Saturday, April 11, 2020

Sticking with the routine

Saturday morning, April 11th.

Day before Easter. We have nothing planned for observance. It's basically just another day for us.

The pandemic seems to be somewhat flattening out here in Connecticut. Which basically means the daily number of new cases has stopped increasing exponentially. It doesn't mean that this is anywhere near over. People are still going to get sick, and every day the total number of cases will continue to rise. We're still months away from even considering relaxing any of the current restrictions.

Our trip to Spain and Andorra scheduled for May 22nd is canceled. We knew it was going to happen, but we had to wait for Norwegian Air to cancel our flight in order to qualify for a refund. Otherwise, if we'd canceled our trip we would have only been eligible for a credit.

Basically, I'd rather have the refund because I'm worried Norwegian may file Chapter 11 and leave us high and dry. So hopefully they'll get us the refund soon. AirBnb allowed us to cancel with no penalty. They are refunding our deposits also.

Of course, our April trip to DC was canceled weeks ago. Amtrak gave us a full refund, and the pre-paid hotel is similarly going to give us our money back.

Now the only trip we still have planned this year is July 4th in Montreal. I figure there's not more than a 1-in-3 chance we'll still be able to go, but both our airfares and AirBnb are fully refundable if we cancel by June 18th. I'm sure the Montreal Jazz Festival scheduled for that week will either be greatly limited or rescheduled/canceled.

Work is still going reasonably well. Being dispatched from home and only running critical service calls means that I may only have to go out a couple times a week. But we're an essential service company, so we'll be fully employed for the duration.

We are taking every precaution when we go shopping once a week. We may stock up next time and get two weeks worth of groceries to avoid unnecessary exposures. Especially considering the supermarket we use has had a bunch of new cases recently!

The stress of this pandemic is starting to show. The fear of getting sick actually makes it harder to sleep. Every day I do a personal inventory to see how my health is. We're still going on daily walks, while using all necessary protection. I'm getting tired of the smell of alcohol and sanitizer!

The coming week will tell us a lot about where we're headed. Trump as usual will be clamoring to open the economy as soon as possible, probably causing a second wave of infections and another cycle of illness. But we'll also start hearing about some results of the latest viral treatments, and hopefully we'll get something that will slow or eliminate new infections.

Anyway, we're sticking with our new routine. It's basically life during wartime. We're all in the same bunker.

And something tells me that while we may return to some semblance of normalcy, we'll never get back to what we were just a few months ago.

Things will be different now.

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