Crappy enough to keep me indoors all week, and crappy enough to resort to Paxlovid and stay off of the beer.

A bufflehead for a couple of days, chewing razorblades for another three, a reduced sense of smell (it played havoc with my cooking), and a permanent taste of bitterness (not in a good beery way) on my tongue.

Not crappy enough to require hospitalization, but there have been others in my circle who have not been so lucky.

What amazes me with this particular viral uprising though, is just how nonchalantly the guardians of our safety (politicians and press) have been taking it.

Are we all so done with it now, that we no longer feel the need to protect ourselves and others, or is it just that there are other more pressing “end of civilization” matters around, and Covid has just become a nuisance?

I cannot just put the blame on the authorities for not doing their jobs, when I myself no longer consider the need for a mask when out and about in the city, or on the ferry, or even the subway.

Alright, I do still cover my nose and mouth when sneezing in public, but I always did that, my parents taught me to do that, it is just common courtesy and common sense.

But we have all come a long way since those heady days of 2020; forward or backwards, who knows and who is not afraid to tell?

So let us briefly jump into the way back machine (if not the way-way back machine) and enjoy a beer or two.

It used to go by the name Covid-19, but it was March 2020 by the time its presence started to be felt in NYC.

2020 started the same as any other year for me: cask events on Long Island’s North Shore and at Fifth Hammer, and a long rail trip to San Antonio and back to visit my son and granddaughter.

I had surgery scheduled for March but that was the first thing to change; delayed until May as the NYC hospitals started to struggle with the epidemic.

Instead, I took the opportunity to go grab a couple of pints of Dutchess Auger Porter at The Ginger Man on March 15^th; little did I realize that they would be the last pints that I would experience there; I still really miss that place.

One week later, we were all locked down in our homes, and I was reorganizing my bottled beer cabinets, and sipping on a 2014 bottle of Transmitter S6 Rye Saison.

Within another week we had figured out that our local Whole Foods had a good selection of KCBC cans, usually four different beers at a time in rotating four-packs; we would mask up and line up (six foot apart) every other week and pick up two packs of ever-differing styles to supplement the diminishing bottle cache.

Well, I would.

My missus would be there to actually do some food shopping.

And that was it for exercise for us, except for a daily, sometimes twice daily, walk around the Reservoir and/or the Great Lawn and/or the North Meadow in Central Park: getting in some distance walking while keeping our distance from other humans.

The city was quiet with the exception of the constant sound of ambulance sirens, but there would always be a few scattered souls getting in similar exercise to ourselves: we would nod and keep on walking.

They were interesting walks, walks of discovery.

We looked on from a distance as the emergency tent hospital in the East Meadow was constructed, utilized and dismantled again; the same East Meadow where our boys used to play during school recreation periods.

We saw the seasons change by closely observing the lifecycle of the trees and plants that we would pass daily.

We saw new-growth pine needles and many different varieties of pinecones: who knew?

We found a Robin’s nest close to the path in the northwest corner of the Pinetum and followed the daily adventures of the small family from nest building to egg incubation to hatchling feeding, until one day the nest was empty, and they were gone.