Now That We can be Present, Let's Not in Trichotomy

Take twos

It’s been almost 2 1/2 months since I have been fully vaccinated and we’ve done one round of in-person visits with friends. Now, the second rounds have started.

A couple of weeks ago we went into the city (first time in 1 1/2 years) for La Professeur’s friend’s make-up bridal shower (she got married last year), and I took the chance to meet up with the ENT pianist. We met near Penn station and walked down the high line to Chelsea. It was unsettling to see maybe a quarter of store fronts shuttered. ENT told me about the outdoor concert of our music group. It was slightly hilarious as there was very low attendance due to it being rainy, and so the audience outnumbered the performers two-to-one, and even then they didn’t stay too long. The audience who stayed for the longest was a homeless person who was sleeping at the bandshell when the group arrived.

Last week we went into the city again, for the wedding, but I was disinvited due to perceived capacity problems. So instead I spent time with Wise Young Friend in the West Village. We had dinner and then ice-cream, and they dropped me off back at the wedding venue (at Bryant Park) where La Professeure invited me in… turns out there wasn’t as much capacity problem any more? But it was nice to see La Professeure’s friends. It was again disconcerting that we couldn’t find a bar to hang out after 11pm - everything was closed.

We just went back to Binghamton this past week to see my in-laws for a second time, this time her brother was also visiting. We went to the same animal park again (because brother-in-law hadn’t seen it), and we got ice-cream. There was not a lot to do there, so I managed to get some work done too.

Next week we’ll be going to the first music party from the Treasurer (she’s still hosting zoom get-togethers), and the week after that we’ll be going up to Lake George for a few days with La Professeure’s college roommate.

So, it will have been a very busy and social summer, in spite of the pandemic.

• N
  
  

Phoning it in

Yesterday was our amateur music group’s second post-pandemic in-person event, and the first indoor one. I was a bit concerned that since the studio is operating at 75% capacity only that we may have to turn people away. But no, we got just the right number - enough to fill the place but not too many that we have to turn away people.

When we announced our resumption of in-person events, we scheduled 6 concerts between now and the end of the year, but curiously people were signing up to perform in September and November, but not many for July and August. There were a few in August and a few on the 20th anniversary of 9/11. But the other concerts are all full except for the December one. ENT doctor cancelled the August and 9/11 concerts and funneled the people to other concerts. This way the performance slots are more rare, so that makes it more desirable. He also got some people in the outdoor concert to reprise their performance in the July one, so the one we had yesterday had a full program. I also signed up to make up the numbers.

I got the sense that people are only getting back to performing in front of an audience again. I certainly felt uneasy when I performed - though I’m not sure if it was because I was phoning it in, or because I’m just not used to performing any more. The very good real estate developer pianist also said the same thing, about it feeling unfamiliar to perform. I guess we have to find our sea legs again.

ENT bot is seeing a lot of use. Now the ENT Pianist is using it to schedule the Carnegie Hall auditions too. I had to add an ‘exempt’ option to events so people who sign up for auditions won’t get a “performance” charged to them, but it turned out that it was pretty straight-forward, and I did that during the wedding I wasn’t invited to.

ENT pianist told me there were a fair number of people who emailed him about not being able to use the ENT bot, but in his opinion, they were just lazy and didn’t want to look up instructions. For the “Help” page of ENT bot, I had created a instructional/demo video, so he suggested I change the wording from “if you can’t use ENT-bot, you can e-mail ENT at xxx” to, “if you can’t use the ENT-bot, watch this instructional video. If you for some reason still can’t use the ENT-bot after watching the video, e-mail ENT.” That trick seems to have worked.

It is nice the pandemic project turned out to be something actually useful.

• S
  
  

The natural Laziness

Ever since we got vaccinated, we have been going out to restaurants more, usually after dance lessons, when we don’t have time to cook. But now we are starting to eat out even when we do have time, and just don’t feel like cooking.

It’s the laziness creeping back in and the work of cooking turned from a challenge to a chore. I think we need to try some new recipes.

• D