Covid Dates

Erik and I try to have a date night once a week. Usually that just means we go out for dinner somewhere. But during the peak “shelter in place” season in our area, all we could do was bring carryout food home. That’s not very satisfying because it takes all the experience out of dining, and we still have to do dishes. 

So we tried to come up with some other creative ideas for date night experiences we could do under semi-quarantine conditions. Here’s what we’ve come up with so far. I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments! 

Picnic on the roof

Longing for a change of scenery, we loaded up our dinner into a picnic basket, climbed a ladder to our roof, and had a picnic there. (This works especially well at our house because it’s just a one-storey house and there’s a pretty flat and low section over the sunroom.)

We enjoyed getting a new perspective on our neighborhood from that vantage point, and we were able to figure out which birds nest in which trees. It was sort of romantic, but also sort of hot. (And yes, we did still have to climb back down and do the dishes.) 

Virtual roller coaster ride

This website has a Google Earth view of Orlando where you can zoom in and click on all the major parks to take 360* tours. There are some attractions set up for VR experiences. That basically means you watch a video of the ride, but you can use your mouse to look around at any point during the video because it was all taken on a 360* camera. 

Our favorite was the Manta roller coaster at SeaWorld, which we watched about 3 times. We pulled the couch up close to our TV and cupped our hands around our eyes to make it feel sort of real. On one ride, we threw our hands up and screamed. I could sort of feel the drops in my stomach, but Erik couldn’t. (I actually got a little motion sick, so we switched to watching live webcams of animals at the San Diego Zoo.) 

Art museum inspiration

For one date night, I made two single-layer round cakes in advance and decorated them with plain white icing. Then we visited a couple of art museums looking for artistic inspiration. We each picked out a painting we liked. (Lots of art museums are open for virtual walkthroughs, but I think our best picks ended up coming from MoMA.)

The rules were simple: replicate the artwork onto the cake using anything edible. 

We dug out all the little candies and food coloring we had in the house and went to work! (Eric’s masterpiece was mostly painted on using food coloring mixed with a little water; mine had the whole gamut from candy canes to carrot sticks.) Here’s what we made. 

Pet store excursion

After several months of not eating out, we had some extra money in the “date night” budget, so I leveraged all my cuteness with a proposal for how to use it. I wanted to add a little member to our family. Erik dragged his heels a little, but finally caved–  and we headed to a pet store to buy a hamster! 

(As we drove to the pet store, he started telling me facts about keeping hamsters that he had learned by researching online in between work tasks that afternoon, so I knew he was warming up to the idea.) I was excited, and had made a list of all the things we’d need to keep a hamster happy. I had a pet mouse when I was a kid, so I think I sort of know what I’m doing. I was pretty confident we could hack it.

But here’s the sad ending to the tale. Every cage at the store was empty. No Russian hamsters, no Syrian hamsters, no Fancy Bear hamsters. We asked an employee about it, and she nonchalantly replied, 

“Oh, yeah, there’s a shortage of hamsters in the whole area.” 

A shortage of hamsters! What on earth? That’s the last thing we thought we’d hear during this Covid season. Apparently we’re late to the party on bringing home little pets. 

I was unwilling to settle for a goldfish, so we returned home petless. Oh, well. Erik got lucky this time!