Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

Living with Lobot coming to Disney+ this August

So are you having the same experience that people are giving up on safety precautions pretty quickly?

I go for runs every other day, and while in March the streets were almost completely empty, now you're guaranteed to pass by dozens of people, and there are lots of groups roving around. I used to go through Eastwoods Park and use the track at Caven Field on campus, but they're both way too crowded now so I avoid them entirely. Aside from that I've only been to the grocery store a couple times.

My social circle is starting to socialize in person again, like invite 1-2 people over to hang out in the backyard and drink. I haven't done it yet, but I want to... and to be fair, I understand both the loneliness overwhelming people, and also the frustration that comes from spending two months suffering alone and then realizing the government - both Texas and Federal - spent that two months fucking around and frittered away all that effort to buy us some time to take action. I'm going to keep quarantine, but I can see why people are seeing politicians (read: Republicans) dick around on TV every day and being like "well, fuck it, this is a lost cause so I'm going out to a bar".

can't get used to having to shop in chunks (twice a week in my case).

so there's nothing for tea, but, simultaneously, i have too much lettuce and milk because they had short dates on them when i bought them. and i hate throwing food out.

i've stopped jogging exactly because it was hard to avoid breathing heavily on people (there are a lot of 'amateurs' around at the moment, people who are struggling and who will just stop suddenly). there are unpopular routes besides busy main roads but...

and part of me thinks i'm never going to bother getting my hair cut professionally again

(the part of me that can't see what a hack-job i've done at the back)

probably not an option in London, but my quarantine running secret is parking garages... they're 100% empty and also shaded.

I haven't been to the grocery store lately, but my wife reported after her last trip that even here in a relatively liberal outpost the mask use has dropped dramatically.

Was talking to a friend on Zoom last night and he said the same thing. He asked a guy at one of the local grocery stores if they were still enforcing the mandatory mask rule and he essentially said that they try to, but the non mask wears get so angry and belligerent that they don't feel safe confronting them. I get it, it's gotta be hard enough with just the stress of being an essential worker right now to not want to be screamed at by a red-faced MAGA idiot on top of it all.

I don't want to jump to conclusions about the non-mask wearing customers, but I definitely detected a sense of aggressive defiance, could possibly be that I'm projecting my own anger onto them.

I was assuming that people might have a bit of expoerience of self hair cutting by the time the lockdown was through and might actually be getting to a point of some ability. & people wouldn't have to be seen in public with the initial rough stages. Or at least there would be somebody in any shared house that might be getting a little skill which they might want a bit of guidance/tuition on when they got the chance.
Also heard the hat was becoming popular in places it hadn't been as much before.

Not only are you going to have a load of people endangering their health by things reopening so early but they'll have to live down bad haircuts. Or is that why they're opening all the hair salons.

You learn real fast working retail to never ask customers to do anything. Even before COVID-19 and MAGA chuds, it was a terrible strategy for getting through the working day. They will always argue, always escalate, and management will never back you up.

the idiotic, ignorant angry non-mask wearing dumbfuck customer is always right!

I feel like things are going to get much worse soon. I heard someone today excited that a Mongolian barbecue place was going to be opening up and seating people inside. It’s a joke to think bars and restaurants are going to be able to manage distancing, and opening them up is going to be a nightmare.

i'm curious how much covid/distancing has invaded other people's dreams. regularly now, I'm noticing I'm worrying about masks or making physical contact with things in my dreams. last night i dreamt that i started coughing in public uncontrollably and while i was sure i wasn't sick with anything, i was mortified because everyone was shooting me dirty looks and i couldn't stop.

I actually ate out twice for lunch this week (the first time I've even attempted such since mid-March). Both places achieved social distancing in seating by making impossible to sit at certain tables by stacking chairs on tables and using police tape to section off booths.

Dreaming about this constantly, though mostly just as free floating stress.

first person I know to die from this fucking thing, my favorite professor from undergrad who also grew to be a good friend in those days. We'd grown apart as he had a stroke a number of years ago and moved to upstate NY. Quite upset.

Sorry akm.

sorry to hear.

I'm so sorry, akm. I was just thinking about my favorite professor today, who died of brain cancer almost 10 years ago. I still miss her very much.

i'm so sorry, akm.

