For breakfast Seven and I had frozen waffles and fruit, while Susan had cereal. Shortly after breakfast, Susan went to the grocery store, one of the only businesses allowed to stay open. While she was gone, I worked with Seven on math problems. I think math is a very important subject. We began with algebraic expressions and moved onto equations. He can simplify expressions such as 3(5x+7)+4x(x-6x+4). He grasped the concepts almost immediately and breezed through the problems. If only his penmanship was a bit better! He got a little stumped with a minus sign outside the parentheses, but we fixed it in no time.
After helping Susan with the groceries, we dressed for tennis and drove the mile down the street our outdoor tennis complex. After an hour of exercise, chasing balls, and having fun, we returned to our condo. After our showers, we worked a few more math problems along with quizzes on Geography and US History. With school work done, we watched a couple of episodes of Jeopardy on Netflix.
I got a contract from a company in Poland to write my third book for them, so that is very good news. The books aren’t long, 20k word or approx 40 pages on Microsoft Word. Hopefully they will flood me with work in April. I asked for a 20% raise, as I underbid the contracts by 20% when I started to make sure I got the work. They said that will happen in May, I hope they are serious.
For dinner, we enjoyed a rotisserie chicken, corn casserole and green beans. After dinner and cleaning the kitchen, Seven wanted to play Wizard. Wizard is a European card game that I was introduced to on a small cruise ship somewhere along the Rhine River. I watched four elderly women play, they told me the rules, and I liked it immediately even though I didn’t play. Susan bought the game for me for Christmas in 2019. The game is played with a standard deck of playing cards plus 4 Wizards and 4 Jesters for a total of 60 cards. The game can be played by 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 players. I would guess that 4 or 5 is the optimal number, but we played with the three of us. The number of hands played is determined by the number of cards (60) divided by the number of players playing. Each player gets 1 card on the first hand, 2 cards on the second hand, 3 cards on the third hand, etc etc, 20 cards on the 20th and final hand for three players. The object is to bid on the number of tricks your hand can take, very similar to spades. The catch is, you only get points if you get your bid exactly. If you go over or under you score -10 times the difference. If you get your bid exactly, you win 10 times your bid plus 20 points.
I had a perfect game going until the 20th hand, getting my bid exactly on the first 19 hands. Needless to say, I won easily, but I really wanted a perfect game! After the deal is complete, the next card is turned face up. That is the trump suit. There is no trump on the last hand. The player to the left of the dealer bids and plays first. Players must follow suit if they can, but a Wizard or Jester can be played at ANY TIME, regardless if a player has the suit that was led or not. The first Wizard wins the trick. Nothing beats a Wizard, not even another Wizard. Jesters are the opposite. They beat nothing.
March was a terrible month for my morale, but today was better. I just hope this is a temporary normal.