Every morning around seven, we go out for our daily 3K walk and it takes us about forty minutes and then we come home, clean up and get dressed and have breakfast.  Our normal routine now, though I don’t have to get as dressed up anymore as I am retired and making sure that I get some of the money that I put into it, for fifty years.  When the lockdown began and it was an experimental short term, that no one expected would become a life sentence, we use to see plenty of people in our subdivision walking hand in hand, walking their dogs and seeing kids on their bicycles.  Now as it has dragged on and there are still no legally sanctioned gymnasiums to try to keep some semblance of physical fitness, one would think that walking, and for those that want to be cool jogging would be on the rise.  Instead there is this new ennui and as we walk, I have started to observe and count the other people, and this morning there were three people; one woman about twenty years my senior pulling weeds and one man about twenty years younger than me jogging.  Even the dogs have given up and have become complacent to house arrest.  After seeing how svelte my Bride has become, I am attempting to join in her endeavor to lose weight, though I probably won’t be as successful as she, as she is now at the weight that she was when she married me.  I want to scream when I am outside “where did all the people go?”  The third person, might respond to my cry, or he may not, as he is usually sitting out on his patio smoking a cigar, and I wish that he would smoke a good cigar, because I can remember how good a quality cigar smelled.

I am still trying to keep busy, as I have noticed that there is plenty of inertia and people are getting depressed from being in a mandated solitary confinement, but one would think that they would at least want to get out and walk, get some sun and some fresh air.  I am sure that the convicts that were released from the real jails early, because they might get the disease, are enjoying their time in the sun and fresh air.  Anyways, one of the projects that I am doing, besides making sure that I still have an article every other day, is rearranging the wine cellar and actually recording what is down there by column and row, the old school way with lined paper and a pen.  So far, I have discovered only three bottles that were not drinkable, but I am sure that there will be more, but out of a collection of almost fifteen-hundred, I am hoping the odds are pretty good.  I went and boxed up some of the wine for the short term, to make some sorting room, and I am making new neck labels for every wine as well.

As I was moving some of the bottles to make room, my hand got very sticky grabbing the neck of one bottle, the plastic seal was still secure, but some of the wine had seeped out, and if you look at some older bottles you will see that the volume in the bottle looks low, and that is called ullage, and it is mentioned by the catalogues when one is bidding on wines at an auction.  I don’t remember the bottle at all, so I will presume that it was given as a gift and forgotten about, as alas these things do happen.  The wine is Weingut Weinhaus Gebr. Endlich Rudesheimer Kosterlay Rotwein Kabinett 1990 from the Rheingau and though it isn’t stated, I will presume that it was made with Pinot Noir, which accounts for five percent of the grapes grown in Rudesheim in the Rheingau.  From what I can gather from the label and doing internet searches, the wine was made for a small hotel that had “strangers’ room” availability.  I took the bottle and placed it in one of the refrigerators to chill, and when I went to open the bottle, I removed the plastic seal, there was no cork at the neck of the bottle.  The nose from the bottle was not what I would call enticing, but I did pour some of the wine into a glass and even the color was wrong, as it was dark with a brown cast, and most red wines as they age tend to lighten in color.  I did not attempt a taste, as the wine continued to open up in the glass, it became even less enticing.  When I poured the wine down the drain, I discovered that there was a cork sitting in the bottom of the bottle.  This was just an addition to the new ennui of the times, and it makes me yearn for the days of “Angel Eyes” and the old ennui.