HOST: Welcome everyone, to an other edition of “Quarantining Today.” I’m your host, [name redacted], and we’re checking in with some of our favoUrite DFO contributors to see how they’re coping with the societal changes that the novel coronavirus pandemic has brought into their lives. With me today are BC Dick, Game Time Decision, Maestro, Scotchnaut, Litre_Cola, and BeerguyRob.

How is everything going wherever you be Eh?

Scotchnaut

I live in a small community in northern Ontario somewhere between two ‘cities’ that you’ve never heard of-Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury-and commute to a smaller one where I work. We are an ‘essential business’ and it’s been crazy trying to meet the needs of First Nation communities, grocery/convenience stores, restaurants that are doing takeout/delivery, food banks, etc. It’s an “all hands on deck” situation at work and the vast majority of folks have responded very well. I had a shouty match with a customer today that insisted that one of our drivers should deliver directly into her store. Wasn’t going to happen and I had to make it clear to her. Of course some people just don’t get-like the member of our Health and Safety Committee that threw a party last Saturday. “CONGRATULATIONS! YOU’RE WORKING FROM HOME!” Getting folks to practice social distancing in the workplace has been a unique challenge but they’re finally doing it. It’s a hard thing for the warehouse guys to do though. So much respect for them.

HOST: What is your biggest concern?

The thing I worry about most going forward? What is the hobo population going to look like after all this is over? They tend to be sociable and their numbers might decrease greatly. Every night I pray that the social safety net fails and a whole new generation of misfits learns how to ride the rails. This new crop will be ripe for the picking. (That’s good readin)

In my neck of the woods the panic buying goes in waves. Bread, root vegetables, bathroom tissue (of course) dog food, ground beef, bananas, Kraft Dinner, canned salmon and tuna. We don’t deliver door to door out help out businesses that do as well as grocery stores, convenience, gas stations, schools (until recently) butcher shops, you name it. We’ve had a flurry of business from First Nation communities that are locking down and want to feed their members. It’s been a wild ride these last three weeks…

Litre_Cola 

BC Dick

I’m in Kelowna, BC. The weather is pretty nice. Going between the high singles and mid teens (Celsius). Grass is growing. (Hell yeah it is, cheap too!)
I’m only drinking and smoking somewhat more and earlier as now working from home. But I get more dog walks in. Around here it’s not too weird but I’ve only noticed those plastic shields and the lines for distancing at the corner store and the liquor store. Both in walking distance so that’s nice. Ran out of TP a few days ago but the store had their 4 packs back in so I thought that was getting normal. I only got one pack and they were cleaned out the next day so maybe not. School next door is closed so it’s now an all day dog park.
I miss the pub as well as curling but that was only one week I lost. Other than I’m really enjoying this. Stay at home, still have a job thankfully and no family members hurt so far. I’ve been eating too many chips though. I’m already built like 10 year retired Warren Sapp so I need to keep that in check.
In a good world I’d see this resulting in more folks conserving their food other consumables and learning how to cook more from staples.
But I’m liking this world so far, but I know it has affected others so it’s not great other than my life’s day to day shit. Better not fuck with the Brier next year though. We already lost the memorial cup this year and I plan on being right wrecked up in the Brier patch come next February. (DFO meetup?)

Game Time Decision

I’m about an hour east of Toronto, in redneck white trash suburbs. So, there has been zero TP that we have seen in 3 weeks. Other things are hit and miss. I was a the grocery store 2 weeks ago, and there wasn’t any pasta, bread or rice. The soups were almost all gone. No flour, sugar or chocolate for baking either. But since then Mrs GTD has gone and found all but TP. I’m an IT guy, so already work remote most of the time. My employer has said that we’re in good shape to ride this out for a few years ( i hope not), so that’s comforting. Mrs GTD works for the our region and is considered essential, so has to go into work(booo). But it is a position that is not going to be affected by this whole thing, so financially we are good.
Almost everything is closed here. So there’s SFA to do. Kids are both in high school and have been off school since March 12th, with no back to school date yet ( if at all). They are talking about online learning, but they still need to figure it all out. The older one should be graduating this year and on to post secondary school in September. The gubment has said that students won’t lose their year, but haven’t said what they are going to do. Also to be determined is how post secondary school works for the oldest. She’s already accepted an offer and has put down money for first year residence in their dorms. But if this ain’t over, then she may not move out as planned.

