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The pandemic has turned dating from a difficult and necessary evil into a fundamentally impossible and dangerous temptation. But with COVID-19 cases declining internationally and vaccination rates increasing daily in the US, you will likely stumble through an awkward date again, just like the old days. And if you did, why the hell would you take another lame, lackluster walk?

A walk is fine. And that’s really all it is … okay. If you’re looking to excite your potential date, especially after you’ve been in isolation for months after months, then you may want to suggest something more creative and fun than another stroll through a park.

Virtual alternatives

We are not quite out of the forest of the pandemic yet. We can hope for a vaccinated summer to frolic with people we haven’t seen in a year, but for now, you could opt for a virtual date. Yes, I know the term “virtual date” doesn’t exactly create the anticipation you might otherwise get from an IRL meeting, but there are some good options that may suffice while we wait.

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• Virtual escape room: Do you like to solve puzzles, especially when it comes to rescue from a (virtual) trap? Do a virtual escape room with your date. These prioritize teamwork and can definitely help you determine early on if you and your date can work together (if your goal is to win at all costs).
• Try wine together: Are you two unbearable wine snobs? Then enjoy this snobbery by tasting wine together. You can buy the same bottles or order wine flights to their respective homes, pour out a few glasses, join a video conference and let the tannins and pretension take over.
• Online tours: This may seem like a novelty stolen from the early days of the internet, but given the options available to you these days, it can actually be pretty cool. I mean you can take one virtual tour of the Louvre together. Or the Great Wall of China, the Georgia Aquarium, or any number of cool options.

Fun IRL alternatives to walks

Walks are often viewed as facilitating discussion or a very intimate get-to-know activity. This is true. But it is also true that your legs can walk while you do other things besides speaking. Of course, given the tenacity of this pandemic, unless you’ve both been vaccinated, which is fine under the CDC protocol for now, you should wear a mask.

• Mini golf: Is there a soul on this planet who doesn’t love mini golf? It will get you out of your comfort zone, and if you can maintain a positive mood while battling a goofy golf course, you will have a great time.
• Picnics: You don’t go, you sit. But you’ll sit and talk, have a nice drink, and maybe eat something like sausage if that’s your speed.
• Handcraft: Better still, if you go to a park for a picnic, why not get creative with some crafts? More specifically, why not bring some color and wine to someone else’s park or garden?
• Outdoor movies / stand-up comedy: As the weather warms up, cities across the country will soon start projecting movies onto big screens amid local parks. There is also an option for stand-up and other performances to take place outdoors.
• Bike tour: Take a bike ride in a picturesque location. Take a blanket and some lunch. Make it a day.
• Look at the sunset: What could be nicer than going to a beautiful place (maybe on a bike), watching the sunset and coming home with fireflies lighting your way? I dont know! But you can definitely make that date come true this summer.
• Botanical Gardens: Well, technically this is a walk, but it’s not an old walk. If your city has a botanical garden or nature reserve, walking around your local park will be a breeze.
• tennis: Maybe you two aren’t the sporty types, but if you are, tennis is a fun game as you can really test your stamina to keep the chemistry going as you hit the ball back and forth.

This is just a small fraction of the things you can do that aren’t just about walking, which, quite frankly, is a boring activity to do on your own.

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As part of an expanded COBRA program, President Biden’s COVID Aid Act includes a temporary healthcare grant that covers 100% of your premiums if you were laid off or worked fewer hours during the pandemic. The coverage lasts from April 1 to September 30, 2021 and is also available to people who are already participating in the program. Here’s how you can qualify.

What is COBRA?

With COBRA or the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, you can stay with your company’s health insurance for up to 18 months, if the company has one 20 or more employees (Depending on the case, this can be extended for a further 18 months specific qualification events). You qualify if you have been laid off, have fewer hours, or even been laid off unless the termination was due to gross misconduct (i.e. vaguely defined– Some employers will ignore this and offer COBRA coverage just to evade the courts.

Sounds good, right? There is a catch, however. While you can keep your employer’s insurance under COBRA, you still have to pay the monthly premiums yourself. Employers often cover that 80% of your premiumsThat’s a high price– –averaging $ 7,470 per year for individuals and $ 21,342 for family insurance, on average according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

COBRA also does not cover other employer policies such as life or disability insurance, which also adds to your costs. In the absence of any subsidy, like other options Medicaid or Obamacare might be preferable.

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Who is eligible for the extended COBRA grant?

Via cnbcThe 100% premium subsidy applies to everyone who already qualifies for COBRA. It is also available to employees who did not opt ​​for COBRA coverage during their original term, as well as employees who originally chose COBRA but are lapsing their coverage. However, those who are eligible for other group insurance or Medicare are not eligible for the grant.

