Hopefully soon, we can actually see each other, but this Friday we played on the internet again. We played the Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. We were doing really well, Colleen figured out the Venn diagrams and we were making good progress until…..the games wants me to let the pressure out of two gauges and vent gas. I am clumsy. Coordination is not my strength. Sigh… I hope I can do it. I noticed that the vent gas had a y and a n. I was wondering why there would be a n. Of course, I would want to vent gas.I was doing good and then I noticed that instead of asking if I wanted to vent the gas, it said explode. Too late, I tried to push the no but I already had pushed the yes. Kaboom!

I feel like I should say something about the protests and the subject of race. I think though it would sound shallow. I do not know what it feels like or the issues minorities face. I can try and understand, but I can’t walk in someone else’s shoes. I often wondered what would happen if we were blind? Would it be the someone’s accent or their deep voice that we would hate? Then if we gained our sight and saw our friends and families had all different skin tones would then hate them for it? I don’t think so, I think we would stick with the voice. People don’t like change, but change is necessary. Without change we would all be sitting, shivering in a cave somewhere, hitting animals with sticks.

This Friday it was just Colleen and me. We played Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. It is really fun. I always think this is it, we will never get past this point, but we always do. Now they have added Venn diagrams and they keep shutting the lights off and making weird noises to distract me. We seem to work well under pressure together. Colleen is always the calm in the storm though. She calms me and we can get through the various bombs together. Last year we had our top ten restaurants list, this year it looks like it will be the top games to remote play together.

Things are going to the new normal, now. There are a few things I will miss though. The blue skies for one, I thought it would take years for that to happen, but it was only a couple of weeks. Traveling was awesome, what would take 30 minutes took 10. Seeing families together walking or biking, often with the family dog. I am sure the children will not look at this as a scary time unless they had a family member die, but as a time when they connected with mom and dad. I will miss people being kinder to you. People look you in the eye to wish you a good day. I will not miss the virus. The feeling like a killer was just outside the window, waiting to strike. It is still there, the virus lurking. I am hoping wearing masks and taking precautions will help keep it away. I wonder how many of these changes will stay. The precautions we are taking are not only helpful in keeping the coronavirus away, but many other diseases too. Things changed after 911, maybe this is just our new way of life.

Happy Birthday Colleen!!!!!

We practiced social distancing again 😦 , but with Sunday being Colleen’s birthday I had to do something. I originally had the choice of 3 different places I was thinking of taking Colleen to celebrate. They will have to wait until after this virus is under control. Hopefully, at least one of them will be open then. So, I got take-out pizza from Federici’s and left it at her door. We ate on the phone together. Federici’s is no ordinary pizza. Exceptionally thin crust with fresh mushrooms, not canned. The crust is like a cracker. In my opinion, it’s the best pizza. After we had our socially distanced lunch, we played the Don’t stop talking and nobody dies game. It’s fun. We work together to figure out the bombs. Colleen has the manual and I have the bomb. We figured out a few more of the different modules. We shall be bomb experts by the time this is over! Not really, please don’t call us if you have a bomb 🙂

This life we have now is starting to become the new normal. I know people are scared, I am too. I feel this is no time to give in to the fear. I see people in different parts of the country refusing to wear masks. I don’t understand why. If you could avoid getting sick or making someone else sick and possibly dying, isn’t that worth the inconvenience of a mask? It’s not that hard a measure to take. If you look at New York and the fact that they tested the health care workers for the antibody for covid, and they tested less than the general population. That should give you the reassurance that face masks do help. They have other gear too, I know. I believe the masks do help. Clothing is uncomfortable, but yet we don’t walk around naked. I would prefer you wear a mask and gloves over clothing right now. Masks at least serve a purpose. I don’t understand people. Do people want to die? Do they not care if they infect others and they die? Now children are starting to get sick and die from it. I do not want to be responsible for the death of someone else.

This Friday we socially distanced again. No one joined us :(. We played Fibbage and again Colleen beat me 2 out of 3 games. We played a new game Guesspionage. In Guesspionage, one person has to guess the percentage of people who have aquariums and other random questions. The other person has to say if they think the percentage is higher or lower. I was winning by a lot, on one of the games, victory was in sight. Then Colleen won on the last question. Boooo!!!! She won the best two out of three games. We also played Bomb Corp. again. Children should not write directions. The children’s directions are the ugly wires are next to the funky wires next to the silly wires. Ugh!!! We were hoping for a file mission. We tried a new bomb game because we did so well with the other bomb game (just kidding). The new game is Keep Talking and Nobody Dies. In this game, one person has the directions and one person has the bomb. Neither can see the other person’s screen. Colleen had the directions and I had the bomb. I had to describe the bomb and she would tell me what to do. We figured out the wire cutting, the buttons with different symbols and the button with a color that tells you what number to let go on. It was a fun game.

What we are going through with this virus gives me hope. Hope for a better tomorrow. In just a few weeks you can look at pictures from around the world and see the dramatic difference burning fewer fossil fuels can make. If we can power our cars without fossil fuels, we would be so much better off. I hope that we can learn new ways to do things. It would be nice if working from home proved to be the way to go. I think it would improve the quality of life for so many. Where I live, people often commute to New York City. It takes at least an hour each way by bus, not to mention getting to the bus stop and getting to your destination in NYC. That would give so much more time to people, to spend with their families and friends. It would also help cut down on air pollution. Just because things are done a certain way, doesn’t mean they have to stay that way.

This Friday my sister, Joann joined us. She joined us for 3 games of Fibbage. Colleen won two games of Fibbage and I won one. I am learning to be a fibber! It was nice to play with my sister. We haven’t played a game together since we were little. Joann had things to do leaving Colleen and me. We then played Bomb Corp. It is co-op game. So there were no winners… sad. We learned that we are terrible bomb diffusers. We, also, learned that we missed our calling. We are apparently, are excellent filers. We can file under pressure with the best of them :). In Bomb Corp. each person has different directions. One person has the wires to cut. Page one might say to cut the white wires. Page two might say that white wires are green. So you need to be able to process information very fast and make decisions. It is was lots of fun.

Colleen and I both love this:

This Friday we added one more to our Friday Funday, Colleen’s daughter Caroline joined Colleen, Val and me. 🙂 We started with Fibbage, which is always fun. We tried to play Drawful 2 but ran into problems and out of time. We did play a new game EarWax, which is fun. In Earwax, there is one person who is a judge. They get to pick a prompt. Everyone else gets to pick two sounds that represent the sentence. Everyone has different sound effects from which to choose. The biggest laugh was when the prompt was what sound effect does Colleen make when putting on skinny jeans. There were some that seemed ringers for the judge. One sound effect was of cows and Caroline(who was the judge) LOVES cows. So you know the person with that sound effect got the point. Another was a sound effect of zombies and ghosts, so you know Val(who was the judge) picked that one. I’ve discovered something about Colleen, she always accuses me of cheating if I use youtube if I get stuck on a game. To me, each game you play often plays differently and you need an example to figure out how it plays. Sometimes even after seeing the answer, you still don’t get it. Soooooo……..when we were playing and Caroline was the judge Colleen let it slip what her answer was. Caroline picked her answer, which is cheating. Not even a little cheating, full-blown cheating. Colleen said it was fine. It was her daughter expressing her love for her. Such a cheater!!!! Colleen and I both tied for first place, I guess it’s a win.

The future is uncertain, but it always was. There are no guarantees in life. You just have to have faith that it will all work out in the end. Hopefully, we learn something from this. I always feel that adversity teaches us a lesson and we are all students in this life.