Appreciation
What if this is the end of the good times?
The missus and I, times decidedly good.
It's Friday, April 3rd, 2020. We are deep into the Covid-19 crisis. My wife and I have been self-isolating since I got home from Reno about three weeks ago.
I had heard about the coronavirus outbreak in China since January. It was an issue for the Fantasy Role Playing Game community early on; dozens of projects were delayed or canceled as China shut down all of its production facilities. Books and dice and Kickstarter extras like game master screens and dice bags were all hung up and nobody was happy.
No one was really afraid for America yet, so I flew (Atlanta-Houston, Houston-Gulfport) to make it to Coast Con, the last actual physical convention I visited, and from there went directly to the GAMA Trade Show in Reno.
Biloxi, McElroy's: My last truly great restaurant meal before the bad times?
By the time I got to GAMA the world was taking real precautions while many folks ignored those same precautions. Hand sanitizer was everywhere, folks were making jokes about not hugging. People were still giving big handshakes, and I heard about a weird seminar where the host orally blew up balloons and then let them fly around the room. That's a mighty fine way to spread some germs there, Lou.
Brett Brooks and I in Reno for GAMA, circa Good Times.
I flew home (Reno - Salt Lake City, SLC - Atlanta), grabbed a Lyft home, and then began my isolation, two weeks before Georgia even considered a Shelter In Place order.
So here I am. Here we all are.
Mixed Bag
Sheltering in Place is a mixed bag.
On the one hand - I'm home with my wife, my dog, and my cats. I'm safe and indoors. Lori and I are both working from home, and while we occasionally work on one another's nerves like any couple, or any two people shut up in in four rooms for too long.
Lori and Esme
We take turns cooking and doing the dishes, as always, but since the lockdown it seems we both take extra care with meals. Lori made a wonderful sausage and lentil dish which I liked so much I asked for it again a week later. I made what I believe to be the best lasagna of my life, and we ate on that for days.
Look on my works, Ye hungry, and salivate!
My work has transitioned online. Where normally I would be getting ready for Atlanta's own Momocon right about now, instead I'm gearing up for Goodman Game's first convention, the fully online Cyclops Con.
So that's great.
The Other Hand
And on the other hand I'm going a little mad from isolation and grief for my world.
Every day you wake up, and you look online, and you see which of your friends are sick, which of your sick friends were either recovering or not recovering.
All change is stressful, and the quarantine's effects radiate across the world changing absolutely everything.
I think about it this way. Go back a few years - go back to the last time you would consider normal, if you are lucky enough to remember a normal period in your life.
Now think of an event during that time that directly affected your happiness in a small way. A favorite TV show getting canceled, or your regular neighborhood restaurant
I want to see my mother and father, my sister, my brother-in-law to be. I want to hook up with my boy Greg and go and go drink beers at Doc's and eat fried artachoes. I want to go to a convention and run games of mixed tables of old and new friends, long time DCC players and complete RPG noobies.
Typin' and Cryin'
I want to wander around through shops, waste time, breathe air, hug and high five and crowd into a booth.
Maybe that happens never again. I'm fragile, sad, and mournful.
And while I don't think this is The End - like, a year from now its just tumbleweeds rolling across a world without humans - I do think that at least for myself this could be the end of the Good Times, the good times I wasn't even aware that I was living through.
What if this is the beginning of the real bad times? What if this is it for all the little comforts that I always assumed would always be here? I can absolutely imagine an economy over the next few years (decades?) where I can't afford to go to a restaurant, or move to a new city, or buy Christmas presents? What if the new economic reality puts simple things like that out of reach to somebody like me?
I have no idea how likely a scenario that is, but it's been on my mind.
Anyway, what do do if that's the case? Well, this is the Traveling Now and all things happen here at once in a single celebrated instance of forever, and so what I choose to do is spend time actively appreciating the good times, and by appreciating them have new good times, the times when I enjoyed the old times.
Appreciate Restaurants
Finding an excuse to be in the neighborhood of one of my favorite restaurants just around lunchtime. Here are my lifetime favorites:
The Ugly Mug Diner, Salem MA
I love the Ugly Mug. Its a little breakfast-and-lunch place with a counter - absolutely essential to solo lunching. They had very good coffee and were very good about refills, and a fantastic menu.
My go-to breakfast choice: the Jon Negretti Blue Plate Special, with blueberry pancakes, bacon, and home fries or sweet potato home fries that they would make extra-crispy if you asked. This was a delightful and rare breakfast combo without eggs (I'm allergic). My go-to lunch: Mug burger with a salad.
They made a duck confit waffle, which is almost too decadent for anything other than birthday or New Year's Day enjoyment. I had it twice, both times it hit me like I imagine heroin does after watching Requiem for a Dream.
They also always had a chalkboard full of specials that could be anything. Special mac and cheese combos, a daily muffin.
Also - the Mug is the best place north of the Mason-Dixon line to eat biscuits and gravy. The chef makes actual red-eye gravy with actual coffee - I saw him do it once. Not exactly nutritionally dense, but delicious.
Sitting there working or reading and drinking up coffee - I will never take that kind of experience for granted again.
Cafe Mini's, Seattle, WA
If I had to choose just one restaurant from my past to eat at for the rest of my life it would probably be Cafe Mini's. The best coffee - I think they bought from Cafe Vita. Fantastic burgers (the Hinderburger! Wow do I miss that). Dutch babies. They made deli sandwiches, and I can't quite put my finger on what they do differently but they are one of the few places where I feel like I an order a corned beef or pastrami sandwich and not feel ripped off, like I just spent restaurant money on something I could have made better at home for a fraction of the cost.
Cafe Mini's also did a rockin' tomato basil soup. I never had anything there I didn't really enjoy. Plus I saw Margaret Cho at Cafe Mini's, twice. Its closed now for many years, but I have wonderful memories of it.
Little Italy Pizza, Athens GA
The best place to go for pizza, hands down, bar none. I've lived in NY, eaten the best pizza Chicago and Massachusetts' North Shore, tried it in every city that had a FRPG convention, and Little Italy is my favorite - perhaps not the objective best, but my clear favorite. Two slices with onions and and pitcher of PBR.
(PS Just found out that Little Italy still, after all this time, still has no website. So much respect. Three oh six oh WHAAAAAT!?!?)
Happy Wok, East Meadow NY
I lived with my grandmother in East Meadow for a few years in my late teens - early twenties. At least once a week she would send me down to see "the Chinaman," an appellation that I'm proud to say makes me cringe now even more than it did way back in the heady days of 1990. I can't remember what she used to have, but I always had their General Tso's Chicken, which to this day is the best I ever had. We would both eat right out of the tin foil while we watched Johnny Carson (eventually replaced by Jay Leno, who my grandma preferred, she once confided to me), sometimes staying awake all the way to Letterman.
I always had great chow from the Happy Wok. No chance anyone who worked there when I was going is still working there (is there?), but I miss that place and wish everyone involved the very best.
Now I feel like I have to do something about McElroy's in Biloxi, site of the last great restaurant meal I had before the lockdown. I'll save it for another time but TL:DR, David Decoubier and myself ate ourselves silly and drank local beer. Amazing afternoon.)
Thanks for reading. More as I remember to appreciate it.
