OK, fine

I have given up on Corner Pieces ever being a real book (sorry Pinnochio!).  At my agency, we are creating a cookbook featuring stories and pictures of 20 refugees, with recipes from around the world.  Doing the research in how to print it, I came to the conclusion Corner Pieces will never get there.  So I link it here.  I''ll post about the cookbook when it comes out.  Should be really cool.

Corner Pieces

Post Covid World

 Certainly, I know we are not yet post CoVid.  However, things are creeping toward that, aren't they?

Last week, I travelled to our administrative office in Dallas, and visited our sites in Dallas and Fort Worth.  Never would I have imagined being so excited to drive to Dallas.  After driving there and back, yes, the drive is still a grind.  But, it was so nice to be able to go.  And I didn't even stop at Buc-ees.  There are people on my staff that have joined the cult of Buc-ees.  I don't quite get it, but their bathrooms are 1,000 times cleaner that every other option, so I give them that.

A few post-Covid observations (this time, likely just a few - which Jill insists means three, and I still think means 3-5 - which is in fact the actual definition of few).

1) In Dallas, I stayed at our normal hotel - the Hyatt Place.  While normally an acceptable hotel on its best days, the Hyatt Place hasn't quite heard about vaccines and the eventual end to CoVid.  Whether as a cost-saving measure or because of the difficulty of hiring these days, they have disposed with housekeeping.  If you stay more than three nights, you can ask them to clean your room once, if you give them 48 hours notice and then leave the room for 12 hours.  I was staying three nights, so I had the pleasure of an uncleaned hotel room for my stay.  Now, I don't typically trash hotel rooms, but I do generate trash, and the takeout food remains did give the room a faint thai coconut soup aroma by my departure.  Happy I didn't choose the Mexican place.  I never mind using a towel more than once, and usually there are signs about saving the environment and hanging up towels if you didn't need them washed.  Every time I did that before, they would get replaced.  Not this time!  And finally, I found myself making the bed on my third day.  Just wanted to come back once to a made bed (and coconut soup aroma).

The Hyatt Place breakfasts were always a bit - underwhelming.  I was always surprised at how thin one could slice bacon, and how paper thin bacon tastes nothing like bacon.  And much more like paper.  But they usually had at least a banana or an apple that was not rotting.  Now, they have a "grab and go" breakfast.  Which was more of a "grab and no."  An expired individually wrapped blueberry muffin, jackfruit yogurt, and a small carton of lowfat buttermilk.  I stopped at the store and got some fruit and granola bars.  Make my own bed and make my own breakfast? Certainly makes me feel at home!

2) We received a grant from the North Texas Community Foundation, and their celebration reception happened to be the Thursday I was in town. So I put on a nice shirt, a tie and my sport coat (first time in a very long time) and head to Fort Worth for the reception.  I know that I haven't worn the sport coat in some time because, as I was interacting with donors and community partners, people starting pulling out their business cards.  I reached into my sport coat pocket and was pleased to find a stash of business cards.  Unfortunately, they were for my last job, the one I left three years ago.  The funders were surprised to find out that the Executive Director of Austin Child Guidance Center was accepting the grant for a refugee music project in Fort Worth.

3) And then this week, I had a day with TWO coffee meetings - at the beginning and end of my day.  And while it was amazing to interact with humans and be out at coffee shops, my 38 minutes of sleep that night reminded me why I used to space out coffee shop meetings.  

Brave new world!