Thai that chicken down!

We had a good red curry and chicken dish the other night. Very tasty.

Tacos! And good reading!

We had a nice dinner the other night with housemade tgacos.

Tacos tonight!

You'll be seeing a lot of food shots, since that's about the extent of what we have to show you.

The view from here

Here is a photo of my partner in life on our balcony. That's about the extent of outdoor time we get these days.

Mandala!

Our friend Sara Hickman spent over three hours in the hot sun creating this mandala for us on the top of the parking garage across the way. It says, "We're in this together," "I love you so much," and "This too shall pass." She is an amazing talent.

Rolls on over--

These fantastic rolls were also sent over from Fixe. Tasty!

Day 42-Inside Day

I carefully got the papers in from the hallway and unwrapped and washed my hands. That will be the only outside contact for today save perhaps sitting on the balcony in the evening. And maybe a step or two outside earlier if opening the door doesn't warm up the apartment too much after the sun goes over the top. As we navigate the apartment this is one of the paintings we see in the living room. It is by Doug Whitfield. We have six paintings by him around our apartment.

Day 41-Clouds Have It

This is how the Frost Bank and clouds looked at the end of our daily 'sit outside and observe' moments.

Day 40-Pastimes

Our niece sent us this. I'm working on it while having a whiskey cocktail...a Manhattan on the rocks.

Day 39-Sunset Reflected

The sunset reflected on the Frost Bank Tower. I was going to show those three white immovable cars on the parking garage, but then this caught me eye.

Day 38-Partriotism

What do patriotism and our current situation have to do with one another? The residents of this condo seem to think that the flags show solidarity. But viruses are global with no respect for borders really. So it goes. I understand that we are going to stop immigration to solve the crisis. Forgetting that farmworkers, health care workers, and lots of essential underpaid foodservice and grocery workers are immigrants. I hope the out-of-work line up for these jobs. Puzzling.

Day 37-Inside with Our Stuff

This was taken a while back, but it shows one of a cool pair of bookends we have on the shelves surrounding our platform bed. I know it wasn't taken recently because there is no dust and it looks too neat! We continue to mostly stay inside. Provisions arrive at the door. We go to the lobby for mail and packages and lobby delivery occasionally. We venture out to the trash chute, down the elevator to our parking level (where we try to start our cars and take recycling). We drive around the neighborhood a bit. If we don't go to the lobby, we sometimes don't encounter another person. We wear masks and handle the doors and elevator buttons and such with a sanitary wipe. We come back and ditch our shoes at the door, wash our hands, put our clothes in the laundry, wash our hands again, etc. And so it goes. We know that we will eventually get it, but hope treatments and testing make the thing more knowable before it has a vaccine and we move through herd immunity (if it will exist for this) and vaccines and on to the next crisis. We are pretty resigned to not outliving the after-effects of this. But we are old. And we won't get all these books read before we die either.

Day 36-In a Fog

 

Woke up to a reasonably cool morning with drizzle and lots of fog. On the right, between the last two tall buildings shown, we can usually see Rainey Street buildings. People higher in our building and others were looking out into a cloud. Now the sun is shining out there and temps are headed to 90 degrees. I prefer it cool, even if foggy.

Day 35 - We Know It's Saturday

Even though we won't venture down there we can see the Saturday Farmer's Market. And we know what day it is! Also, our friend who lives on the 43rd floor did go down and dropped some farm fresh eggs at our door.

Day 34 - Inside

I'm cheating a little. I didn't post this on the 17th. Shut up in here, it's easy to forget to do things. This is a snap of some bookshelves in our office where there are a few books and some small collages by Laurie Frick. We are fans of her work. She is based here in Austin.

Day 33 - The View Again

Was sitting outside earlier. It's quite pleasant out there. Decided to put up a view picture again. Taken while sitting in my chair. Made sure to include the three white cars which, yes, do not move. The cranes in the picture, though. They do.

Day 32 - What's Inside

We are inside with a lot of books, art, and artifacts. This little painting cheers me up. It is by Jennifer Balkan who is a local artist we like very much.

