“Well, here we are again!” sighed Dave Winston when Cliff Murray carried takeout food from Mabel’s Grill into Dave’s heated garage the other morning. “Back having coffee in my garage again, a year after we were sure the pandemic would be over in just a little while.”
    “Hey, apparently it is in some places,” said George Mackenzie, as he accepted his coffee and scrambled eggs in a styrofoam tray after first making a non-welcoming sigh. “I’ve got a brother-in-law who’s in Florida right now and it’s like the pandemic never happened. I mean the waitresses wear masks but nobody else in the restaurant  – which is full – seems to act any differently.”
    “Except unless they test positive – which about 70,000 people a day are doing down there,” said Cliff as he handed a cup and tray to Dave.
    “Hey, these hot cakes aren’t even hot,” grumbled Dave as he opened the styrofoam shell.
    “Well it’s 12 minutes from Mabel’s and it’s darn cold outside,” said Cliff.
    “How’s Mabel taking it?” Dave wondered. “Seems like she just gets back close to normal and she gets shut down again. 
    “She’s trying to see the positive side of life,” said Cliff. “She said with the Chinese banning the import of Canadiansbeef after that BSE case was found in Alberta, maybe at least beef prices would fall.”
    “Oh, that really makes me see the lighter side,” sighed George. “If the price of beef falls as much as it did  15 years ago when we had BSE, I won’t be even eating takeout from her.” 
    “Even so,” said Cliff, “what was I reading? That we sell $170 million in beef to China, $90 million to South Korea and $13 million to the Philippines – that means a lot of beef we’re not selling.”
    “Gee, thanks. I really needed to be reminded of that,” George said glumly.
    “Yeah, we all could be in a mess with you,” said Dave. “I was seeing some woman on the TV the other day who was talking about the COVID crisis and disease in animals and  how we shouldn’t keep animals in such close quarters,” 
    “I’m betting she’s likely the kind who’d find some other reason we shouldn’t keep animals if there was no COVID,” said George. “She probably thinks we shouldn’t keep animals at all – unless it’s some sort of cute dog, of course.”
    “If it’s a dog, it doesn’t even need to be cute,” said Cliff. “I’ve seen some animal lovers with dogs that are too big and too ugly for me to want around.”
    “Yeah, the sort of dog that was bred originally for hunting animals,” grumbled Dave.
    “Hey, can’t we talk about something entirely outside this pandemic thing?” asked George.
    “We’re not rich enough to be able to ignore it all,” said Dave.
    “You mean like those rich guys who are paying big bucks to be shot into space?” wondered Cliff.
    “Well it gets them away from the COVID germs for a few minutes anyway,” said Dave.
    “It’s their money they’re wasting so I guess they can do what they want with it,” shrugged George.
    “Except they’re messing up the atmosphere while their rocket is taking them up,” grumbled Cliff.
    “Can’t we find anything to talk about that doesn’t bring us down?” Dave wondered.
    “Hey, we’ve just spent 10 minutes talking about all this,” said Cliff. “That means we’re 10 minutes closer to spring!”
    “And already you can see the sun getting up earlier and going down later,” said George.
    “And it’s not much longer before the fuel truck doesn’t come up the lane to refill the oil tank,” said Cliff.
    “And they say this newest variant of COVID is bound to burn out fast, so we can get back to Mabel’s Grill and Molly Whiteside can find some way to shoot George down every day,” said Dave.
    “Gee thanks, that makes me feel so much better,” said George.◊