Another pretty quiet week. I felt a little bit more antsy this week than I have been feeling.
With the exception of Saturday, which was blissfully nice out, the weather has been some combination of chilly, windy, and rainy so we haven’t been out much. We went out last Sunday and this Saturday for walks, but we didn’t get out much in-between. We got take out on Wednesday which was just from the place across the street and also went on a grocery store run on Thursday morning. Although even going to one of our local places for groceries is not without drama these days.
It seems like most weeks we’ve been able to get out for a walk at least one night after we’re done working but not this week.
If I felt antsy this week with the not-so-great weather, I’m curious how I’ll feel when the weather is nicer.
Although we like our apartment and are good at keeping ourselves entertained, we do like going out so the isolation is starting to wear on us. Certainly, having a small apartment in the city is predicated on the desire to often be other places.
Work was a little quieter this week, and Holly and I both took Friday off to use up some time that won’t carry over into the new fiscal year. However, we both had to work a little so it wasn’t the best day off.
Despite being home all the time, not much to report with my hobbies. As I mentioned before, work is somehow still very exhausting and the stress of the general situation makes concentrating difficult.
On our last couple of walks, I did take more film photos so I think I will just go ahead and mail my rolls off to get processed this week.
In addition to my post of my macro photos of my watches, I did share another post with more macro photos.
Other than that, it was just the usual photos of our take-out
And our home cooking.
We’re still doing fine in terms of getting what we need for which I’m quite thankful.
It doesn’t seem like we’re going to hit a point when we won’t be able to get to a grocery store (as long as neither of us falls ill) or get things delivered. Early on, neither of those things were certain, but it’s been six weeks without any major problems just minor inconveniences.
Not only have our food stocks not suffered during all this, but neither has our beer, wine, or booze selection.
A few of the places we get take-out from also sell beer. We had already been getting some wine from a couple different wineries and a wine club so we were well-positioned to keep wine on hand. Also, our favorite local wine bar is selling bottles.
This is all more noteworthy than is should be. We live in Pennsylvania which has backward and archaic liquor laws. Getting beer has never been a problem, but there are restrictions wine and liquor which made things difficult even prior to the shutdown.
Although we had some workarounds for wine, getting liquor initially seemed unlikely. At first, the Fine Wine and Good Spirits stores (aka The State Store) all closed. It is illegal to order liquor to be delivered from out of state so we thought that what we had at the time of the stay-at-home order was going to be it for the indefinite future. I even started taking weekly photos of our booze shelf to document our dwindling reserves. Luckily, things haven’t been as bad as we thought which is good since cocktail hours can provide a bit of a reprieve.
Local distilleries are still able to operate and deliver so we were able to stock up on gin and amaro from Philadelphia Distilling. We are fortunate to have not only a local producer of gin but also to have that gin be one of our favorites, Bluecoat.
With The State Store shutdown, I didn’t see many options for restocking amari (and my homemade ones have been so-so at best) so I took the opportunity to also get Vigo Amaro from Philadelphia Distilling. It’s not my favorite, but it’s good and certainly better than nothing.
A couple of weeks ago, The State Store started selling online, but they were so overwhelmed (or incompetent) that they had to limit the number of people who could get to their site.
In addition, they offer only a limited selection of products (the 1,000 most popular items) so we aren’t sure what is even available.
After a couple of weeks of that, they added the ability to place phone orders but seeing what a debacle their online store is, I have even less faith in their ability to handle phone orders. Plus, we can’t see what their inventory is so you have to navigate that with the person on the phone. Even if you can get through, you can’t be sure what they have and orders are from the individual stores so tracking down something specific could take multiple phone calls.
We had tried getting onto their site a few times over the past couple of weeks with no luck. However, by some miracle, one night this week, Holly was able to get to their online store and ordered us a couple of bottles each of Campari and Fernet-Branca which arrived within a couple of days.
I know that’s a long ramble about something that’s not all that important in the big picture right now, but I wanted to document the hoops people in PA need to go through. I’m curious to see if The State Store changes its ways after all this is over.
Speaking of PA, the governor has set a date of May 8th when some parts of the state can begin loosening the stay-at-home order. Because of the density of the city, Philadelphia will probably be a few weeks behind that, but it’s comforting to know we’re in a position where these conversations are at least starting.
The numbers do seem to show things leveling off with a smaller jump in new cases and deaths from last week.
- Total cases in the U.S. this week: 895,766
- Total cases in the U.S. last week: 690,714
- Difference: 205,052 (231,549 last week)
- Total deaths in the U.S. this week: 50,439
- Total deaths in the U.S. last week: 35,443
- Difference: 14,996 (18,873 last week)
- Total cases in Philadelphia this week: 12,329
- Total cases in Philadelphia last week: 9,014
- Difference: 3,315 (3,221 last week)
- Total deaths in Philadelphia this week: 466
- Total deaths in Philadelphia last week: 342
- Difference: 124 (205 last week)
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