Anything good come out of this mess (aside from helping dump Trump)?

For me:

Martha and family loved Seinfeld, which I had never seen so we watched all of it. So fun. I think we are about to watch it again.

Saved money on three trips we didn’t take. Decided to send each of three kids a surprise check.

Grateful it started after I retired so I didn’t have to deal with working from home.

Martha not able to work so she’s home every day and making some great dinners.

Jf

We definitely saved money, and though I’d rather have had the vacations, I guess that’s a consolation prize.

Two things that come to mind are the three of us started walking/riding together daily, though that stopped in Jan when the whether got bad. Still, 9 months of that was great. My son is a much more confident bike rider now and is happy to explore the area on his own.


The other plus was, in lieu of vacations, we took a number of day trips. We went to many of these cute Hudson River towns that people swoon about and would spend a few hours walking around, getting a takeout lunch, etc. many of these places had been on our list of places to visit but honestly I don’t know if we would have gotten to them without the pandemic.

The third thing was kayaking on the Hudson. We did that a few times last summer too.

We too are glad we retired in 2019, although this was not the first year we anticipated. Still, it affected us less than a lot of folks, although had I known I might have worked for anther year since it would have been at home anyway.

Still, we have managed to make driving trips to North Carolina to move the daughter, to Bethany Beach, Delaware and Annapolis, a couple weeks in Orange Beach AL and now headed from there to the Keys.

I really missed socializing though. Hopefully that will be over soon.

Also glad to be retired.
It could have been worse. A friend lost his mother, father, and stepfather. He is about to lose his partner of 30+ years to cancer.
Back to playing piano.

I’ve had a huge uptick in my teaching schedule (knitting). I was ready and in the right place/right time with an organization that had to cancel their live festivals, and they set up a virtual one. We’ve been doing that every month since last May.

And then I started partnering with a couple yarn shops to teach on the other weekends, so I’m as busy as I want to be. I like teaching on Zoom. Everyone can see my hands at the same time.

Back when this all started I had to clean out the hoarder house, which was fine because I had very little else to do with my time.

We've saved a lot of money by not traveling or dining out much. Saved on gas by working at home.

My yard and garden never looked better, and I am about halfway through the garage. I got a lot of work done on the house as well - projects I have been putting off for years.

Zoom meetings meant I had to learn how to do Power Point presentations, and so I did.

My daughter and her dog spent the first 4 months of the lockdown with us in our house (back when we thought it wouldn't be that long...). That was great. She's the kid who went off to Australia for 6 years, so we really hadn't spent any time just hanging out with her since she was about 20. Turns out that they get a lot nicer as they age!

We had a lot of fun family meals, where we would try out new recipes. I did some baking as well. Also I didn't get sick the entire year, and we too saved a good amount of money, which was great given our 2019 tax bill, which was crazy enormous.

(As an aside, did anyone else see their taxes go way up in 2019? I think our accountant--a new one--didn't quite do things correctly).

Finally, we used it as a good excuse to touch base with a lot of family and friends via Zoom. With everyone inside, it was much easier to find a time for all of us to get together.

That said, overall the year was an incredibly stressful time for me at work, as my job morphed into a full time job managing our covid-related unemployment insurance and work share (a covid-related UI plan). If I messed up, it meant that someone didn't get paid. Ugh, so much stress. So far I've filed almost 25K claims (because the plan requires weekly claims for everyone). Too much stress--I nearly walked off the job on multiple occaions, something I never, ever even considered in my life before then.

But it's better as more and more of our employees are leaving the program (this is good news), and I have time to resurface and do other things. Thank heavens!

Renovated two bathrooms and did the hardwood floors. The savings from not shopping, traveling, and eating out helped with expenses, plus we were around to facilitate the work.

Got a puppy, which was impossible had we not been home bound.

Discovered Peleton and ditched our filthy gym.

Got to know LS.

Put no mileage on the car.