school, car seat, parents' anniversary, REI curbside shopping, garden shopping
This morning, "T" had his second day of school. Again we used the school's new curbside drop-off procedure, which went smoothly. We ran a post office errand before heading home; "J" said that there was no one else in the lobby.
During the day, J cleaned the inside of the car, which was a mess after camping and quite a big of general neglect. I did a little work, dismantling T's car seat; J ran the padding parts through the laundry with lots of T's clothing. (I usually do laundry, but J was on a roll!)
When it was time to pick up T at school, we only remembered to reassemble his car seat at the last minute, and it was a scramble to get it all put back together. When we did the school's curbside pick-up, it was a bit messy, because I hadn't been able to adjust all the settings for T's height and seat belt length. We ended up just rolling the car forward beyond the pick-up zone without strapping him in, to avoid holding up the line. Once we were out of the way, I got out to adjust the car seat.
On Tuesday, we had placed an order for a plaque as an anniversary gift for my parents. (My parents are difficult to shop for, because they have pretty much everything. So, for lack of a better idea by me or J, we went along with my brother's idea of the plaque.) In the evening, I realized that I hadn't discussed the font to use with the trophy-and-engraving shop, and planned to phone them yesterday to request a serif font that didn't look too corporate. But yesterday was pretty busy, and I forgot to call.
During the day today, besides doing the post-camping clean-up of the car, J ordered some candles for the lantern we use to light and heat our tent when camping in chilly weather. When it was ready for curbside pick-up (which is incredibly efficient at REI), we headed there.
As it turned out, the trip to REI took us really close to the trophy-and-engraving shop, which I still hadn't phoned about the fonts. So, we stopped there along the way, and I went in to ask whether we had time to discuss it. As it turned out, the place was already finished with the plaque. So rather than discuss fonts, I just got to inspect the finished product. Fortunately, the place had chosen the font well: it was an excellent match to the "serif font that doesn't look too corporate" description I meant to request. When we placed the order, I had mentioned that my father has a lot of business gifts, and that we wanted something that didn't look too corporate since it was an anniversary gift, so I guess they had enough information to get it right. Still, nice work on their part.
From there, we proceeded to REI. To do the curbside pick-up all we had to do was click on the "I'm here! Ready to pick up my order" link in the "Items Ready for Pickup at REI" e-mail. The link asked which parking place, and optionally a description of the car. Very soon after, a woman came to the car with our goody bag. She had me show identification by holding it up to the car window (without even rolling it down), and then placed the bag on the ground within easy reach of the door; she wasn't supposed to place it in the car. As she was walking away, I opened the door, grabbed the bag without even loosening my seat belt, and we were on our way.
Today is the actual day of my parents' 60th anniversary, but they had planned to celebrate on Saturday, when we would all have more free time. So in observance of the actula day, I phoned to offer the appropriate greetings. They pretty much insisted that we come by for a visit, so we did. Normally, we would meet outdoors, either at a park or the outdoor common area deck at their building, but the weather has been warm and dry for a long time, and wildfires have been raging all along the West Coast, so the air quality is pretty bad. My mother didn't want to be outdoors, and they both agreed that the definite risk of the smoke was worse than the potential risk that we might be asymptomatic and contagious. So instead of an outdoor, we went inside their home for the first time in months. The place looked the same as always. The visit was nice.
After the visit, we had more errands on our agenda. First stop was a hardware box store, to pick up a bucket and a couple of garden supplies. To minimize public indoor air, I went in alone. The shopping went smoothly; an employee pointed out where to find the type of sand J wanted, and I found some concrete pavers on my own. The rookie cashier didn't know the exact product name of the pavers, but she came up with an expeditious price-check: "Can you show me where you got them?" That was pretty quick, and soon I was out of the store with everything on our shopping list.
Because the visit to my parents' home had taken up more time than J and I had planned, we postponed the two remaining items on our agenda: returning a pipe wrench I hadn't needed, and picking up a prescription.
Quarantine report: seven outside stops: T to school (curbside), post office, T from school (curbside), trophy-and-engraving store, REI (very careful curbside pick-up), parents' home, Home Depot.