A continued journal of Week 2 from the Social Distancing zone of Washington DC.

This week the news started getting dire as our hospitals and healthcare workers are getting hit hard by the pandemic. This is also the week that things started getting personally stressful. Getting accurate information is quite difficult and I am trying to making sure not to get overwhelmed by hearsay and rumor. However, the partial testing and seven-day delay on results create a pretty big gap between the number of confirmed cases in the US vs. our likely actual cases and daily transmission rates. Social distancing and staying at home seem appropriate, and possibly not enough.

All that being said, I’m going to keep things positive here. Week 2:

The very beginnings of scarcity

If I was able to send a letter to my past self from a month ago it would say:

Buy 2 big packs of toilet paper
Buy 2 big packs of paper towels
Buy dry yeast packets so that I can make pizza from home
Buy an enormous dispenser of hand sanitizer and 4 small bottles
Buy 2 x 32 oz 99% ethyl or isopropyl alcohol
Buy 25 lb and 35 lb kettlebells
Consider buying a deep freeze chest for the basement

Things I did this week that I would not normally do

Sanitized my doorbell
Filled up my car with gas when it is already 80% full
Backed out of running an online D&D game for the local community
Many zoom happy hours
An absolutely wonderful zoom dinner with family around the country. We should have done this years ago.

Zoom socializing newbies

“If I have to be on Zoom one second longer, I’ll scream.” – friend unused to working from home

As a six-year work-from-home veteran, it is humorous to see the rest of the world telling the same work from home jokes for the first time. Seeing people discover “Brady Bunch-mode”, the mute button, and being ready to be off of zoom on the weekend is amusing.

“I never knew my lifestyle had a name, it’s called quarantine” – gym member on gym cocktail hour

Am I taking this seriously enough?

This week I left my house for three things:

Getting supplies from the grocery store.
Running in my neighborhood.
Visiting my local bar for a weekly pick-up order.

I’m torn on whether I should be doing the third one when I have plenty of food at home.