Complaint:
I spoke to my father on the phone yesterday and it appears that the generally more sensible one of the pair, my mother, only bought groceries for one week and plans to go back out in a few days.
I can’t find any grocery delivery that will deliver to them in rural Ohio and she’s insistent that they’re trying to stick to their budget which is laid out for groceries once a week. OMG.
They have a huge chest freezer - just fill it up!! Ugh!
They are both in their mid/late 60s.
the shadowy one bought a thermometer 10 days ago as my nod to preparedness. that’s how fast
Interesting piece on past US government bailouts as a way of starting to think about what the US response might/should look like:
I’m pretty annoyed that my office is insisting that we remain under normal business operations and there are no confirmed cases in our building. If we wait to make changes until there are confirmed cases, it will be too late.
Of course, there’s that issue where the vast majority of our work needs to be done in a SCIF, so I don’t even know what I want them to do. (Well, I want them to provide unlimited paid leave to everyone so we can all go home. But obviously that’s never going to happen.) My teammate and I are working to get things set up so it’s at least possible for us to work from home, but even then we won’t have all that much work to do at home.
The other two people who sit on our aisle have gone home; one can work from home and the other is in a high-risk group and apparently her kids persuaded her to take time off. So at least there’s less exposure.
Yeah my wife works in a position that would have very limited ability to WFH even if she wasn’t down employees because of needing to be on-site to troubleshoot production and safety issues, necessitating her to be involved in a lot of lab bench work instead of higher level data stuff. But her company is cancelling a lot of internal meetings and/or switching them to internal teleconferencing instead of face to face and also spreading production shifts out so that there’s fewer people in the plant at the same time.
I’m annoyed that we were hampered by how many (few!) bags of food fit in our granny cart when we did our last stock up. A Lyft didn’t feel safe. Our cart was literally overflowing (largely because of the 12-pack of TP, yes, we bought only ONE and that was the only size still left in stock), Boyfriend was struggling to push it down the street, I was carrying more bags on top of what was in the cart. This is hard for people with no cars.
We probably will have to go back out early next week to replenish milk and coffee and cheese and produce. I don’t want to go on a weekend, but Aldi shortened their hours so that they don’t open until 9 and my daily scrum meeting is at 9 so that’s no good (also Boyfriend is expected to be butt in seat and logged in at 9). I’m told first thing in the morning is best but that doesn’t seem possible except on a weekend when it will be crowded.
City grocery stores are very small. There is no way to line up and maintain 6 feet of distance.Usually the lines end up going right down one of the aisles as there’s no place to stand except there. Maybe we’d be better off going to Walgreens or the little bodega next to the el (though neither has produce).
ETA: Seems likely that we’re going to get a shelter-in-place order from the mayor this afternoon, she’s holding an address. If that happens, it won’t include grocery stores, those will stay open, so I fear panic buying will happen again. Maybe I should make a quick trip to the bodega for milk at lunchtime just in case.
I feel you. Our company was slow to react for similar reasons.
In today’s tiny coronavirus complaints, I’m salty that there’s apparently no mechanism to get refunded the $105 that will come out of my paycheck for the CTA pass I likely will not be using. I could use that money for other things. But, the 3rd party company that handles this benefit just sent out an email today saying it’s up to whoever manages your city’s public transport (it’s the same 3rd party company for all locations so this includes Boston, NYC, etc) and Ventra, which runs the CTA’s payment methods, is currently saying no refunds.
Did a grocery shop this morning and it was not terrible. No TP or raw chicken to be found but there was some beef and pork and frozen dinosaur chicken nuggets (limit 2 each). Got all groceries at the first store, checked another for TP since it was on my way home, lucked out at a CVS after that. There was no limit on people in the stores, the first store was reasonably quiet because I was there 1.5 hours after open but apparently it was “busy” at 8AM when they opened. The second store was Saturday morning busy which is kind of insane.
I also got gas. My anxiety monster feels better with a full tank of gas, I can get to a lot of resources with a full tank of gas.
I have a rental unit, I emailed the management company this morning to inquire about how I go about waiving next month’s rent. I think she’s retired/living on social security but I think everyone would feel better having a little more money to turn into resources as needed right now. Maybe she has family whose hours have been cut.
Good news: Dolphins and swans spotted in the canals of Venice now that the water is clearer and the air quality has improved. Link One and Link Two.
This warmed my heart. Thanks for being a helper 
My sister lives two hours from me, her county has 104 confirmed cases and one death. 
I really wish Kid-2’s base commander would stop insisting that all airmen continue working as usual. He is the only US commander in Italy to do so, and the base is in one of the worst locations in the country.
Went to the bodega. They were pretty well stocked - no TP, but I got paper towels, 2 gallons of milk (one of which is being frozen in portions), some coke for Boyfriend to mix with his booze, more wine (ALWAYS more wine, LOL). We’ve had a discussion about rationing and he is on board.
They only had crap coffee and plastic-wrapped chemical cheese slices so I didn’t get either of those - to be fair, I believe they generally do not have good coffee or normal cheese under normal conditions.
I forgot he’s off tomorrow. He has a birthday day off that he must take in March, and this weekend he was supposed to go see his dad downstate but that’s obviously off. But he’s taking the day regardless. So he’s going to get up early and replenish his meat (the bodega doesn’t have that or fresh produce). And coffee for me. Assuming the Jewel has either of those things, the meat is reportedly cleared out many places. And then that is going to be IT for leaving the house for as long as we can stand. He is just going to have to make do with what’s in the house after that.
The bodega was too small for me to maintain 6 feet of distance, I tried but some guy walked right behind me while I was paying and there was no place for me to move. Also they don’t have a credit card swiper for customers, they take your card and touch it, argh. Scrubbed down when I got home and made Boyfriend clean off the groceries.
I suppose they are just getting tests back now after waiting for results, but Michigan TRIPLED the confirmed cases overnight.
Washington sitting at 1187 confirmed cases and 66 deaths right now. 4 and 3 in my county.
Guys. I talked to my mother this morning. These are people that, up until like 4 days ago, were just going about their business as usual, despite me telling them over and over again not to and sending them articles about why it was important to practice social distancing.
Now this morning my mother says she can’t sleep at night and she feels like it’s the end of the world. (She has depression and is on anti-depressants.) She said she is going stir crazy (it has only been a few days y’all). I didn’t know what to tell her. Like, yes, it’s bad, and stuff is closed, but things will change, things will get better, it will be different. I tried to reassure her. But like, I didn’t know what to say. I told her to stop watching the news and reading the newspaper because that doesn’t help anyone.
She is still somewhat sick from something bacterial she caught like 3 or more weeks ago. She was on antibiotics. But she still has congestion and stuff. Apparently it is not as bad as a few weeks ago. She was tested for flu back then, NOT coronavirus. Giving the timing I think it is ok. (???) My parents are 71 and they live 2000 miles away.
I think there are a lot of people in your mother’s place right now – didn’t want to see it as a problem and now can’t stop seeing it. It’s got to be very hard to make that mental adjustment.
It’s good partner and I weren’t trying to social distance from each other because I just now realized that we’ve been using the same toothpaste for ages. 
Like, I knew this? But had gotten so used to the fact that I’d forgotten what it meant.
Is that not normal?
Eta you said toothpaste. Did you mean tooth brush?