I have two dear professors I try to visit once a year who are getting up there in age. Thankfully they’re healthy but i always get teary thinking each visit could be my last. Sorry, akm.

i thought a few Zoom sessions with friends might be fun. I hated them.

everybody talks over each other (moreso than IRL), but most of all.....it feels like being at work. I'm in front of a computer in meeting software all day, I don't need to replicate the experience.

I have never taken part in a Zoom session, it sounds like hell on earth.

i have been teaching adult ESL students for 3.2 hours each session via an inferior zoom-alternative (i have used both and zoom is definitely superior as a teaching tool) multiple times weekly
morning and night, class last night went to 10pm

this is my life and while i do not enjoy the format whatsoever, i am grateful for it because my students are still all there, still working hard, and their attitude about learning is stubbornly positive. the students in my music class are doing an AMAZING job. i am actually genuinely proud of the work we have done under these circumstances, many of them are still working, some lost their jobs. we are all still chugging away even though in general as a mode of human communication videoconferencing is technologically amazing but otherwise BLOOOOOOOOOOWS imo

we have two more weeks of class. i am going to try to enjoy them because idk what is coming next

My initial two-month work contract (I started March 16) was not renewed. There's a possibility I'll be brought back in July, as my boss liked my work and the fiscal year ends June 30, but I'm not holding my breath.

I got my Trumpbuxxx in today's mail, so that's something, at least. According to the memo line, though, it can only be spent on wire fraud, bribes to elected officials, or donations to the Republican Party, so I don't know what to do with that.

im sure you can think of an official to bribe

i also will say that one on one videocall conversations are actually not that bad. awkward sometimes for sure (like all conversations) but afaict videochatting with someone one on one is pretty much like being separated by a window and still hearing ok. the group situations are very different.

My mother is leaving her locked-down assisted living digs to run a couple of errands and then coming to my house so I can unfreeze a frozen app on her ipad. I said "you better go to the bathroom before you come over because I'm not letting you in. I'll come out to the car masked and gloved and fix the doodad."

wise

I've been having 1 or 2x weekly drinks online with btw 5-10 of my oldest/dearest friends...ppl I've known for 25-30 years who are spread around the country.

I'm alone, w/o my kids, for four days every four days. It gets lonely. So I've been apprectiating this, and it's not at all awkward.

I find it exhausting if I hold too many; two weeks I participated in two per night for a couple nights. The constraints of Zoom: the nanosecond pause between speaking and response; the reluctance to step on each other's lines; its sedentary nature. I'm not drinking more, but I end these chats rather wobbly.

thanks for the condolences all.

re: zoom parties: the success of these absolutely depends on the people. we're doing weekly drinks (I don't drink but everyone else does) and pub quizzes with one set of friends and it's been really fun. you can't have more than a certain number of people on though because audio levels do fluctuate depending on how much noise is coming through, some people have latency, etc, so if there are like more than six people calling in it's bound to fail unless everyone mutes themselves when not talking and then it's not very spontaneous or enjoyable.

My mother had her own mask on, surprising and heartening.

moderated calls w/ friends

akm, ugh, I'm sorry! I just read your post.

We did a family zoom with my in-laws recently (parents two bros, bro’s wife and 3 young kids) and it was excruciatingly boring, mostly bc of the kids, who made us play a game where we had to guess the number on a rolled dice.

My partner has a bad case of the dropsky's with her MS and is dropping things every day. Somehow a dropped plastic rinsing cup has smashed a hole in the porcelain in the bathroom sink. There was already a crack in it so it was ready to break but FFS not now of all times. I'm going to have council plumbers in the house tomorrow for hours, which sucks absolute shit.

How big is the hole? I patched a hole in a bathtub once using an epoxy repair kit with plastic mesh... it looked terrible but was watertight. JB Weld might be effective too. Might tide you over for six months or a year (especially if it's the bathroom sink and not the kitchen).

my extended family has weekly zoom calls and i did them twice and there are too fucking many of us. i tried to get together a smaller chat and it happened once, and it was great, and hasn't happened since.

We got dinner delivered last night, and I left specific contact-free instructions for the driver (leave food inside the front door of the building, call or text when you arrive). So imagine my wonder and surprise when the first new human being I've come into close contact with in the past two months is the dumbfuck who I find standing in our lobby (thanks again to the neighbor who unaccountably let him in, top notch, A+ work there) with no mask or gloves and who insists upon handing our food directly to me. And who has, presumably, gone through this same dumbfuck routine with who knows how many other customers. And who has, presumably, missed the news that we're living in one of the hardest hit US counties in the midst of a global pandemic.

