New England B.S. Thread

My friend was able to come and go from her home. Her job had her working from home though. She lives in Shenyang. She didn't mentioned anything like that happening in her area. China is also more densely populated than we are, but we seem to be getting newer cases at a faster rate.

 

Hopefully it isn’t!


Yeah I’m not sure how things will turn out, in the end I think we will get back to it. Until then, strange times.

 

Strange times indeed!

 

I know I’m late on a quote to this post, but my son just got new tires yesterday and he was told to wait outside while it was done. I get it . At least it’s not mid January....

 

I had to go out yesterday for propane ( a backup tank) and shop for my elderly In-Laws and for ourselves . I absolutely hated it . But they need their provisions and I had to help. Ended up finishing the stack of logs I took home for firewood . One more tree left to get

 

Surprisingly, the grocery store was very quiet and reasonably well stocked mid-day yesterday. I think the 2 item limit in many areas helped.

 

Not down here.
Did an early morning "suicide run" to 3 supermarkets, 2 CVS and a Walgreens. Gloved up, masked up and not touching a thing.
Bare shelves everywhere.

What amazes me is that this area is a "hot spot" and I still see plenty of people with zero protection still fondling food and products like nothing is going on.
Also disturbing is seeing families with elderly and children in tow still in these places.

 

So far, the only item in my area hard to find is still toilet paper. I haven't had trouble getting anything else.

 

I'm up and down about it to be honest. Sometimes I'm perfectly okay with the "everyone let's just stay home and bust this thing out" and other days I'm reading too much Reddit with their disaster fetishists and worry about being mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage. I'm trying to limit my trips out to once a week, though I did get takeout Friday to support a local restaurant with all appropriate precautions, but cabin fever is real. The wife was out for the first time all week this AM. I've got all the supplies I need, but I wish it we'd just lock and be done with it. Otherwise I am going to keep incrementally buying "a little more than I normally would"...not hoarding, but maybe two loaves of bread instead of one, or an extra package of Oreos I otherwise wouldn't buy while I wait in anticipation.

The other angry side of me is has moments of frustration like, we've had 2 deaths in MA out of how many in the population (which is a horrible way to look at it, blow this up in my face, please) and how is this different from EEE, the flu etc. I fundamentally understand it is (and in normal rational times fully get it, and as I've stated I haven't just gone out to go out, I haven't seen family or friends outside of dropping off groceries to my Mom at a safe distance), have seen all the charts, etc, and know my Mom wouldn't survive this, which is why I am taking every precaution (washing hands anytime I'm out in public, wiping down the steering wheel and gear shift of the Jeep after every use, etc. It's just horrible not being able to see family and friends, keeping the kids from relatives, etc. I just want to be done with it. I cancelled my vacation to Bermuda sans kids in July already and even though I bought the "free cancellation" seats I learned that doesn't mean free refund, that just means you can rebook later without penalty. Of course you have to rebook within 1 year of cancellation and some reports say this is going to span 12-18 months, and with the wife being a teacher, we have windows of when we can travel.

Gas around me is coming down, but my truck pings on 87, so I've been running 93 through it and 93 is no longer $0.20 to $0.30 per gallon more than regular, it's more like $0.90/gallon more.

 

My 4.0 Tacoma pinged on 87 too. The Ford has noticeably less power on regular, but given it's a twin turbo engine I don't think that is surprising. Manual says to use premium for severe service.

I have never had a vehicle that didn't recommend premium either all the time or for certain conditions, so I have been buying it all my life. Sometimes I get confused when other people talk about gas prices.

 

I’m still considered an essential employee. So I go to the office. But I also have a 2.5 year old cattle dog. She doesn’t understand stay inside. So we go to the dog park some days but most days go into the trails and she can run off leash. I still consider that being distanced. Not the dog park, but we only went today since this whole thing took off.

wife got laid off and a bunch of classes cancelled. She is a yoga instructor. I’m glad she doesn’t run her own studio right now. She worked for a guy who did just open one like three weeks ago. Poor bastard. She got a lay off notice from one place but she’s an independent contractor elsewhere so they can just cancel the classes. We’ll weather the storm. Not what we wanted to happen but we should be fine.

