We went to church today and last week ate inside a restaurant. This week we are traveling!! We are still being careful and taking precautions. Our mask mandate lifted but some businesses are still requiring masks. Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

We‘re vaccinated ... still wearing masks in indoor, more crowded places, but not outdoors.

Met with family in a restaurant today, have been chatting with neighbors outside, planning some outings and get-togethers. It’s wonderful. :)

Happy Birthday!

Our family went out for brunch today. Going to a friend’s house for dinner later this week. So happy about both!

Happy Birthday!

We are having friends over for dinner this week. I'm looking forward to in-person socializing. We thought about going to a restaurant, but I know I'll be more comfortable eating at home. I'm still wearing a mask in stores and will continue to do so.

Happy birthday! Hope you had a great day!

Mine is on Thursday and I've decided not to see my dear daughter and my sisters.. There are not enough of us vaccinated here in Canada unlike in the US.

There is talk of lightening the restrictions but I think I would rather wait until I'm sure that the vaccine works against the variants. Considering we only have one shot until 4 months from now when we get the second one it seems sensible and prudent to wait.

A totally different world than what you are living in. Different World different rules are necessary. :-). Plus an ounce of prevention is worth it in the long run or something like that.

I hope you are enjoying your freedom for all of us who are not able to at this point. :-).

I've been getting together indoors without masks with my friends who are fully vaccinated. Hugging!! I'm still wearing a mask to stores and will continue. No restaurant meals yet, but a friend is coming to town tomorrow and we're going out for breakfast...we will eat outdoors if available, but indoors if no outdoor table.

I'm having my windows washed for the first time in a year an a half on Tuesday....usually it's 2 or 3 times a year, so I'm excited about that, too. Now that the sun is shining again, it will be nice to have them clean.

I love the lessening of the tension of the last year about the virus, now that I'm vaccinated. Whether it's an illusion (because of variants) or not, I don't care.

Happy Birthday! I hope you enjoy your day.

I feel a tentative collective sigh around me... "lessening of the tension," as Olychick described. People are still wearing masks indoors and every store I've been to still requires masks. But there seems to be a sense that we've made it through the worst of this.

My extended family members are all fully or partially vaccinated, and we are getting together in a few weeks. It will be the first time I've seen 2 of my sisters since before the pandemic. I miss them so much, and look forward to sharing a good, long hug.

Happy Birthday! I will actually drink water and coffee at work now that I am fully vaccinated. Pre my second shot my mask never came down. We met my siblings and parents at a restaurant for brunch last week. My first inside a restaurant meal since March 8, 2020.

I have been socializing outside with a few feet distance sans a mask since last summer. My hematologist, who has published multiple studies on covid at Yale, mentioned after the protests that if there were no spikes that outside transmission was very unlikely and he recommended the benefit of social interaction over the tiny risk. Turns out he was spot on for not even .1 percent of cases were linked to outside exposure a year later.

Because kids under 12 are still at risk I will wear a mask until they are approved inside stores.

My middle schooler just got shot 1 last week! :)

Shopped at Publix yesterday and it was a little strange seeing many more people in the store without a mask. (Hopefully, they were all fully vaccinated) I am still wearing my mask indoors in stores for now but, I must say, it was nice to see a hint of a future without them.

I will be traveling by plane this week to NYC to visit my DD. I am very curious how the air travel and city will feel and look.

Enjoy your birthday @3katz4me!!

My dear aunt turned 95 yesterday. Her son, my cousin, hosted a surprise birthday party bbq for her, family only. He had prepared bbq and brisket and we all brought sides. Our family is really quite small, and not all could be there. We had about 20, ate outside and on the porch and had a wonderful time.

Next week DH and I are traveling to North Carolina to the mountains. It is his birthday and we will be in a small lodge we have visited in the past. Then in early June we are going with 3 other couples to the Bourbon Trail and sightseeing in the Louisville area. Can’t wait.

