April 18, 2020

Cheat Day and a New Bourbon covid-19: day 37 | US: GA | info | act

Today, I began to re-read Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and it strikes me as an apt play to consider during our current COVID-19 crisis. We all now find ourselves awaiting this day in the future when it will end—when we can get back to “normal,” but what will we do if normal, like Godot, never comes? We find ourselves in a quotidian crisis as we wait: what sort of routines do we develop to kill time while we wait for our salvation? What can we do to distract us form the tedium of a now limited scope? Our houses become minimal sets where boredom becomes more pronounced—the stuff that we have surrounded ourselves with doesn’t help. “Suppose we repented,” like Vladimir suggests at one point? Yeah, it rings just as hollow in this situation.

Well, today, I drank some new bourbon: Evan Williams white label. This is EW’s bottled-in-bond offering, and it was $15 at my local purveyor of fine spirits. Since I’m a regular drinker of Evan Williams black label, this higher-test bourbon was familiar. Most reviews, like this one, agree that this is an excellent value bourbon—a strong middle-of-the-road mainstay for any bar. I enjoyed it.

We made Instant Pot mac and cheese for dinner, adding leftover chicken tenders from lunch. This might have been my best yet. I used all-white cheeses that we had in the drawer: sharp white cheddar, some Swiss, whole-milk mozzarella, and parmesan. Since the quarantine began, we seem to have an abundance of cheese for some reason—not that I’m complaining.

We ended the day by watching Spies in Disguise which we all enjoyed. After Henry went to sleep, Autumn and I finally finished the last season of Doctor Who. It added a bit more to the lore of Gallifrey and the origin story of the Doctor, and we got more of the current Master’s over-the-top performance by Sacha Dhawan. It was a stronger end to a so-so season.