Day 5: Killer stuffed vine leaves
And other things that won't kill you
Buonasera, as we say here in Italy. Finally, the weekend has arrived! What is everyone planning on doing? We’ve just finished our aperitivo in the kitchen, while having a lovely video chat with friends. Then we’ll have dinner, and proceed to our living room to explore our music collection to absolutely no audience at all, because as all live performers know, the career-changing stuff happens when there’s no one watching.
It really is a marvel, how many things you can do in your house, if you just decide (or are forced) to stay there for a while.
I read somewhere that the more you work from home, the more you look like a homeless person. I mean, who am I to disagree. I must confess I have already noticed one of the major benefits of being in all the time: you can wear your dirty clothes as many times as you like. In fact, the t-shirt I’m wearing as I type this has a beautiful red stain on it from last night’s dinner.
In our apartment, I’ve started applying the productivity trick of using different spaces for different activities, so I sit in the living room for work and the kitchen for meals and breaks. This has been a very wise decision, since snacking can be highly dangerous (you use up all your food supplies and become fat), plus, my motivations for eating resemble those of a dog: no understanding of the concept of hunger, just a general satisfaction of having something in my mouth (that’s what she said).
Speaking of ‘that’s what she said’, we watch one episode of The US Office at lunch, and it makes everything better.
It feels like spring is arriving. Today was a warm, sunny day, and various people looking like Mortal Kombat characters went for a walk to enjoy the sunshine. In the afternoon, someone, somewhere, was playing the recorder. It was dreadful but strangely comforting.
The number of Covid-19 cases in the rest of the planet is also increasing. When a person in Berlin manages to infect 16 other people in a nightclub, you know it was a really good night.
Reading the news in Cyprus, which makes me feel like I’ve invented time travel and I’m looking at the world from the future, I found out that people are calling the Coronavirus emergency line to reveal their deepest, darkest fears, including catching the virus from rolling stuffed vine leaves at home. Someone please turn this into a movie.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s impressive immunity to Coronavirus has come to an end. After diligently reporting 0 cases despite what I’m sure has been very thorough testing, once the US diagnosed a person in Maryland who had just flown in from Istanbul, Turkey also surprisingly announced its first case. The world works in mysterious ways.
I wonder why we don’t just shut the planet down for a couple of weeks and get it over with. Italy does it for the entire month of August every year and, until one month ago, it was doing just fine.
The high point of my day was going through the storage under the sink and finding an almost full pack of antiseptic wipes, which is basically like striking gold during the Great Depression. For about 5 seconds, I felt like Mary Poppins. Although, if you look at the photo, they probably needed disinfecting themselves.
[NEW ENTRY] Question of the day: How many people are making babies right now? And, more importantly, how traumatised will these babies be?
Lunch: White beans with tomato sauce (AKA fasolia yiahni) - yes, I am going through a wartime diet, and loving it.
Song of the day: Madness - Our House
P.S. Tomorrow is Steak and Blowjob Day. You should stock up, you never know which one of the two will run out.
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