At work yesterday, we had a “town hall” over Zoom. Around May 18th, the company will start furloughs. My department lead believes we will all go on hiatus, for a number of reasons. First, our department competes for work with a second, newer department begun by our equally new head of digital. This does not bode well for us. Second, since most of us are older, seasoned artists, furloughing us sooner rather than later will be good for the bottom-line. Finally, our company simply does not have a lot of work left. The younger artists can certainly handle the handful of shots left to do.
This announcement was no surprise. A month ago, our top visual effects supervisor estimated that we had roughly a month’s work. Because we are dependent upon live action production, and these have been deemed unsafe, we have no new work in the near future.
Hannah, a coworker, stopped by with kumquats. We gossiped a bit, each of us in our fancy patterned face masks. My husband opened the door and chastised us for hanging out too long, too closely. She drove to Target, and I picked loquats from our tree for her. While she waited to go in, I arrived with the loquats. She said she planned to give some to her mother. The prolific kumquat tree belongs to her mother. So we had a “quat exchange.
We have three refrigerators: one in the garage, one in the kitchen, and a college dorm-room sized small one on the back patio. The one in the garage stopped cooling the food, and we had about four gallons of milk sour. Before you judge, remember we are actually six persons, two of whom are growing teens with big appetites, and three cats.
D and I defrosted the refrigerator in the garage, but only the freezer has really reached a usable temperature. The main body has only reached about 55 degrees, not cold enough for milk. It needs to be repaired. We had this problem roughly a year ago, and at that time, a repairman cleaned out one of the parts and got it working again. We do not want to call a repairman now but would rather wait until it is safe to have contact with strangers.
D rescued much of the milk: he made yogurt with the slightly sour milk, mint-flavored whey and fresh cheese from the milk that had separated. Chilled, the whey with mint was quite refreshing. The mint leaves came from our flowerbed. We ate fried, spiced cheese with dinner two nights in a row. On the second night, F prepared dinner, and provided fresh cheese with salt and dill along with the fried cheese, and two varieties of store-bought cheese. So we had a private cheese-tasting inspired by spoiled milk.