We have been doing babysteps back to normal here, and haven't been wearing masks outdoors in non crowded spaces, still wear masks in stores, but the BIG excitement for me was yesterday having book club in person. We met at the restaurant that we used to meet at, but this time sat outside. It was delightful. There were 10 of us.

Everyone is still wearing masks indoors here (in public). I find that being un-masked outdoors feels like a thrill! So weird, something we took for granted not long ago.

Took my college age DD for shot #2 in Boston on Fri and we celebrated with lunch (outdoors) and a little shopping spree. We live 6 miles from Boston and I had not been there in at least a year!

DS from AZ is home for a week. We saw him at Thanksgiving and Christmas but only for a few days and with a fair amount of angst thinking we were doing the wrong thing — having him travel, having him stay here, etc. Now it’s all Joy having him here. My dad and some of DH’s siblings will be here for lunch on Sat — first extended family gathering since Christmas 2019.

DH, DD, and I are flying to NC in a few weeks and I am sooo excited to go on a real vacation!

I forgot to mention — I’m also looking forward to being able to hear what people are saying! I have hearing issues and didn’t realize how much I relied on unobstructed speaking and watching lips. I’ve done a lot of nodding and yes’ing at people in stores in such, having no clue what I was nodding about. :D

And just being able to smile at people is so wonderful. Everyone has understandably been on edge and tense — not being able to communicate via smiles and expressions has been a real lesson in how human interaction works (or doesn’t).

Saturday evening we had a small gathering of neighbors to celebrate the 'new normal' now that we are all vaccinated. We were unmasked and stayed outside in our backyard for the entire 2 1/2-3 hours. We invited eight people, but one woman didn't show up. She texted me the next day and said she had decided she just still felt it was still too risky, and so didn't come over. I think that's the delineator right now. Some of us are ready to fully embrace life again and some are still cautious. As always, I say viva la difference, as long as your choice doesn't harm someone else. As for me, I recognize that there is certainly some risk to fully embracing life -the vaccine is not 100% effective. But I view it like the risk of traveling by air, going to unknown destinations, driving on the freeway, etc., and I take that on all the time, so I'm ready to make up for lost time!

Two days ago DH and I went shopping at Costco WITHOUT masks for the first time in so long and it was exhilarating! Freeing! About two thirds of the shoppers were still wearing masks, but a third of us were not and we were not the least bit worried. And, yes, we’re both completely inoculated for more than the required 2 weeks. Afterward, we celebrated with lunch at a nice restaurant, indoors. There, everyone was required to wear masks until we were seated at our tables. Yesterday afternoon we met up with our best friends and their children and 7 grandkids at their home for the first time in well over a year. No masks and it was beyond wonderful!

Woo-hoo!!! Both of my kids got their second shots last week!

We are going to the Bahamas on Saturday to celebrate dd’s upcoming HS graduation, and I am thrilled/anxious to be getting on a plane for the first time in about 18 months! As I was drooling over the divine AirBnB Luxe villa we rented that is so ON the actual private beach if it were any closer it’d be in the water, I conveniently ignored the fact it was international and what that might mean for us. I’ll tell you what it means...a huge PITA! 😂 The Bahamas has their own Health Visa with tight windows for pre-travel Covid testing (would be ok except that when dh & I did ours-people who are two weeks past 2nd shot can skip the pre-test-it took more than 3 days for them to approve!) And things are changing daily! Oh, and even though we’ll all be two weeks past at that point, we have to all trudge to a test center 3 days before we come home bc the US hasn‘t updated requirements for vaccinated travelers coming back from other countries. Oh my! We should‘ve gone to St. John! 😂

I‘ll let you know how it all goes! We are going to see swimming pigs so there’s that.😂 Definitely not how dh & I do trips, but it’s dd’s present so we are doing random teenage things. Probably going to the Atlantis for a day as well. 😂

Nini... ack... hopefully you'll all have fun anyway! We were thinking about going to Bermuda but changed for exactly those reasons. Just seemed like a lot of "work" for a vacation, so maybe next year.

