I ended my 10-day quarantine period yesterday. I seem to have followed a pretty standard track for symptoms — it got bad earlier this week, but I worked Tuesday morning, then rested up all day Wednesday and Thursday. By Friday I felt well enough to work a half day. I’m still pretty out of energy, and my throat is sore when I wake up in the mornings. But I rarely need to cough now, and my senses of smell and taste are recovering. Last night I made dinner and drank some wine, and for the first time in a week didn’t need Neo-Citran to sleep. Lindsay is a few days behind me still, but seems to be on the same path.
The advice I got from public health is that these lingering symptoms could hold on for weeks, which I’m not looking forward to. But all in all, I’m very thankful it was as mild as it was. Clearly it could have been much, much worse. I guess the trick will be to not push myself too hard, as I’m wont to do at the end of a cold or typical flu. This bug doesn’t seem to react well to it.
Still, it’ll be hard — I’m super-behind on work, as I really just forced myself to lie around and watch huge amounts of TV. I watched all of The Spy (imdb | rotten tomatoes) and finished Lovecraft Country (imdb | rotten tomatoes) and numerous episodes of Clone Wars. Together we watched all six episodes of Q: Into The Storm (imdb | rotten tomatoes) and finished Retribution aka One Of Us (imdb | rotten tomatoes).
Last Tuesday I started feeling sick, with a sore throat and a headache. By Tuesday afternoon I’d canceled my meetings and went to lie down. It wasn’t severe or anything, I just felt tired. I took Wednesday off as well, thinking rest should take care of it, but just to be on the safe side made an appointment to get a COVID test the next day. By Thursday morning I actually felt pretty okay. I did a full (and long) day of work, then went for my test at St. Mike’s even though I barely felt sick anymore.
By Friday I felt mostly better. I actually considered firing up the Peloton to do a low impact ride. I was sure it couldn’t have been COVID; it never felt much worse than a medium cold, or a mild flu. But then I checked my results, and saw this:
Awesome.
By this time Lindsay had started feeling symptoms too, about three days behind my own. We made dinner, and wallowed in grump for a few hours before dosing ourselves with Neo-Citran and going to bed.
Yesterday I woke up feeling a little worse again, but got better as the day went on. I received the promised call from a doctor at Public Health, and he told us to isolate for ten full days from the onset of symptoms. He also explained that the symptoms can come in waves, and he was right: by the evening I felt like garbage again, with a slew of sinus symptoms. Today — Sunday — we both feel pretty wiped out. It won’t be hard to stay isolated; we can barely get out of bed.
Frankly, though, isolation means very little change for us. We already had 100% of our groceries and 95% of our food delivered to our front door. We both work from home 100% of the time. We hadn’t gone to anyone’s house. We hadn’t visited any patios when they were reopened a week or so ago. Frankly, it felt pretty unfair that there are yahoos out there visiting gyms and going to house parties and shopping and all manner of shit without getting sick, and with our practically-monastic lifestyle we catch COVID. So how did it happen?
Without getting into too much detail, we had one — one — short, socially-distanced hangout with our neighbours in the back laneway, four days before my symptoms kicked in. We were careful, but because we were outside and 2-3 metres apart, we didn’t wear masks. That one 20-minute window was all it took. Months and months of isolation, discipline, and missing people, and boom. But hey, we live in Ontario, and our provincial government’s response to COVID has been a collection of blunderfucks from the get-go — pulling emergency brakes after they’d already driven into the tree, and so on — so who knows? Maybe it was silly to think we wouldn’t get it.
Anyway. We’re not in particularly problematic age ranges, and we have no pre-existing health conditions which should complicate this. We’re not experiencing any of the severe symptoms. Nobody’s going to lose their job, we don’t have kids to worry about, and we have plenty of supplies and gourmet restaurants who’ll bring us food. We’re not taking this lightly, but the odds are certainly in our favour. So now we just hunker down, try to get better, and…stay indoors until our fucking vaccination appointments, I guess.
After a tough work week (though, admittedly, my vacation day on Friday was super-relaxed) we decided to watch a movie after dinner. We could have gone with something light and fluffy, but instead finally watched Parasite (imdb | rotten tomatoes).
The best-picture Oscar was deserved, in my opinion. So good, so thoughtful, so richly-shot. Such incredible imagery: Ki-Jung smoking calmly, feet tucked up on the toilet exploding beneath her, stairs which almost served as a character. It was funny, biting, deep, well-acted, sad, important.
Highly recommended, as if you needed me to tell you that.
True to form (which is to say, consistently formless and unpredictable) the Ontario government on Friday announced restaurants and bars could open their patios. With no warning.
First of all, in my opinion, we shouldn’t be opening up anything right now. There were 1,791 new COVID-19 cases in Ontario yesterday, and 18 people died. There’s a “growing consensus among medical experts that the province has entered a third wave of COVID-19 cases” in Ontario. (source) I get that businesses, especially small businesses, want to re-open. But re-opening early just prolongs the pain of this half-measure. Is it really worth it?
Breaking: Ontario Government is leaving your safety in the hands of people who really miss going out for wings with their buddies.
— déjà brü • June 02/22 save the date (@_MiphasGrace_) March 19, 2021
Second, if you’re going to make this decision, you don’t drop it on all these beleaguered business owners with less than 24 hours notice.
