Whoa! Speaking as someone who has three amazon Echoes in her 1,200 sq ft house, I may have to take a look at these… I do love my gadgets.
Has the maid been coming all along?
I’m still paying my cleaning lady, but she’s not coming. And I can keep doing that pretty much indefinitely. When I first posted about possibly letting her continue to come, The Dope told me in no uncertain terms, “NO WAY!” I don’t know when to ask her to come back.
<ThelmaLou glances at the window.> Are you peeking at me?? 
We’ve been working, shopping for groceries, and going to the home improvement store like always (but wearing masks). However, I would REALLY like to have my library back.
Anything else can wait.
EVERYBODY is always at Home Depot now. I’ve never seen it so busy.
I quit going inside, I’ll still go to the outdoor garden section for stuff. But if I need something from inside, I go to the local Ace Hardware because it gets much less traffic.
No, we went a month between visits. In all honesty, I am a lot more concerned with spreading it than catching it, and after a month in isolation I felt pretty confident that we were very low risk to have it. She doesn’t do many houses in a day, especially now. There’s some risk, I am sure, but I decided it was acceptable. I will probably be slower to start some other things because in my mind it’s your “total risk profile”, no one thing, that really matters.
It’s funny because I’m the opposite I have no smart speakers in my house which does crimp some of the frames style but I love them for phone calls and music. Especially during the lock down they do a great job of filtering out the background of children screaming so my clients don’t hear but I can still freely interact with everyone around me as necessary. They also leave my hands free for operating the computer during conference calls. Even without lens I wear them 3-4 hours a day.
Another Texan here and watched much of the Gov’s press conference yesterday. I work from home a bit but have to be in a location with additional security for parts of my job. The office is mostly empty and my company is constantly sanitizing the facility. It has also taken other steps to increase distancing.
I very much plan to go to a state park this week as they are open for day visits, have a couple new kayaks that beg to be used. I do expect the distancing rules to be bent by a few of the others but they are easy to avoid. When walking around my neighborhood, there is 90+% compliance to social distancing, exceptions seem to be the teens/early 20s that, of course, are indestructible (as I was at that age!)
Have to go to HW stores at times, compliance is spotty but it’s pretty easy to avoid the offenders. I have no plans to go to restaurants, even if some open up. Will continue to use take-out a few times a week.
The jury is still out on an Idaho trip in August as part of a family get-together, the issue is if my relatives from upstate NY will travel or not. They would have to fly out and back but have older relatives back home. A January cruise booked very early this year is most likely out on general principles even if the planned ports are re-opened to cruise ships.
I don’t think I will ever go to a movie theater again.
I also agree that we are re-opening too quickly. Without immunizations available, the risk of contagion will be unacceptably high IMHO. We won’t even consider going out to eat until at least June.
i will take my long over-due books back to the library as soon as they open the book drop, though!
Now I’m curious: just how risky is it to go to a movie, if it’s uncrowded enough that you’re sitting well over six feet away from anyone else?
Well for me I’m not expecting the 6-foot distancing to last very long. At first theaters may be fairly sparsely attended and distancing easy to maintain, but once people get more comfortable I don’t know. I’d like to wait until I’m sure there will be no resurgence or a vaccine is in place.
Movie theaters would have to enforce it by selling fewer tickets per screen and making sure patrons don’t sit too close. Plus what if friends who don’t live together, for instance, go to the movies and sit together? Enough of that and there could be a resurgence.
I don’t know. I’d love to go to the movies again but I didn’t go that often before this and I won’t die if I wait.
That’s exactly what I did. And a #8 gets rid of the curls that stick out, without doing any damage. Next time I’ll try a #6.
I really miss getting a buzz cut by my barber. But it’ll be a long time before I go back. If I get really good at self-clipping, I may never go back.
I’m truly stunned at the states where things like hair / nail salons and tattoo parlors are among the first to be allowed to reopen.
You are, by definition, sitting close enough to touch / be touched by / be breathed on by the person working on you. HOW DOES THAT MAKE SENSE???
Now, I’m a slob regarding my hair; I’m obscenely overdue for a cut and color - but I’m not going to rectify this any time soon.
Movie theatres: There are so few films any more that are worth the insane price of admission - 14 bucks or thereabouts, per person - and while 25% capacity would probably be safe enough, it’s just not necessary.
Regular retail stores, to me, are different. As long as they have distancing in place - and people are compliant - I wouldn’t be too worried about it (though I’ll still likely avoid them; I’m in a higher risk category).
