elephant in the room

[idseer]

so how is covid 19 affecting you.

for me ... i'm retired and my wife will be retired in a month. we're in between houses right now waiting for ours in va. to be completed. temporarily living in md. near our daughter's and staying inside (she insists we don't leave the house so we almost never do. fortunately my wife is able to work from home via computer so neither of us is affected financially. also fortunately construction is still allowed in va. so keeping our fingers crossed that that doesn't change and our end of may completion doesn't change. the worst effect this has on me personally is, i'm a musician and i do a lot of open mics and small gigs. obviously all that is gone for now so i practice a lot here. so mainly, i'm bored to tears. not complaining cause i know my situation is a dream compared to so many people right now.
i AM curious to know how you all are making out! maybe it'll feel good to share a little?

 

[richig07]

Yeah, it's pretty rough times for most everyone. Like yourself, my biggest complaint is being bored to tears. I haven't worked since mid-late March.

This all happened at an awkward time since the lease on my house in the Detroit area was up at the end of April and I was planning on staying there. Then, all of this happened and my work stopped. Not knowing how long this would last for. I made the decision to pack up and head for my sister's house in Columbia, SC before the worst hit. She's a single doctor and owns a 3 bedroom home. Plenty of space. I have a few things in a small storage unit nearby and I'm going to wait it out here. My mom relocated to the area after retiring recently as well. They've jokingly pressured me to move down here ever since.

So, I can get some quality family time in. The weather is nice too. Overall, it's better than isolating all alone in Detroit and it's not draining my savings nearly as bad.

My sister worked 116 hours in the hospital a couple weeks back. Definitely a scary time for MD's and nurses. Shit, it's scary sharing a house with her. Fortunately, South Carolina has been fortunate to this point. Only a couple thousand cases and 62 deaths or something last I checked. I keep my distance. They also monitor doctors/nurses extremely closely.

The highlights of my last two weeks include playing video games for the first time in years. My old Play Station 3 runs hotter/louder than a jet engine. Losing 50 dollars in online poker. I stopped shaving. So, we'll see where that goes. Uh.... and my courses got moved to online. That has sucked.

I guess the bright side has been that my sister has a little home gym. So, I've been able to keep in good shape. We also eat insanely healthy and I have nothing but time to cook everything on the grill. Which I enjoy.

I'm trying to look at this as a breather from real life. But man... every day the boredom gets worse. I even thought about getting a temporary job during all of this. Just to pass the time. Then, I decided it isn't worth it.

 

[Rambunctious]

I stay busy on my ranch and avocado orchard during the week we are 20 miles from town so we don't see many people around especially these days. We make a weekly run to the store and on the weekend we go from our night time pajamas to our daytime pajamas and we watch Netflix. I even found my playstation one and set it up in my office.

Mrs America my lovely wife is making hand sanitizer and giving it to the post woman to hand out. The worst thing is we haven't seen the kids in weeks and they just live 60 miles away but we do zoom or whatever its called and see them on our computer. I got my grandson a motovox mini bike to ride around for his birthday and he hasn't seen it yet.

Hopefully this will be over soon. I think the kids are coming over next weekend regardless. Happy Easter and Passover everyone.

 

[Mingo]

I live alone in Austin, Texas. Austin was smart enough to cancel South by Southwest - the big festival - and the outbreak here has been very mild - according to published numbers of cases.

I go the grocery store about once a week. I work my own business out of my house and so far my income stream has been unaffected - if what is going on with the shutdown right now - continues into July - I'm expecting an income stream bite around then. My daughter's family is staying home in Carlise PA - and my Son's family is homebound in Roanoke VA - everyone is fine - so far with them. At one point - my retirement funds - which I haven't had to tap fell almost 30% in value, but has recovered to maybe a 24% loss at this point.

I write short stories and poems on the side and have had plenty of time to work on my craft for that hobby.

The one statement true in all instances is - this too shall pass. Hang in there friends.

 

[Bullitt08]

Well I am still going in two days a week which I have been doing since January. Doing a lot of work from home as many customers are wanting to buy stocks right now.

Yesterday was the first day out in 4 days as I had to make a grocery run for fresh milk bread etc. The crowd appeared to be down.

