Time hasn’t been normal since March, which seems approximately 14 years ago. Every day is Saturday or Monday or hump day. You forget whether fall follows summer or precedes it. Sleeping through the night has become a thing of the past for many. As Christian Moerk, a Danish novelist who recently moved from New York to Paris, told the Wall Street Journal, “5 p.m. is the new 9 p.m.”

This change is evident, strangely enough, in the hours that people are choosing to eat out. Before the pandemic, most couples booking reservations would choose later times, such as 7:30 or 8 p.m. But they are now opting for the “early bird” hours, around 4 or 5 p.m. Some people would have been eating that early anyway, and now that they’re not going into the office, why not? If you’ve been working from home all day (all week, all month, almost all year), you might be a bit more eager to get out of the house.