It’d be nice to be able to go to the doctor’s office if needed - I need some bloodwork, which you can’t do via telemedicine. I need to have some podiatry work done also… doc would be over a meter away from me sort of by definition there :D.
I’d actually still try to avoid grocery stores. Those are the one place where everyone needs to go at some point, and it just seems like too many chances for contagion.
Right new we shop with curbside pickups and what FedEx delivers if they can find our place. I check our post office box after waiting till no other customers are inside. We might stop for a bake-at-home pizza from the local drive-thru; that should be sanitary. Otherwise we don’t venture among others and won’t until forced to. Critical dental and medical work is done. Theaters are optional. We miss sit-down eateries and some socializing but survival is better. We’ll wait till the crisis settles.
Probably going to wait at least a month after restaurants open. Just to let them perfect the process first. No need to be guinea pig. Don’t see anything wrong with movie theater, there usually isn’t more than 20 people at any screening I would go to. I plan to wear mask and have sanitizer in my pocket at all times.
Another (adopted) Texan here. The decision has come down that the small museum where I work part-time will open for a few limited hours each week. Our volunteer staff are being asked whether they want to go ahead or not, and are being reminded that we understand perfectly if they decline the risk; so far enough have accepted to open as planned. We have several volunteers who are in high-risk groups and will avoid having them in any public-facing roles for the time being. For those who do wish to help out, we will provide cleaning/disinfecting materials training in the necessary protocols, are strongly recommending they use face coverings, and have a limited supply of such to get us started. We’ll need more within a couple weeks, however.
The museum operates in a structure that is capacity-rated for a couple hundred visitors under normal conditions, but actual visitors usually number no more than 5 or ten at any given time, so it’s unlikely we’ll bump up against the 25% limit. I don’t expect to see any tour groups during this next month or so.
With all that said, I’m feeling considerable angst that Texas may be moving too fast, and am going to feel pretty damn uncomfortable if any volunteers or visitors end up sick out of this.
Outside of the above, I live alone and plan to continue social distancing my ass as much as possible, pretty much only going out for work or groceries, and masking up for those occasional forays into the big scary world. No chance I’ll going to any sit-down restaurants or movie theaters for the foreseeable future. I will probably take one big chance in a couple weeks or so: getting my hair cut. That’s pretty much it.
I guess it depends on the approach the business takes.
I’m fine going to retail stores - if I can be safe in a grocery store I can be safe in a pet store. Other places, though, I’ll have to see their approach.
Any theater is a non-starter until there is a vaccine and we have gotten it. Pretty much the same with sit-down dining. Most of the places we frequent have switched over to pick-up/delivery fairly well, so picking up food to eat at home keeps them in business and controls our bar tab as well!
Well, at least one county in Texas (Montgomery County, population 600k) has decided that Abbott’s order is too vague and doesn’t prohibit squat, so they plan to go full bore on Friday with reopening all businesses at full occupancy. And Abbott agrees with them! After he, “actually went back and looked at the order.”
I think the idea is to enable people in that type of work to start earning money again.
If the operator and the client are both wearing masks and everyone washes their hands, the risk is diminished, though of course, not eliminated. The person getting his/her hair cut can’t wear a mask (unless they tape something to their face), but the operator can. My hairdresser was booked solid six days a week at $60 - $125 per customer. The loss of income to her family is large. She’s a freelancer and for the past few years, her husband was in school, so she was the sole support. They have a teenaged son and both have grown kids from previous marriages. Hubby had just graduated and gotten a job when this stuff hit. I don’t know what kind of health insurance they have, but she had to have a pacemaker put in last fall-- she’s 46. They desperately need to be bringing in some money. As I described in the OP, her sitch is to work in a private room with one person at a time, period. That seems to me relatively low-risk for her and for each client. There is no ZERO risk, and won’t be until a reliable vaccine is developed and widely distributed. My 2 cents.
At nail places I’ve gone to, the operator wears a mask anyway, and I’m sure they won’t be offended if clients do. In my area, it seems the majority of nail salon staff are Asian (frequently apparent first-generation immigrants), and that part of the world is more mask-prone anyway. I’d consider the nail place acceptable risk, since I’ve been doing some in-person grocery shopping through the whole mess (can’t afford to do delivery ALL the time, around those minimum orders) and going to work in a call center (we’re contracted with a bank, thus “essential”). If I can get DH to trim straggly ends, a professional haircut is not a big thing in my lifestyle.
I do miss browsing the library, and not everything is available digitally that I might like to read/watch.
For those of you who miss libraries try the free National Emergency Library:
It has about 1.4 million copyright items (although almost nothing from the last 5 years).