We closed this strange post-Thanksgiving Day weekend with a nicely attended Groove. I guess people were feeling more inclined to connect being in the holiday spirit and all, even though the weather over the weekend was unusually good. We shared our Thanksgiving Day jaunts with each other, all of which were arguably pandemic-friendly. I spent my Thanksgiving at my parents, after testing negative a week before and being careful thereafter. I had tested at the request of my sister-in-law who planned to host for the holiday. Unfortunately, my niece’s closest friend tested positive, so she decided it was best to cancel and instead we all Zoomed from all our respective homes. Having become somewhat adept at the Zooming thing this went much smoother than at Passover (no shouts of “unmute yourself Dad!” etc.). The next day, Friday, I enjoyed a potluck picnic in the park which had been postponed a day because of scheduled rain for Thanksgiving, thankfully which never really came, but which made the picnic available to those of us who had plans the day before. As Friday was sunny and unseasonably warm, this worked out very nicely. One friend described his Thanksgiving Day diner lunch with a friend, he had a turkey burger in honor of the day. Another had lunch at an upscale French restaurant where he ordered the Thanksgiving Day special which he said was excellent, with turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce. His date ordered something French. Another friend who is out in the Hamptons described a potluck dinner shared outside on covered picnic tables overlooking the beach. Someone else described a larger dinner held in a garage with the door open. Another described a very small inside dinner with his brother, brother-in-law, and a young friend who taught special education classes, and we discussed the challenges she faced teaching more challenged kids remotely. Another had a small three person get-together in a friend’s apartment building courtyard. And another had her husband and one of her two kids for Thanksgiving and Zoomed with her other child and other relatives. As turkeys don’t usually come in a size “small” most people are facing more turkey leftovers than usual. One person shared that her nephew and girlfriend had a dinner for themselves and mistakenly ordered a 26 pound turkey, which, as she said, meant “turkey sandwiches until Christmas.” Many people, among us, and friends we’ve heard from, and as evidenced on our Instagram and Facebook feeds, made their own turkey for the first time this year, as for years they’d all been celebrating at others’ homes. We noticed that there were indeed a lot of travel pictures on our feeds, and we wondered about how that would impact our country’s health. In any case, most people did something for the holiday, which is a nice show of strength in a way, and of how we all keep going and keep celebrating any chance we can.
We also talked about COVID, about the lockdowns abroad, and about how France is still very strict. We pondered the threatened December 15 NYC lockdown and wondered whether that was really going to happen or whether it was just a boogey-man threat to get us all to behave. And, in line with NYC frights, our regular with a new dog shared that she had a bit of a pup-napping scare. She had left her little dog tied up to the fence near where she was playing tennis. Obviously well cared for, the dog was wearing a bright red warm coat, was sitting comfortably on a soft folded towel, and had a chew toy to amuse himself. Despite all this someone took it upon himself to “rescue” the animal and removed the dog from where it was chained and delivered it to the person manning the tennis center front desk. Fortunately, the dog wore a license with his name and our friend’s number so she received a text describing the whereabouts of her pet, but that was only after she had noticed he had gone missing and was panicking a bit, and this probably was all several minutes later than the abduction since the dog was wearing an anti-barking collar. I mentioned I would have been furious, but she generously assumed it was because the abductor was a “dog person.” In the end no one was worse for wear but we all agreed this was a heads up that she should probably not leave her dog unattended. Since the pandemic began, and remote working became the norm, dogs, especially cute little apartment-sized dogs, are in high demand and are demanding big prices. Someone amongst us relayed a story she knew of a friend whose dog had disappeared and was found a month later two states away, obviously pupnapped, so this happens. That same friend shared she also had a new dog, but that living in the suburbs the pup had other threats, like roaming wild turkeys bigger than the dog, even at over 80 pounds.
We then stopped to sing Happy Birthday to one of our regulars, and afterward marveled at how comparatively better the Zoom performances by known bands and artists on television are than our disjointed attempt to musically express our birthday wishes. We posited that they must use better tech, or maybe prerecorded tracks. In any case, the wish was heartfelt and she enjoyed the off-key serenade.
We then meandered to memories of vacations and summers past. A mention of summer camp horseback riding lessons reminded a friend of riding horses on a Costa Rican vacation with her then-boyfriend now-husband when her horse decided to take off from the slowly walking pack into a full on gallop. Having mastered summer camp horseback riding classes she was able to rally the horse and bring him into line. She fondly remembered the horse’s name was Saddam.
We discussed how in many of these vacation spots, like in this case Costa Rica, tourists are allowed to do possibly dangerous sports, like horseback riding and diving, with minimum training. We talked about having been pushed off the back of boats on random islands and in Australia after a half hour’s lesson with a diving tank, while those of us who were “certified” divers endured months of training in swimming pools before being permitted to dive. Another of us, a certified diver, remembered that a year ago at this time she was swimming with sharks in French Polynesia, and we discussed that this was likely a COVID-friendly activity. She had had another diving trip planned for this past April and has postponed it to May and we all wondered whether this might need to be postponed as well, based on what the likelihood of obtaining a vaccine by then will be. This of course then led into a discussion about the vaccine trials and the promises of the various companies coming up with the vaccines and AstroZeneca’s latest flub in their trials. The scientists among us discussed how the vaccines work and whether the FDA would approve them fast enough, and about the QAnon conspiracy theories we read about which made too many people adverse to taking them when they do finally come out.
We then somehow moved into remembrances of myriad celebrity spottings. As most of us live in NYC most of us had a couple to share. Celebrities are known to prefer New York because we city dwellers tend to leave them alone, being too cool for school, or just too much in a rush somewhere to stop to gawk. Most of the mentions related that they were generally very pleasant. One person shared that her friend witnessed Paul McCartney singing “Blackbird” to a fan who apologetically stopped him in a store to tell him it was her family’s favorite. Another mentioned she saw Chris Cuomo at a pizza place, and he was more excited to talk about the excellence of the pizza than anything else. Alec Baldwin was seen many times in the Hamptons by our Hamptons dwelling friend, and though his reputation with fans has been a tad tarnished over the years, her experience and her friends’ experiences with him have only been lovely, as she described. Other names were mentioned, and all with a bit of excitement, but distance, like Ric Ocasek, Steven Tyler, George Clooney and Peter York. I have several encounters, having lived here quite a while, but I shared one of my favorite stories from long ago, spotting Chris Noth at a charity benefit when he was in Sex and the City playing Mr. Big, and looking up at him and then away, because of course he should be there, Mr. Big always went to those parties, but then double-taking, remembering he was a person and not the character, and that this was pretty ironic and funny, and the look he shared with me was a total Mr. Big “yeah, it is pretty ironic and funny, isn’t it?”
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