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Staycation
Mar. 21st, 2020 07:38 pmI've been on staycation since Wednesday. I go back to work on Tuesday.
Staycation is less fun when it's REALLY staying at home, but it's still better than trying to work, especially now.
I have mostly been working on the cover for Spark of Desire. I haven't done the final proofread of Spark of Desire, but I am happy with the book and am unlikely to make any substantial changes to it, so might as well start the cover.
Of course, it's a terrible book to release NOW, because the subplot is "protagonists trying to cure mysterious new disorder". This subject wasn't topical when I started writing it. Why, universe.
Besides working on art, I've written a thousand words or so on The Lord, His Monster, and Their Lady. It's not much, but it's something.
I went to Walmart Saturday for groceries. I've been ordering groceries online and picking them up from the store for many months now, which seems like one of the more sensible ways to get groceries under the circumstances. Walmart doesn't even charge a fee for pickup. The system is laboring under disruptions at present. Usually, you can request a pickup time several days in advance. Right now, the only options are "today" and "tomorrow". When I tried ordering Thursday evening, there were no slots available. My cat woke me up at 1AM on Friday morning, so I tried ordering from my phone, and got a slot for Saturday at 11AM.
I left early, to do some walking around by the pokestops near Walmart. One of those pokestops is a donut shop, which was open and doing a lot of business. Enough so that I stopped walking along the strip of grass between the road and its parking lot, because I didn't want to be that close to people. It was surreal in comparison with the podcast I was listening to, where a man talked about a coffee shop line that stretched around the block -- not because there were a lot of people, but because everyone was standing 6 feet apart.
Walmart sent me the "your order is ready" notification 15 minutes before the hour, as usual, so I finished my walk and went to get my order. There were a lot of cars on the road, and a lot of people coming out of Walmart. The pickup area was much quieter than I'd expected given the state of the website: just one other car waiting.
I got out of my car while the store clerk loaded my groceries into the trunk. I stood by the driver's door and said, "Normally I help load, but under the circumstances that feels more of an unkindness than a kindness."
He gave a dry laugh. "Yeah. You just stay over there, that's fine."
Normally they have me sign for the groceries on a store smartphone; they didn't this time. Another little thing to avoid unnecessary contact.
My city and the smaller city I was in have both closed all restaurants to dine-in, and restricted gatherings to 50 people or fewer and 10 people or fewer, respectively. But they haven't shut down businesses. A lot of businesses have voluntarily closed. I saw a tire shop packing up on Friday afternoon: taking all of the tires that are normally on display outside and storing them. My bank closed all its lobbies as of Friday, though the drive-throughs remain open. Customers with needs that can't be handled by tellers can make an appointment to meet with someone at a bank. I don't know how they're handling employees who aren't set up to work from home. I can check my work email from home now, but I haven't wanted to. I am not the sort of employee who checks her work email when she's on vacation. Not even now that I'm salaried and have access to it.
I checked my email just now anyway. And I still don't know how employees are being handled. My division is still working -- all of us, as far as I can tell -- and the people who didn't already have remote access are not getting it. They still have to go to work, although they're taking steps to spread people out more. Branch staff may also still be coming to work, but not seeing customers face-to-face. It looks like branch managers are handling that with their staff individually instead of us all getting an announcement.
That's better than what happened at the hotel across the street from me. On Monday night, senior management received notice from headquarters. On Tuesday morning, they told their staff that the hotel was closing. Everyone was fired. Not 'laid off until it's safe to reopen'. Fired. I don't know if the chain plans to hire new staff and reopen after the crisis or if they're going to sell it. Maybe they don't know, either.
Southwest sent me an email that they were extending the period during which funds from cancelled tickets could be re-used, from "one year from purchase" to June 2021. They were also allowing customers to reschedule flights for a later date with no price change. That struck me as extraordinary; in an age where most airlines charge exorbitant change fees and no refunds are offered, Southwest is making their policy more generous, for people who had already agreed to the previous terms.
My city's mass transit is still running. They've waived all fees -- they were working on making the mass transit system fee-free anyway -- to minimize contact between riders and drivers. The apps for the electronic-lock bikes and scooters all allow 20-minute free rides, to encourage social distancing. I thought that was clever.
We are all trying so hard.
I listen to several economics podcasts, and the enormity of the impact from the shutdown is staggering. There will be a cost in lives to this, too. I see people blaming capitalism for this, as if it is the fault of capitalism that we do not live in a world where no human labor is involved in providing food, shelter, clothing, power, and medical care to people. These are not objects that we could all have an infinite amount of, forever, if only billionaires weren't selfish and greedy. Humans -- mostly low paid, overworked humans -- work the farms and hospitals, drive the trucks, staff the supply chains and oil rigs and power companies. They can't all stay home and play video games for a couple of months without mass death.
So much activity has ground to a halt, and so much of it absolutely must continue. I don't know if even the US federal government can fill in this enormous gulf with enough money.
I hope they will try. It is vital that they make the attempt.
A lot of people have suggested that rent and mortgage payments should be suspended. I think it's a better idea for the federal government to cut checks to all American adults and let them pay their bills from that, myself. But one little thing on the subject of mortgage payments: I am pretty confident that this is not an action that banks can take voluntarily. I don't mean "they wouldn't be willing to take it"; I mean "the regulations that govern banking would prohibit this." As a rule, regulators take a dim view of banks classifying loans as sound and collectible at the same time that the bank is not receiving payments on them. Yes, there are payment extensions, but doing these with no fees and no interest collected on massive numbers of loans would -- in ordinary times -- invite a cease-and-desist notice from the regulators. The federal government would actually have to step in and say that banks are even allowed to take such an action.
