Coping with the Lockdown in Trichotomy

Heatwave

When we moved into the house, the inspector had told us that our central A/C would be due for replacement any time. We even got a few thousand dollars knocked off from our purchase price from it. But in the seven and a half years we’d been in the house, it has worked without a glitch.

Until last month. One day, it just stopped working. It was during a weekend with a heatwave, the temperature was up in the 90s F. It quite reminded me of the chamber music camp I’d gone to precisely a year ago, in a campus dorm with no air conditioning, so it wasn’t something new. We luckily had a lot of watermelon, and popsicles to keep ourselves cool. And we have a fan from my bachelor pad and a small fan from the music camp, so we managed.

Luckily the service company got someone to us just 2 days later. We were weary of having people in our house during a pandemic, but as it turned out, the repairman was even more cautious than we were - he had the fancy N95 mask on the whole time. So I felt safe. And it turned out he just had to replace a capacitor. Now the AC is back to normal.

He did say we should replace the whole unit though - apparently a lot of the parts this unit has aren’t even manufactured any more, so if something else breaks, it could be non-fixable. Hopefully the unit can last till the end of the summer so we have a whole winter season to get it replaced. Currently, there is such a long backlog of people waiting to get it installed that there’s a waiting list that stretches till September.

For now, La Professeure got an evaporative air cooler in case the thing breaks down again.

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Outing take 2

The first time we ventured out after the pandemic hit, we busted our tyre. The second time we went out, we went to somewhere we knew: La Professeure’s campus. It was interesting how our perception of time and distance changes. Having not ventured more than a mile from outside our house for more than 3 months, just a 20 minute drive felt long. We went back again a few weeks ago, for La Professeure to pick up something from her office.

La Professure had been furloughed from her job because of the financial problem her school is in (they’ve had to lay off people too) even though there is more work to do as an associate dean now, coordinating all the arrangements to migrate some of the teaching online, and making social distancing accommodations for the teaching that has to remain in-person.

But I have had too much vacation accrued and have to use them before I hit a cap. Basically, every 2 weeks I have to take a day off in order to keep my vacation days under the maximum I can carry. So, we’ve been looking for places we can go on a weekday, when we’ll both be off, and it’d be less crowded.

Last week we went to Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Park, by Oyster bay. It was a nice little park, and the people there all have masks, and are nice about staying apart. The advantage about north shore beaches is that the water is always calm, it’s neve crowded, but the disadvantage is that the sand is very coarse, almost rocky. We had a picnic, sat in the shade, and watched people launch and retrieve their boats. It was a nice day out. I think it will be hard if the pandemic ends and we have to get back to not having vacation days during the week.

But, most importantly, this time we did not bust a tyre. I consider that a success.

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Food of the lockdown

At the beginning of the lock down period, we didn’t get to go to the grocery, so we stocked up on non-perishable food items. So our fridge and pantry was full. So was the snack corner.

But because we have time, I get to cook a lot more. So we are managing to use those items. I’t surprising how much you can do with just frozen, dried, or canned food.

I thought I’d ordered 3 pieces of frozen fish from the grocers, and instead got 3 pounds. So our fridge is full of frozen tilapia, cod, and tuna now.

Some of what we’ve made:

Strawberry Pancake with Condensed Milk Glaze

Tilapia with Hash Brown and Egg Salad (the egg salad was made from fresh egg and celery)

Cod in Butter Sauce with Angel Hair Pasta

Tilapia with Hash Brown and Cheesy Vegetables

Strawberry Nutella Crepes

Pan-Seared Tilapia with Vegetable Medley

La Prof made cupcakes for our anniversary. Again, the eggs were fresh.

Turkey and Broccoli Omelette with Texas toast and Hash Brown (with fresh broccoli)

Cod and Tilapia fillet in Butter Sauce with Herb Skillet Potato and Broccoli (the broccoli and potatoes were fresh - we had just gotten a grocery delivery)

Crepe with Caramelized Pear

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Last updated July 25, 2020