Corona virus, what's different for you.

I went to the grocery store today to pick up a few things. It's really little more than a glorified convenience store in terms of size, but it's the closest one to my house (by a wide margin), so it's where I usually shop. Packed with customers, only about 6 of us are wearing masks, and only one of the employees has a mask on. (The elderly bagger.) I ended up getting more than I'd planned on as they were having some good sales, and it was easy for me to get two weeks' worth of things that I need. As I walked around the store, trying to maintain social distancing (difficult with how cramped the place was), the manager kept saying "Hi" to me, as if he thought I was up to something since I was wearing a mask. (Nevermind that they know me well at the store, and can identify me with the mask and the local cops would have no trouble tracking me down if I were to do something.)

I get to the check-out, which is being run by a woman who's been a smoker since probably Ike was in office. As I'm swiping my card through to pay for everything, she turns her head towards her register, and coughs. Smoker's cough? Could be. If I hadn't just bought two weeks worth of groceries, I would have just said, "Fuck it!" and left everything as I fled the store. Instead, I grabbed all of it, dashed outside the store, slathered my hands with sanitizer, stuffed as many of the bags that would fit into my backpack, reslathered my hands with sanitizer, strapped my backpack on, grabbed the other bags and raced home. Once I got into the house I sprayed everything with PGA, stuck the perishables in the fridge, resanitized my hands, sprayed myself, and everything (like the fridge handles) with PGA, stripped my clothes off, tossed them in the washer, then hopped into the shower and scrubbed myself down with the hottest water I could stand. Guess I won't be going back there any time soon.

So it turns out the arcades in the area have not re-opened. The best I can conclude through the lies and dementia it was not the arcade that called my grandmother telling her they were opening up and inviting her to a COVID death trap of gambling. Instead my grandmother was angry at her bank who had closed down one of the three locations they have within a mile of her house. It was her favorite location. She was yelling at them for not returning her checks, and for closing down one of their offices while every other office is open. So they called her and invited her down to the closer office to discuss it and to remind her that she needs to wear a mask. So while I have been wandering around searching for this mystical open arcade and trying to find her a mask so she can go to the arcade because they told her on the message she cannot go in without a mask, she slips up and tells me that she called the number back and the people at the arcade gave her the bank phone number.

So florida is not opening up the old people gambling death traps. I cannot say I know if church is open as I don't fucking care if god is calling his people home immediately with a painful virus. My grandmother's god is gambling, but she plays the penny slots and only twenty dollars a day. Before anyone complains, the only reason why I was searching for the arcade was because I wanted to be able to tell her which one it was so she would not get lost if she went on her own. That would be silver alert time and she has a tendency to play up the drama with authorities for sympathy and talk about how she wants to kill herself which gets her tossed in the psych ward for observation.

It is like having a toddler that can drive and go places on their own sometimes. The COVID is just another potential disaster.

Peoples' senses of humor seem to have been killed by the virus. A friend posted a silly Hillary joke of FB and it led to 25 "that's not true and not funny" posts, and when I pointed out it was just a political joke, I got "There's no time for humor now! Trump is ... yaddayaddashitwe'veheardalready"

Oy vey.

They all must be related to @We Are Borg

I've been using an app to keep track of my fuel mileage for the last 3-1/2 years. The app uploads the data to DropBox when I enter the latest gas fill up. So I've got data for how much I drive roughly each week for the last 3+ years. And kind of interesting, I've fueled up each December 31st for the last 3+ years.

Looking at the data, in 2017 and 2018, for the months of January, February, and March I averaged 4900 miles. Then last, due to tearing my rotator cuff and being in and out of work for and going to a four day work week, I drove 3300 miles. Now this year, for the same time period, I drove 3900 miles. My work commute is the same distance, and when starting back to work, I went back to a 4 day work week, part of the reason was to allow me to ease back into work and also to work on improving a new hire. The lower mileage by 1,000 miles was not really due to going into work less often, I only missed about 2 weeks total due to the virus affecting work. The lower mileage is mainly due to not being able to go anywhere. Usually on one of my days off I'd go out for lunch or dinner,typically the round trip would be around 60+ miles, and along with usually going to one or more stores the other day(s).

Well, our gas credit card bill has been zero for the last two months. My wife just drives to the market once a week, and we do a "sunday drive" to make sure my car still works. I've only used 1/4 tank since mid-march.

gasoline "shelf-life" is only about 3 months. Something to worry about...

It's almost as if it was a very poor choice of generating energy for motive force.

You know what I prefer?

I think many people find partisan politics less funny now that they are killing tens of thousands of people every week. It just lacks the entertainment value it had when the victims were all brown and on other continents.

On the contrary, now that the stakes are life and death, it's funnier than ever.