That means pretty much anyone who lost their job at the start of the pandemic can qualify, as their 18-month COBRA period spans April 1 to September 30, 2021, when the subsidy ends.

Starting April 1, employers may also offer you one special registration period of 90 days sign up for a different group health plan, although the premiums cannot be more than what you have already paid. This is an optional policy for employers. You should therefore check with your previous employer to see if this is offered.

How do I get the grant?

Your employer or your health insurance company should send you a declaration of eligibility. If you were expecting one but haven’t received it yet, contact your company’s HR department or your health insurer directly. However, as soon as you have been informed that you are eligible for COBRA, you will need to register within 60 days.

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It can feel like an obligation to be nice and close to your significant other’s friends. Of course, you want to develop a relationship with someone who is close to someone you love, but it’s often not easy. You may not be crazy about some of the people around your partner. Or maybe your partner’s friends are skeptical of you and see you as some sort of unwanted intruder in a pre-determined group of friends.

If the latter situation ever arises, you always have to extend an olive branch and try to make friends with these people, even if they are not immediately welcome. You don’t have to ask them for a “friend date” where you sign some kind of peace treaty. Rather, you can try to attract them by trying to get to know them in good faith and by being your best self in general.

Show that you care about your partner

Perhaps that person is skeptical of your intentions when it comes to your relationship. Humans can understandably protect their friends. It is possible that your significant other’s friends will not see a textbook example of an outstanding partner when they see you when it is you.

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To do this, show them that you support your partner. Dr. Paulette Sherman, Psychologist and author of Dating from the Inside Out, says that standing up for your partner as a means of making real friendships with their friends has an endearing effect.

She says Lifehacker:

It’s great to go the extra mile for your partner that you would do for you. When a friend is important to your partner, it is great to make actionable efforts to get to know them, be friendly, and make them feel welcome. People want to feel liked and sometimes friends feel threatened when their good friends start a new serious relationship and they may feel that things are changing or that they are not included. You can set the tone by showing up and making an effort.

You don’t have to talk about how much you like your partner or get lyrical about their talents or bombard them with compliments. You don’t want to look like you’re performing. Rather, show a passion for the things your partner is passionate about. Show commitment to the enrichment of their lives by supporting the things they love. That means showing up to events they might attend or giving them thoughtful birthday gifts.

If your commitment and commitment is evident enough, the skepticism will likely subside.

Don’t try too hard

You have to be yourself. It is possible that your partner’s friends are unfair, and any major overtures you make will go unnoticed anyway. But if it’s just a routine skepticism, don’t go too far out of the way to find a good favor. It becomes transparent pretty quickly when you are openly trying to get someone to like you. This can easily seem insincere, especially if the person you are trying to contact already has some concerns about you.

To this end, Sherman recommends putting your ego aside. She advises:

You can’t guess why a boyfriend is skeptical – they may have broken up badly or lost a boyfriend to their new girlfriend – all things that may have little to do with you. And while you are not responsible for your partner friends’ luggage, you can do your best to be friendly and do your part in building a relationship. If you are reacting defensively from your ego or expecting them to take the lead to improve things the first time, then you are not doing your part to move things forward.

Let things flow naturally. There is a chance that they will see you in an accurate light in due course, especially if you are kind and accommodating to them and your partner.

Be direct

When someone turns you down, it can be tempting to return the favor. But you can build up a lot of good faith by killing this person with kindness. Ask them how they are. Make eye contact and smile. Remember if you mentioned something important the last time, then follow up on it. It will show that you are kind and conscientious. This is exactly the kind of person that someone their friend wants to be with.

The main purpose of the guideline here is to show that you are a good significant other who genuinely cares about your partner. When you do that, the rest can and should fall into place. And if not, it’s likely that it is your partner’s friend who should reevaluate their approach.

Understand the limits

Sherman notes that some attempts to make up with a skeptical friend come with limits. Perhaps this friend only has an ax to sharpen that seems unsolvable. In this case, it’s okay for your partner to have their relationship with that person without you.

Sherman says:

If that friend belittles you or is hostile after your endeavors, it may be healthy to step back and allow your partner and them to have a relationship of their own. It is worth a try, however, as all new relationships require effort and trust building can take time.

Of course, you can always be polite with this person. But since any reconciliation depends on what the other person does, understand that there are limits to what you can achieve.