Lol sorry but they gave us 24 HOURS NOTICE to open patios tomorrow…WHAT!!??? I am not surprised as there have been MANY fumbles fundamentally rooted in gov having ZERO understanding of how restaurants work but wow. Honestly fucking RUDE. And no. We wont be panicking to open.
I don’t know why I expected anything else from this clown car of a government who is clearly prioritizing the economy over lives — as if the economy doesn’t count on alive-ish people.
Wednesday night we went for a walk around the neighbourhood. When we got home I made us an Old Fashioned each and we drank them on the back deck. We were so delirious from getting that much fresh air that we fell asleep early. Alas, the warm weather didn’t last long, and the coming days will dip well below zero, but it feels like spring is around the corner.
In the meantime, we’ve no end of great TV to watch while we wait it out. Last Week Tonight (imdb) is back. We’re nearly through all three seasons of Easy (imdb) which has been excellent — when a show can bring things as complicated as relationships to life by showing you and not telling you, you know it’s very well done indeed. We’re also about to wrap up WandaVision (imdb) which has been catnip for a nerd like me. Speaking of nerdery, I’ve been catching up on Clone Wars (imdb), a part of the Star Wars universe I’d never bothered to consume until now.
Brother #2 reminded me yesterday that two years ago we happened to be in London at the same time, and met up for a delicious meal at Hawksmoor Knightsbridge. It made us both realize how much we miss travel. Lindsay and I then spent a good chunk of last evening talking about recent trips (Lisbon! Dublin! Paris/Champagne/Liège! Copenhagen/Amsterdam! Stockholm/Gothenberg! And so on.) and dreaming up a list of where we’d love to go when such things are once again possible. It was fun to think about, but bittersweet. I’m trying not to let myself speculate on when, as it’s so out of our control.
But man. Is it ever a list.
Speaking of reminiscing, Lindsay asked to start watching The Wire, as she’s never seen it. I agreed very, very quickly. Can’t wait to revisit all these characters. (Related news: there’s more David Simon coming, and it’s going to be about Baltimore cops again.)
I’ve never been much of a cocktail guy. I don’t mind the odd one, but I usually can’t be arsed to order one, and certainly not to make one. However, if getting older / more poncey / the lockdown has led me anywhere, it’s to wanting to make a cocktail now and then. That said, I’m still too lazy to make anything fancy, and all my spare kitchen/bar space is taken up with wine and beer paraphernalia, so I have to keep it simple.
To wit: maybe the simplest cocktail of all. The Old Fashioned.
I love bourbon. I like sugar. I got my hands on some angostura bitters. Orange peels: no problem. So I gave it a go.
A note on sugar: rather than use a traditional sugar cube, I put a Dickinson twist on it and used maple sugar. It seems a nice touch, but it’s subtle, so I need to use more (and find a way to muddle it more effectively).
I’ve tried making a couple and they weren’t bad. I can tell I don’t have it nailed just yet, but I was reluctant to practice too much until I had more bourbon in the house. Until today all I had was a lovely bottle of Angel’s Envy my brother sent up from Nova Scotia, and delicious cocktail or not, I’m not wasting it. I grabbed a bottle Knob Creek today, so…let the tuning & tweaking commence!
Yesterday was a bit of an exercise in staying still. Sleeping in ’til 9. Staying in bed until noon, save grabbing coffee from downstairs. Walking across the hall to the guest bedroom to start season three of Line Of Duty (imdb), eat too much food delivered from Yum Croissant, and drink a bottle of Raventos i Blanc 2017 “Blanc de Nit” cava rosé. Finally walking downstairs to watch an episode of Think You Know Wine whilst cracking a magnum of Tiny Batch Wine Blaufrankisch. Making pork chops & salad for dinner and finishing the mag. Heading back to the bed to finish (!) season three while Kramer slept hard at his end of the bed.
Today will be busier. But yesterday we accomplished so little that, frankly, it felt like quite the achievement.
.:.
Cover photo by Ray Muzyka, used under Creative Commons license
As I type this I’m waiting for my new Synology DS220+ Network Access Storage device to set itself up. Of course I named it Illmatic.
I’m excited to get all my old media loaded onto it and install Plex, so I’m not constantly swapping files onto backup & media drives. I’m also excited that Lindsay will have a place to back things up, finally. 😐
At least once each weekend we try to set aside an evening as date night — fancy delivery, dinner table, proper place settings, music, etc. — and our go-to dinner spot lately has been classic French: Jules Bistro. Twice we’ve ordered the Cote de Boeuf for two, and last night we got the Magret de Canard. It’s hard to find places that can deliver high-quality food in a car in the winter (see also: Terroni) so, as long as the pandemic continues, they’ll probably be a mainstay for us. Because let me tell you: damn, the food is good.
Also: these dinners provide an excuse to pull a pretty exciting wine out of the fridge. So far it’s been a 2012 Le Vieux Pin Equinoxe Cabernet Franc (steak), a 2013 El Enemigo Gran Enemigo Gualtallary Single Vineyard Cabernet Franc (steak), and a 2011 Bodegas Raul Perez Bierzo Ultreia Valtuille (duck).
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 