HOST : How are you passing the time otherwise?
I have been trying to be a good kid and use the weighs that are in the basement most nights. I’ve been out for a few jogs ( think sloth like pace) to just try to get out and get some fresh air. But to counter act all that, I’ve been having a beer or 2 most nights, since I’ve got no place to go. We’ve been trying to do all that shit around the house that you just don’t get to unless you have to. So far we’ve cleaned out a room that looked like a hoarder lived in it. We’ve done a bunch of other cleaning that normally wouldn’t get done. I started our taxes. I replaced a hinge on the fridge ( pic below) that i had ordered a few weeks ago. We have been streaming a bunch of stuff ( Blacklist, Brooklyn 99, Good Place, Fosters, Tiger King, Jack Ryan). The show being watched depends on which family members are in the room, so that’s why the list is so all over the place. Oh and we’ve been cooking and baking ( buns a la yeahright pictured below) more since we have the time, but there’s sooooo much food around here, that I’m starting on my quaran15.
For me, I’m going to miss that my butcher has closed as they don’t want to get sick, which i totally get. But when the stuff we do have runs out, i’m going to miss it. The kids miss seeing all their friends and the social stuff. It’s just not the same on the phone. (You do have a great brewery nearby)

(This is just damn funny.)

The Maestro

Living in our Great Nourthern CapitoUl (Ottawa), I’ve kinda felt in the thick of things since everything went haywire on Thursday, March 12th. Lady Maestro and I got home from a Vancouver trip (where we got to meet @beerguyrob, a true gentleman!) (he is something alright) on the 10th, and while we were certainly aware of the worsening situation while in airports (we had medical masks, gloves, and alcohol wipes), and wiped down seats and backrests, folding trays, etc., and were very diligent the whole time. We got back Tuesday the 10th, and both of us went to work Wednesday and Thursday as normal, but still definitely keeping a close eye on the news the whole time. On the 12th… holy fuck. What a surreal day. Spring Break in Ontario was due to start on Monday the 16th, and I’d had chats with colleagues at school about what their plans were for the break. A few had family Florida trips planned; responses ranged from “yeah, I’m kinda having second thoughts” to “as long as we don’t turn the kids loose at Busch Gardens and keep close to the [rented] house, we’ll be fine.” I was a little skeptical, to say the least. Lady Maestro and I had plans for another little weekend away doing some skiing in small-town Quebec at the end of Spring Break, but we were really starting to question that.And then, right in the middle of teaching piano after school, I get a text from my mom. It’s a link to a tweet from the CBC. School’s cancelled until April 1st.And now I’m in full panic mode. What does this mean? Am I gonna be paid? Unlike many other teachers in the province, I don’t have a guaranteed permanent contract yet, which typically means that if I don’t work, I don’t get paid. What the fuck am I gonna do? And how the fuck did I hear about all this from the internet before I heard it from the government or from my union reps?I end the lesson early – I can’t teach at all. It’s one of my colleague’s kids I’m teaching – she hasn’t heard the news yet – I tell her. She’s gobsmacked. She’s got tenure – she’ll be ok. She sees the fear in my eyes, and gives me a hug. A kind gesture, but so much uncertainty right now that I can’t deal with anything. I cancel the rest of my music lessons for the evening. I don’t go to play hockey that night. I can’t do much else other than sit with a beer and stare at the wall.Lady Maestro works at one of the main hospitals here in town. Not as a nurse, but as a sales rep for a big biomed company, selling surgical implants for craniotomy and spine surgeries. She also spends tons of time in the OR, teaching surgeons and nurses how to use the gear her company sells to the hospital. With her time around all these medical professionals, what’s the likelihood of her getting sick, or bringing the virus home with her? What happens to her job if they start cancelling procedures, and then aren’t buying gear?After a few days of many big, gigantic questions, things have calmed down as we’ve adjusted to our new reality. I’m getting partial pay from the school board for at least the two weeks after the break, and Lady Maestro’s job is a-ok. With virtually all elective procedures cancelled at the hospital, and with third-party contractors only allowed entry into the building if specifically requested by a surgeon, we’ve both been cozy working at home. With school out and with basically all of my private lessons on hold, I’m re-training, taking a programming course to help my dad’s company out. I also have a small handful of video music lessons a week still, which is definitely an adjustment for me, but good to try and keep some normalcy in these weird times.It’s been kind of surreal to wake up and know that the world is so unbelievably fucked up right now, as we’ve learned to adjust to the new normal. I was kinda disappointed to see that the local national park was closed, as we enjoyed a lot of good adventures, including hiking up the mountains and skiing back down, and some minor freeclimbing stuff too – but it makes perfect sense that they made the call. I can’t be upset about it – they had to do what they had to do. What is weird is that cops are now doing border patrol checks on all of the bridges between Ontario and Quebec – something I’ve never, ever seen in my lifetime. Residents of Ontario are basically banned from Quebec, but not vice-versa. Things keep changing all the time – first the national park, then the city nature trails, then the local parks… the world is shrinking, and I know it’s for the best, but it’s hard to be cooped up in a basement apartment all day long.Trickiest thing has been groceries, for sure. I’ve been rotating through online orders with my parents, who live nearby – seems like we get one placed every 8-9 days, which is strange, especially for mom, who’s a food writer and tv host and is used to going to the store literally every day for stuff when a new recipe idea lands in her head. It’s good see my folks doing well – they’ve both worked from home for twenty years, so other than grocery stuff and seeing friends, there hasn’t been a ton of change since things started going nuts. Good news is they’re both in good health – even as mom recovers from hip surgery a month ago, she remains in great spirits and is walking 3-4 km a day. We can’t go to dinner at their place anymore, but we did have a redneck party in their big garage the other week, sitting twenty feet apart with beers and tunes. So that was cool.Good news is that we’ve got four gallons of cider finishing brewing here in my home office – should be ready by April 7th. At least there’s that to do. It’s hard – I’m unbelievably fortunate and privileged to be in A) a nation with universal healthcare, B) still have a regular paycheque coming in, C) being a healthy late-twentysomething man and therefore not the most likely demographic to be seriously ill, and D) have family and friends nearby that are also in good situations… and I still think about everyone afflicted by this and feel such utter despair all at the same time. There’s zero fucking chance that things ever go back to normal after this – we’re living through history right now. I don’t know what’s going to happen – not tomorrow, not next week, or next month. I know I, myself, am probably gonna be fine, but I legitimately worry about the world. I wish I couldn’t, but through all the distractions of Netflix, cooking, beer, and used books, I live in fear. It’s not a primal fear – not the kind of fear that you feel when a wolverine is licking its chops at you when you’ve fallen to the ground – but the kind that slowly gnaws at you, knowing that things are teetering on the knife edge of falling apart. Maybe it’s so, maybe it’s not. I’m not an epidemiologist; I’m just a guy with severe irony poisoning due to internet overexposure, trying to reconcile a perspective about a world that probably no longer exists as it did. I feel most for folks who are cooped up with their kids right now – particularly the number of friends I have who have toddlers and infants at home. One of my best friends just had her second today – husband and son weren’t allowed in the hospital, obviously, but even with her and the kid being healthy and happy, I worry about the world that these kids are coming into. Who’s to say that the world we’re making for them is legitimately going to be better for them than it was for us – as folks my age were told time and time again that would also be the case as we grew up? If we can’t do that for them, I feel like we’ve failed. And I really, really don’t want to fail. Because I don’t know what the repercussions are if it happens. Not only for myself, but for society as a whole. It’s a scary thought.

