This year has been something else altogether – Mainly dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and all that has involved, meaning self-isolating, wearing masks, social-distancing, and finding ways to keep our sanity amidst all the alone time this has required – Being introverts, this has not been anywhere difficult for us.

We have been ultra-serious about the social distancing and wearing mask whenever we venture out of the house, mostly the latter not being required because being retired we don’t have that much that takes out there. We have not entertained guests in the home and only relented with having a plumber in to handle a plumbing problem. We had him wear a mask as he performed his work. Our son essentially decided for us that he would take care of all our grocery shopping, which relieved us of that chore, and with the university basically closing down for in-person classes, meetings, and other events, our participation with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute has shifted from in-person meetings and classes to zoom sessions, which have been working out as well as could be expected, considering – considering most of our classes and meetings were valuable because of the personal contacts it provided with other members, and that was lost in the switch to zoom sessions. Zooming with our friends and colleagues is better than nothing, but a price is being extracted. Still, I’m glad for the technology of zoom because without it there would be nothing, and that would be worse.

One other thing our son Paul did for our extended family here was to host a movie night every 2 weeks or so – He emptied their garage of their cars, and set up chairs for each couple spaced 8-10 feet apart, with a large projection screen and a great sound system and played a series of movies for us – We all arrived separately with our masks on, settled in for the movie, and brought our own refreshments and drinks – We went through the whole series of Star Wars movies, starting with episodes IV, V, and VI, then back to episodes I, II, and III, ending with picking up episodes VII, VIII and IX to complete the series. Each night before the feature film, we were treated to a Looney Toons cartoon and some old vintage Movie Tone newsreel from the 40s and 50s – What a treat.

The last thing up to this point was Paul hosted a family Thanksgiving zoom session for the families here in Eugene and our daughter and son-in-law and our two grandchildren who now live in Bend – The two sets of images are from our Thanksgiving zoom session – We are thankful for such technology particularly under such circumstances we’re facing this year – We are set for a follow-up zoom session as Christmas nears – Everyone keep the faith, stay safe, and be well…