Any discussion of things slowly reopening and going back to normal is going to have to take into account the untold multitudes who continue to behave as if nothing about our lives ever changed in the first place.

I've had generally good success with Zoom. I talk to anywhere from 1-3 Toronto friends every Thursday. When I'm with one friend, we go on for 90 minutes; with more than 2 people, we've been cut off at a certain point. We just disconnect and start over. On Sundays, I play checkers with my goddaughter's 6-year-old daughter. That's fun, although it can move slow--the board is on-screen, and I have to verbally guide her as to which of my guys I want moved. I of course try to win, because just like Michael Jordan I'm driven to win. I did a Zoom call last night with a friend in Vancouver I hadn't spoken to in over a decade--that was great.

Talking over each other is sometimes a problem, yes, but not as much as on a phone call (I hate phones)--I can at least see the person and gauge when to talk/listen. I suspect that from a commercial standpoint, they're approaching this the right away. They're keeping everything free, like Facebook, until they reach a point where it's part of life for enough people that they'll cash in.

We got dinner delivered last night, and I left specific contact-free instructions for the driver (leave food inside the front door of the building, call or text when you arrive). So imagine my wonder and surprise when the first new human being I've come into close contact with in the past two months is the dumbfuck who I find standing in our lobby (thanks again to the neighbor who unaccountably let him in, top notch, A+ work there) with no mask or gloves and who insists upon handing our food directly to me. And who has, presumably, gone through this same dumbfuck routine with who knows how many other customers. And who has, presumably, missed the news that we're living in one of the hardest hit US counties in the midst of a global pandemic.

This is a reprehensible post, if you want to blame someone, blame the employer not the people in precarious employment being sent out without adequate provision to deliver you food. For all you know he isn't actually permitted to just leave it inside the front door to your building.

nah i'm with OL on this one

Zoom good here too. Have a couple of weekly quiz/drink sessions (one friends, one family) and my 9 yr old son also now has his weekly Cubs meeting via Zoom. There's about 15 or more of them on the call but it's set up so that only the leaders can speak and all the kids are muted until the last five minutes or so when they can talk to each other. My son really enjoys it as it's one of the only chances he gets to see some of his friends from school.

This is absolutely 100% on the delivery services. the continuing independent contractor bullshit means delivery Companies can shirk their responsibilities towards their employees and not provide adequate PPE and training (whist shafting restaurants for 30% of the bill and the customers for whatever delivery charge they can get away with).

"How big is the hole? I patched a hole in a bathtub once using an epoxy repair kit with plastic mesh... it looked terrible but was watertight. JB Weld might be effective too. Might tide you over for six months or a year (especially if it's the bathroom sink and not the kitchen)."

the hole was quite a biggie and beyond repairing I think. I live in social housing so I just click my fingers and say "oi skippy.. new sink ..pronto!" and one comes the next day - that's socialism for you! Love the new sink as well, can't use it till tomorrow and won't be able to sleep tonight!

It isn't especially difficult to imagine why, even in a pandemic, a food delivery guy might be forbidden from just leaving food in the lobby of a shared building. I'm not saying it's ideal approach - we've ordered in at various points during lockdown and had other deliveries and on some occasions they have been required to physically hand them to us. 'Doesn't this dumbfuck know there's a pandemic on?' isn't an especially edifying line to take with people who have to go out there and aren't in a position to kick up a fuss about it.

matt dc otm

Yeah - OL how do you even know your instructions were passed on to him?

Rethink this one big man

Every delivery service we've used is explicitly set up for contact-free delivery at this point. I wouldn't use them otherwise, because I don't want to be exposed unnecessarily and I don't want others exposing themselves unnecessarily. He didn't need to interact with anyone at all. Everyone else who's delivered anything here (on the rare occasion we've had anything delivered here) seems to be onboard and get it. I'm sympathetic to anyone who's having to maneuver through the outside world on a regular basis but it blows my mind that there are still people in that position who are (apparently) taking basically zero precautions. I mean the state has had a face mask mandate since the first of the month, for the love of pete.

Anyway, sorry to mostly apolitically discuss/vent about my rational/irrational fears and experiences in the Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020 thread.