Hi, Internet.

I'm still alive, I've just been painfully busy. More painfully busy than usual,
actually, lately, because of our friend Covid-19. As a remote server admin in
an "unaffected country" for an Asian company, guess who's been expected to pick
up the slack from quarantined coworkers? Yeah.

Anyway, I'm writing this little phlog on the morning of March 16th. Things are
still somewhat normal where I'm at, but all that's going to change, I'm sure...
possibly quite soon. Schools here are closing tomorrow or the 17th; if/when
they reopen is anyone's guess.

I mention the school closings because that's usually when the gravity of what's
going on hits home, for people. Eh, some people elsewhere are sick, big deal...
oh, you're closing schools... for two weeks?! Maybe I should be worried.

I've been worried for a while, lol. Not personally, or anything, but after the
disruptions in China it was pretty clear that this was a nightmare waiting to
happen, and that stuff was inevitably going to "get real", as it were.

So my roommate and I are in a pretty okay position, I think. We haven't been
panic-buying or hoarding or anything. We've just been buying a little extra
stuff, mainly nonperishable staples, every time we go to the store.

Right now, we've got:

40 lbs of various types of rice;
More than 12 lbs of various dried beans;
four or five pounds of assorted barley and groats and lentils;
About ten one-pound cans of assorted cooked beans;
About ten cans of assorted canned vegetables (peas/green beans/corn);
Six pounds of pasta;
Six large cans of fruit in syrup;
Two large and eight small cans of tomatoes;
Four boxes of couscous;
Four packages of... red bean and rice mix;
Four boxes of instant mashed potatoes;
Five pounds of assorted dried fruit - raisins, figs, dates;
Five pounds of shelled walnuts and pecans;
Ten pounds of flour;
Five pounds of sugar;
Four pounds of butter;
Two pounds of lard;
A gallon of cooking oil;

...and enough seasonings and sauces and stuff to make rice and beans palatable
and interesting for... a while.

We've also got about two pounds of powdered drink mix.

We've also also got about three months' worth of cat food, both wet and dry,
and extra litter.

And there's a lot of random other stuff in the pantry, as well. A bunch of
popcorn, a dozen packages of ramen, a can or two of chili, a couple random cans
of soup, a full package of oatmeal, a couple cans of refried beans, several
jars of salsa... you get the idea. This isn't, you know, all our earthly
food... just the stuff we've been picking up and have set aside for the coming
crisis.

We're anticipating needing to "isolate", voluntarily or otherwise, for up to a
month. Yeah. :( We could do that with just what we have on hand, but it'd be
less than completely pleasant.

Rice and beans both have about 1500 calories per (dry) pound, and we're aiming
for 1200-1500 calories/person/day.

We're hoping to get a couple days' notice before that happens, so that we can
stock up on more perishable items, especially fruit and vegetables. We've got a
grocery delivery scheduled for later in the week that'll bring us 15 lbs of
potatoes and 10 lbs of onions, plus oranges, bananas, lemons, and other stuff.
And we placed a large Amazon Pantry order that, assuming it arrives as
scheduled, in about two weeks(!), will at least provide more beans, more canned
vegetables, more canned fruit, and some canned/dried meat. We'll see if that
happens, I guess.

The baking supplies are to make bread and cookies with. I anticipate baking two
loaves of bread twice a week, but that might become two loaves once a week and
cookies/bars once a week. 

We've got a couple of roasts in the freezer, which will probably be our primary
sources of meat for the duration of the excitement. I hope to pick up a little
extra, maybe a couple pounds of bacon, in the next couple of days, for added
options and variety. Any way you look at it, though, meat's not going to figure
very prominently in our isolation diet, more for economic than philosophical
reasons. A pound of beans costs one dollar, and has 1500 calories; a pound of
beef costs at least four times that, and has 900-1000 calories. Bacon's only
slightly better, at 2400 or so calories per, what, six-dollar pound?

And because someone's bound to wonder... we've got about fifty rolls of toilet
paper.

I have no idea why people are stockpiling bottled water. It's a pandemic, not
the collapse of civilization as we know it. Look at China, look at Italy - the
water (and power, and Internet...) stayed on just fine. But if society does
collapse, um, we've got bleach to purify water with, I guess. And a couple
solar panels and batteries, so we can play Harvest Moon on the DS, lol. And
candles, oil lamps, and a couple gallons of kerosene, not because of concerns
about Covid-19 but because we live in a part of the world that gets severe
winter storms frequently.

Anyway, that's it for now. More updates as the situation warrants, I guess.