Apart from a few issues, the weekend was quite nice. Had a beautiful bike ride on Saturday morning, enjoying 32 miles in the sun, a new record for me, and good conditioning for the Cap2Cap in May. The girls at home had a busy day Saturday as well; the dance school performing company got themselves booked for a couple of shows at a scaled-back, masked-and-distanced Busch Gardens, which, by all acounts, went well, and the pandemic preventative practices were much more thorough and effective than my similar trip to the grocery store on Saturday afternoon, where I saw tons of exposed noses and uncovered faces wearing MAGA gear. Personally, I wouldn’t choose to go to an amusement park in the current environment, but the performing experience was a good one for the kid. Sadly, my quick shopping experience proved to me that my particular local community, which was never that invested in preparedness anyway, has largely given it up.

Sunday, we took a calculated risk, though it was still much safer than my grocery store run. One of our dear friends, who’s had one hell of a year, even apart from the pandemic, had a birthday, so a small group of us met up in a backyard in Williamsburg for a couple of hours and sat in spread-out chairs enjoying conversation and good food.

Everything in life is a calculated risk these days; we all have to make our own calls based based on our own comfort levels. It’s possible to do some social things safely; our Sunday afternoon was worth the low risk (especially as we practiced good distancing discipline, largely stayed outside, avoided contact, and wore masks when appropriate) to engage with people whose company we dearly missed.

All our limits are different, but there’s a difference with taking calculated risks while acting in accordance with safety guidelines and denying there’s a problem. Personally, I’m happy to engage in outside recreation on the bicycle or sparsely populated hiking trail, keeping a face covering handy for the occasional crowd, or to sit at my own small table in a local brewery where the staff and those not actively sipping are masked, chatting with another patron at their own table more than ten feet away from mine, even better if we can be outside doing so.

But you won’t find me at a movie theater or crowded live music venue right now (and damn, do I need live music, either mine or anybody else’s), or someplace where people like those grocery store patrons (or 4/5ths of my County school board) are likely to be. When I *have* to be near those folks, I mask up and keep my distance (I’ve been known to pick the much busier checkout line if the patrons ahead of me, or way too often, the person running the till, aren’t doing masking right…) That’s my line.

And as far as the effectiveness of masks (that sadly, we’re still harping on about): Did you get the flu this year? Me neither.

The good news is that vaccines are rolling out nicely, even around here where they’ve made a hash of things. My spouse and my eldest have had their first shot, and I booked mine for later this week yesterday after I got the message from VDH. People, even those who complain about Bill Gates microchips and “mah raights as a ‘murrican!” are quietly getting theirs.

We might be on the way to getting back to some semblance of normal life soonish, at least in some respects (though it’ll be another year or more until we reach effective immunity levels, and that’s assuming people won’t be any stupider than they already are).

The real question, though, is what we want the new normal to look like. I don’t want to go back to “the way it was,” personally, because there was a hell of a lot about it that didn’t work. We’ve got an opportunity here to change things for the better, to make our society work a little better and more safely; I would love to take advantage of it.

…I just wish more of those people in my local community, and those like them all across the planet, cared to do the same.