1. As I've alluded to throughout the week, Carol was in charge of family dinner this week and she planned an Italian feast. None of us knew what it would feature, but Christy and I knew what we were to bring to add to the mystery main dish.
I was in charge of wine and brought a bottle of Rose (Rozay) and a Petit Syrah. I also brought gin, sweet vermouth, Campari, and strips of orange peel and mixed us each a Negroni cocktail.
Christy picked up a loaf of freshly baked bread at Blackboard Market in Wallace on Thursday. We all agreed it was Italian bread! I froze the bread until this morning and it remained fresh. Christy also made a superb Italian green salad.
Upon arriving at Carol and Paul's, with Paul's mother, Pat, as a guest, we found out that Carol make a very delicious minestrone soup featuring tomatoes from last summer's harvest and homemade chicken stock which had bubbled away for about a week and was dark, full of nutrients, and deep and rich in flavor.
We also discovered that for an appetizer, Carol had prepared a Merenda, a spread of nuts, meat, cheese, crackers, olives, and fruit. For what I enjoy most in an appetizer, it was perfect!
For dessert, Carol baked an awesome Italian lemon cake served with a scoop of vanilla gelato that had oak in its title. Was it vanilla oak gelato? Oak vanilla? I didn't quite get that straight.
So, not only was our dinner perfectly delicious, we also felt some of the relief that comes with all being fully vaccinated.
We've been having dinners at Carol and Paul's because they have room in their living room for us all to spread out and establish plenty of distance between one another. We've also taken the added precaution of covering our faces when not eating and drinking. I've been very grateful, week after week, that Christy, Carol, Paul, and I have all agreed to cover up and that no one has groused about it.
Tonight, though, we agreed that given what we've learned about being vaccinated, we could be together uncovered. Pat took a group picture of the four of us, one with our face coverings on and another with them off, all holding our vaccination cards.
Being fully vaccinated gives me a lot of confidence that I'm unlikely to get sick -- or get very sick -- if exposed to the virus.
I remain concerned, though, about the potential for me to spread the virus to others, should I be exposed.
Enough uncertainty exists about whether vaccinated people might still be vectors and sources of contagion that I will continue to wear a face covering in public places -- again, not so much because I'm concerned about getting sick, but because I don't want to take a chance that I might be carrying the virus, not know it, and spread it to others.
I'm lucky, I guess. I don't feel restricted by having my face covered. It's not uncomfortable for me. I understand neither of these things are true for many others. So I'll continue to cover up, for the sake of others, in public (unless I'm eating or drinking!), until I am assured that a large segment of the population has been inoculated.
2. Today's Zoom meeting with Bill, Diane, Val, Bridgit, and Colette was, on the whole, a sobering one, often difficult. Bridgit lost her balance in a parking lot last week and fell, suffering broken bones, countless bruises, and other sources of pain. She's going to the hospital on Monday, the 29th, for surgery on the fractures. It's going to take her weeks, if not months, to heal, not only physically, but from the trauma of such a surprising and brutal accident.
Colette worked for over thirty years in Boulder with developmentally disabled people. She helped clients in innumerable ways to, among other things, train for employment, find jobs, live independently, navigate getting around in the city, and many other things.
The gunman who killed ten people in the Table Mesa King Soopers store in Boulder on March 22, 2021, murdered one of Colette's longtime clients, Teri Leiker. Teri Leiker worked as a courtesy clerk, a grocery bagger, at King Soopers for thirty-one years. Colette had been instrumental in helping her secure this job and continued to work with Teri regularly until Colette and her family relocated to Washington State a few years ago.
The slaying of Teri Leiker devastated Colette. Colette entrusted us, her friends, with as much of the story as she could tell, bringing Teri Leiker to life for us in vivid detail, telling us Teri Leiker's personal history, describing her personality, and detailing the relationship she had with Teri Leiker. We learned about how much Teri Leiker loved working at King Soopers, how she loved hugging people, high-fiving them, and how Teri Leiker articulated what she wanted in life and how she was able to make many of her dreams for herself come true.
Why would I include the murder of Teri Leiker and Colette's grief in a daily accounting of beautiful things that happened to me?
To me, the way Colette has written about Teri Leiker online and the way she brought us into Teri Leiker's world today is beautiful because Colette's writing and telling of Teri Leiker's story, and her part in that story, brought the horror of this murder close to us, made it immediate. Colette's accounts have not only animated the lost life of Teri Leiker, but her accounts have brought us intimately into the murder's impact on those who knew Teri Leiker, helped us experience that the effects of such brutality extend out far beyond the person killed. We could see the devastation in Colette's face, hear it in her voice, and could begin to comprehend it in her stories. None of the rest of us knew Teri Leiker, but we are now all involved in one dimension of the trauma her murderer activated when he killed Teri Leiker.
3. It was also quite a day in college basketball. With UCLA and USC winning their games today, three of the eight teams still in the tournament are from the Pac 12 conference. Gonzaga seemed to barely break a sweat dispatching one of my favorite teams, Creighton. UCLA defeated Alabama in a thrilling overtime game. My alma mater, however, had a lot of problems tonight. I've repeated this point about the Oregon Ducks over and over again: they have to get good production on offense from their four best players, Richardson, Omoruyi, Duarte, and Figueroa in order to have a shot at beating really good teams. If they also get production from Williams or get some production from the bench, it's a bonus.
Tonight, USC played a zone defense that befuddled the Ducks. They just couldn't get the ball in their best shooters hands in places on the court where they are at their best and often the shots they did get were rushed as they ate up time on the shot clock trying to penetrate the Trojans' great defensive scheme.
All credit to the Trojans. Their defense disrupted Oregon, really made the Ducks struggle, and on offense the Trojans got great scoring out of their backcourt. The guards' shots opened up, in large part, because the tall and lanky Mobley brothers established themselves as a potent scoring threat inside early on and as the Ducks collapsed their defense on them, the Trojans peppered the basket with deadly outside shooting.
This game was never really in question. Early on, USC established dominance over Oregon and beat the Ducks handily, 82-68.
Now USC plays Gonzaga.
I don't really know what to expect.
The Zags have never played a team quite like USC -- nor has USC played a team quite like the Zags.
It'll be fascinating to see what gives.
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