Charlie

Brilliant!

This morning my Stater's even had toilet paper! It has been very well stocked with almost everything for the past week, and they have redesigned the layout so that the aisles are wider and there is more open floor space. They will let us bring our own bags, but they won't pack them for us.

I am paying my cleaning lady to stay home. I am not going to do my own cleaning at the same time.

I believe I read somewhere that a doctor gets a much smaller payment for a telemedicine appointment than an office visit that covers the same subject, but gets even less or nothing for a phone call.

Starting last week, every market I have been to in Palm Springs requires people who bring their own reusable bags to bag their own purchases on tables set aside for that purpose, so the checkers don't have to touch those bags. However, if the checkers bag the purchases in the store's bags, then the customer is taking home the bags that the checkers have touched. It feels like we are going around in circles.

I suggested it, but I suspect that financial reimbursement for telemedicine is better; he probably doesn't get paid for a phone call.

A good friend stays here in Palm Springs for the winter, while her husband lives all year in the mountains in Utah. I asked if she planned to return to be with him in this trying time, and she said, "Are you kidding? There are still two feet of snow on the ground up there!"

Now that would be a scary project for me!

I had my first telemedicine appointment last week on Facetime, which worked pretty well. It was a follow-up with an allergist to go over results of tests done in the office on March 2nd, so there really was no need to actually be "seen" by the doctor (though I don't mind "seeing" him, because he is so cute).

Remember, this is California. Bicycles are considered an important part of the transportation system (almost every town in CA has designated bike lanes for commuters), so bike shops are specifically listed as an essential business, just like auto repair shops. The bike shop allows only one person at a time to come in, and customers must wait 6 ft apart on a line outside. There was a pretty long line outside of people with bikes that needed new tires, broken chains, etc.

I discovered when I was young that one of the best ways to feel in control of your life is to write about it, which is why I have kept a daily narrative journal for close to a half century. It is not only helpful for us to learn what you are experiencing, but also helpful for yourself. It will also be a resource for you to go back to read in future years. I still sometimes re-read my journals from the 1980s, where I can see my own experience of the first years of the AIDS epidemic from the perspective of having lived through them. Years from now, it can also be a resource for future generations who will not have experienced it. Please keep writing as beautifully as you have here.

Two finger selfie?

I am sure dentists are also seeing a fall-off in income, since so much of their practice is routine procedures like cleaning and filling, which can't be done with the patient wearing a mask or through telemedicine.

Yes, the list of ways in which online education would change the entire higher education experience is long and depressing.

Yesterday I pulled my old bike out of the garage, where it has sat for several years , and took it to a bike shop to be reconditioned, so I can start riding around town for exercise.

Ahoy!

I'm not sure that residential colleges and universities will go the remote learning route. How do kids have drunken parties and sex with new people if their classmates are in their bedrooms at their parents' home? How can you have athletic teams without a campus? How can schools like USC and Alabama make money without filling stadiums and having live football games for TV contracts? How do students take science courses without sophisticated technical equipment? I think that college life will return to its familiar forms pretty quickly. On the other hand, will we see office buildings and retail malls converted to housing? Why not? It's been happening for years to churches.

As an independent consultant for a national company, I used to drive to an office in New Jersey to work. Then in 2002 they decided that most of the non-management employees could work at home, because it would reduce the company's overhead expenses, not only for maintenance of office space, but also because the employees would be supplying their own computers (and power and Internet connections!). Since they used people from all over the country, it also meant that they no longer needed satellite offices full of computers in Chicago, Atlanta, etc., and they could hire people who couldn't get to those satellite offices. Anyone in the country who had the proper equipment and an Internet connection at home could be employed after appropriate training at the main office. It also meant that I could move from PA to CA without giving up my job. After four years of commuting 25 miles on an Interstate to an office, I was happy to continue working from home for the next sixteen years, even though I did miss the cameraderie of working in an office.

I wore my new mask to the supermarket today, and it worked well. My only problem was finding a suitable color ball cap to wear with it.

After telling us for more than a month that only those who are ill should wear a mask, the county authorities suddenly switched gears yesterday and recommended that everyone wear a mask in public. Our HOA president emailed everyone this morning that one of the women in our community has been making homemade masks and donating them to the hospital, but she has a supply that she will sell to residents for $5 each. I called her immediately, and this morning my spouse went to her house (he said there were about 20 people outside!) and bought a mask for each of us. They are very pretty; mine would make a nice cover fabric for a Victorian sofa.

Oh, good! He's using hand sanitizer.

My tennis club just told us that they are closing the courts for the duration. The only active outdoor exercise left for me is walking.

I don't think things will be back to anything like normal by September. I also worry that the pandemic will appear to be tailing off by the end of the summer, but will come roaring back in the autumn, just as the flu did in 1918. I love London (I used to live there), but it is not where I want to be ill or quarantined.

I may wait and see what things are like in a year before making any commitments. I certainly don't see our original plans of London in September happening.

Thanks for the info. Last year we did get a direct deposit return from the IRS to our joint account. We both get direct deposit S.S., but they are to our individual checking accounts, not our joint account. We each qualify individually for the checks, as well as a married couple filing jointly, and the total amount seems to be the same either way, so I assume that somehow or other it will all work out.