Well, here's day 2 officially of the quarantine, or lockdown, or whatever it is we are calling it here in Spain. It's been an oddly productive two days. Let's start at the beginning.
So for quite a while my wife and I have been planning to fix the floor in our kitchen. It's complicated because we live in a rental, and the owner doesn't give a crap about anything, so inevitably we end up fixing most things ourselves. It sucks because we end up paying to improve his crap apartment, but we don't want to live in a dump, so we just do it. Anyhow the floor in our kitchen (among almost everything else) was just absolutely awful since the day we moved in. Most floors in old buildings like ours have old Spanish tiles and they crack and move, no big deal, but the kitchen was just terrible. So long story short after a few years of dealing with it we finally went out and bought some decent vinyl flooring and I took the quarantine time to redo our floor. Here's a little before and after shot of what I did:
Before:
During:
And the final product!!
Well that took a lot longer than I thought, and I had to move the washing machine and fridge into the hallway, and then move the oven around to get it all done in one piece, but I did it! It looks great in my opinion and my wife loves it, so that is all that really matters. It makes our life just a little bit nicer to not feel like our kitchen is a dump, and right now that honestly counts for a lot. Though looking at it now those cabinet doors under the sink look absolutely awful. Oh well.
I downloaded Starcraft II and started playing yesterday with a friend of mine here, it was a really good distraction, but I already feel like I'm wasting too much time on it, even though I really don't have anything else pressing hahaha. Played a bit more today just by myself cause he's really good and I'm really rusty. It's fun and it's nice to do something kinda social I guess? We've also been talking to family and friends back home in Canada a lot, which is really nice to be able to do. Lots of what's app and video chats, it's been ok.
I went out today for the first time in about three days I think, to take out the trash and to get some groceries. It was really strange. The streets are normally full of people and cars and just life here in Barcelona, but it's so quiet. I went to the lidl grocery store by our house and there is a security guard standing watch outside of the door. I took some photos inside but I still haven't sorted out LR so those are not up yet. The shelves were really surprisingly empty and it took me a bit by surprise. I figured that since they are controlling people in and out they should be pretty stocked up, but I was wrong, and that honestly worried me a bit. Where there is normally a small tower of eggs at any time on any given day there was just a big empty spot. The entire meat section was about 1/4 full. There was zero toilet paper, or paper towels and almost zero cleaning supplies. Things like packaged bread and cookies were almost gone, coffee was almost completely gone, beer was almost completely gone, water was almost completely gone and there weren't very many veggies either. You should understand that on any normal day all the things I listed will be literally stacked 6 feet high at this store, so under these circumstances it really makes me uneasy to see them so empty. Anyhow, I purchased my food, realising that despite my best efforts to not touch anything with dirty glove hands, the checkout guy would be grabbing every item with his dirty glove hands that he has probably grabbed literally hundreds if not thousands of things with that day... So much for that. What can you do right? I bagged up my stuff and started on my way out.
Once I got out the doors another thing hit me pretty hard. There was a line up almost a block long now to get into the store, the store that was already pretty stripped of essentials. Everyone was standing about 2-3 feet apart which is really abnormal for people to do here in Spain. Usually they don't have much concept of personal space here. It was super strange and honestly affected me more than I thought it would.
Old friends have been getting in touch, calling, sending messages, just saying hi. It's been nice, but also kinda strange how this virus is reigniting old friendships, and actually helping us to be in better contact with our friends and family.
Strange days.
That's the thing that just keeps running through my head.
These are some strange days man.
Well, it's off to bed to watch youtube or something now. Probably wake up early tomorrow, maybe I'll write another post and speculate on how my day 3 will go?? hahaha.
Stay safe folks. Here's a little Canadian music from my younger days that I just haven't been able to get out of my head lately...
