Charlie

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.

I actually filed and paid our 2019 taxes by check on March 13 (silly me!), so I assume we will be getting a direct deposit into the account on which the check was drawn. Right?

I suspect that many men who become aware of their sexual attraction to other men at a young age become introverted simply in self-defense. I realized I was homosexual in adolescence and was very shy until my very early twenties. Once I was out of college and on my own in a gay urban community, I became more self-confident socially, and was lucky to find a partner and friends who basically taught me how to at least behave like an extrovert, even though I still am in that "Introspective Introvert" category.

Back in December, I used a ton of frequent flyer miles to purchase a one year membership in the Star Alliance airport lounges, because I expected to be doing a fair amount of leisure flying in 2020. I haven't used it, I'll bet I never get to use it at all, and I'm sure there won't be any refund.

Although I have always thought of myself as something of a loner, this crisis has made me more aware how much of the meaning I get from life is from social interaction. Before I retired, I looked forward to having more time to sit at home alone and read and listen to music. Instead, I moved to Southern California and ended up spending my most enjoyable hours playing tennis and socializing at a tennis club. I now live in a 55+ community, where I have also discovered the pleasure of playing Bridge and other games with groups of residents. All those activities have suddenly been stopped by government orders, and I have lots of time to sit at home and read and listen to music...but I don't feel like doing that now.

It sounds to me as though this young man is really concerned about the fact that his partner would go back to paying for sex if they were to break up. Does he have a nagging worry that the older partner finds him desirable basically because he is putting out for free?

The young often engage in dangerous behaviors because they feel that the consequences they are warned about won't happen to them--whether it's AIDS, gonorrhea, addiction, rape or unwanted pregnancy. With COVID-19, the news is basically reinforcing the belief that they are going to be OK, because only older people are going to get really sick and even die. And many of the young never get wiser as they grow older, if they were lucky enough to escape those consequences when they were young.

They look like something out of a Tom of Finland illustration.

I get gas frequently in Oregon, and I have never considered tipping the attendant. I grew up in the era when you were not supposed to pump your own gas, so every fill-up was done by an attendant, and I never knew of anyone tipping the attendant in those days, so why do it now, especially since they usually expect you to do all the other things that they used to do, like clean your windows.

After many days of cold, wet windy weather, suddenly today the sky is blue, the breeze is light, and the temperature is rising. As I walked to the mailbox just now, all that I kept hearing in my head was, "Pourquoi me reveiller, O souffle du printemps...?"

NJ and OR are the only states without self-service.

I was in Texas in February, before the price of oil stated to fall, and I paid $2.39 for hi-test at one station in a small town in west Texas. At the time, I was paying almost $4 in Palm Springs.

If I remember correctly, that was actually a line in one of her movies.

The one constant in the supermarkets I have been to here in Palm Springs the past two weeks has been long empty shelves in the canned foods area. The other day at Albertson's there was a single can in the Progresso soup section: split pea with ham. There were a dozen cans of sardines, and I bought half of them (I love sardine sandwiches). Eggs and yogurt have also been hard to find.