Summer Vacation: Day 1
Pandemic Emergency Day: 71 (Counting from March 13)
My summer vacation starts today. I live in Texas and have been staying at home, for the most part, for more than 2 months. It's crazy to think about. Technically in the US, President Trump declared a national health emergency back on Jan. 31; but most people didn't notice. It was the March 13 invocation of emergency powers that I think marked the beginning of this nightmare for most people so that's the day I'm going to count from for my pandemic emergency days. That was also around the time of spring break for many schools.
I had been paying attention to the news coming out of China and Europe so I already had extra groceries and such, but a lot of people quickly panicked and bought out toilet paper. I wasn't expecting that. Luckily I keep lots of toilet paper and paper towels and cleaning wipes at home. Many people had spring break vacation plans and refused to cancel them. I went into lock down mode. With a virus out there that could ruin my health, hospitalize me, or even kill me - I didn't want to take any risks.
I'm so lucky that I have my teaching salary. We went into "at home learning" mode and I was able to keep my job, but millions of people are now unemployed. There are people out there struggling just to have money to eat, let alone pay their bills. It's going to get worse as this situation continues because people will run out of savings. I also think the housing market is going to have huge issues.
Looking at the positives of this situation: I no longer eat fast food or delivery food like pizza. I cook all of my meals, which should be healthier (but there's also stress eating from the anxiety of the pandemic). The more experience I've gotten cooking, the more confident I feel as a chef. BTW, I love all of the Zatarain's products. Easy to follow instructions, just add meat, and you have a meal in about 30 minutes that is absolutely delicious; I've cooked a lot of jambalaya, red beans & rice, gumbo, and dirty rice during the pandemic.
I also have more time to read and, now that the school year is over, to write. I spent some time playing Minecraft and playing The Sims 3 (with a legacy challenge in the works). My 2 cats have gotten spoiled that I'm home all the time. They are getting plenty of attention now.
On the downside, I use my school laptop and iPad for everything and they are now blocking Discord. That means I can't play D&D online with all of the people in the Discord communities. I do have a few friends who play over Skype, but it's not the same without roll20 and Discord. It's still fun, but it's just 1 game about every 2-4 weeks. And I'm certainly not going to have people over to play in person like in pre-pandemic existence. Even with facial masks, it's just not safe to sit in an enclosed area with people for hours.
Well that's all I've got for the blog today. Hopefully there will be more good news in future personal logs. Peace!
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