An Unremarkable Day in Virusy Times

Today I had no scheduled work meetings, aside from the 15-minute meetings that take place anyway. As my mother witnessed, I literally did a 'happy dance' when I looked at my calendar yesterday evening and saw that.

(After missing an important meeting two years ago, I asked one of the managers for advice. He said that he checks his calendar last thing in the evening, to see which meetings are scheduled the next day. His advice has been so helpful that I've kept following it.)

But many surprise tasks and questions came up. So even without the meetings, I was quite absorbed and absent-minded, and had to take pains to make sure that I kept up with developments in my team and others.

For lunch I put on a pot of potatoes to boil, and later stirred together yoghurt with chopped onion, salt, and cracked black peppercorns — although the melted butter that I had with part of the potatoes was even nicer.

Then Ge. came home and went grocery-shopping with his red mask, obeying the anti-coronavirus measures that have been ordered by Berlin's city government since yesterday.

Now we have a greater variety of food to eat again; I've been culpably reluctant to drag myself around to the grocery store, and had begun to 'scrape the bottom of the barrel' when deciding what to make.

Ge. also fried an omelette for us, and he and Mama and I took turns boiling water to make a kind of grain coffee throughout the day.

Also, I broke off work earlier, at 6:15 p.m. — the day began before 9 a.m., so it was fair. Then I exercised and read in a paper book until the Berlin city evening news began, when I dashed back to the living room and listened to the TV news. At the same time I finished up the last daily tasks for work.

After hours, I've been listening to an audiobook and doing language exercises on Duolingo after neglecting it for months. Right now I'm focused on Swedish and Turkish.