In which, although we are not made of sugar, we probably would melt

I find it sort of glum when it’s a rainy day. One of the high points of my retirement is nice long walks listening to audiobooks, on which rain puts the kibosh, so to speak. Not taking that nice long walk means missing out. Fortunately I do have a nice place to take the long walk, quiet streets that for the most part are free of other humans. Hence no face mask, just me and my shadow and my iPhone and headphones. It’s about time to dump the over-the-ears, which act as ad hoc earmuffs. At least there’s that to look forward to. Anyhow, housebound today, again. Feh. 

I sallied forth Tuesday for the first time in ages, launching an attack on one of the local supermarkets. Liz told me that it was quite empty a couple of weeks ago when she went; grocery shopping is a chore that she hates and which I rather enjoy, but the rule in NY is that is if you’re over 70 you have to stay home, and until yesterday she was short of the mark. Now that we’re both in our dotage and hence equally potential quarantine felons, it was back on me. It was my first time masked (shades of “A Weekend in the Country” – we’ll go masked), and my first time traveling one-way aisles, but it was good to get my hands on some foodstuffs again. We’ve been well supplied from a local farm with once-a-week online ordering and curbside pickup, but they don’t grow pineapples or gelato locally… The market even had toilet paper, which we actually didn’t need, but I alerted Catholic Charlie, who lives nearby, and who apparently hasn’t relieved himself since early March. I can’t wait till the plumbing supply stores reopen: I’m going to stock up on bidets in preparation for the next apocalypse.

The Wyoming folks recently did a virtual tournament, and published a whole slew of help docs online. Curiously, they were able to do it without charging everyone an arm and a leg (I’m looking at you, Kentucky), since the software was, all of it, free. I know I’m the only person in the world who thinks there’s a future for long-distance forensics that can somehow eliminate most of the costs and enable less resource-heavy teams to participate, not from homes with dicey wifi and shabby equipment (if any), but from better set-up schools, but I can dream, can’t I? Maybe I’ll end up throwing my own damned tournaments, just for the hell of it. I mean, it won’t cost me anything. 

At the moment, it’s questionable if/how schools will reopen in September. If they do, whew. If they don’t, we all need to get our acts together at a much more rough-and-ready level than TOC. For one thing, PF will be 90% (or whatever) parent judges. Then again, the lack of travel costs will enable lots of college student judging; I would imagine that a tournament might set up an exchange for schools to purchase judges absent the tournament getting involved much in the process. I don’t know. It’s early days yet. I’ll learn more from the NDCA conference.