Tonight the nice folks at dialysis handed out masks and get-out-of-home-confinement cards so the cops/national guard can’t stop us on our way to get our blood washed.
You can’t cut it now and then save it until you can donate it? I don’t think cut hair spoils.
So, I live in Cornwall, in England- that’s the end of the pointy out bit at the bottom of the South West. It’s a big tourist area, and somewhere a lot of wealthy people have second homes. That’s… OK verging on controversial most of the time (tourists are the main income, but second homes price locals out of housing then sit empty most of the year), but right now, coming down here on holiday? Just no.
Not just the second home owners but fuckwits with caravans are getting out of London ‘before the lockdown’, to come down here.
We have one proper hospital.
One.
Usually the really serious cases get airlifted out of the county, people needing to see specialists go up to Bristol or maybe Plymouth. There’s some small ‘community hospitals’, but they’re largely for minor treatments or inpatient stuff like dialysis. They don’t have a bunch of spare beds. Some aren’t even open 24 hours.
This is not a time to go on holiday. It’s definitely not a time to go on holiday to an area which is already, frankly, seriously underequipped for medical care. I don’t give a crap if the county does depend on tourism. I don’t care if if is probably going to be a nicer place to be- so long as you’re not ill- than London, as realistically lockdown can’t be enforced so strictly somewhere like here. This is not the time.
Stay
The
Fuck
Home.
No, dude, that photo of empty shelves at the Kroger after everybody panic-bought all the meat is not “how socialism works.” It is, in fact, an illustration of how capitalism works.
The funeral is over and all went well. We expected thunderstorms but the sun made a brief appearance once we got to the cemetery. My husband says our job now is to figure out what normal is and get back to it. I expect it will take a while.
PurpleHorseshoe, I’ll keep your advice in mind for the next time I need a dog sitter. I didn’t see your post until Saturday.
It’s raining indoors. Literally. I woke up this morning to sounds like I had left the shower on–ran into the bathroom to find water gushing out of the ceiling. To their credit, emergency maintenance showed up 30 minutes after I called (masked and gloved) and is working on it. And it does not appear to be sewage. But seriously? Now, of all times, this happens? My bathroom floor is flooded.
There is a Spanish Merlot that is a very good value that I’ve been buying dozens of bottles of over the past few months. During the recent shopping panic I bought a lot of stuff at the liquor store and picked up four more bottles of the wine.
They are screw-top bottles but so are a lot of good wines these days, so no problem with that. Casually tried to unscrew the cap at dinnertime, but no go. Tried much harder, still nothing. Finally took it down to the basement and applied large alligator-type pliers to the cap and turned with all possible force. Still would not budge. It took multiple efforts and all my strength to finally force it to break the seal and open.
Tried it with the other other three new bottles. One opened fine, and I just screwed the top back on and figured it will keep just fine, since it’s not uncommon for wine collectors to uncork aging old wines and recork them again to keep the corks from rotting. A brief moment of air exposure to a full bottle doesn’t harm it if it’s properly restoppered. But the other two were the same as the first – tremendous effort required just to open the fucking thing! Again, screwed the tops back on tightly and figured they’ll be fine. I also tried a random bottle from an older stock and it opened just fine just like all the previous ones so hopefully that was my only share of a bad batch of badly manufactured screwtops.
First world problems, I know, but someone with less muscular strength or lack of the right tool would have been totally out of luck. No one should make products that are defective to the point of requiring a major athletic performance to open them!
Back in the day, any half competent alc…, er, drinker would have a churchkey around the house, and when they got thirsty enough they would have figured out how to use it on a screwtop.
Those bottles are single serving size, right?
No, they’re just ordinary full-size wine bottles with screwtops. We had a discussion in CS some time ago about the increasing use of screwtops for even many top quality wines, especially from Australia and New Zealand but also many European countries and South America. They are somewhat less commonly used for French wines and my impression is that they’re downright rare for California wines, but modern screwtops are actually superior to corks, although they lack the cachet that goes with uncorking a bottle.
