Journal of the Plague Year, Day Two (March 17th)

Bars have been ordered closed, here, and all restaurants are takeout-only. The
largest shopping mall is closed indefinitely. Roommate is now working from home
until further notice.

Things don't seem too terrible here, yet. The small stores I go to are still
fairly well-stocked, though it seems like business is down. It seems like the
asian markets are more picked-over than the latino ones. Might just be the
demographics of the area, might just be the advice I keep seeing posted online
to try asian stores for rice, or it might be something else entirely.

Picked up some groceries last night, but more normal groceries than pandemic
stockpiling. Eggs, fresh fruit, a pound of coffee beans, a few other things.
Did get another four-pound bag of dried beans, though, since they were there.

Ideally one of two Amazon Fresh orders I placed will arrive this evening, which
should help.

One thing I should point out, vis a vis preparations for isolation and food and
everything. I don't drive, and neither does my roommate. We don't have a car.
We bike, walk, or take public transit everywhere, basically. We do most of our
grocery shopping at a latino mercado that's about a quarter-mile away, and also
at some asian markets in the area. If they close because of the pandemic, the
next nearest place to buy groceries is a grocery "department" attached to a big
box clothing store, which probably will close during the crisis, and is in any
event two miles away. The nearest actual grocery store is about two and a half
miles away. There's actually three really close to one another, and then a
fourth a similar distance away, just in the complete opposite direction. Even
with a trailer, there's a distinct limit to how much you can carry on a bike,
and I'm far from enthused about, you know, dealing with traffic full of
panicking people distracted by their out-of-school crotchfruit, just to fight
over whatever's on the shelves.

I've got a nice large pile of reading material I can work my way through here,
at least. So things aren't all gloom and doom. And who knows, I might get
inspired to compose a poem or two about, um, topical events.

Oh, I will add this - if you live with someone with OCD and are preparing for
pandemic-related isolation, talk to them *now* about what they're going to
want/need to get through the day. Walk them through their day, their routines,
in _detail_. My roommate drinks a lot of tea when she works. We're... seven
hours into working from home, and she's complained three times that we don't
have any plastic stir sticks/twizzle sticks/whatever they're called to stir
sugar into her tea, and that having to use a spoon makes her feel "itchy".

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everybody.