The View from the Hermitage, Day 214

I've been talking about Halloween and the possibility it might be cancelled. I had my final Halloween canceled, and I was not happy. We were living in Morehead, Kentucky, and there was an age limit on Halloween. Once you turned 12, you were not supposed to be out and about for Halloween. The year I was 11 years old, I had walking pneumonia over Halloween. I did not feel all that bad, but I was not allowed to go trick or treating. The last year I would be allowed to go! I was not at all amused.

So far, one other family in the subdivision has gotten on board on having treats for costumed kids. And it was a family I would not have picked as participating. Sometimes it's nice to be proven wrong. I'm still pondering what kind of candy(ies) to offer. Son #1 has been ordering our groceries from Whole Foods. They're delivered to him, and he brings them out to us. He said he would check what sort of candy they had the next time he orders something. I need to make sure it's something The Professor and I will eat in case there are leftovers, a guilt-causing consumption to be sure but better than throwing it away.

The Professor has not yet decided if he is up for watching either town hall tonight. Uncle Joe's (I figure if The Orange Foolius gets a nickname so should his opponent) is 90 minutes log; that of The Orange Foolius is 60 minutes long. Son #1 has offered that The Orange Foolius has a higher probability of letting some horrible profanity slip out. I haven't read anything about real-time fact-checking, but you know there will be some untruths put forward by The Orange Foolius, probably more than some when it comes right down to it. 

So far, The Professor's trial run of some sort of thing has yielded no explosions. It turns out that whatever might explode is sitting in a trash can full of water, meaning I might not even hear anything. No explosion is what he and his graduate student want to happen. They want to see how high they can get the pressure in some sort of container. I think there is an upper limit they want to hit, but that's just my guess based on things The Professor has said. It turns out that The Professor and his graduate student will be busy with this into the evening hours, meaning that I'm making frozen pizza to go with the already made salad and that I can eat whenever I want to. 

On the unpacking front, I today managed to empty two boxes of random things. Nothing made it into the donation box, but I have one bag of paper to recycle and one bag of trash. I'm trying to get boxes in the basement cleaned out in hopes of finding my kindle. If I can't find it, I'll add one to my Christmas wishlist.

They're locking London down again as covid rates in Europe go even higher. I can't imagine any locality here going into total lockdown again. I understand that people are very tired of this. There are days when I am tired of being a hermit. Then I remind myself how little contact it can take to transmit the virus to someone else. I haven't hermitted as long as I have to make it for nothing in one short fix of the outside world. Son #1 has done so much to keep me safe; I will not disappoint him. 

Fortunately, I was not planning on a wedding or other large-scale event during this time. I know people are tired of the pandemic, but I cannot understand how a large-scale event is important enough to put so many people at risk. The motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. The wedding in Millinocket, Maine. I just don't get it and probably never will. Even harder for me to get are the virus-deniers or science-deniers. This is not a conspiracy of any sort. Perhaps I should remind myself of something The Professor's brother has said more than once: The average IQ is 100, and most of the people with whom I associate are above that average.

Maybe for something different, I'll watch the nightly network news. And maybe not.