Of course, everybody knows about the Covid-19 pandemic. Here's what I call my Covid journey, the steps at which it stopped feeling foreign and started feeling like a personal danger:
- In early February, I remember discussing the news out of China with my friend Miki. At that point, I still felt like we had a lot more to fear from the seasonal influenza.
- By late February, I was worried about the economic effects of the oncoming crisis. I didn't expect supply chain disruption, but I did think it likely that the hype would cause an uptick in demand and lead to shortages. Fred and I don't generally keep much extra food on hand. We put something on the shopping list when we start getting low on it. I did my first Hamsterkaufen (the Germans really do have a word for everything; in this case it means shopping like a hamster) on February 27. Fred cleared off some shelves in the basement to accommodate my purchases, which we both assumed were not really necessary.
- On March 8, we were supposed to meet up with our friends Phil and Amy for lunch at National Harbor. We changed our plans and cooked steaks here at the house instead when news broke the night before that attendees at the recent CPAC, which was held at the nearby Gaylord Hotel, had tested positive. We felt a little silly, but why take chances?
- Annabelle was supposed to come to town that next week for a programming conference, which got canceled at the last minute, but I was still hoping she would come just for a visit since her ticket had already been booked. She opted not to come though, which was probably a good idea.
- Around this same time, I was encouraging the national indexing organization on whose board I sit to consider canceling our April conference in North Carolina, not because I feared we would be in some sort of lockdown situation but just because I thought the virus was going to make people less likely to travel. We decided to err on the side of caution and replace this year's live conference with a virtual conference.
- I was supposed to fly to Orlando on Saturday, March 14, to visit my family and to see Sarah and Violet, who were going to be there visiting Sarah's mother. We were going to take Violet for her first trip to Disney World on Monday, March 16. The whole week before I was in turmoil. I wanted to see them so bad, but at the same time I was feeling awful about making the trip, especially the Disney part, when the death reports were stacking up.
- On Wednesday, March 11, we got guidance from our union at work to request permission to telework if we felt unsafe going in to the office. I arranged with my manager to come in the next day for a meeting but then to switch to telework starting Friday.
- That Thursday I canceled my travel plans for Florida. Within a day or two, Disney had announced that they were closing their parks the night of Sunday, March 15, so that part of the trip became, as Joey from Friends would say, moo--like a cow's opinion, it just didn't matter.
- During my first day working from home--Friday the 13th!--the guidance from our company switched from needing permission to telework to needing permission to go into the office.
- That next week marked the first week that Fred and I would spend working from home. As I type this, we are headed into week 11.
Obviously a lot of my 2020 for 2020 list became outmoded during this transition. Anything involving travel has been shelved for the foreseeable future. I decided early on that I did not need to do anything (like learning to ride a unicycle) that might increase my chances for needing medical care. So I have transformed my list into a 19 for Covid-19:
- Keep regular work hours: 9:00 to 5:00
- 20 flights of stairs daily
- Re-read A Gentleman in Moscow
- Finish knitting sweater (and then Sam’s stocking)
- Finish “The Self-Taught Programmer” class
- Clean out Downloads folder
- Catch up on podcasts
- Daily Duolingo and Deutsche Welle
- Animal Crossing
- Finish birthday puzzle
- Bake bread or make cinnamon rolls
- 1SE: guest stars
- Watch a Bluprint class
- Freelance indexing project - April 14
- Table of cases presentation for ASI’s virtual conference - April 25
- Take 19 baths
- Do 19 workouts
- Close Safari tabs on phone (146)
- Make face masks
I haven't looked at the list in several weeks, and there are a few things on there that I'm probably going to change. But this is my list for now, and having finally caught up on 10 weeks that have been both incredibly long and incredibly short all at once, I shall once again start documenting my progress (or lack thereof) here.
