Older Comments for blog entry "Our Pandemic Story" (original date: 2020.03.20) https://wilcfry.com/mylife/2020/0320-covid-19/ Due to the ongoing nature of this entry, the comment section grew long. I’ve moved the oldest comments out of Disqus, to this text file. ____________________ DANA, 2020.03.30, 14:07 My parents are complaining of food shortages, too. I think that's a suburban/rural phenomenon because people have larger houses and garages - so many have second refrigerators and deep freezers. Even though the items are perishable, families go through more of them faster when everyone is home because many people are eating more meals at home. Arthur and I usually buy both breakfast and lunch on workdays, but now we're eating those meals at home everyday. So even though we're just two people, we go through multiple packs of turkey breast a week. But, here in Brooklyn, I haven't had any problem finding the food items I need. The stores are fully stocked and the aisles are mostly empty of people. Oddly, I'm also starting to understand the toilet paper hoarding. Normally, the 12 pack Arthur I and buy lasts us for about a month and a half. But that's because we both work and many of the bathroom breaks aren't at home. Now that we're both in the house - we're going through toilet paper a lot quicker (but we can also find that here so not worried). I think people are concerned that if they test positive for Covid-19 and are truly confined to the house for 14 days (or more) that they could run out of toilet paper. Work is finally starting to settle down for me, at least. Arthur is still working like crazy (he worked at a hospital Sleep Lab/Pulmonology department but they kicked the lab out of the hospital last week because they needed the beds for Covid cases) even though it's remote. My staff is getting used to making court appearances via phone or Skype and we've had great success getting quite a few of our clients released from jail so they're not trapped in prison if there is an outbreak of Covid. It's a bit awkward having both of us work at home in our 650 square foot apartment, but Arthur has a tiny office (what realtors call a "half bedroom" in NYC parlance) and I have a desk in the dining area. The funniest moment was when I was scheduled to have a Zoom video-conference with the 29 attorneys that I supervise and Arthur decided at the moment that he was going to shower. I had to caution him to put clothes on before leaving the bathroom because none of the attorneys needed to see him naked. We had a fun-time Friday night using Zoom to catch up with our many nieces and nephews (all on Arthur's side) who live in Las Vegas, California and Oregon. It's been about 6 years since we last saw them, so that was fun. Glad your family is well and managing. I think the worst part is yet to come - dealing with the aftermath of closing down the United States for two months. I am concerned that the "cure" is going to be worse than the disease, but that's not where most people's minds are right now. WIL C. FRY (IN REPLY TO DANA), 2020.03.31, 16:40 The Zoom/shower story was funny. Fortunately, M isn't required to do any video-conferencing (yet). Otherwise, the background would be the interior of our closet... I think you're right about the urban/rural/suburban divide when it comes to the hoarding. Obviously, even if you and I both decided to hoard all we could, I could hoard a lot more -- I could park outside and cram our garage with nonperishables: thousands of dollars worth. People further out (I'm thinking of my parents and places like that) have to drive a lot further *anyway*, so "stocking up" for them isn't the same as hoarding; it's something they do every few weeks anyway. But, like the suburban people, they have the space if they *wanted* to hoard. (I don't know how long I'll continue the regular updates, and I will try to keep them brief, but I wanted a single entry I can come back to years later.) DANA (IN REPLY TO WIL C. FRY), 2020.03.31, 20:01 I'm loving the updates. (Says one who met you originally on Flickr where you used to post daily photos of the family.) Impressively - all 29 members of my staff attended the video conference, including one from his closet, as he is at home in his two bedroom Brooklyn apartment with his wife and kids: 3, 2, 1. ____________________ ZANE, 2020.04.04, 11:29 I enjoy reading this. Thanks for continuing to update it. I think it's great that you are learning some Spanish. WIL C. FRY (IN REPLY TO ZANE), 2020.04.04, 11:56 Thanks for the comment, Zane. Yesterday I learned the word for "learn", so now I can say "Yo aprendo español." :-) Though I've probably conjugated that incorrectly. ____________________ BILL FRY, 2020.04.05, 23:53 I hope everything is going okay for you and your family. We are doing okay so far. WIL C. FRY (IN REPLY TO BILL FRY), 2020.04.06, 