Willie Mays as a Met, Johnny Unitas as a Charger, Franco Harris as a Seahawk, the list goes on) will be the more likely end for Brady, the G.O.A.T.  

A guy like Brady deserves the right to call his own shots as to when and how to end his career, so good luck to him.

Also, we shall now get to see how great a coach Bill Belichick is without Tom Brady as his quarterback. If I had to bet, I would bet that Belichick will prosper more than will Brady in the years ahead, but we shall see.

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In the other sport in the news, the money grubbers at that comprise the International Olympic Committee are continuing to insist that, despite a worldwide pandemic, the Tokyo Summer Games will go on as scheduled come July 24.   Today I read that the USA Swimming, the governing body of that sport in the United States, has called for a postponement of the games.  That appears to be the first significant fissure in the dam that is the IOC, so, again, we shall see.  As my pal Matthew stated in a Facebook post the other day, he often has a hard time deciding who he hates more, the NCAA, the IOC, or FIFA.  Today, the IOC is in the lead.

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I close this post with a picture of a statue of Winston Churchill that stands in Parliament Square in London.  I took this photo when we visited that city last year.  Why am I doing this?  Well, I just finished Erik Larson's terrific new book, "The Splendid and The Vile" (reviewed on this Blog earlier in the week), that detailed Churchill's first year as Prime Minister, a year when Great Britain was at war with Hitler's Germany, and the city of London and all of Britain was being bombed on a nightly basis by the Luftwaffe.  To read how British citizens lived through and survived that horror, and to read that one of the reasons that they were able to come through all of that was the extraordinary leadership of Winston Churchill, offers a large dose of inspiration and perspective.  It did for me, anyway.

Stay well, Loyal Readers.