Anyway, trust me, none of those flimsy “churchkey” things would have opened them. It required major effort with large adjustable pliers. Normally when you open one, the twisting breaks a series of tiny metal tabs holding the cap to the seal underneath. For these three particular bottles, the tabs were practically unbreakable!
My gf picked up six boxes of wine Saturday. We will be drinking the boxed stuff before moving on to the bottles in our cellar.
On a related note, bad news and good news:
Bad news: With all the closures and precautions being taken against the pandemic, the Beer Store chain, which is the only place to return deposit-refundable wine and liquor bottles, has announced that they are suspending the service until March 31, but I bet it will be a lot longer. Meanwhile I have tons of empties as I haven’t done any returns in months, and am running out of space. Throw a couple of dozen at a time in the recycling bin, you say, and forget about the deposit refund? The city has announced they won’t take them, as they’re supposed to go through the refund/recycling channel that the Beer Store operates.
Good news: Looks like there won’t be a lot more coming in. Liquor stores are on shorter hours, limited staffing, and are implementing crowd control measures, and will probably have supply shortages soon. Hey, you gotta look on the bright side of something! 
Dear Game Developer
Stop putting me in these “tournaments” against fake players. I’m insulted that you think I’m that fucking stupid. I scroll down the list of my “opponents“ and every single one has a correctly spelled first name, first letter capitalized and all else in lower case. No one with a last name, or nickname. Just a list of first names that sound like they came out of a recent baby name book
Ayden
Lincoln
Aubrey
Jayden
Lincoln
Alice
Gabriel
Aaliyah (my favorite, the only ethnic name they use )
Joshua
Willow
Hayden (they love rhyming that one)
Etc etc. There seem to be about a hundred names total that they mix up (allowing duplicates) and use for each tournament. And the app doesn’t even let you pick a game name. But at least make it look real, OK. Use names like Waystead69 or WetFart45 or Ihatedon or the kind of names that show up when you’re competing against real people.
But I don’t compete against fake people. I just ignore the damn tournament.
I’m going to keep the pitting mild because, unlike most of these games, they are easy enough and generous enough with lives and gifts that I can play free without frustration.
But damn, these fake tournaments chap my ass. Also, I need to get mad about something that’s not virus related. Balance, you know.
In what world is that good news?
And yes, ordinary full size bottles = single serving size. I wasn’t suggesting the churchkey as a way of removing the cap, rather just punch a hole in the top of the cap and pour.
Anyways, I’ve been invited to a local Facebook group whose purpose is for local restaurants to post their take out menus. Which seems like a fair idea, right? No, what we have are local idiots posting “is restaurant A delivering?”. For fucks sakes, you have a phone in your goddamned hand. Why don’t you call and ask them directly?
I often joke that I cut my hair every 5 years whether it needs it or not. Although I think it’s been more than 5 years since the last cut.
That is one coronavirus problem I do NOT have.
I am being told I have to work from home. My job is way more difficult to do remotely without my three big monitors, printer and scanner. I feel like I am being punished. Stupid virus.
I was on vacation last week (didn’t go anywhere) so this is a new development.
Sometimes I think they do the same thing on ‘Duolingo’ with these too “perfect” names making me think they’re bots that I’m competing against.
Yeah, I’d consider working from home but I really don’t see how I could do it without my stuff, man!
My son’s work is letting them bring there monitors home - could you ask about that? I assume the printer and scanner are shared resources, so that might be a Thunderdome sort of thing.
New hobby: collecting incredibly moronic coronavirus-related headlines. Today’s keeper, courtesy of Fox News*:
"Bella Hadid shares coronavirus do’s and don’ts while eating burrito topless: ‘Don’t be selfish!’"
*I originally mistyped this as “Tox News”, which is uncomfortably close to the truth. Fox is a great source of dumbass virus “news”.
I’ve been getting similar emails from any hotel, hotel chain or air company to which I’ve ever given my email. Or at least it seems that way.