a day off

I took today as a PTO day. I had a dentist’s appointment in the morning. Normally, I would just start work late after that, but I realized that the year is almost half over and I’d only taken one PTO day so far. And (again) normally, when I take a Friday off during the summer, I generally go into Manhattan and spend the day checking out museums and walking around parks and stuff like that. That’s all off the table now, obviously. I really had no plans today beyond the dentist’s appointment.

After going for a walk and killing some time poking around at stuff on my laptop, I decided to try giving blood. I haven’t given in a while, and I know the blood supply is low right now, since they can’t really do blood drives as usual. So I made an appointment and drove over to the New Brunswick donor center. I’d never been there before. It’s just a nondescript building on a side-street downtown. They were following reasonable precautions, checking temperature before entering and stuff like that. Before you can donate, you need to fill out a questionnaire on a laptop. I’m hoping that they were wiping those down between uses, though I didn’t actually see anybody doing that. Anyway, I got through the first step but got turned away because my blood pressure was too low. So that was kind of a waste of time, but it got me out of the apartment for a while at least.

Between the dentist’s appointment and the blood center, I had more human contact today that I’ve had since the lockdown started. A lot more really, since the main room of the blood center is basically one big open room, and there were about a dozen people in it. Most were wearing masks, but the three or four people who had finished donating and were at the snack tables had their masks off so they could eat and drink.

I’m seeing some posts on Facebook from local restaurants that are going to start doing outdoor dining on Monday the 15th. And “personal care” businesses are set to start reopening next Monday, the 22nd. Murphy’s stay-at-home order was lifted earlier this week too. (That was largely symbolic, but still worth noting.) I’m not sure how good an idea any of this is, but nobody’s asking my opinion.

I have a bunch of other stuff I want to blog about, but maybe I should stop for now. I also have a bunch of stuff I wanted to get done today, and it’s now 2 PM and I haven’t really done much of it.

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