I have also been investing in individual stocks. Put 6 figures in large cap value with nice dividends. Nice bump to my some day retirement funds. My IRAs are in VAs with guaranteed lifetime income payouts which have guaranteed growth rates until I turn the tap on.

First thing I am doing when the local restaurants open back up is head to my favorite and order a 20 ounce rib eye. Yum. Can't wait.

Edit I am also growing a beard.

 

[Lake Shore Drive]

In one sense, life for the Mrs and I hasn't changed dramatically or at least all that negatively due to us being retired, plus our home is paid off. So no cessation of work or having to do so remotely. Our combined SS and my two small pensions continue as usual. And while we have IRA and Roth IRA investments which of course have been hit pretty hard, the majority of our retirement dollars are set up with annuities, so everything is fine there.

But that's where the normalcy ends. Otherwise, like just about everyone else, the change in the way we have to go about our daily lives has been greatly affected. How we shop and what is available, how we dine, as in the lack of dining out, how we interact with the public.....the social distancing thing all all that. Major suckage.

For the longest time we never knew anyone who was directly impacted by the virus. Then in the past week we learned that a co-worker of our daughter tested positively for it, altho she hasn't had any serious ramifications and is already getting better. Fortunately, our daughter has been working from home for a couple of years now, so she hadn't been in direct contact with the co-worker for quite some time. And just a few days ago I received a text from an old high school buddy of mine, who told me he's had the virus for several weeks, even to the point of having to be on a ventilator. The good news tho is he's finally on the upswing, but talk about scary.

 

[podsox]

I work in construction. Nothing has changed besides the streets being empty. I work ,mostly, downtown. Worked at the sears (Willis) tower last week. Working at chase tower this week. No social distancing at all. I was on a job 3 weeks ago that had 3 confirmed cases of covid. It shutdown for 2 days and then reopened for 3 days before closing for 3 weeks. We were told we had to quarantine for 14 days and then a day later we got a call that we were cleared to work. Mayor/governor talk a big game but they don’t give a shit at all. Glad I’m working though

 

[Jiddy]

I'm working at the office 6 days a week. Wife is working from home. Only have 4 in the office and we all stick to our rooms for the most part, and no appointments in the office itself. End up running up and down the stairs to provide clients their work on the quick. Very odd indeed. Secretary checked out as she has a daughter with asthmatic conditions, so we have the intern to pick up the slack. Most concerned with how a lot of our clients (small business) are going through this. We're doing our best to help them, but everything to do with the SBA/Payroll Protection Program/etc is just overloaded, so I'm just fielding call after call of basically verbalized helplessness. It sucks.

We actually found a seafood restaurant that was doing a festive Easter takeout. That was the first non-homecooked meal I've had in a bit. Crab cakes, Haddock and all kinds of fixins. It was nice. Felt good to help out a local restaurant too. On the way home from work on Friday, I stopped in what is the local downtown, and it was a ghost town at 7 PM. Every year I go to a chocolate shop there for Easter goodies for the kiddos. Wouldn't you know? The place was open. The ONLY place open from the looks of it. The owner was tending with one assistant. As I came in, one couple was leaving. From that point on, I was the only one in the place. We got to talking. He had all this product he had prepaed and he knew it was not kosher to open, but holidays are make or break for him etc etc. I ended up dropping a hundred bucks on candy and fudge and left with sadness that he probably won't make it through this.

I do the shopping since wifey is working from home with the kids. One less person possibly exposed. We try to go out on bike rides, walks etc each day, so as not to stay cooped up. Been googling around for a lot of classic movies of my youth to binge watch with the kiddos. Bloodsport was the Easter movie. God I love Van Damme. Gotta get Kickboxer next.

I'm sure there will be financial impact on me in the near future if this thing goes on for a while. I mean, I'll have a job, but earnings will be affected. So hoping things normalize and we're all back to it in the near future.

 

[idseer]

.... He had all this product he had prepaed and he knew it was not kosher to open, but holidays are make or break for him etc etc. I ended up dropping a hundred bucks on candy and fudge and left with sadness that he probably won't make it through this. ...

i experienced a similar thing here in our temporary digs. ordered some cat food and went to pick it up. turns out the store had opened a few months earlier. single lady proprietor, beautiful well stocked layout of the store including a dog run, cat room with extended caged track along the ceiling thruout the store. really well done and i was her only customer that day. a week later she had to close the store. very sad to see this.