Quarantine Stories Part 12

I decided to take a leave recently for a couple of reasons. First, work has become really hectic and I felt I needed a break beyond just the weekend. Second, I'm still paranoid about being infected by Covid so I think that doing some activities on a weekday might be safer because most people are working and less people would be doing non-work stuff, such as getting a haircut. My first haircut since the quarantine started was early this year and it felt safe enough because I booked the earliest schedule on a weekday and no one else was there during my appointment. I decided to take that same approach this time around, scheduling an appointment on a weekday. As it turned out, a handful of other people had the same idea. It was a bit jarring for me to be in the salon with two or three other customers (thankfully, we all sat far away from each other) and in fact, when my haircut was done, three more people came in for their appointments. It's been several days since my haircut and I'm not experiencing any symptoms so I guess I didn't get infected.

After my haircut, I had my car washed. This time, thankfully, there were no other customers when I got there. The car wash I went to was also very spacious so I was several meters away from the people cleaning my car (and from anyone else). Aside from maximizing physical distancing, I was also thankful for the fact that I managed to bring my car home before it rained. 😂

In a recent post, I talked about purchasing a few online versions of board games during the Steam Summer Sale (I also got a gift from one of my gaming friends). While I haven't gotten to play them with other people yet, these games can all be played against AI players. As such, I've been playing Istanbul, Splendor, and Potion Explosion quite a bit since last weekend. I have to say, of all the Steam games I've played, the AI players in Istanbul are by far the toughest to beat. In all other games, I can score at least one win every few games (in some of them, I can win consistently). Istanbul, however, is a different story. I often lose, sometimes pretty badly! I still have to figure out how best to play it so I can compete well against the AIs.

Another recent purchase I made was a bottle of limoncello, which is an Italian liqueur made from lemon zest.

Morra Limoncello

I think I started wanting to get a bottle when I saw an ad for a Limoncello cake. It reminded me of the few times I've gotten to try to this drink, including once during a business trip in Italy. This liqueur has 30% alcohol so you don't want to have too much of it, lest you end up getting massively drunk. While the recommendation is to enjoy this drink after dinner, I sometimes have it as a nightcap. I have a 1 liter bottle so this should last me a while.