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How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting your life right now? Tell us about your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.

January 1, 2021 Happy New Year! Today is the start of a new year. Too bad that it starts with the same problem that we had last year— a massive pandemic that is scheduled to get worse in the coming month. Last night was surreal. One would have expected all sorts of parties and fireworks. After all, the point of New Year’s Eve is to give the old year one last hurrah and start the new year off right. At the restaurant, we had fireworks all right. We churned out so many pizzas that our delivery response time was up to 2 1/2 hours. I had to answer the phone for call-in orders, and the first thing that I had to tell people was that their order would not be processed right away. Most were polite, even when they said no thanks to “Would you like to place your order now?” I also had to tell an old friend that I could not serve him until he at least showed me that he had a mask, since he entered the facilities without a mask despite the signs on the door noting that they are required. More fireworks came when I had to break up a large party and separate them into several tables because they had too many people. Our local guidelines for COVID-19 say that we can only have 10 people in a party. One vengeful Karina got mad and screamed discrimination. I ended up in the back of the kitchen making sauce cups. The other part of the celebrations that made everything surreal was the fireworks. Someone shot off some sky rockets perilously close to the gas station behind the restaurant. I guess they didn’t care if everything caught fire and we didn’t survive. They also shot off fireworks near the Gonzales stockyards. Since there were no cattle sales this week, there were no animals to spook. I wish that I knew whether or not my little town shot off any fireworks in the city park like they have in past years. It would have made the whole thing seem more normal.