Love in the Time of COVID-19

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Itā€™d be interesting if there were a resurgence in drive-in theaters, though I wouldnā€™t hold my breathā€¦

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Journal of the Corona Year

3/22

Last night I got an email telling me my glasses were ready. So I guess optometrists are considered ā€œessential.ā€

I hadnā€™t planned on making any large journeys this weekend, but I did want to get them before the quarantining rules became more restrictive. These were my first ā€œcompleteā€ glasses, with Progressions and Transitions. And anyway, with the subways being so sparsely populated they are far safer than my trip to the crowded, frantic grocery store yesterday.

I took the R to 4 Avenue/9 Street and transferred to the F at and got off at Delancey. Itā€™s hard to navigate subway stations when you canā€™t brush past slow-moving people.

The store was open, the two staff-members were friendly. No one else was there.

While they were adjusting the temples, I noticed a letter-sized piece of paper lying on the counter with a few short paragraphs printed on it. It was facing away from me, but I could read it. It was a notice to be hung on the front door apologizing to customers for the store being temporarily closed. So they were still open, but they were preparing.

To get some exercise and to test out the transitional power of the Transitions, I walked to Canal Street to get the N train. It was an interesting experience encountering people on the nearly deserted sidewalks of the LES and Chinatown. They would appear, and I would have to find a way of getting around them or finding another route.

Walking in Manhattan now is like being Pac-Man, but without the power pellets.

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This is coming from de Blasio, so it might be an exageration.

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I realise that this is a sober time for everyone but thereā€™s always a silver lining

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Day 1 of officially working from Home after a weekend of getting my home office space finalized after it had been moved (again)

Something is beeping. Just at the edge of hearing, so as long as I have something playing I donā€™t hear it, but if it is quiet, I do.

But it is there and Iā€™ve yet to find the source.

This may be how madness begins.

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Check anything with that contains one or more batteries. Like smoke detectors.

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Is that a sports reference?

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Itā€™s a reference to the ā€œFalloutā€ games. The uniform of a ā€œvault dwellerā€ who went into a sealed bunker and avoided destruction in nuclear apocalypse. Vault 111, from what I gather, is from the Fallout 4 game and was based in Massachusetts (I havenā€™t played that one, not sure if thereā€™s more to the reference).

Little bit of whistling past the graveyardā€¦

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At least he has a sense of humor.

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Got it, thanks!

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With now all of our business units on WFH, we have weathered the onrush of VPN\Citrix access really well.

Primary VPN worked fine, some of the older VPN solutions *in the process of migrating to the primary VPN) held as well after some strategic upgrades on userā€™s machines.

Citrix farm was upgraded with some older kit we had decommissioned from other purposes but not disposed of yet. License true up my be a bit $$$, but have to wait until the dust settles.

All in all, all the CIOs were happy. A rare thing indeed and will disappear like the morning dew.

Itā€™s a living.

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Journal of the Corona Year

3/23

Today was my first full day of working from home. Everything went well. The idea of operating my office iMac from a laptop in my apartment is still quite amazing. However, you have to pace yourself. You cannot rush it. Operating a computer this was is like wading through molasses with your eyes half closed.

At one point around noon a mother and child played a game of ball in the hall outside my door. Normally this would have been annoying, but now I will allow it. I just hope they sanitized themselves when they were done.

There was cold rain and strong winds all day. The kind of weather that keeps people at home. So I decided it was a good day to try grocery shopping. Indeed it was. There were only a few people in the store, and I did my best to avoid everyoneā€™s vapor wake.

The produce was fully stocked and looked like better quality than usual. Perhaps their supplier ran out of the usual second-tier goods and had to bring their top quality instead.

Other parts of the store were still a bit bare. For example, there was no ricotta cheese and only the lower-quality mozzarella. There must have been lots of lasagna made in Bay Ridge over the weekend.

This evening there was a notice on Instagram from Moscot. As of tonight all of their stores will be temporarily closed until further notice. So I got my glasses just about in time.

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Iā€™m not that afraid for me:

But, god, this state is going to collapse.

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My daughter is now with me en route home from college. It was strange to drive up on a Sunday with roads clear all 15 hours of the drive, stranger still to return part way today on a Monday with road still nearly empty of all traffic, most rest stops with businesses partly shut down, gas station attendants standing far away from the desk trying not to get infected. Itā€™s nice to have my daughter with me now.

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