Fortunately LJ notified me that you'd posted, because I haven't been looking at LJ for a while - too many Russian trolls. (Though I have been crossposting from DW.)
I too am a pretty social creature. Fortunately for me, after my spine surgery last year I was forced to work at home for seven or eight months, so the house is pretty well set up for this.
My company ordered all employees worldwide to work from home a week _before_ the shelter-in-place, and they're doing some pretty amazing stuff, e.g.: "You can expense half of two family meals per week while this lasts."
I can see where this would be hard on a very social person like yourself. I'm more of a loner, and I have my fambly here, and I'm still finding it a little hard. S. works for the public health these days, so _that_ is an "essential job" and so viri can come in that way.
"Staying sane" is a bit of a challenge, because my parents are currently on the MSS Amsterdam off the coast of Western Australia. They are (in theory) docking in Perth - well, Fremantle - tomorrow, and the cruise line wants to have everybody off the boat by Monday. The Western Australia State Government, on the other paw, has declared that nobody gets off the boat except for a direct trip to the airport, and that only for those who have flights booked.
Since the cruise was expected to end in Fort Lauderdale in May, nobody _has_ flights booked. We've got several hundred senior citizens who have varying degrees of ability to navigate this kind of situation. I imagine some of them put a significant fraction of their life savings into this round-the-world cruise - and now they're going to have to (a) find and (b) figure out how to pay for short-notice flights home from Australia ... at the very time when the airlines are canceling flights left&right and look like they may collapse completely.
So _that_ is keeping my siblings and I busy, trying to help them (only the 'rents so far) to navigate this situation. We made them hotel reservations in the area (after finding hotels that were staying open), but then we found out that they probably can't use them...
My sister is communicating with her Senator, who is communicating with the State Department. There are a number (more than twenty, less than a hundred) of big cruise ships in this same situation all over the globe.
They supposedly got on a plane from Perth to Brisbane this morning, there to connect to LAX. I say "supposedly" because, of course, we have no way of verifying their actual presence on the plane - though we _do_ know that the plane left on time.
I too am a pretty social creature. Fortunately for me, after my spine surgery last year I was forced to work at home for seven or eight months, so the house is pretty well set up for this.
My company ordered all employees worldwide to work from home a week _before_ the shelter-in-place, and they're doing some pretty amazing stuff, e.g.: "You can expense half of two family meals per week while this lasts."
I can see where this would be hard on a very social person like yourself. I'm more of a loner, and I have my fambly here, and I'm still finding it a little hard. S. works for the public health these days, so _that_ is an "essential job" and so viri can come in that way.
"Staying sane" is a bit of a challenge, because my parents are currently on the MSS Amsterdam off the coast of Western Australia. They are (in theory) docking in Perth - well, Fremantle - tomorrow, and the cruise line wants to have everybody off the boat by Monday. The Western Australia State Government, on the other paw, has declared that nobody gets off the boat except for a direct trip to the airport, and that only for those who have flights booked.
Since the cruise was expected to end in Fort Lauderdale in May, nobody _has_ flights booked. We've got several hundred senior citizens who have varying degrees of ability to navigate this kind of situation. I imagine some of them put a significant fraction of their life savings into this round-the-world cruise - and now they're going to have to (a) find and (b) figure out how to pay for short-notice flights home from Australia ... at the very time when the airlines are canceling flights left&right and look like they may collapse completely.
So _that_ is keeping my siblings and I busy, trying to help them (only the 'rents so far) to navigate this situation. We made them hotel reservations in the area (after finding hotels that were staying open), but then we found out that they probably can't use them...
My sister is communicating with her Senator, who is communicating with the State Department. There are a number (more than twenty, less than a hundred) of big cruise ships in this same situation all over the globe.
So, yeah, staying sane is proving challenging.
Thanks for letting me vent!
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YIKES! about your parents. Keep us posted on that situation, which sounds just awful.
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So I'm breathing a little easier.
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Whew!
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