What’s the state of your work/personal life these days? I keep hearing reports that the US citizenry are still ignoring this as a commie plot (and suspect this is correlated with MAGA states). I had friends wintering in the states say that it seems like business as usual in the south, lots of business at ihop, etc.
In Waterloo, things are dead quiet except for boomers shopping at walmart and costco.
My entire family is now at home. We’re not quarantined, but we’re not going out other than to walk the dog. Groceries are ordered online and then picked up. We’ve put some home renos on hold because we’re not prepared to wander the hardware stores picking out flooring.
Workwise, we’re all work from home which is nice. I work at a business incubator with shared workspaces who’s staff went work from home a week and a half ago. I went in early last week to pick up my phone and webcam, and the building was empty. I’ve had more zoom meetings in the last week than I’ve had in my life.
University of waterloo is shut down, campus buildings locked. Students just had a week off but return to classes today - with everything online now. Final exams are cancelled, it’s a mess because profs are having to replace finals with projects and changing the weightings of midterms and students are in complete turmoil over it. It’s also time to sign up for summer courses (Waterloo has 4 month co-ops, so the summer term is a regular term full of students) and nobody really knows what that’s going to look like other than it’ll be fully virtual.
I’m taking courses at UW but I’ve been fortunate. One of my courses was online already so we’re just getting a takehome essay. The second course they did two things: reweighted to be ‘best of midterm marks’ and finals are now a 100% takehome group project. I killed on one of the midterms so that’s good, and I do really well on assignments with no time pressure so yay. Found a group partner and we’re just using zoom to work through things.
So far so good. Wife and I are retired, so work isn’t an issue for us. Groceries will be a challenge, but local supermarkets have just started senior hour at 6 AM, so I hope they will be less crowded then. We’ve done several takeout meals pick up at restaurant; will do more.
Today the province of Ontario shut down all non essential businesses. That’s going to include most things actuarial. Everyone will be laid off or working from home.
My Sil works in hr at an insurer and has been 100 percent from home for a week and a half.
I wonder if ups will be still working. I needs muh Amazon.
Yeah, waddup with that? We just went under essential services only allowed open, starting Wednesday. My son runs out to the beer and liquor store which is crowded. They’re telling everyone to relax, they’re staying open.
At the same time, they’re considering closing down construction sites.
And the Canadian federal government is now trying to give themselves powers to spend and tax, without oversight. Our government works by ‘number of representatives per party’, and they’re in a minority. That means that they have the most seats of any party, but not enough to pass anything - so everything they do requires that they get one of the other parties on board. It’s called democracy people, and they want to circumvent it.
Worse, I have a coding assignment due. And I suck at coding. Stupid R.
As some who at times posts here told me, shutting down the liquor stores could cause serious health problems by itself. Forcing an alcoholic to go cold turkey is dangerous.
I’ve heard that too. My mother remarried later in life, and he eventually had some alcohol problems. When he went in the hospital for unrelated reasons, they actually prescribed a shot a day because the withdrawal would be catastrophic.
But I think the lineup at the liquor store were mostly people like my son who wanted three boxes of beer so he had something to drink while watching netflix.
Yes, most buyers would be better off not there, and most of us would be better off if they were SIPping (Stolen acronym; sue me) instead of sipping or guzzling.
Is SIPping is as redundant as ATM machine? I suppose not. But “were SIP” should also be ok.
