Monday night was Labor Day and I booked a PareaGroove for the night, but with only two maybe RSVPs I postponed it to Wednesday. It seemed I got the tech wrong somehow with re-using the original invite and only invited myself to our rebooked Wednesday meeting. When this was fortunately called to my attention through a phone call from someone I usually see on a Zoom, like why are you calling me? we have a Zoom now? What? I wasn’t invited! Yes, you were…oh, oops. So I sent out an invite a few minutes after it was meant to start. It was great to see how many people showed up on a moment’s notice. We got a good sized group.
We talked about the normal top of mind stuff, starting with our job searches, as many of us have lost our jobs and work opportunities since the quarantine, and job searches and Zoom interviews have proven a bit of a challenge. We talked about what opening meant for us and whether to shop in person now that we can or on line because it’s safer. We talked about our walks in the parks which we’re continuing from the quarantine habit, what it must mean for the kids to have classes in the park, and how we’re supposed to dress for the Zooms, the kids for classes, us for work. We talked about dealing with the uncomfortable loudness of some very minor sounds on the Zooms, the tech opps-es, like my invite, and our mic challenges, and we wondered how the kids and their teachers will deal with these tech hiccups if we’re finding we’re having so much trouble. We talked about old television shows and our memories of our favorites and how some tropes from them were coming back. We worried about what open dining will look like in the winter. We commented on how our sunsets of late have been spectacular, and wondered if it were due to pollution or climate change. We worried about the post office, how it’s slowing down, how they’re cutting hours, and how that will affect voting. We talked about what school lunches might look like with the new precautions and reminisced about our school lunches, both good and bad. We moved on to politics and our concern with AG Barr and his associations with weird right wing religious groups, we talked about religious conspiracies and the threat of authoritarianism. That led to talks about Freemasons and Dungeons & Dragons and the Catholic Information Center. We worried about how the government took over the defense of E Jean Carrol’s accusation of defamation over her “alleged” rape by the president. We talked about the relationship with Russia our country seems to have, and about pardons and how that will affect the peaceful transition of power.
Then we talked about air fryers (I have a new one) and cooking and old diets like South Beach and the Atkins. Memories led to talking about Broadway, what we’re doing with our time now that we’re not seeing so many shows and concerts, and how many of us are playing tennis. Then we talked about the Tooth Fairy and how she’s gifting $20s now while we got dollar bills. We talked about teaching competition to kids, tracking parents for COVID, and the ethics of keeping records with doctors offices. We worried again about what indoor dinging would mean and marveled how masks are almost prohibited in some instances like the Sturgis motorcycle gathering which led to a lot of COVID cases, and we worried that maybe the cases are higher, they’re not being reported. So back to the COVID concerns in the end of the evening.