06:29 I'm glad to hear you all are okay. We are managing well so far, and I think we can hang on for as long as it takes. ____________________ DANA, 2020.04.12, 11:18 So four weeks in and this is all very uneventful for Arthur and I. We have toilet paper and eggs. We’re both healthy (albeit a little run done by work loads). And we’re in that small minority who like social isolation and staying in. I hear you about the kids. I have to go to the grocery store about once a week (due to the constraints of living in a small city apartment) and inevitably, there’s always a family who had to bring all the kids with them to the store (the average number of children per family in our neck of the woods is three). These parents aren’t known for reigning there children in under the best of circumstances and it seems they’re even less inclined to contain their kids now. It’s as if they have this notion that children couldn’t possibly spread contagions. WIL C. FRY (IN REPLY TO DANA), 2020.04.12, 11:38 I'm glad you are both doing well -- we do miss being able to go out (since our state parks closed last week, even that is off the table now), and it was certainly easier for me to grocery shop when the children were in school, but... :-) As for the children in stores thing, I have seen a big change in our town where this is concerned. While I *have* seen children in supermarkets, there seem to be far fewer than there were before. When I do see them, it's just a dad and his son or a mom and a baby (often the baby has a little mask, even though I've seen plenty of news warnings about not putting masks on babies). We haven't taken either child with us to any store since the "shelter at home" order went out a few weeks ago. Both of them are now really starting to notice it. :-/ DANA, 2020.04.19, 18:47 Week 6 comments: Boo, about the ebooks. I'm able to use Overdrive on my devices, but also via web browser. It's not an intuitive site, but generally you find your library through Overdrive, then create an account (using your library card), sign in, then navigate to your library within the app, and go from there. You're tech savvy, however, so I'm sure you've done all the usual trouble-shooting. I probably shared this link already, but this is the web-based link for the Central Texas Digital Library: https://ctdl.overdrive.com/ We had some excitement this week. After a month of our refrigerator's motor making sporadic odd noises, the compressor cut out for about an hour today. I rarely panic, but that panicked me, only because we have so much food in the freezer and refrigerator as we're trying to avoid going to the store as much as possible. I called our landlord and he ordered us a new refrigerator that will be delivered Tuesday. Which didn't really reassure me - I'm still worried about the refrigerator dying again and I'm also concerned about receiving this sort of delivery. We have a small apartment and I don't want strangers in the house... WIL C. FRY (IN REPLY TO DANA), 2020.04.19, 19:24 Yay for your new fridge! Hopefully the delivery persons will be sufficiently masked and non-touchy. As for Overdrive, we both get a lot of "bad gateway" error messages, or pages just won't load. My best guess is the servers are overloaded due to increased demand... Or else our ISP is blocking that traffic for some reason. (I just now thought of a way to eliminate the second possibility: use 4G instead of wifi - it's a different provider.) I will probably try again, but it's not an immediate need for me - I still have a stack waiting on me. M is the one who's run out of books... :-/ DANA (IN REPLY TO WIL C. FRY), 2020.04.19, 21:32 I logged on yesterday without a hitch but that doesn’t help Marline. Have you tried it from the laptop? WIL C. FRY (IN REPLY TO DANA), 2020.04.20, 21:35 Yes, that's what M tried first. We'll likely try again soon, or she'll be forced to start reading my old Heinlein books, LOL. DANA (IN REPLY TO WIL C. FRY), 2020.04.21, 17:14 Ugh, not that. It's a rare female that appreciates Heinlein (I am not that unicorn). Refrigerator arrived at 8:00 this morning - without advance notice! But the delivery guys were wearing serious masks and wore gloves. I spent the rest of the morning disinfecting and sanitizing the refrigerator inside and out. It's a cheap model (we're renters) but the refrigerator portion is larger than our old refrigerator, so now our refrigerator appears empty. The freezer on the other hand is causing me much angst (too small and poorly designed. It's also really loud, but at least we know it's working. WIL C. FRY (IN REPLY TO DANA), 2020.04.20, 07:16 Glad to hear (most of) that. Fingers crossed that the loudness somehow means effectiveness. ;-) Re: Heinlein: yeah, I was joking - M read a couple of them when we first met and it didn't go well. She would rather stare at the wall.