Day 31--What's Inside

Enough with the views from the balcony, right? Inside our apartment are many shelves with books and knickknacks and little works of art. High on a shelf in the second bedroom (which we've turned into an office) are some old Eiffel Tower souvenirs and an ancient paperback and some literary magazines. During this confinement, I should be sorting through all this stuff. But instead, I'm trying to exercise by walking laps around the apartment just looking at the stuff. I took this one a while ago while dusting the shelves on my ladder.

Day 30

It's quite cool here today. I'd like to be sitting on the balcony but with the wind, it was a little uncomfortable earlier and we are all in shade now since we are east-facing. The peak on the shadow is, I believe the needle on our building. For those following along, yes, all three white cars are still there although only one is visible here.

Day 29

I actually took this day before yesterday. We can't see the sunset from our apartment. And therefore we can't see sunsets at all right now. But the sunset is sometimes reflected in our view.

Day 28, Half-Hearted

Actually, I'm using a picture I snapped last evening looking north from the balcony. A few days ago we noticed the set of windows lit up in the gray-striped building that formed a curve. Looking at other pictures from other vantage points, I realized that they have made a heart and we can only see half. It's the Wyndham Vacation Resort on Eighth Street, I think. I guess not too many people can vacation there. It's amazing what the restrictions on our views have caused.

Day 27 But Who is Counting?

Nothing much going on, but note the cranes keep moving. Progress for office space and such for people who may work from home forever or never work again?

Day 26

No big changes. Due a storm later, but didn't wait for interesting clouds.

Day 25

Promise to end this soon. Yes, the three white cars are still there. Yes, construction continues. It was very hot today (record 95 degrees) so I didn't open the blinds and snap this until late.

Day 24

View today.

Day 23

I'll quit this after a bit, I'm sure. Today I extended the panorama a bit so you could see pieces of the relatively empty Nueces street. And, of course, I added my companion in this glorious experiment standing on the balcony! More of the same tomorrow? Maybe. Or maybe I'll start showing pictures of the things in my house. Or go back through the pictures I took when we still went outside and strolled.

Day 22

Not much different, is it? No Farmer's Market. See you tomorrow. We just got a grocery delivery that included bacon so off to make BLTs.

Day 21

It's Saturday. Notice the Farmer's Market on Fourth Street. We would like to shop there, but just too risky for us.

Day 20 Inside

This is our view from our apartment. We have been mostly inside for almost three weeks. We assume outside our apartment door is a petri dish of positive exposure. We know one person in the building is monitored. (Our management has informed us.) Most days we only get our newspaper in (with great care and glove and Clorox wipe removing the wrapper). We have been to the lobby a few times to get our mail (mask, gloves, Clorox wipes) and to our parking level twice. Once to take our car to a pharmacy and then to the curb in front of a restaurant for take-out. Once to get in the storage cage and get all the extra TP and paper towels and Kleenex. We also took some recycling to make us look less like alcoholics when they take us away. I swear those two Scotches barely had any left! We started both cars to see if they would run.

We made one shopping foray to the deli in our building (with masks). Much construction will continue in our neighborhood so people on the very front lines of infection will be in the shops. Four times neighbors (one on our floor) added some of our grocery items to their shopping and left at the door. We had take-out delivered several times, had some packages of supplements from Amazon and had the wine store deliver Sweet Vermouth and some white and rosé wines. We've tried to combine our trips to the lobby to get things with picking up our mail. Discarding trash is a two-person operation with sanitizing wipes, hand-washing, changing shoes.

I'm going to take a picture from the window for a few days to put here. It's cloudy and rainy today. The three white cars? They probably won't move. We believe they are unmarked cars of Federal marshalls. The cranes? They will probably move. Welcome to our (new) world.

Where he Went to University

FFP is only a few miles from all the schools he attended. The closest, of course, is the University of Texas where we frequently walked from our downtown condo. (Currently, due to COVID-19 we are avoiding getting outside our apartment as much as possible.)  Here FFP is looking across the fountain on the mall looking toward the Tower. Because of the events of August 1966, that edifice always gives him pause. Today is Theme Day at City Daily Photo and 'school' is the theme. Click here to see what others have offered for this theme.