Lurching Into Autumn

It’s been a little while since I last wrote here. Well, of course I have two or three mostly-written entries which maybe I’ll put up sometime, or maybe I’ll decide they’re kind of dumb since I don’t have the forward progress which made me write them in the first place. We’ll see.

The first half of October has been the Bay Area slowly lurching into Autumn. Some cool weather, then the last two days temps in the 80s, and today it cooled off into the 60s, and tonight we got out first light rain of the season (with a couple more days forecast over the next week). It wasn’t much, but with California in the midst of another terrible drought, anything helps.

We put up our Halloween lights a couple of weeks ago. I picked up a little smiling grim reaper to add to our (honestly rather small) display- I enjoy Target’s assortment of Halloween decor. Other homes in the neighborhood have been putting up lights too, but there are fewer than there were last year. I think we’ll be able to do a closer-to-normal Halloween night for trick-or-treaters this year, though we’ll likely still take some precautions.

Speaking of normal, we’ve been acting a little more normally lately. For most of the pandemic I was doing the grocery shopping, usually going to the store at 2 pm on a Tuesday to avoid the crowds. Now we’re back to going on Sundays after going to the farmer’s market. We’ve also gone out to eat a bit more, though always eating outside, and trying to avoid the craziest times for the crowds. Last night we had an early dinner at Cascal, which was great.

We lost another local restaurant, although this was a branch of a chain, Opa!, which was a place I enjoyed ordering lunch. They’d had a Help Wanted sign up for a while before they closed, so I wonder if they closed because they couldn’t get staff. And today our nearby Starbucks closed at noon due to staffing problems. Hopefully we’ll see businesses raising wages more soon to attract workers. They’ll have to, because I think there’s a worker shortage because of people who have to stay home due to COVID.

We’ve gotten together with friends a couple more times – including a last-minute visit to some friends who brought out their copious selection of gin for us to try. We also bought new patio furniture which we were able to enjoy for a few weeks, but we’ll likely cover it up soon with more rain coming up.

And my nemesis, the sycamore tree that shadows our front yard, is starting to drop its leaves. Which means I’m going to be raking through New Year’s. I do like that tree, though.

So that’s the news here, such as it is. I hope the couple of dozen people who stop by here when I post are doing well.

2 thoughts on “Lurching Into Autumn”

  1. We have had a much similar experience lately. However, our kids’ school is now covid testing every single person every single Wednesday, which makes us feel more socially adventurous since that is where the majority of our family’s exposure as a whole originates. So far, so good! 🙂

    I think Halloween will feel more ‘normal’ than any of the upcoming holidays. By nature, it is an outdoor affair. Also, we now know that surface contact (aka community candy bowls) are an unlikely source of covid spread and that a brief ‘trick or treat’ interaction at a doorway is extremely unlikely to provide enough of a viral load to infect anyone.

    The question becomes what will be the impact if this brief moment of low-risk normality will embolden people to engage in covid risky behavior in November and December?

  2. 2021 COVID life for us has been better than 2020; we’ve been vaccinated and have had our boosters, but still limit eating out to outdoor venues. We have also limited our exposure to people -only socializing with a few trusted friends. Tennessee has been #1 for COVID cases per capital so that makes us extra careful about going anywhere. Huge regret is not seeing family Thanksgiving! We do plan to attend my great niece’s outdoor wedding in FL. I particularly wanted to go as I am now the oldest surviving member of the Simmons family and I want our family to somehow stay connected.
    I always enjoy your posts and am happy to sorta “keep up” with your life. I miss hearing from Katy and would love to know about her and Ivan’s life.

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