China took it seriously but the govt was able to put a little bit more....chutzpah behind their orders.

I’d almost prefer that. Stay inside when it’s bone chilling, nobody does much anyway.

but I think you mean he wasn’t allowed to wait inside at the shop rather than them being slow enough that he was told just hang on a sec we’ll do this in like 5 minutes.

lol I went to like 4 pharmacies the other day after a hike in the woods with the dog trying to find a thermometer. Found the last one that wasn’t even on the rack it was like tucked away behind on the shelf next to them.

but then again I’m not at risk and neither is anyone I’m seeing and if I get it or am exposed I have no problem shutting down the house and staying inside for a few weeks.

 

So did my 2013. I really, really wanted to get that reflash which supposedly fixed the pinging. It also fixed the into and out of overdrive BS that made driving the truck miserable (so I laugh when 2G guys who have never sat in a 3G bash the transmission). I still get a bit of pinging, but I've actually found with this truck if I drive it with a bit more revs across the band I get better fuel economy and less pinging (who knew!). Like where I would normally drive in 6th, I'll keep in 5th to keep the revs around 1,800-2.200 rather than 6th at 1,200-1,500.

 

Just literally discussed this in another thread in the 3gen forum. I stay around 2k and a bit higher while in gear when cruising. Keeping around there helps with MPG for sure.

 

To those wearing gloves at the grocery store: are you wiping everything down (all containers, produce, etc.) with bleach/vinegar/alcohol when you unload the bags at home? If not, what's the point of the gloves? Just realized this today...

 

Likewise. When I'm on the highway I go into S5 unless I'm going down a big hill then I'll push it to S6 but then back to S5. The truck (3rd gen) has 2 overdrive gears so when 6th isn't enough it drops to 4th. If I leave it in 5th, I find it doesn't need to drop nearly as much. Keeps it around 2k usually, which is still good, and I see myself getting better MPG because I'm bouncing around less and spending less time in 4th.

A sense of security.

At this point I'm saying giddy up bring it on let me get through it and then be done with it. I know I can still carry at that point though.

 

I went grocery shopping yesterday morning just to get the normal stuff plus some extra (nothing over the top extra). The checkout lines at 730 were 5 times longer than they were at 830 when we checked out

 

I went...Friday? I think Friday. At 4:30/5ish - had to get the dog out of the house so wife could live stream yoga stuff. Target in Seekonk had normal/shorter than normal lines. I needed socks. Got some Tim Tams too.

Oh, edit: I forgot, Target didn't have good granola for my yogurt, so I went to the shaws down the road in Barrington RI - same, little to no lines.

 

I was told to stay home unless something comes up that I can't deal with remotely. Last night I got a notification that every switch and AP at the high school went down. Today I went to look and somebody's pile of junk collapsed onto the MDF rack, putting tension on a power cable and killing power to the switches. I didn't want anyone to have a key to that room, but I lost that battle since they always had access and people are change-averse.

Bright side is we get a new building soon and I've been assured that keys won't be issued for those rooms. They also aren't off of other rooms, but off of the hallways which should cut down on the urge to make them into classroom storage. At this point I want to see if they'll put "No Storage Allowed" on the MDF/IDF room placards like they do for elevator machine rooms.

 

Yeah we're aero and defense, and the other divisions run electrical components, truck transmissions, etc.... the corporate email outlines how we supply power to hospitals, transmissions to trucks so they can do deliveries, etc. Until we get shut down or I get infected, I'll be going to and from work at least. I don't always like my coworkers but the minute of social interaction is great!

 

I wasn't expecting a line from the registers into and around the cheese, milk, eggs area at market basket lol. It was weird to me for that early in the morning