The Pittmeister's Parade Around America

 Instead of posting in the morning today, I thought an evening post would be more appropriate. It can be so difficult to do morning posts on the events of the previous day, but it can be so much easier to complete evening posts on the events of the day. My day began around 6:30am, which is about the time I usually get up. During the first week of vacation, I was downing 10mg of melatonin before going to sleep, which caused me to sleep much later, which was nice, but I am not late-sleeper person. I'm an "up with the sun" kind of person. I made the pot of coffee and settled into to checking my social media on my phone and playing the game Township on the app on my phone. About 9:15 I went and woke Wife up. She's a much later sleeper than I. I brought her medication to her and reminded that we had agreed to go do some shopping at "10-ish" which IMO is any time between 945a-10:15a. I think we ended up leaving closer to 10:30 or even 10:45.  Prior to leaving, we ...

In my opinion, there is nothing better than a whole roasted chicken. Yesterday, in an attempt to maintain some sanity, I went for a drive in the late afternoon. While I was out, I got the craving for roasted chicken, and this was partly due to the fact that I finished the remains of the roasted duck we had for Christmas dinner. So, while I was out on my drive, I called Wife and asked if she wanted to have roasted chicken for dinner, which was a suggestion that met with a mild level of indifference, given the verbatim response of, "if you want to".  So, I headed to our local Safeway and picked out a 6.5 pound whole chicken for $1.49/pound.  For this particular chicken, I wanted to make it spicy, so after painting it with olive oil to crisp up the skin, I covered it in the Weber seasoning known as "Frickin' Chicken".  I stuffed the cavity with onion eights and quartered some mandarin oranges. I put the chicken in the oven, uncovered for 1 hour & 45 minutes at ...

Yesterday was a pretty boring day. Wife and I stayed home again. I did venture out to the post office to purchase stamps to mail out about 8 Christmas & New Year's letters to friends and family who had sent us one. The post office was pretty low key. There was only one other person in front of me who wanted to cancel her PO box and have her mail redirected to a residential address. While I was out, I stopped by Safeway to get some more kimchi for Wife as well as bananas & salad mix. I also got a breakfast burrito and ate that before coming home.  Wife and I talk often about the pandemic and Americans' response to it. She feels, and rightfully so, that some Americans are fools for traveling during the holidays, for continuing to attend family gatherings, and for refusing to wear a mask. Wife had to cancel her trip back to her home country this year due to the pandemic and she has already stated she does not plan to go back in 2021. Her country has barred entry to the cou...

It has been a pretty boring couple of days since my last post. Wife and I have not done much except stay in the house and do our own things. I think this morning was the first day since Christmas Eve I had even taken a shower in the morning and I spend most days in my track pants and sweatshirt. I have been doing most of the cooking since Wife is taking solace and solitude in the bedroom where she feels safe from the pandemic and the myopic attitudes of Americans.  I can't really blame her because there is not much that needs to be done. I have been encamped on the sofa or chair watching movies I have not yet seen, like " The Silence of the Lambs " or rewatching documentaries like " The Last Dance ". I also ordered another Christmas gift from Amazon for my mother as well as something for Wife that she can use to start using our indoor stationary bike (doctor's orders). I have started to use the spin bike once again too, getting in two workout rides on Saturd...

Yesterday was the Christmas, which if you grew up watching the movie "Home Alone", you would know is, " the season of perpetual hope ", which is the line that Kevin McCallister's mother shouts at the gate ticket agent when she's stuck in Scranton, PA on Christmas Eve. Our family did a stay at home Christmas this year, even though my parents live only a hour away from us. I realized yesterday that it was the first Christmas since 2015 that Wife and I had spent by ourselves since 2015, when we were living in that cess pit known as Bullhead City, AZ, but it felt more like the Christmas we spent together in 2008, when I returned to Japan after my 1st semester of graduate school to spend the holidays in Japan with Wife before she received her visa the following February.  I prepared the main dish and I cooked a duck for our main dish. Prior to cooking the duck, I spent last week watching YouTube videos of people cooking ducks in order to learn what to do. Here ar...

Updated yesterday, there are now 2,425 active cases of COVID-19 in our county. That's an increase of over 600 from last week. I'm not even going to bother with sharing the rest of the data. It's too depressing.  Yesterday evening, Wife and I made the difficult decision to cancel our plans to attend the family Christmas gathering. We notified our family via text message. And this morning, my sister announced their intention to do the same, so Christmas this year is officially canceled in our family. We didn't even put up decorations . I'm not sure what I'm going to cook for Christmas dinner, but I'm thinking I'll be a "maverick" and cook a goose. "Great balls of fire!" This week was "Doctor Visit Week" for me. I paid a visit to my eye doctor and dentist. I updated my eye glass prescription and got my teeth cleaned. I also endured/experienced a sales pitch for Invisilign from my dentist.  My online class is nearly over. Final ...

  As of this morning, there are 1805 active cases in our county .  800 of those cases are in the zip code for Douglas, AZ and 231 of those cases are in the population center of Sierra Vista, which is where I am employed.  There are 65 active cases in our zip code for Old Mining Town.  Overall, there have been 4,200 cases in our county with 82 deaths. In the state of Arizona , we are approaching 360,000 cases of COVID-19 with the death toll approaching 7,000 people.  The debate in our house has recently been if we should attend Christmas dinner with my parents, who live an hour away in the next county. Their numbers are nearly identical to ours and surging just like ours are surging.  My sister, who is in a "delicate condition" and brother in-law are planning to fly in from Virginia on 12/16 and so Wife and I are concerned about potentially spreading the virus to them or catching it ourselves, since they are flying through Atlanta, GA. They are taking extra ...