Corona Virus

[Rusty Edge]

Yes. Taste really suffered. When I talk about wine I'm thinking about the flavors rather than the scents. Wine's a challenging thing due to its complexities and subtleties. Even at my best before Covid I could only only taste assorted fruits and spices in it. None of the various tobacco/chocolate/coffee etc. flavors you may sometimes read in a critic or winemaker's description.

Formerly my wife and I were fine diners 2X per week, and as often as possible when we traveled. You could call us foodies. We've met chefs Carla Hall, Robert Irvine, both Voltagio brothers, Richard Blaise, Art Smith, and some others.  Anyway, we can always tell when the chef is a smoker, and because of that I've just been cooking according to habit or recipe rather than taste because I know I can't trust myself. I still get the same praise from the rare guest when I cook, so I guess I'm still doing it right. I don't know if I cooking better by doing it more often, but my knife skills are clearly improving.

To begin with all I could taste was sugar and salt. I remember when I could first smell and taste vanilla again about a year ago. I had sugar cookie cravings.  Until recently I could seldom taste the smoke in the food prepared in the Traeger. Another problem is that I've been slow to identify spoiled food if it doesn't look bad. I was vigilant about shelf life of left-overs, but things like cheese and produce were challenging. Mold was one of those things I couldn't smell any more.

Does your son still want to be a chef?

[Unorthodox]

Alec has had a rough go of it. 

Senior year of HS more or less cancelled for Covid, and [poop] for jobs after.  Coupled, that kind of killed his desire for that line of work.   

Kyle works as a manager for UPS in Salt Lake, and it's been really fairly perfect for him.  So fall of 2020 when the Ogden sorting station was hiring, Alec joined up there.  They worked him up through christmas when he was due to become a permanent employee, then layed him off.  A month later they hired him back, worked him up until he was due to become a permanent employee again and layed him off again.  Well, there wasn't going to be a third time. 

He ended up at Lowes where he seems to be doing well. 

He started college thinking he wanted to be a computer programmer and swiftly realized how mind numbingly boring that is.  So, he's still deciding things. 

Talia is due to get a learners permit in under 30 days...  And I'm good enoough you can call some of the things I make art, but HOLY CRAP!  Talia it better, hands down.  Unrefined, yes, but better raw talent.  They're making jewelry right now.  As in, sculpting a form, making a mold, and casting in silver jewelry. 

[Rusty Edge]

Thanks for the update on your family. It's always interesting.

That does sound rough for your sons. I would have thought that the delivery companies would be trying to retain employees rather than playing games. I'm sorry to see anybody lose their dreams so young. Well, I guess it never gets any easier because the longer one's self-identity is entwined with one's career or profession the more one has to lose.

 Now I'm having flashbacks about teaching sisters and nieces to drive. Girls. The challenge was always to keep them focused on their surroundings. Questions and comments tended to result in conversations, which took their eyes off of the road, mirrors and speedometer. Next thing I knew the safety margin got uncomfortable for me.  Then it became a matter of getting them redirected without anybody losing their calm. That and finding a way to de-stress afterwards.

I'd like to see a picture of some of Talia's jewelry here, if she doesn't mind.
[edited for clarity]

[Buster's Uncle]

In college, I rode along with a girl I liked, and later a she-cousin, enough that I got really good at steering left-handed from shotgun.  They were both always looking for a cassette tape on the floor.

[Geo]

Fumbling for tapes? There's a thin line about messing up a car or having a messed up car. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Isn't this where we've groused about strange weather?  It's 25 degrees outside in mid-March.  I don't know about y'all Yankees and furiners, but that's a teeny bit low.

[Geo]

 If I leave the screens open, it gets 25° indoors at my place (Celcius that is).
Yes, we're havin' a nice early Spring here, with  outdoors temperatures reachin' 15°C outside.

[Unorthodox]

https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?UT

Though, at 80% snowpack, we're not outside the realm of a solid spring storm bringing us up to normal for the year, we really need a long cool spring to keep the snowpack from melting all at once. 

[Buster's Uncle]

I had a Pfizer [I pronounce it puh-fizer IRL] crows booster Friday.  Painless, no reaction or soreness Saturday worth mentioning.

[Geo]

Now you can enter Europe.

[Buster's Uncle]

Sexually?

[Geo]

Ask the ladies.

[Buster's Uncle]

I've never been much for asking about that.

-Alas.

[Rusty Edge]

This is a Covid story about one of my nephews. The anti-Biden one (he won't admit to being pro-[Sleezebag], and maybe he isn't, but apparently he listens to some Trumpist propaganda or other).

He was one of the 3 sitting next to me on Christmas Eve of 2020 who refused to wear a mask. That's when I got sick, but they got sicker, and his mom ( 1 of the 3)was the source.  He survived, but refused to get vaccinated when he became eligible. Something about it being experimental gene therapy rather than a real vaccine, and besides, he had natural immunity now.

Well, until recently. He contacted my wife on his way home from work (about 7:30 AM), asking if we still had test kits. Well, of course we do. His boss is sick with Covid. The nephew picked up the kit from our porch and tested himself this morning. Positive. He remained in denial, saying the tests were unreliable. My wife reminded him that they were inclined to err on the side of a false negative, as was the case with her when we all got it. She told him to look on the bright side, that he could start spring yardwork projects with his enforced leave from work. Turns out he wasn't feeling that well and would just be going   directly to bed now.  My wife took a test just to be safe, considering that we've been feeling bad lately and attributing it to tree pollen. She tested negative. Like me, she has had 4 doses of Pfizer in the last 13 months. Officially cases are on the rise again here, but hospitalizations are few this wave.

[Buster's Uncle]

I've been sickish for two weeks straight now, probably spring allergies, but who knows?