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I had a much more pleasant evening yesterday. Shobhit was very docile, seeming kind of down actually. Maybe he read yesterday's post but I opted not to ask him about it. Frankly this version of him, while not ideal—believe it or not I prefer to see him happy—is easier to deal with. We had leftovers for dinner, and we watched the season finale of The New Pope on HBO Go. Then we went over to Netflix to check out this Tiger King seven-part docuseries everybody's talking about (especially among the millions out of work and spending their quarantine time watching TVs and movies). We only watched the first episode and I am indeed hooked on that clear craziness, but I think maybe I can still only take one episode at a time.

Otherwise, Shobhit watched one of the Transformers movies. Ugh. He watched another one this morning before leaving for work, telling me he worked several days on background for it, but it was too hard to see him in all the frenetic craziness of those movies. While he did that, I spent a little time writing captions on my Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras photos. I've captioned over 100 of those so far; I still have the rest of the Australia travels to do even once those are done.

Shobhit's work situation seems a bit up in the air. For now at least, he seems to have lucked out in that he's an assistant manager. They stayed open for business yesterday and were apparently applying to be regarded as "essential business" during Washington State's "stay at home" mandade. I rather doubted they would succeed; apparently they were trying to rationalize that hospitals might eventually need some things they sell, like sleeping bags. Seems like a bit of a stretch to me.

He texted me after getting to work this morning though—much later than originally scheduled, as they had altered hours even before the stay-at-home mandate—and said they seem to be closed today. "Store is closed so we might just do projects," he said. He told me yesterday that even if they have to close, apparently they expect managers to come in. Thankfully, he is one. I asked if it will be the same hours though, and he said he didn't know.

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— चार हजार सात सौ नौ —

I just got "back" from lunch with Karen! Via FaceTime, her at her kitchen table and me at my dining table. I had the last of my leftover baked macaroni and cheese made on Monday. Karen was eating too, but I don't know what; I didn't ask.

It didn't even occur to me to suggest lunch via FaceTime until yesterday, when I was looking at my Google Calendar and seeing the scheduled lunch with her on it, and lamenting the uncertaint of when I'll be able to eat out with anyone again. And then it dawned on me: duh! I even could have considered that as a possibility for the last time she had to cancel lunch, two weeks ago, but that was still a day before I was even sent to work from home, and under regular circumstances it's normal for her to cancel semi-regularly anyway.

But, well, now we've both been working from home for a while, and this idea was quite easily done. She had texted me last night that she wanted to hear more about my trip to Australia, but of course the vast majority of what we talked about wound up being COVID-19 related, what it's been like for each of us working from home, how business is going, and the like.

It still sure was nice seeing her for once, even if it had to be virtual. Our regularly scheduled lunch during my vacation obviously had to be canceled, and she also had to cancel the one we were supposed to have just before I left—so I actually had not had lunch with her since January 23. We honestly could have spent a lot more time catching up, but we hung up after an hour as I still have work to do and need to get back to it.

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[posted 1:14 pm]