I celebrated the “To-Go only” opening of our neighborhood Italian restaurant with a couple of homemade Tito’s vodka martinis. It was a nice variation from my nightly red wine habit and Chinese take-out. My wife cooks great meals at least three nights a week while I contribute a single feeble recipe attempt, leaving two evenings of carry-out and one of leftovers. It will be nice to actually get a socially distant table in the near future and be waited-on by someone in a mask. Such a setting would have sounded unappealing just months ago, but welcome progress coming soon to Oregon. 

The other positive step we took yesterday was a wine tasting reservation at our favorite Willamette Valley vineyard. It will be the first time we’ve gotten together with friends since St. Patrick’s Day. This is the same group that will join us in a few months when we stop for a night in Walla-Walla on the way to Glacier National Park. We’ll also stay at the Prince Albert Hotel, just over the Canadian border, provided it’s allowed by then. By then, hopefully, we will have been to Florida and made arrangements to build a retirement home. The plan is to make our move next year. Egypt and Hawaii are still scheduled in between. We’re keeping our “fingers crossed” on all these travel plans. 

I thought it might be interesting to include the origin of this strange gesture that I just used to imply good luck:

“The act of crossing one’s fingers dates back to before Christianity. The earliest use of the gesture had two people crossing their index fingers in order to form a cross. The pagans believed that a cross was a symbol of good luck. They believed in “sacred geometry” and believed that benevolent spirits resided in the intersections of crosses. Therefore, once two people made a cross they could make a wish and the spirits would favor them.”

“It is also believed that in the early days of Christianity people used it to signal their belief to others. They were persecuted for being Christian and this was their way of acknowledging each other. The would each form an L with their thumb and index finger and when placed together it would form a cross.”

“With time the gesture evolved to one person being able to do it by themselves. It is rumored to have evolved in the 14th century during the war, when soldiers needed luck and were unable to cross fingers with another soldier.”

“These days people don’t always perform the gesture but simply use the phrase ‘fingers crossed.'”

Source: theidioms.com