Getting ready to go somewhere, anywhere!

 Am I getting ready, really? No. Until we know what the schedule for deconfinement is, it is hard to get ready. Mentally, I am ready. We think that the weekend in mid-May will be free, but that is going to be a '-day weekend anyway from Ascension Thursday. We fear there just may be too many people on the road. I don't really care. We could leave a day or two before that and or come back a day or two after. I would simply like to go down to see E and G. The car needs to go on a trip!

Over the past few months, a bunch of my classmates wrote some essays that we have compiled into a book. That book will be coming out, soon. Our editing team is expecting the second version from the publisher. We hope there will be no more changes, that they get the cover right this time. If so, publication will follow! This is what comes from our now regular Zoom reunions!

Paul and I have been having even more frequent Zoom reunions with our Pierwige friends. We are a group of 5 couples. We've travelled together to Malta (and some more), to Portugal , to Valencia, Spain, the Camargue, France, and Andalusia, Spain. We're talking about a possible trip to Germany towards the end of summer. 

Meanwhile, here, in the Paris region, the weather is fine. I bet they'll start talking about a drought before too long. We had a cold snap a couple of weeks ago and that has guaranteed us higher fruit prices, again, this year. Every year, there is something that means production will be low and prices high. That's not always true. This is asparagus season and the news reports a couple of weeks ago were about the glut in the asparagus market. At our market, though, a bunch of 11 spears cost €13! That's outrageously expensive. You'd think that if there is a glut, the prices would be lower.

This confinement period meant that the kids, who had been in school with regular vacation breaks since the start of the school year in September, had a short week (Easter Monday is a holiday, here) of online school, then their 2-week Spring vacation. We had them for a few days, so their parents could work calmly from home, then the parents took a few days off and delivered them to their other grandparents. Normally, the Paris region's Spring break would have been a few weeks later, but the confinement, in all logic, had all the zones on the same schedule. This week, the primary school kids all went back to class. They've got saliva tests and at the first sign of Covid-19, the class goes back to online sessions. Middle school kids go back to class next week and high school kids, in mid-May in split in person and online classes. Our grandkids are still in primary. 

Baseball practice has continued. With the nice weather, I can walk over to watch. In fact, L had practice last Sunday and his family sat by the bleachers for a picnic. A hopped on a bus to the Bois and joined them and I walked over after our lunch at home. Next Sunday, the N°1 and N°2 teams will warm up together and play a practice game. I hope the weather holds up. I also hope that I do not have a severe reaction to the second Pfizer shot. I had my first dose on April 2 and the second one is this coming Friday. My arm was a little sore after the first shot, but no worse than after any other vaccination.

I need to go into Paris to return some books to the library. Maybe I'll pick up a lunch at Breakfast in America and walk home from there. It's a long walk but I need motivation to get out and walk. A destination, a purpose. A and I went to the arboretum a few weeks ago. We should go back now that all the trees have leaves out. I walked there. We also have a walk planned in the Bois de Vincennes to discover parts we are less familiar with. Maybe next Monday afternoon.