So, who is the happiest person on the planet because his college got cancelled in the middle of midterms? Well, that would be Jonah.
Got toilet paper! Score!
And he’s very proud of his Corona baseball cap with a built-in bottle opener.
Yeah, dude, black humor. I get it. You’re still not going to Alaska on Spring Break.
Apt. 11d 
Now, I do wonder something — how does one prevent him from going to Alaska for spring break? Money, definitely a lever, if, say, he needs you to buy the ticket. And, the relationship, as in he actually listens to you.
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Why shouldn’t he go to Alaska? Flights are ~345 – ~500 right now, he’s young, if they stop flying it’s only about a week of driving to get back. Only problem is if Canada or the US close their mutual border.
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Cranberry said, “Why shouldn’t he go to Alaska?”
Because he’s leaving a high-infection area and going to a (presumably) low-infection area. Worst case scenario–it’s like sending Alaska smallpox blankets.
Furthermore, it’s a low-resource part of the country with a lot of poverty, very difficult logistics, and no easy access from the rest of the US. I expect that a lot of smaller Alaskan communities do not have good access to even a family doctor.
It’s just not a nice thing to do right now.
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There is apparently a booming China-to-Alaska winter tourism industry. https://www.adn.com/business-economy/2019/07/05/beautiful-impression-chinese-tourism-to-alaska-is-growing-fast/
Alaska’s oil workers live in the rest of the country, commuting in to work through Ted Stevens Anchorage airport, a very busy international hub. The teams cleaning international flights would be the first exposed to the virus, especially during the period no one knew it existed.
As Jonah’s roommate is just as exposed to any NJ viruses, Jonah himself would not increase the infection rate. Many college students who grew up in Alaska attend college out of state. Many of them are heading home now, bringing their germs too.
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Nobody listens to me, but if they do, they should be aware that Modelo (the regular one, not dark) is much better than Corona. My uncle from Texas brought some by.
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Just read that 2 kids (2nd grader and a preschooler) in Westerly, RI, have been diagnosed with COVID-19. One recently got an autograph from one of the Utah Jazz players who’ve been diagnosed.
My sister, who is a nurse on LI, says a patient in her hospital was diagnosed with COVID-19 today. He has been in the hospital for 2 weeks already.
S is in Vienna now and heading back to Spain tomorrow morning. They’ve declared a state of emergency in Spain. She hasn’t decided what to do yet. I still can’t believe I was in Barcelona 10 days ago.
As bj has suggested, we parents don’t really have the ability to control our 20-year-old kids.
Local school district announced it will be closed next week.
I spent about $200 in food and CVS stuff today and got $120 in cash. Now I’m watching Once More With Feeling (the Buffy musical episode).
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Wendy said, “He has been in the hospital for 2 weeks already.”
Oh, crud.
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I kinda agree with Cranberry. You’re only young and dumb once, and my regrets all center around things I didn’t do. But, Laura’s kid and she knows him.
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My partner got me a big pack of toilet paper and said that today a man’s worth is now based on his ability to go out and get toilet paper. Jonah looks like he’s feeling that too.
My friend’s daughter, 16, had the same kind of response – school’s out, we should go travel somewhere! On the one hand, I’m glad that kids are not (yet) terrified. But I wouldn’t travel right now. I just got back from flying to the east coast and God only knows if there were COVID germs everywhere I sat, ate, set down my bag, etc. etc. I really wish testing were better so someone could give us some information, like: 1 out of 1000 flight attendants have it, or 250 out of 1000, or whatever.
Our rural state university just cancelled classes for next week (it’s spring break now) and then is going online for two weeks, but we all know that means the rest of the semester. The tech people have done an excellent job of putting together resources – I was just on a Zoom meeting with about 30 faculty learning how to use Google Meetups (which has given us a free improved version temporariliy so we can record any online classes we hold). The university also put together a very good informational webpage. But it is so, so sad to know how much work everyone has done to get our enrollment back up – efforts that seemed to be working – and realize that will probably be undone by this. Of course we have to do it, and everyone else is, but given that we basically only convince people to come here via campus visits, we may be hit harder than other places.
