I have largely stayed home during the past eight months because of Covid-19. That means I have stopped going to indoor gatherings with family and friends, stopped taking taxis and Uber rides, stopped going to shopping malls, stopped going to movie theatres, and stopped taking airline trips. 

For some of these, I have had no choice but to stay home. Movie theatres, for example, remained closed for more than six months. I did venture out for restaurant patio meals with Zelda when the weather was nice, but indoor restaurant dining and pub socializing became a thing of the past and the foreseeable future for me. I didn’t want to be exposed to strangers who refused to wear masks or failed to observe physical distancing rules. 

I did keep a Covid diary for the first couple of months but abandoned it when it started becoming repetitious. “Got up. Washed. Went to bed.” Mark Twain gave this to us first as a tongue-in-cheek example of a diary entry he would have to write if there was nothing “startling” happening in his life. Nothing startling was happening in my life during the pandemic, so I didn’t see much point in trying to make more soup out of the same old bone.

But I did think it would be fun to look back at some of the things I did before Covid, starting with my introduction to the piano at age seven and continuing for the next seventy years. That’s now my work in progress. An online memoir, Seven Up, that I’m starting today and hoping to add chapters to at the rate of one a month. I hope you will stay with me for the trip. Enjoy!