Lee Geiger

I don’t go grocery shopping anymore. I go foraging.

Katherine Patti

My morning routine hasn’t changed; I wake, I shower, I dress, I breakfast, I caffeinate, I computer. There’s just one problem.

I can’t remember what day it is.

I’m not the only one experiencing a mutation of the mind and spirit. Have you stepped outside and made a trip to the grocery store lately? Unkept, unshowered, and unpleasant is the new normal. Anxious shoppers hoping to hit the toilet paper lottery shuffle their feet at six feet intervals, their vacuous stares reminding me or archival news reels from the 1970’s of Soviet citizens waiting hours in a breadline just so they can buy a one-week old brick of borsch. I bet if I looked hard enough, I could find a bookie who would give me 3-1 odds that the Zombie apocalypse is taking place right before our eyes and that Commander Zamboni will be elected president come November.

I’ve also morphed into a hall-of-fame procrastinator, a soft taco version of my former self. A pair of “to-do” lists are taped to a wall next to my desk. Posted in mid-March, these self-prescribed honey-do’s are to keep me focused and occupied so I can come out of this pandemic mess saying I had made the most of my time. One is a list of items related to my job, while the other corresponds to my role as Dude of my Domain. The list of professional assignments, beautifully displayed in size-50 font on computer paper, stares back at me from a squared-up position of four perfectly formed right angles; the second list, handwritten from a small notepad in a doctor’s prescription scribble, requires me to angle my head and squint. That sorry collection of burdensome bothers reads like this (I think);

• clean garage, attic, and shed
• figure out what to do with the guest room closet
• organize filing cabinets
• start stretching
• do pushups and sit-ups more than once a day
• hike and bike
• eat better
• read more books
• start writing next book

Four weeks into this dreary existence and all I’ve managed to accomplish is to sweep the garage floor. Actually, that’s a lie. I can’t find my broom.

The president is about the hit the airwaves. Again. If you had told me five years ago that America would be brought to its knees by a dangerous pandemic, and that the person our great country elected to lead us through a crippling global health and economic crisis and guide us back to the promise land would be a reality television star who had family members as key policy advisors, I would have wondered whatever would have possessed Kim Kardashian to want to run for president. I mean, why would she and her sisters bother with the drudgeries of governmental service unless they believed it would it help her sell more makeup? Y’all know I’m right.

Meanwhile, the stock market continues to skyrocket on the belief the COVID-19 death rate may have peaked. Excuse me, but did Wall Street not get the memo? Someone needs to tell those pimply-faced day traders to step away from their computers and take a look outside their windows. You know what they’re going to see? A heaping helping of nothing. And it’s going to be like that for a good…long…while. I don’t want to sound overly dramatic, but Gen-Z types who had expected to find their dream jobs by age 23, and who grew up with an economy that only went north by northeast, had better get used to tackling life’s speed bumps without the perks of orange slices and participation trophies. Those days are over for now.

Seriously, if all the stay-at-home restrictions were lifted tomorrow, would you step into a crowded Starbucks for a latte made by a barista who just coughed? Sit in the bleachers shoulder-to-shoulder to catch the Giants taking on the loathsome Dodgers? Go to a movie theater to watch the newest summer blockbuster with hundreds of your closest friends? Book a flight to attend a boondoggle of a sales conference in Las Vegas? Travel to New Orleans for a juicy jazz festival followed by a boozy crawl through Bourbon Street? I probably would, but that’s just me. The smart money says I’m in the minority.

A lot of things are going to change in society. It’s Back to the Future time, folks, because everything we’ve known and done is going to be measured by B.C (before corona). Think about it; what’s going to happen to the friendly so-good-to-meet-your-acquaintance handshake; the warm I’ve-missed-you hug? There’s one social grace I won’t be sorry to see disappear; the haughty European air-kiss. You know, the smack-around of cheeks and lips that truly annoys the earwax out of me. That silly charade has got to go, if only because I was never any good at it.

On a completely unrelated note, Casa de Geiger had some unexpected excitement recently. A swarm of honeybees descended on my property and set up camp high up in a tree. New to this marvelous act of wonder devised by Mother Nature, I was clueless as to how to respond. But I did know that being surrounded by swarms of buzzing insects that can sting or bite me in the butt isn’t good for my blood pressure. I instinctively called my Orkin rep, who informed me that honeybees were protected by law and that I should contact a local beekeeper to learn what I should do next. Two questions immediately popped into my mind. One, how does one find a local beekeeper? And two, in this time of social lockdown, is the art and science of beekeeping considered an “essential service?”

A web search led me to the Mount Diablo Beekeepers Association. The website’s contact page listed the email addresses of the association’s board of directors, including its president, someone who went by the name of Mike Vigo.

Mike Vigo?

Twenty years ago, I worked with a Montgomery Securities salesman named Mike Vigo. He was a young huckster then, pitching Montgomery’s IPO pipeline to investors who thought the Etoys and Pets.com gravy train would last forever. Who didn’t?

Ten years ago, I knew a portfolio manager named Mike Vigo who partnered with another former Montgomery Securities sales legend to start their own hedge fund in Orinda. Then came the financial tsunami of 2008. Next.

Now I know a local beekeeper named Mike Vigo. He used to sell stocks and manage money. He misses Wall Street about as much as he misses the plague.

Mike, as super cool a dude as you’ll ever know, came out to my house and calmly surveyed the situation. With thousands of honeybees feeling fat and happy after a day spent pollenating my backyard, Mike climbed up my rickety ladder, raised a large cardboard planter bucket around the basketball-sized swarm, and gave the tree branch a thunderous shaking. The bees fell softly into the bucket, laying there like a brigade of drunken soldiers. Mike fit a lid over the bucket and headed back to his truck, where he spends a good chunk of his day driving around the Bay Area overseeing 150+ beehives while listening to sports-talk radio with his dog Bee (of course) riding along in back.

I gave Mike a cash donation for the beekeeper’s association and congratulated him on making one of the best trades I’ve ever seen in my life.

Stay safe and sane, my friends. It’s a crazy, boring world out there.