It will also be interesting to see if the massive move to online education makes colleges push it more, or back away from it, in the future. Anyway, these are the more fun things I’ve worried about in the last couple of days, to avoid worrying about the bigger things.
Now I want to watch Once More With Feeling.
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“Now I want to watch Once More With Feeling.”
Do it! You will feel awesome afterward.
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“My partner got me a big pack of toilet paper and said that today a man’s worth is now based on his ability to go out and get toilet paper.”
That’s hilarious!
A few days ago, my husband came back from the store ecstatic at having found some Lysol disinfectant spray.
I told him that it sounded like such an East Bloc thing to be happy about. (Although they didn’t have Lysol disinfectant spray…)
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I awoke from a delightful spring break nap to find that the kids just got a second week of spring break from school. My senior paid up the $5 from our wager.
It sounds like school is going to be using this week to figure out their next move. The AP teachers have to be losing their minds.
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I’m doing a smallish 9th grade home birthday party this weekend and I’ve already gotten one rather detailed query from a mom. She wanted to know if my husband had done any recent exotic travel. I was able to say no, and furthermore, that we haven’t left town all week.
Our birthday theme is “retro gaming” and I’m already planning on some serious disinfecting between players.
Husband wants to do a road trip to Enchanted Rock State Park:
https://www.visitfredericksburgtx.com/things-to-do/outdoors/enchanted-rock/
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I’m concerned about our British cousins:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/13/uk/uk-coronavirus-response-boris-johnson-intl-gbr/index.html
“The reason the UK has held off stricter “social distancing” measures [school closures and bans on large gatherings] appears to be rooted in the government’s prediction that the outbreak may not peak until 14 weeks from now — and that people will not be willing to drastically alter their ways of life and stick to the new rules for over three months, so there’s little point imposing more restrictions just yet.”
I have no idea why we don’t have travel restrictions on the UK…
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Do you have the list of European countries in which the president owns golf courses?
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MH said, “Do you have the list of European countries in which the president owns golf courses?”
Funny!
But there are presumably a bunch of Trump properties in continental Europe, too.
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Strangely enough, there are not. Only the U.K. and Ireland.
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That’s likely a big part of the reason. The UK has performed Brexit. Do we want it to get even closer to China?
The real reason for Britain’s nonexclusion of Huawei was kept under wraps by its government: fear of retaliation. After Brexit, London sees itself as dependent on Beijing’s goodwill. In an interview with the Global Times on Jan. 20, the Chinese ambassador to Britain made it clear that an exclusion of Huawei would severely damage economic and political relations. And for Johnson, the threats from Beijing—a government with expansive control over its national economy—were more credible than those of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.
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Here’s an incomplete list of stuff relevant to our family that has closed/canceled over the last several days:
–Hometown U. (going remote)
–speech (via Hometown U.)
–school (one extra week of spring break and then ?)
–the 9th grader’s track and field (via school)
–state Junior Classical League convention (was supposed to be in suburban Houston in two weeks)
–religious education for the 9th grader and 1st grader
Our local public schools are closing for at least two weeks. That means that school volunteering is also off the table for at least that long.
I’m also probably going to pull the plug on the senior’s music lessons, as a) she hasn’t been very serious lately and b) her teacher is a heart patient.
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I’m spending the next two weeks in a voluntary quarantine after managing to evacuate from Spain before the travel ban hit. Already stockpiled food so I should be fine there but I’m low on toilet paper and for some reason this is what people think they need. Had a friend go to the store today for me and no toilet paper but plenty of tissue, paper towels, and napkins. I’ve got plenty of paper products to meet my hygienic needs but really, seriously, toilet paper is what people think they need most. The mind boggles.
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BeeGee, at one point my plumber explained to me that he has made a huge amount, lifetime, from clearing sewer clogs caused by paper towels. Toilet paper is designed to fall apart and not make a blockage after flushing, paper towels are not. So, tissue is more likely to help you avoid coupla hundred bucks to get somebody to break quarantine and ream your drains… For forty dollars, you can solve your problem permanently! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D9TCWXC/ref=dp_cerb_1
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No worries Dave. I put all my paper products in the trash. Years of enviro friendly toilets in CA taught me that.
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