No, not really. But you’d think so from watching people around town. Maybe a quarter of the people in the grocery store wear masks. The employees do. Mostly. And mostly properly. Restaurants are full. Theaters are open. It’s like the pandemic never happened.

Meanwhile, we wear our masks everywhere. We ate out on Saturday night, at Ruth’s Chris, but outside and even then we were a little nervous as the staff was not masked. We did have leftovers for dinner tonight!

On a more cheery note, we had a great time in Boise. We enjoyed the new park a half-block from our place. It’s called Cherie Buckner-Webb Park after woman who broke down many barriers in the Idaho legislature and has been a leader in the civil rights movement. The park has two particularly fun elements. One is Gentle Breeze, a massive, pink, metal tree. The leaves move with the wind; they have some kind of special hinge that lets them move freely.

The second is a new, to Boise, coffee shop called Broadcast Coffee. We went three of four full days we were here. It’s really nice to sit in the park with coffee. Yesterday we saw a very large dog turn into a whimpering, quivering puddle of an animal sitting in his owner’s lap all because he was afraid of a three year old girl riding a scooter around the park.

The weather has been pleasent and our step counts are going up! We’re on the road four of the next five days, so step counts will drop again. 😒

The Capital City Public Market, a craft / food / art fair held in downtown Boise on Saturday mornings from April to October is finally back downtown. It’s previous location was restaurant row and has been taken over by outdoor dining. (So maybe some concessions to Covid were made.) But that means the market is right on the corner by our apartment. Convenient! We got some presents for friends and some small items for the yard and patio.

This was our fifth trip to Boise since the start of the pandemic. We had been coming here about once a month. Some of the things we used to do; eat in restaurants, sit in Starbucks, movies, shop, lots of in-person meetings, etc. are mostly off-limits for us at this point. We’re using our place more; spending more time inside, cooking more, etc. And we’re driving instead of flying. Looking forward, like everyone else, to getting back to normal…

At the grocery store, the check-out guy was rude, inaccurate and slow. I have to stop using those self-check outs!