Tag Archives: Quarantine

Cold day chronicle (also, Norway is open!)

Most of what’s below can be skipped without any loss to the diverse richness of your life. It’s just the account of my day, offered here for your perusal because I can’t think of anything actually interesting.

No, wait, I do have one interesting fact. Norway has opened its borders again. The requirement that people traveling from countries outside a certain short list must go through a quarantine period before entering has been lifted. You still need to show proof of vaccination, but this is a big relaxation. A step back toward normal life, one fervently hopes.

“Following a recommendation from the National Institute of Public Health, the government is abolishing the requirement for entry quarantine because it is no longer considered necessary for infection control,” the Norwegian Ministry of Health stated.

You may recall that I predicted something like this just a few days ago, based on the amount of translation work I’ve been getting – which would seem to indicate a belief inside the film industry that freer association and travel are coming. I didn’t expect it to happen this fast, though. No doubt the movie moguls I serve in my small way have friends in high places, who tipped them the high sign.

Today was my first day without translation work since… I don’t recall. Probably less time than I think. But it’s been a string of days. I’d marked today out, whatever my work situation, for shopping and errands. (Note: it’s in times like these that I contemplate finding a wife. Only I know she’d retaliate with a Honeydo list.) The coldest day of the week isn’t prime time for such activity, but there are moments when you just need to go to the store, or else you’ll run out of some staple, like chocolate or beef jerky or pigs’ feet.

As I planned my day, I realized a lot of stuff had piled up on my list. It called for careful trip planning and logistics. Aside from the gym in the morning, which was a separate excursion, I must:

Go to the post office. Take my suit to the cleaners. Run my car through the car wash (not optimal on a day with a high around zero, but on the other hand there wasn’t much of a waiting line). Go to Wal Mart for a new computer monitor (because I knocked the old one over and broke the screen. Nothing to do with old age and clumsiness, of course – I was just as clumsy at twenty. And the piece of junk was always unstable. Which should teach me to buy computer components at Wal Mart). Get groceries. Stop at the drug store for immune system supplement. Then get the new monitor working, which is always more complicated than you expect, if you’re over ten years old.

I’m planning to work on the novel tonight. If God gives me strength. And the monitor doesn’t fall over again.

For your Spectation

I have a new piece up at The American Spectator Online today. I was worried it was a little too personal for the venue, but the editor told me it was “the best piece I’ve read in a long time.” Which is always nice to hear.

Anyway, it’s about the Lockdown and living in fear. Because fear is a subject I know all about.

I hope I’m open-minded enough to listen to experts. However, when an “expert” starts telling me the only way to prevent Gotterdammerung is to increase the size and power of government, I start reaching for my skeptic’s hat. I wear that hat a lot nowadays.

I’m not an epidemiologist, as you’ve probably guessed.

But I do know about fear.

And what troubles me most about our current predicament is that we’re being governed on the basis of fear.

Read it all here.

“Who was that masked man? I wanted to thank him.”

Years ago, for some reason (perhaps a college assignment I’ve forgotten), I picked up a copy of Boccaccio’s Decameron.

This is not a review of that book.

I started reading the Decameron, for some reason, years later in Florida, when I was sick in bed and looking for reading material. Back before I could summon books magically through the ether with my Amazon Fire.

I didn’t finish it. It’s one of those books I just couldn’t get into.

Anyway, it’s a collection of 100 stories, supposedly told by a group of ladies and gentlemen who’ve fled Florence during the Black Death in the 14th Century.

I tell you all of that just to ease into my real subject – I have a very brief Plague Story of my own today.

Buoyed by the prospect of money coming in from my recent translation job, I decided to throw some patronage at a restaurant I like, but haven’t been to for a while. I called in an order for pick-up.

When I got there, rocking my stylish Black Bart Stagecoach Robber bandana mask, the cashier told me it would be just a minute. I said sure.

There was another guy there, sitting on a bench. A middle-aged guy (which makes him younger than me, I shudder to think) who seemed to be waiting for a large order.

“Sure never thought I’d see times like this in America,” he said to me, keeping his distance as the law prescribes.

I agreed, pretty much echoing the same sentiment back to him. “I feel bad for the small business owners,” I added. “A lot of those people don’t have a lot of margin to fall back on.”

He told me he was a small businessman himself. He owned two neighborhood bars. “I’m doing OK,” he said. “But I feel bad for my employees. Some of them are in real bad shape.”

We went on to talk about various theories about the Coronavirus thing. He’d heard that people get immunity from sunlight exposure in summer. I said I’d heard it was temperatures over 80 degrees and humidity.

“If it’s heat and humidity,” he asked, “how come it doesn’t die on your body? What’s warmer and humider than your body?”

I admitted he had a point.

Then the cashier came out with my food. As I stepped toward the counter, the guy said, “Hey, Mister, forget it. It’s on me. It was a pleasure to talk to somebody new after all these days at home.”

I’ll share a little-known personal secret with you – I almost never turn down free stuff. I thanked him and gave the cashier a big tip. We were all happy for a moment.

As I left he asked my name, and gave me his. Which, of course, I’ve forgotten already.

I should have asked the names of his bars, so I could recommend them to any locals who may read this – after they re-open on VC day. But I didn’t think of that. And I don’t drink myself.

Well, fortunately he’ll never be able reproach me for my ingratitude. He never saw my face without a mask.