Couldn't think of any other place to post this, but I just got another $600 from the U.S. Treasury. Which was completely unexpected. So with that, and the additional stimulus payment that should be coming, added to my state and federal tax refund, and the previous stimulus payment. The amount I paid to have my A.C. system replaced is paid for.

It was a sign for my grandfather that he could give up his car when the gas went bad in it. It was also probably good he gave it up because he might have been tempted to drive out of his assisted living community. I feel so bad for the people in these places now. It used to be assisted living gave them more freedom than ever to live. They look out for everything, and try to make activities. They provide transportation, and are located where you do not have to drive so far to get to places. Now they are locked down and it is more like an old age home of nightmares.

I get that there is nothing they can do, but it is bringing a lot of depression to people who were enjoying a huge extension of quality of life into their twilight years. For people with dementia and who want to be among people who get what they are going through a lot more than younger family does these places were great with the amount of care and access they provided. Yes, it was sad that some families still neglected their elderly members, but no one can fix that. You really need someone watching over a person with dementia all the time, and some families cannot provide that level of supervision. In this case we could not isolate enough to allow my grandfather safety to live until a vaccine is made, but many people in his home will make it to the vaccine because the home is isolated.

Despite how people might see some of my views towards the operations, I am not unaware of the desire and problems of trying to keep the elderly sector of our society going, and why we do it. we do an amazing job, but these are the weak years where they environment is a danger to us all and we have to recognize we got these people many extra years and there comes a point where we are going to lose them because that is our existence. As individuals fall and mourn society goes on. We should recognize the pain of the relatives and give them time to grieve, but the world does have to go on, and some people are having great days off in the distance and should not be brought down because someone else is having a bad day.

We got a chance to spend some time talking to our neighbor the nurse yesterday (while standing 20 feet apart!). God damn, but anybody who thinks this shit isn't serious needs to talk to a nurse for a while.

Apart from from working in the danger zone all day, she lives with her 90 year old parents and has to stay in a separate part of the house from them. I told her I have friends who think it's all a government plot. She told me her brother thinks that, and she told him to never say those words to her ever again.

^ Tell her a bunch of nerds on internet, people she never met and never will meet, feel for her. Fortunately, she and people like her are there, and reasonable.

And too bad for those who think it's all a Democratic plot to discredit Donald Trump (I'm looking at you, Eric Trump...), as if the whole world was invested in ruining their economies in order to affect the American election.

We did what we had to in order to beat him at his own game of making himself look like the biggest failure ever.

I went to Target yesterday to pick up a few toiletries and bleach. I will drive to fucking Ukiah or Pismo Beach or Mono Lake to go to the smallest corner store I can find if I need to before I go back to the Emeryville Target. It started out mediocre: half the items I wanted weren't available for online order, so I knew I was going to have to go inside. Soon as I get there, turns out that despite the massive sign outside, they don't actually have curbside pickup. Had to go inside to the customer service counter. Okay fine. Security guard has a mask on, and is making sure people going in do too. Customer service has a separate entrance, which is nice. People doing pickups seem mostly good with keeping apart and masked up, including the CS cashier. One person in line coughing, but she has a mask on pretty well. But I can't get bleach, sanitizer, TP, or isopropyl alcohol (which I still couldn't get - still sold out) there. So I put the rest in the trunk and go back in the main entrance. Again there's a security guard checking masks... and then the descent into hygiene hell begins.

I will say this: at least half of the Target employees on the store floor had masks on correctly. But no one seems to have heard of social distancing. The main artery behind the check stands is as full of people as ever. There are no one-way aisles. Maybe ⅔ of customers are wearing masks correctly. But most of the rest are wearing them like a feed bag -- not just below the nose, but hanging loose there -- and there's at least half a dozen wearing them like a chin strap. One customer asked another to wear their mask properly. The other one took it off in response. There's no enforcement of mask-wearing once you get through the door. No one's even pretending to distance in the aisles. There's something resembling an attempt in the check stands, where there are the big dots on the ground, but once you get into the main artery, it more strongly resembles sardines than people trying to avoid a pandemic. I went to a manned check stand because the self-checkout line had no distancing at all. Could hear coughing while waiting in line. Couldn't tell from where, which is almost certainly a good thing.

The cashiers though. 80% of them are wearing their masks below their noses. Maybe a quarter even worse. A bunch pulling them off to talk to people, including people wearing their masks as chinstraps.

Either there's no COVID in Emeryville and this part of Oakland, or this Target is going to be the epicenter of another outbreak, if it isn't already. Soon as I got home I stripped and put everything I was wearing in the laundry, and showered. I haven't touched the bags from Target, and won't for a couple days more.

