“I Don’t Eat Anything I’m Not Sure How to Pronounce”
I’m afraid these updates are going to start getting pretty boring with everyone staying at home for the most part. I’ll do my best to find some interest in the day to day goings on around our McKinney home and beyond.
We’re determined to try and get some daily exercise even with all the gyms and pools closed. After a reasonably extensive search, we found a nice used elliptical machine locally and had it delivered on Tuesday. Thank goodness Diana decided to pay extra to have it dropped upstairs in the media room. There’s no way we could have done it ourselves. The gentleman on the lower end looked like he was competing in “The World’s Strongest Man” as he hoisted the behemoth upstairs. Fortunately some excellent supervision was provided from the upstairs landing.
All that activity was worth it as the machine went into daily use:
The other way we’re getting exercise is with C25K (Couch to 5K). This is an application that coaches you from sitting on the couch to being ready to run a 5K. It’s an 8 week course with three 30 minute sessions each week. The duration of runs versus walks increases each week. I never expected McD to do this with me, but she’s doing really well and we completed week 1 successfully.
Week 2 starts around 11am tomorrow morning.
People have been trying hard to stay connected with everyone working at home, and I shared my Wednesday dinner creation and asked my team what they’d been cooking. Sole meuniere ended up being much easier than I anticipated – I added a bit too much lemon juice but otherwise it tasted quite good. Nick responded with a picture of one of his favourites – mixed cheese stuffed bacon wrapped jalapenos – don’t those look amazing?
I did chuckle when one of my very Texan team members replied that he doesn’t eat anything he’s not sure how to pronounce.
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nother way we’re staying connected is with virtual happy hours. Here’s some of my team participating in the Thursday night version. Michelle on the top right lives on a boat on Lake Travis – a great setting but very tight quarters to be cooped up in. We were treated to an excellent version of “Rocky Raccoon” by Will, a very talented colleague who is leaving us this week for a new opportunity.
Diana picked up the meal kit for this week from Rye in downtown McKinney – lamb baos. We had them on Friday night and they were fabulous. And there’s plenty left for another meal. Baos of any kind was one of our favourite meals when we were doing Blue Apron a few years back. She also treated me to a bottle of their delicious “Bob Marley” cocktail – scotch, rum, and cynar – a very interesting combination.
I was able to finish the Sunday NY Times crossword in less than an hour – a first for me. I’m getting a bit more time to practice with the NYT puzzles.
We’ve been doing whatever we can to support our local businesses – the restaurants, music clubs and artists that we enjoy most. The Kessler, an amazing venue in Oak Cliff, south of downtown Dallas, started selling t-shirts to support their staff while closed down. I think they came up with a great design.
We watched the movie “A Change in the Air” one evening, not sure exactly which at this point. This was a quite and peaceful movie, such a nice change, with a very interesting ending – I won’t spoil it for you.
Macy Gray plays a musician and music teacher in the movie and one scene has her leading a choir in Dylan’s “Ring Them Bells” from my favourite album of his, “Oh Mercy”. The Daniel Lanois production and Mason Ruffner guitar playing are excellent. The album was released in 1989 and was hailed as a triumph by critics, after a string of poorly received albums. Here are Dylan’s original and a couple of interesting cover versions:
I finally finished “Christmas in Austin” – it’s been a while since it took me 3 weeks to get through a book. Nothing much happens in the book beyond what I reported over the last two posts. The family did climb Mount Bonnel this week, reminding me of when Diana and I dragged Alicia up the 99 steps to see the terrific views of Austin.
On tap for this week is “The Adventurer’s Son” by Roman Dial, and it looks like it will be a bit more of an exciting journey:
I leave you this week with my 88 year old mother-in-law looking through some pictures that had just been unearthed from deep storage. It’s lovely to see her reminiscing about her opera performances:
Sorry – I just remembered one other funny thing that I wanted to share. This is Damon’s cousin playing “Stairway to Heaven” with parrot accompaniment. That’s really the parrot. Apparently Damon’s mother owned an exotic bird shop and they owned one with a vocabulary of over 1,000 words and the ability to remember phrases associated with folks he only saw every few months.