social isolation survey in shiny things

Swiped from Search Results. Very timely. Well, it was timely when I started it on April 8. Okay, still timely since nothing at all has changed since April 8.

Are you an Essential worker?
I am not, and neither is Baker B. And we can both work from home. We are REALLY REALLY lucky. I was just reminiscing with someone yesterday about how we used to be completely dependent on paper files for student records, but now everything is accessible via our paperless system. Our paperless system which I’m the “office tech” for, and got approved to go to their conference in Orlando like two days before this all exploded. The conference was in June, and I was SO EXCITED to get to go somewhere. (I went to one in Philadelphia a little over a year ago and was overly thrilled about that too, because I never ever get to travel for my job, and I looooooove traveling.) Anyhow, that’s not the point; the point is that I can do pretty much everything I need to do now remotely, and that would not have been possible a few years ago. I do have a little rolling cart full of graduation applications in my spare room and three notebooks full of senior checks, but printing all this stuff is something we really need to stop doing anyhow. We just all like having a physical paper copy in front of us when doing graduation checks.

How many drinks have you had since the quarantine began?
A LOT. Way way way too many. This needs to stop. I stocked up massively on every Panic Shopping Trip we did, so I have plenty of booze. Mostly beer, mostly from our local Appalachian Mountain Brewery, which has the best beer EVER. My favorite is the porter, but Boone Mountain Blonde is great too, and what I am mostly stocked up on because everyone ran out of porter. Boone Mountain Blonde is not what we call it. When they originally opened a number of years ago, they called this beer Honey Badger. Honey Badger is a MUCH better name, so that’s what we call it still. Although I can see their point since it’s a smooth beer, and not what you think of when you think of vicious honey badgers who don’t give a shit.

Sometime between when I originally wrote this and now, Baker B woke up hearing popping noises in the spare room, where I was hording my beers, and discovered my beloved AMB Porter was exploding - and he hastened to toss the six pack with issues into the kitchen sink. The next morning I was baffled as to why A) a six pack of beer was in the sink, and B) there seemed to be beer on the counters and on the cabinets and on pretty much everything.... then I tapped on one of the not-leaking beers in the sink, and it exploded. In my face. Which was not as horrific as it sounds, but did result in beer in my eyes, my hair, all over my pjs, all over the ceiling, and all over pretty much every other surface in the kitchen. Since then most of the remaining six-packs have foamed up and tasted weird when I open one. This is VERY VERY annoying. It is not cheap beer.

If you have kids, are they driving you nuts yet?
I have no kids, THANK GOD because I think I would have gone completely out of my mind by now. Me, Baker B and three cats are plenty of creatures confined to one small house.

What new hobby have you taken up during this?
NONE. I have actually been a wee bit annoyed, because everyone else on earth seems to have massive amounts of spare time now, and they are catching up with projects and reading and watching all the shows piled up on their watchlists… and I am working absolutely as hard at home as I did in the office. With the added twist that it’s weirdly difficult to take breaks and to take lunch and to actually quit working at 5 now. On the plus side, I do find time to run the dishwasher and throw a load of clothes in the washer. And I really am grateful to be busy and not be sitting around with nothing to do, or with no job at all.... but… I want to catch up on all the things!! I AM catching up on sleep at least, because now I just have to get up and turn the computer on.

OH WAIT… I have actually started a bunch of seeds in little starter pots so that we can have something to eat this summer if the apocalypse continues!! Tomatoes, peppers, and a bunch of cosmos. Which aren’t edible but are pretty. Also lettuce and basil from a “kit” - I think one container of lettuce is growing, but the rest seem to not be doing anything. Tomorrow I am going to put tomatoes and peppers and cosmos into “grow bags”, which I had no idea existed until a few days ago when I was trying to see if it would be possible to order very big pots on Amazon for under $10,322,667 apiece. We have no good space to plant veggies and I’d used my big pots for basil and lettuce. I just got these 7 gallon grow bags yesterday so we’ll see how they do.

How many grocery runs have you done?
When this started, like a month ago, we went on A WHOLE LOT OF GROCERY RUNS. Baker B is a Stock Up For The Apocalypse kind of shopper at the best of times, and we made so many massive stock up trips for the first couple of weeks that it was actually a little embarrassing… but GOOD in the end, since when he finally settled down and decided we had enough stuff, we were so stocked up that we’ve only been shopping once in the last two weeks, and that was for perishables. We’ll probably get by for another week. I miss going to the store, getting a little hand basket, and buying a few things whenever I want. I’m a shop-several-times-a-week-for-a-few-things-at-a-time kind of shopper.

What are you spending your stimulus money on?
Not sure. We don’t have ours since Baker B is from the 1800s and has never filed our taxes online, so we didn’t get the direct deposit. It sounds like a whole lot of people didn’t get it who do have direct deposit with the IRS. I have tried to give IRS.GOV my direct deposit info but of course keep getting the INFO NOT FOUND page. We aren’t desperate, luckily for us, so we can wait for paper checks. Although I am REALLY REALLY annoyed that we’re getting checks with that orange goon’s name on them.

Do you have any special occasions that you will miss during this quarantine?
Our 29th anniversary was Monday, and although we don’t usually do anything massive, at least on that day, we DO generally go out for a beer and maybe even dinner. I just had pictures from our Mammoth Cave trip four years ago pop up on Facebook- that was on our anniversary and was SO much fun. We also always take a redbud viewing drive this time of year, up into Virginia, which isn’t happening. Next up will be our birthdays in early June, so we’ll see how that pans out.

If a burglar breaks into your house, are you prepared to suppress them?
Hahahhaha!!! Not really. We could throw clutter and canned goods and boxes of rice and quinoa at them. Oh, and Exploding AMB Porter!! Maybe I better hang onto the rest of those cans. Phillip might bite them - he does growl and act menacing when he feels threatened.

I am splitting this survey into two parts, since I lack the ability to be concise. And here are some pictures of my new coworkers.

This one stole my chair when I got up, and then bit me when I tried to take it back. That kind of behavior is ordinarily frowned upon at the office. Obviously he thought I was a burglar.

He also is very helpful in eating the elastic band off my notebook.

My somewhat unusual view as I work:

And not a work view, but we can’t leave out Eddie. Poor little Eddie has lost weight the last few months, and doesn’t have a thyroid problem (Cayce does, so we figured he did too). His white blood count is high, which could just be stress, and the vet suspects Phillip since he’s, ummmm, kind of a terror. I suspect Eddie was stressed out by the vet visit because he is VERY shy and we had to leave him there and then go get him hours later thanks to social isolation, but I’m trying to be sure he gets plenty to eat and doesn’t stress out. He doesn’t LOOK stressed about Phillip-