BeerguyRob

How am I doing? Well, thanks for asking. 

HOST: That wasn’t exactly the question, but please lord of the content mines go on.

My life is pretty much going along as normal. After two weeks of Spring Break, where I interacted with just my dogs, I am back “teaching” my courses. The advantage I have over 95% of other teachers is that my program is already self-directed – before, the students would come to school & ask for homework; now, they email me & ask for homework. The kids I work with couldn’t handle structured instruction, so what I do is perfect for them, so they can just keep rolling. Tests involve emailing them a sheet, saying they have to send it back in three hours, and then googling their complex sentences to see if they plagiarized.

What makes my life difficult is the daily interaction with other teachers. Before the #DarkestTimeline, I never went to staff meetings because a) They are at 8:30AM & I start at 1:30PM; b) I used to be management, so the bosses don’t necessarily want me contributing on the teacher side; and c) I used to be the union rep, but they think I betrayed the movement by going to admin, so they don’t want me sticking up for management. It was a perfectly wonderful dysfunctional relationship. Now, however, we are all summoned to the computer at 11:00AM everyday for mandatory check-in to ensure we are all “working from home”. I am debating whether to start wearing KISS makeup.

(takes 30 minutes hair metal break)

(Hair metal? I can do hair metal)

Also, I have to make sure I don’t surf porn on my work computer by accident. Boy, would that be awkward. The key is to detach the mouse, so you don’t accidentally click tabs on the wrong unit.

In addition, I have the near-daily catharsis of typing up the Open Threads. It’s a simple task, but one that I look forward to now, if only because it gives me something to both do & look forward to. “Do”, because I don’t always get, shall we say, “intellectual stimulation” from the assignments I receive; and “look forward to” because football season is juuuuust far-enough away that it still seems plausible that it might start on time. Having that on the horizon provides a seeming sense of an eventual return to normalcy, whatever the hell that might mean anymore.

HOST: Thank you for all your hard work, seriously, you keep some of us sane.

In terms of exercise, I’m really trying to make an effort. The dogs see me as some sort of merchant of walkies, so they are now getting up to two hours per day. In addition, I’m trying to give myself at least thirty minutes on a bike or step machine. I haven’t weighed myself yet, but I’m clearly seeing positive results.

Everyone stay safe, keep hydrated, support your local dealer/liquor merchant, and exercise when you can. Next week we will have another regional bracket of DFOers.