^ But did you have your entire set of internal organs injected with disinfectant? If not, you just aren't taking proper precautions!

hmmm....so if the virus is a government plot what is the goal of this plot? What is the endgame? Which faction of the government is instigating this plot? That said I totally believe that every politician will milk as much out of this crisis as they can (that's their job) I don't believe any of them would - even if they could - be involved in any underlying conspiracy involving COVID.
Do I agree with the way every aspect of managing the threat is being handled? Not in the least! We have 50 states and thousands of counties - every decision is six of one, half dozen of the other!
Try to keep yourself safe in whatever situation in which you live and work is about all we can do, but that applies to pretty much everything. Remember, nothing can be 1oo percent safe, only safer.

Just heard from a friend who's caring for his elderly aunt with terminal cancer. She's in a nursing home, and yup, she just tested positive for COVID. Talk about a double-whammy.

Haven't you heard? It's a leftist plot to destroy the economy of the country so it can be rebuilt as a socialist state.

Hell they don't have to plot that out - it's pretty much on autopilot already!

We started allowing indoor dining on Friday, so went to a cafe for the first since early March. Places are limited to 10 customers inside at a time right now, but it was still a strange experience eating in a room full of strangers.

It was lunch, but the three of us shared a bottle of wine. After all with limited customer numbers it would be wrong to not spend well.

Re-opening is staggered in over the next few weeks as the health authorities monitor progress. It's now two weeks since the last detected case in the state, and that was finding someone who caught it in March, so a month since the last known transmission.

Still looks possible we might have eradicated it, but having to take baby steps since there could be undetected cases out there, and there are cases interstate still.

great things are getting back to some type of normal. Where I live restaurants are finally allowing "dining in" with about the same types of limitations as you are under. But here comes the "trigger word" that sets off wordforge.....my wife got a haircut! boo! hiss! What a selfish bitch, right? That said my wife wore a mask, and the hair salon workers wore masks. Rather that sitting around waiting your turn, you give them your cell phone number and wait in your car and they call you when it's your turn. Or, you can wait outside on the benches and they come get you. Nobody had any complaints about that, and it was very safe. My gym's been open for a month or so now and ZERO members or staff have come up positive.
It's great to see local businesses opening up and low wage earners working again.

However....in about a week bars and nightclubs will open up. I'm not at all saying these places are more risky than any other businesses, but let's be realistic here: alcohol impaired brains, people getting physically closer in romantic pursuits, perhaps a physical confrontation or two....security & management better bring their "A game" if they don't want to be shut down again!

One very disappointing thing: they built a brand new baseball stadium (minor league so nothing too fancy) and only got to use it for one season before POW! Coronapalooza hit like a Louisville Slugger to the old noggin. So now it's shuttered until baseball opens up, which may never happen until 2021. Not a baseball fan, but that's a lot of local jobs lost from no baseball.

For the moment alcohol consumption on premises is limited to those ordering meals for that reason. Can't wait until we can just go to the pub for a pint.

Today I ordered a handle of bourbon and a 12 pack of quilted northern. Arrived two hours later. Haven’t been to a store in over two months. Haven’t gassed up in nearly three. Thinking about going to clean out my corner office tomorrow. Wonder if I’ll ever go back. Sure won’t have an office like that again.

I've been working at least 30 or so hours a week since this whole thing started. The first two weeks I was doing "busy work" along with inventory type work for our company vehicles. Then was doing some support work for a couple weeks, then back to regular work by working with clients again for the last two, and will continue to do so. Most of them are pretty good about following our guidelines for Covid19, those that don't are basically told to get lost, up to us. They can bitch all they want, it won't get them anywhere, and our management supports our decision 100 percent.

damn that sucks! It's like being under house arrest. Long term this type of thing will have negative mental health effects for some people.

I’m not particularly bored. My wife and I work full time from home because our offices are closed. Simultaneously we deal with two kids one of whom is in first grade doing “distance learning” since her school is closed. It’s frankly more than we can handle. I wouldn’t mind being bored like all the olds that are complaining about lock down.

Anyone else notice that the postal service in their country has completely shit the bed?

USPS and Canada Post are a fucking disaster.

A U.S. parcel that was shipped to me on April 23 (over a month ago) from New Jersey is still sitting in the Chicago sort facility.

A Canadian parcel that was shipped to me on May 12 (two weeks ago) is still sitting in the Montreal sort facility.

But here's the funny part: I had a shipment sent last week from the U.K. via a private courier company and I just received it today.

I swear it's time to dismantle public mail delivery service. Between electronic documents and private couriers, there really isn't a need for the mail service any longer. That is, unless you like being bombarded with flyer advertisements for ugly real estate agents or stores like Big Bob's Dildo Emporium and Furniture Store (which is apparently the only thing propping up the postal service, other than taxpayer subsidies).