Quick update to show you all how we’re living.

This is our living room. The chairs around the dining table are incredibly uncomfortable, which makes sitting around watching Netflix difficult. At least there’s enough seating that we can both sit at the same time, not always the case with an Airbnb.

Here’s our “view” from the back window. No balconies for us. At least we can see the sky.

The kitchen. I’d rate it as “barely adequate,” meaning we’ve been able to make it work but it’s not really set up for cooking all of one’s meals. For example there are no measuring cups. Hey, you’re vacationing in Valencia — you’re going to be eating out all the time, right? Right.

We spend our days watching movies and TV, studying Spanish, doing some Pilates exercises and reading. We’re able to sneak out occasionally to buy groceries or take out the trash / recycling. We sleep as much as we can. I’ve spent quite a lot of time trying to get banking set up here and get a little better organized for the time after the plague. It’s surprisingly difficult because we ported our phone numbers to Google Voice and gotten Spanish SIMs, which our bank at home won’t recognize as a legit cell phone — and everything uses two-factor authentication now through the cell. Ugh.

I managed to get my desktop computer re-assembled. I brought over the MB/CPU/RAM, video card and drives in their own static bags and bought case, PS, monitor etc. to rebuild here, just before the lockdown. Works like a champ and now I have a great photography processing platform and movie watching station. I’ve also joined folding@home, who are using my idle CPU/GPU cycles to search for an answer to Coronavirus, Alzheimers and other diseases. If you have the compute horsepower available, maybe give them a look.

I’m not crying. I know that others have it much harder, either worrying about or caring for an ill loved one or wondering how they’re going to pay rent or feed themselves. Our biggest challenge is boredom. Nonetheless, here we are. The highlight of today for me so far was taking out the garbage. I stayed out for an extra couple of minutes just to be in the open air (well away from any other people) and it was glorious.

Word is that they’re considering extending the lockdown here until the midle of April. We are not excited but we’ll adjust. Our current landlord has already agreed to let us extend our stay here if we have to but we’re both hoping it won’t come to that. It all depends on whether or not the owner of our new apartment can get himself moved out with the restrictions in place — and that’s far from a sure thing.