I’m hoping that flying here in the U.S. will become easier and easier . . . quickly. We’ve recently made reservations to fly to Georgia to visit our DS & DIL next month in Augusta. It’s been too long since we seen our son!

Sorry, me again. :D

An Alice Cooper/Ace Frehley concert just got announced for Ft Worth in October. Hoping to get presale tickets tomorrow ... and hoping by October, things will feel much, much safer.

We have concert tickets for August. I hope it’s not too soon, but when I purchased them over the phone the woman said the date could change. Things have to return to normal at some point otherwise what’s the point in getting vaccinated. The question now is, how long do the vaccines last, will we need a booster and when?

Normal here is normal. Sorry. We ARE getting our outdoor concert series back here in town, but for 5 months we have been dancing outdoors for our friend’s band, soooo....

We never wore masks outside at all but also never really got that close to anyone. It is freeing to be able to run inside somewhere for a couple minutes now without the bother of a mask.

We are going to a wedding in NC in August - decided to drive from MN. Flying just sounds terribly unpleasant these days and the rental car situation does too. We never used to drive anywhere but for our entire careers we had frequent flyer tickets/upgrades. The idea of being crammed in next to a bunch of unvax’d people just doesn’t appeal to me and I like coming and going on my own schedule with all my stuff piled in the back of the vehicle.

Happy Birthday!

After being afraid of the air for all those months I thought not wearing a mask would cause some anxiety. But we dined al fresco for the first time last week and it was like ripping the bandaid off. Might still wear a mask to grocery shop, and probably in close quarters if I know I'm with unvaccinated folks. But it's been kind of nice...

This month my bff and I will celebrate our birthdays at one of our favorite restaurants. We both had our second vaccine this month. Yay! I’ve been holding on to a bottle of champagne that was supposed to be for last years celebration.

Also, we will be getting together to celebrate my goddaughter finishing med school and starting her residency. So proud of her! I just wish she wasn’t going to be so far away.

In June I will be attending my nephews wedding, postponed from last June. So happy they will finally be getting the wedding they wanted!

I‘m excited to be making some plans and feeling a bit more normal.

I’m waiting for a Live Nation presale at 10 a.m. today! Yay!

I’m not fully vaccinated yet. I have another week. I really want a haircut, blow out, mani-pedi, wax, so badly! Good news it’s almost my birthday so these are excellent rewards. I also want to travel to see my extended family.

Happy Birthday!

We ate inside a restaurant for the first time in over a year. It was wonderful! We also flew last month, but kept masks on the entire time.

Much as wearing a mask is a minor inconvenience in the big scheme of things, I have to say I felt extremely liberated today to do all my shopping without one.

I was very surprised to see signs at (one of ) the local supermarkets which said- Masks not required if you are fully vaccinated.

I walked in putting the mask on, and then read the sign. I re-read it to make sure I was seeing correctly and then took off my mask.

I will say though, that there were hardly any other people like me without their masks, but I am pretty sure most have been fully vaccinated at this point.

So far in my experience the majority are going mask free though there are still a good number of people wearing masks in the metro area stores. From what I observed it's more the senior folks who are keeping the masks on. In the more rural area where our lake cabin is very, very few are wearing masks. This is the same as it was before we had a state wide mask mandate.

I too suspect a lot of the people wearing masks are the cautious ones who also got vax'd as soon as possible. Those without a mask are the vax'd people who aren't as afraid and all the people who don't think it's important to get vaccinated or wear a mask. Oh well, everyone is now free to make their own choices which seems right under the current circumstances which will hopefully continue to improve and not regress.

My husband just returned from a trip to Costco (Tampa). He reports that everyone, shoppers and employees, were still wearing masks. Maybe wearing masks is the new normal?

Our mask requirement is still in place, but the rural areas definitely weren't complying before. I'm contemplating a domestic trip in late July and we've bought international tickets for late August. However, right now my employer actually reinstituted quarantine rules for air travel, due to the spread of variants (especially internationally).