Hugs, BreakForTheLight. I've never been much of a fan of New Year's Eve either.

And, @AzulOscuro. I don't get what it is about the supermarkets either. These days we've been ordering most things online and usually if we have to go, only one of us goes in. The last two times, my husband went alone and he said that he was amazed at the large groups going in together - mom, dad, kids, grandma. I mean is it really necessary for everyone to go to the store? Don't people realize it's a pandemic? Here there are capacity restrictions for retail, so there are lines to get in. Having 4-5 people from one family group waiting instead of 1 or 2 just makes the lines that much longer and increases possibility of exposure. I'm just glad our area is less populated than the capital. I saw footage of lines there before New Year's and Christmas and it was absolute chaos.

Our government announced a big surprise on Saturday, our municipality and various others in the Metropolitan Region were moved to phase 3. Nearly all were in more rural areas. Nothing was supposed to be announced until today. We keep being praised for a high level of testing and contact tracing (top 10 in the country). I wasn't even paying attention to the news. Instead a few friends that live where I used to live texted me about it. They are still stuck in phase 2 with weekend and holiday quarantines and not happy about it. I was just looking at the latest stats and it is true we are doing comparatively well.

I hope we stay this way. My birthday is coming up and it's on a weekend. I want to be able to at least take a drive to a brewery and go to the nursery to get those plants, finally. The brewery is by a lake, so it should be scenic. We're just going to buy some beer, I don't think they even have a restaurant and I'm not sure I am up for that yet. Cross your fingers, all! I should have been packing my bags for Portugal now, but, oh well, that's not going to happen.