This is the first of a few pieces as we reach the one-year mark of quarantine and lockdowns and social distancing. Yes, all these things in theory started late in 2019, but the rubber hit the road come February, 2020, when it was basically a quick inevitable road to the world that really started in earnest on March 11th, 2020, when Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID, the sports world shut down, the whole world shut down shortly there after.
I truly hope I don't regret writing this at a time when the future is still so unknown. Yes, vaccine roll-out has started in earnest, countries are making plans for a better future. But it is a future. Anyway, if we aren't in a better place come February, 2022, I'll do a second A to Z for then.
This lost year did have one fundamental change - one that would've happened either way. In early February, I bought an apartment in Hoboken. I closed in April, a lengthy process delayed partially due to lockdowns making it tough to do inspections and the like, but it happened right before this started. It was a huge life shift, and in many ways doing so during the pandemic was a blessing. It gave me a lot of time to move in - no rush to get going in a new city with less space for social distancing. It gave me a lot of time to furnish the place (more on that in the 'F' section). It gave an escape for our family early on - with an early-COVID Saturday tradition being my whole family driving up to assemble furniture and just laze around in a different setting. Finally, it gave me the chance to enjoy my new house - not having to abscond away to some client site for 3-4 days a week. I was able to get more use out of the apartment than I ever expected. Initially I was very worried, saddled with this big purchase just as the world went into turmoil, but as things settled around May to June (economically) it became such a luxury and blessing.
B.) Bubble
My bubble I kept throughout this process changed all the time. For the first couple months it was basically just my immediate family. Slowly, I added a few close friends that lived close by who were bubbling with their families - this was really needed as it created a nice little group that we utilized throughout the summer. But for me, bubble came to represent all the cleaning and hygiene related changes that took over this year. The constant washing of hands, clorox wiping of food boxes, mail and the rest - even more pointed early in the year when we had to often ask "do I use this wipe or save it" when wipes were sold out day after day. For my sister, little changed as she took a lot of care and precaution prior to the pandemic, but for me this was a life altering change. That said, life will change the other way particularly quick.
C.) Cooking
I always loved cooking - from starting out making an Oreo Cheesecake probably for the first time in Middle School (I still make it - probably have 100+ times), and moreso throughout my life. That love went into hyperdrive this past year - which coincided with my Mom buying an Air Fryer and then Instant Pot. The cooking started with those two gadgets but quickly became a sprawling multi-faceted throughline of the past year. The first was a routine of cooking a multi-course meal each Friday. It's a week-long affair, of thinking of a main ingredient, rapidly googling, then prepping and cooking for hours. Overtime they got more complex, got more challenging, and to be frank, got better. The other throughline was diving deep into old family recipes, spice mixes and learning to cook my favorites, from Sorpetel to Biryani. Hopefully quite soon I'll be forced to doing something more 'fun' on a Friday night than cook - but to be openly honest, it was quite fun at the time.
D.) Drives
I've long talked about my love for doing random drives. Well, a year in lockdown gave ample time for this activity. The drives weren't anything unique - maybe a few times off the beaten path, but mostly just around my town. It was nice doing so, seeing a community that was suffering and going through the same things we were. There was something so hauntingly serene driving around the town with the air of the situation never really leaving. In most drives in the past I used to stop for a Starbucks or bug around somewhere, but this was not about that, it was just seeing the little slab of world I settled down in, time and time again, because there was so little else I could take in.
E.) Episodes
Here's a show I probably would never have watched if not for the pandemic - being at home giving me more time to just mindlessly scroll through NETFLIX, Hulu and the rest, before aligning on this little magical beast of a show. So damn funny, so endlessly good - a tone that sets itself immediately, and just a brilliant Matt LeBlanc performance that has me rethinking a lot of things about Friends. The show was great, but more than anything this indicated just how much time I had at various points in the pandemic to pick up on a show that aired during the time I was traveling a lot. But not only that, it was a show that I watched because as the fall set in the amount of actual new programming dropped off precipitously - allowing for these random little dalliances. I can't wait for the spigot to turn fully to on again in this era of Peak TV, but glad I got a chance to dive back on these untested masterpieces.
F.) Floorplanner.com
From March through maybe May or June, I had a nightly routine trying to figure out how to furnish my new apartment. It was a steady little project, traipsing through Wayfair, overstock, and so many others. What really underpinned that mining exercise was a little site called floorplanner.com, which has a free-to-use CAD software to build out a 2D/3D replica of a house/room if you have the measurements, and then little pieces of furniture of all sizes that you can add with specific measurements to generate a view of how it will all look. I spent more time on this site than maybe any other in 2020 - definitely in the first half of the year. It was the sight that made me rething the whole way I was laying out the apartment, the way that let me test out all my hairbrained ideas - and in the end came fairly close, I would say.
