Yesterday I was at the office for the first time since March 13, 2020. I walked in, which as expected took just under an hour. The man at the security desk took my temperature with a forehead scanner, I tapped my wallet with the security card on the gate, and proceeded to the elevator. The rule says occupancy is limited to two persons, but there was no second person that side of the gates and desk.
The building was largely empty, perhaps thirty persons where the capacity is ten times that. Downtown was not deserted, but appeared to have many fewer persons than usual. A hamburger restaurant looked to have half a dozen patrons at 12:30 pm. Restaurants with outside tables might have had a quarter of them occupied. The sidewalks had plenty of space for all.
My commute to work was just an hour, walking. I ran an errand after work, so I can't say what the commute home would have been: forty minutes is a safe guess. When working from the dining room table, of course, my commute is either nil or the time it takes to walk down a flight of stairs.
This makes me feel melancholy.
ReplyDeleteFriday was the day for melancholy, with steady rain until about 3 pm. Still, it wasn't that bad.
DeleteVillage life here has fairly much returned to normal. We still have an official mask mandate for a few blocks of Main Street, but nobody pays any attention. Evidently it requires a certain length of time to pass and a vote for it to go away, but essentially it has gone away. There are some signs on shops saying to mask if not vaccinated...
ReplyDeleteOne is supposed to put on a mask on the Metrobus, and many or most shops require masks. In general, I wear a mask on the street only for short walks when I judge it more trouble than it's worth to remove it and then put it back on.
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