The last time we went to a restaurant was on March 12, 2020. We had pizza at Bellagreen, one of our favorite neighborhood establishments. We’d been out to eat three other times earlier that month. Since then, other than ordering food to be picked up or delivered on five or six occasions, we’ve been making all our meals at home. I haven’t gained a pound!
On March 16, my boss told our group he was giving permission to anyone who wanted to do so to work from home for the foreseeable future. I packed up my laptop and everything I thought I might need and went home that morning, stopping at Best Buy on the way to pick up a terrabyte drive. I have only been back to that building a few times since then, always on weekends, to pick up things I needed from my office and, ultimately, to pack up completely and move everything to my home office. Our remote-working tenure has been made permanent.
My wife, too, has been working from home since then. We’ve only gone out to get groceries or other necessities. We’ve converted out grocery shopping to online/pick-up, which has worked out better than expected for us and we might continue to use that when the world returns to whatever will be considered normal. I’m still using the same tank of gas I bought a year ago. No kidding!
A couple of weeks ago, we received our first coronavirus vaccination. At the end of the month, we’ll get our second shot. By mid-April, we’ll be considered fully immunized. We might loosen our lockdown protocols a little after that…but not much. Not planning on going to restaurants or movie theaters any time soon, but we’ll consider going to the dentist, for example. Depends on how bad the next wave is a few weeks from now, when the stupid decisions of Texas politicians play out. Spring break, 100% occupancy, no mask mandate…how dumb do you have to be to get elected governor of Texas, anyway?
I have a brief contribution in How to Write a Mystery: A Handbook from Mystery Writers of America. My advanced review copy arrived last week, and I look forward to spending some time with it.
I was a guest on the KingCast podcast a few weeks ago. It was recorded the weekend before the big freeze. We joked a little about staying warm, little realizing how cold things were fixin’ to get. You can listen to it wherever podcasts are distributed, including here.
Here’s the “blurb” for it: Frequent Stephen King collaborator and author of The Road to the Dark Tower, Bev Vincent, chats with the boys about his long history with King, what it was like to read the final three Dark Tower books a full two years before they were published, fields some truly nerdy Dark Tower questions and has to explain to the dumb-dumbs that host this podcast what “orthogonality” means.
My three-part exploration “King of Crime” is now up at News from the Dead Zone (Cemetery Dance Online), culminating in my review of Later. Part I | Part II | Part III
I should probably mention again my novella at Amazon, The Ogilvy Affair, which is available as an eBook and a paperback.
Movies we watched recently: Nomadland, The United States vs. Billie Holiday, I Care a Lot, News of the World. I Care a Lot is bad people doing bad things. Wasn’t sure who to root for, but it was fun watching Rosamund Pike go up against Peter Dinklage. News of the World has Tom Hanks coming to the rescue of a young girl who was raised by Native Americans. The Civil War has just ended and everyone in Texas is too concerned about figuring out the new status quo to worry about one lost little girl. Nomadland is about a woman whose husband and the town they lived in both died, so she packs up a van and hits the road, joining the ranks of other nomadic people. The United States vs. Billie Holiday wasn’t easy to watch. What a hard life she had, and the government didn’t make it any easier.
I’m continuing my re-watch of Lost. I’m now about halfway through the third season. I’m continually amazed by how much of that show I’ve forgotten about. It’s good–I can be surprised by certain turns of events. On the other hand, it’s interesting to see things mentioned and know how they’re going to play out. First mention of Jacob. First time Nikki and Paolo emerge from the background. Knowing what Kate and Sawyer are being forced to do.
I’ve also dipped into WandaVision. I’m four episodes in and it’s just starting to make sense. I was a full episode in before I made the complete connection between the two main characters and the MCU movies I’ve seen. My wife and I enjoyed the adaptation of Sarah Pinborough’s Behind Her Eyes. I had the advantage of having read the book, so it was fun to hear my wife’s guesses about what was going to happen. We also checked out the excellent four-part 2006 adaptation of Jane Eyre starring Ruth Wilson, and we’re five episodes into Bridgerton, which takes place in an alternate universe where mad King George married a Black woman.