G.) Grocery Stores
Early on in the pandemic, back in April and March, it was truly a sick adventure any time you left your house. There was so little open and so little normal. It was in that environment I started being my family's main grocery store runner, and I was never so happy to do so. Those weekly visits have still extended but early on it was just a huge haze - one of unstocked shelves of house products, limitations on meat, runs on random goods and so much else. In our area it never got too bad and settled down in short order, but those early trips to the Grocery Store were just an adventure. Also, let's pour one out for all the grocery store workers, truly essential workers, who sacrificed and risked so much the entire time.
H.) Home
For many years, I lived at "home", in that home means where my parents live, where I grew up. While on its face it may seem weird, the big caveat is for most of the past four years (basically 2nd half of 2016 through Feb, 2020) I was traveling four days a week for work. I spent most Fridays and then Friday Nights in New York City. I was barely "home". Well, for a good year now I've been home. I spent something like 180 nights in hotels or AirBNBs or not at home. That number dropped to 359 nights in the past 12 months, 225 of which were in my parent's house. For a year, it absolutely was home. And I loved it - it helps that this house is a lot bigger than my apartment. It wasn't just the extra room though, it was being around people I love for this time period. It was the Friday Cooking, which my Mom's kitchen afforded me significant choice of meals to make. My basement was a refuge at all times. I could enjoy my Mom's amazing garden sitting on our patio. It was a great placed to be cooped up far longer than I ever would have thought.
I.) Instant Pot
The one kitchen item that changed my life during this pandemic was none other than the instant pot - the thing that allowed me to make everything from rice, to pork belly, to short ribs to boil pound of pound of goat, to confit to so much else. Overtime, I stopped using it as much as I got more refined in my cooking and got honest to its limitations (curries will be better on the fire, for instance), but even in this cases it damn helps start things off. Others focused on bread baking, some on air frying, for me it was instant pot-ting, from everything down to soups, to central portions of my most complex meals. Its a truly life-changing gadget, especially when you realize what it can and can't do. The latter is a pretty short list, which is nice.
J.) Justified
This was the first show I binged, starting way back in March or April. I don't really know why I never watched it while it was running. It was on FX, which I usually blindly trust. The one almost running joke was how loosely the show played with the idea of what US Marshals do, but man did it not matter. Such a good show in mixing a spotlight on 'rural' America in all its faults, and crazy long list of full characters, and really well structured 'bid bad's for each season. Olyphant's performance as Raylan is one of the best leading performances I've seen - but the brilliance was so much of the cast, from Goggins to Art to everyone else. Justified was a fantastic watch, and while it was plot heavy, the real magic was the care it took to tell a true Southern story. What I really loved about the show was it categorically did not make Raylan a 'good guy.' There was a lot wrong with him, and right with Ava and the rest. The show also was unabashed in its authenticity for Southern life, be it religion to so much else. To me it sits right below The Wire and Breaking Bad, heading that next tier of all time drama classics that I've seen.'
K.) Karen
Karen in my sister. We lived in the same house the first 16 years of my life - right until she went to college. We lived in teh same apartment for a year when she started work which overlapped with my Junior year at NYU. We probably thought heading into this year that we were done living together - but COVID forced us back under one roof: and it was great! It helps that we've gotten past all petty childhood sibling squabbles (helps that there are enough TVs to go around!), but it was great to live as a full family again, even in such strange, sad circumstances. We would never have expected this time to be around each other so much again. It likely won't happen again, but it will always be a little gift that 2020 gave us.
L.) Local Eating
It became almost a cliche for people to follow the line of 'eat local' and 'support local businesses' through this pandemic. Luckily for us, we lived in a town where very few local restaurants have been forced to close. I'm sure they've been through hell and back (probably not even the 'back' part yet). I'm sure we aren't nearly out of the woods yet. But through the year I was able to support a few - especially early on in the pandemic before I started spending more and more time in Hoboken. A quick shout-out here for Asian Halal & Meat (Great biryani and curries), Persis (ditto), Tiger Noodles (good for a lot more than Singapore noodles), Taco Rito (always great), Maria's Tacqueria, Small Bites Greek, Diesel+Duke, Shanghai Bun, Ricky's Thai, and so many others. They helped make the pandemic a yummy time - even when it wasn't home cooking do the work.
M.) Maine
It actually didn't take long to leave the state - the first Saturday after my first week at home - so around March 20th or so - we went for a walk in Philadelphia in Franklin Park. I left the state a couple times to go to New York City. But from March through September that was it. I went from flying from Newark to Raleigh to Toronto back to Newark in a five day stretch to not leaving 60 miles from my house. The first time we broke that was a boys' trip to Maine - though one that was a lot less 'boyz' than normal. A couple brewskis at night, some poker, some hiking, some great food, some breweries. Portland is a great city, one that I had been to previously with my parents, but one that with my friends group we may never have gone to otherwise. It was the one 'trip' I took from March onwards, and one that was just exotic enough to classify - a perfect encapsulation of what that was like that year.