It is more than likely that you will be happy with your Google Account until Jeeves returns from the dead to regain dominance in the search market (in other words, forever). However, I met a few strange instances Recently, Google was deleting users’ accounts for no rhyme or reason so that they could no longer access what they had stored on Google services (a lot) and had no real resources to get it back.

The solution? Well, there is nothing I can do to help you get back into a Google disabled account. I’m missing a magic wand that has no effect in Mountain View. However, if you regularly back up all the data that you store on Google services, the pain won’t be so bad if or when Google cancels you.

How to backup Gmail

It’s easy: just upload yours Favorite email client and connect it to your Gmail (with IMAP, not POP3). Once you’ve downloaded your email, your desktop client can, without exception, back up or export anything in your various folders. If you do, you are doubly sure. You have all of your emails on your desktop or laptop and a backup archive that you can re-import into any email client you want in case something ever goes wrong.

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The only thing to remember is to load up your desktop app from time to time and sync your Gmail account. Both Windows and Mac have very useful tools for scheduling apps to run, so you can set up a routine that lets your email app start at noon every day, for example. It should sync your emails automatically and you are good to go. At the very least, running your email client manually (inconsistently) means you’ve always backed up a good chunk of your old to very old emails.

How to backup your Google Drive

For this I just turn to the aptly named Back up and sync App from Google. When you install it, it will put a folder on your desktop or laptop and copy everything in your Google Drive straight down. Any changes you make to the desktop folder are synced to the cloud and vice versa.

The only downside to this plan is that Google Docs that are created in your synced folder – your documents, sheets, slides, forms, and so on – are actually saved as hyperlinks on your system, rather than local documents. To actually back them up, you have to go to your Google Drive on the web, select them (which you can do en masse), right click and select “Download”.

How to backup your Google Photos

This is difficult. Google Backup and Sync only works with files in your Google Drive, not Google Photos. There’s no handy app that lets you sync everything you’ve uploaded there. Instead, your best bet is to use it Google Takeout You can back up all of your photos and movies – also a handy way to back up all of your data stored on Google if you don’t want to take the step-by-step approach.

The catch? Google Takeout backs up all data every time it runs. So, every time you run the backup, you’ll get a large download that mostly consists of the same things. On the plus side, you can have Google automatically create a link to this gigantic archive every two months and have it emailed to you (for a year until you have to set it up again).

Knowing that all you always do is upload new photos and movies to Google Photos, you can run Google Takeout once to get a full backup of all the data you have, and then just search for the current year, “2021,” then choose Google Photos in periodically everything it finds and download it manually. It’s more work and you need to think about it, but you save a few gigabytes worth of data transfer.

How to Back Up Your Google Play Apps, Games, Movies, etc.

You can not. Unfortunately, I am not aware of any way to access items that you have purchased on Google Play if your account is deleted (or removed) by Google. While it is possible that you can still use these apps and games on your Android device, they will remain with the version that was there before you removed your account. You can’t update them to access the Google Play Store without an account. Likewise, you will not be able to access your purchased movies, music or TV shows because your account no longer exists. (You can try Download them for offline viewing, but this is going to be a pretty space-saving process if you do this for everything you’ve bought; Even if it works after removing the account, you will only be able to view the content on that device.)

Basically, if you’ve bought a lot of things on Google Play and don’t want to lose access to them, don’t upset Google. Don’t do anything with your Google Accounts that could otherwise cause Google to use “hmm” as it will run its mighty hand over the delete button for your account.

How to back up your Chrome bookmarks

I’m honestly not sure what would happen to your Chrome bookmarks if you synced them through Google and the company destroyed your account. I would assume they are still there in your browser – the source of the sync – but just in case it never hurts to visit your bookmarks manager (chrome: // bookmarks / in your address bar). Click on the three-dot icon in the upper right corner and select “Export Bookmarks”.

How to backup your google contacts

If you use Google to manage your contacts, be sure to save them to a different location from time to time. I suspect they will disappear from your linked devices in case you ever lose access to your account. Even if I’m wrong, a little backup didn’t hurt anyone. visit Google contacts and click on “Export contacts” In the left sidebar you can download all your contacts as a handy CSV file or vCard.

How to secure your Google Authenticator 2FA codes

If you are worried about losing access to your Google Account, diversifying your services can be another. Switch from Google Authenticator to another appand anything that happens to your google account will not affect your precious 2FA codes. They know exactly the things that you use to log into every other account.

The same applies to your saved Google passwords. When using Google’s password manager to save all of your website logins, this is something to keep in mind Switch to another (free) service. Export your passwords is easy – just as easy as importing it elsewhere. Nothing against the Google tools, but if you put all your eggs in one basket and lose access to that basket, you’re kind of confused.