h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Massachusetts want grocery stores to further distance their customers form each other. Some are painting directional arrows on the floor of the aisles so that the shoppers will not try to pass each other and thus get closer than six feet apart. With a little time and training this could be done, but the store I went to today assumed that people would look at the floor (they didn't) and read the 8 X 12" sign telling them about the one-way arrangement (most didn't)

If I only have one item to get in an aisle, and the shopper ahead of me has numerous items, which she isn't sure about, theoretically I have to wait until she has made up her mind -- no passing, as the aisle is too narrow to that without getting closer than six feet apart. Theoretically I can't back up and try another aisle, because the one I'm in is one-way.

Other shoppers were passing each other right and left anyway. The aisle along the front of the store, where the checkouts are, is one way going North. The aisle at the back of the store is also one way going north.Does anyone see a problem with this? You can't reverse direction; and you'll likely get to the North side of the store, where there are no checkout machines, so you won't be able to buy the items in your cart.

I sympathise... Sounds like you were in a supermarket very like the one I was in at the weekend - I kept getting stuck waiting for the people in front of me to move, while other people pushed past from behind me, too close for comfort... Sets off my hypochondriacal tendencies, too, so I sympathise with you on that as well...

I feel my forehead numerous times a day (I don't have a thermometer yet -- it won't come until a week from Friday).

On Sunday I imagined that I had a slight sore throat, and a very small cough. The throat is no longer sore, and really I was just imagining the cough. So, the Covid apocalypse has not arrived for me, at least not yet. Mostly, i think I walked too far in the cold and rainy weather a day or two earlier, and I caught a very mild cold. Plus I'm allergic to the pollen.

There are other things one can catch these days.

Yes indeed - well described All the best with it all.

I expected my thermometer to arrive next Wednesday, but it came today instead. My temperature is 98.1 F.

Things being hat they are, what would have seemed normal a month ago seems pretty special now.

That is good news

Glad you're doing OK

It never fails: as soon as I get a new thermometer, I find my old one.

Ah, yes - that is typical!

Let me guess: It was the last place you looked?

Yeah, happens to me also

Let me explain: I keep some odds and ends in the box where my bags of blackcurrant tea are -- in addition to the tea, there are nail clippers, bandages and, I discover, a thermometer. The trouble is, that box sits on top of a package of garbage bags. I have been reaching for those garbage bags a lot lately, and have often knocked the box of tea off onto the floor. I scrounge around for the things that have gotten tipped out of it, and I haven't found everything. Today I found the thermometer .

My temperature is now 97.9, barely changed from yesterday's reading.

I'm about to heat up some supper. Tomorrow I'd like to get some takeout food. Haven't had takeout in almost a week. I hope no one will lecture me for making a "nonessential" trip. (Even less 'essential" will be the eclair I plan to get at Whole Foods )

I didn't get the eclair, but everything else was divine.

I bought a warm rotisserie chicken, about a pound of mashed potatoes, and a mesclun salad with walnuts, cranberries, and goat cheese, at Whole Foods.

It took about 15 minutes to get into the store, since the number of people in the store at any one point was fixed. As soon as someone came out, the shopper who had been waiting the longest was allowed to enter. There must have been three dozen people patiently standing in a line outside, all of them six feet apart.

Can you blame me for splurging? The food must have cost twenty dollars, but it will last for three meals. It was excellent from first bite to last.

It's been a month since I've been allowed to have a meal in a restaurant. That meal was in a Chinese restaurant that is now closed for the protection and health of its employees.

Whole Foods does not have very many components for a multi-course meal. The chicken, potatoes, and salad were the best options I could find.

I will go back for the eclair some other time. Or, they have some superb cakes, if I want to splurge on a desert.

God, how I miss the life that has been lost