Oh, I almost forgot. I set two of my books to free on non-Amazon stores. Amazon has figured out that A Rational Arrangement is free and price-matched it without pulling it, so that's nice. (Amazon's official position is that you can only set books to free if they're exclusive to Amazon. If the book is reported as free, Amazon will either price-match it to free, or they'll remove it from the store. It's book-selling roulette!) Amazon hasn't figured out that The Moon Etherium is free yet, though. It's free on all the other stores. Anyway, the links will take you to either books2read.com's page or your favorite store, if you've already told books2read.com what that is. So if you want to get The Moon Etherium for free, you'll have to click here for Kobo or B&N , or Apple or wherever.
One thing I keep thinking is "We are not all staying home because it's the apocalypse. We are staying home to STOP the apocalypse. We are staying home to stop hundreds of millions of people from getting sick, and millions of people from dying."
It is a tiny, personal thing that we are all doing, a small sacrifice for some of us and a major one for others, as they lose their livelihoods and watch their business crumble. But it is also our moment of heroism; our moment of deciding, as a nation, that millions of lives are more important than trillions of dollars.
Staycation is less fun when it's REALLY staying at home, but it's still better than trying to work, especially now.
I have mostly been working on the cover for Spark of Desire. I haven't done the final proofread of Spark of Desire, but I am happy with the book and am unlikely to make any substantial changes to it, so might as well start the cover.
Of course, it's a terrible book to release NOW, because the subplot is "protagonists trying to cure mysterious new disorder". This subject wasn't topical when I started writing it. Why, universe.
Besides working on art, I've written a thousand words or so on The Lord, His Monster, and Their Lady. It's not much, but it's something.
I went to Walmart Saturday for groceries. I've been ordering groceries online and picking them up from the store for many months now, which seems like one of the more sensible ways to get groceries under the circumstances. Walmart doesn't even charge a fee for pickup. The system is laboring under disruptions at present. Usually, you can request a pickup time several days in advance. Right now, the only options are "today" and "tomorrow". When I tried ordering Thursday evening, there were no slots available. My cat woke me up at 1AM on Friday morning, so I tried ordering from my phone, and got a slot for Saturday at 11AM.
I left early, to do some walking around by the pokestops near Walmart. One of those pokestops is a donut shop, which was open and doing a lot of business. Enough so that I stopped walking along the strip of grass between the road and its parking lot, because I didn't want to be that close to people. It was surreal in comparison with the podcast I was listening to, where a man talked about a coffee shop line that stretched around the block -- not because there were a lot of people, but because everyone was standing 6 feet apart.
Walmart sent me the "your order is ready" notification 15 minutes before the hour, as usual, so I finished my walk and went to get my order. There were a lot of cars on the road, and a lot of people coming out of Walmart. The pickup area was much quieter than I'd expected given the state of the website: just one other car waiting.
I got out of my car while the store clerk loaded my groceries into the trunk. I stood by the driver's door and said, "Normally I help load, but under the circumstances that feels more of an unkindness than a kindness."
He gave a dry laugh. "Yeah. You just stay over there, that's fine."
Normally they have me sign for the groceries on a store smartphone; they didn't this time. Another little thing to avoid unnecessary contact.
My city and the smaller city I was in have both closed all restaurants to dine-in, and restricted gatherings to 50 people or fewer and 10 people or fewer, respectively. But they haven't shut down businesses. A lot of businesses have voluntarily closed. I saw a tire shop packing up on Friday afternoon: taking all of the tires that are normally on display outside and storing them. My bank closed all its lobbies as of Friday, though the drive-throughs remain open. Customers with needs that can't be handled by tellers can make an appointment to meet with someone at a bank. I don't know how they're handling employees who aren't set up to work from home. I can check my work email from home now, but I haven't wanted to. I am not the sort of employee who checks her work email when she's on vacation. Not even now that I'm salaried and have access to it.
I checked my email just now anyway. And I still don't know how employees are being handled. My division is still working -- all of us, as far as I can tell -- and the people who didn't already have remote access are not getting it. They still have to go to work, although they're taking steps to spread people out more. Branch staff may also still be coming to work, but not seeing customers face-to-face. It looks like branch managers are handling that with their staff individually instead of us all getting an announcement.
That's better than what happened at the hotel across the street from me. On Monday night, senior management received notice from headquarters. On Tuesday morning, they told their staff that the hotel was closing. Everyone was fired. Not 'laid off until it's safe to reopen'. Fired. I don't know if the chain plans to hire new staff and reopen after the crisis or if they're going to sell it. Maybe they don't know, either.
Southwest sent me an email that they were extending the period during which funds from cancelled tickets could be re-used, from "one year from purchase" to June 2021. They were also allowing customers to reschedule flights for a later date with no price change. That struck me as extraordinary; in an age where most airlines charge exorbitant change fees and no refunds are offered, Southwest is making their policy more generous, for people who had already agreed to the previous terms.
My city's mass transit is still running. They've waived all fees -- they were working on making the mass transit system fee-free anyway -- to minimize contact between riders and drivers. The apps for the electronic-lock bikes and scooters all allow 20-minute free rides, to encourage social distancing. I thought that was clever.
We are all trying so hard.
I listen to several economics podcasts, and the enormity of the impact from the shutdown is staggering. There will be a cost in lives to this, too. I see people blaming capitalism for this, as if it is the fault of capitalism that we do not live in a world where no human labor is involved in providing food, shelter, clothing, power, and medical care to people. These are not objects that we could all have an infinite amount of, forever, if only billionaires weren't selfish and greedy. Humans -- mostly low paid, overworked humans -- work the farms and hospitals, drive the trucks, staff the supply chains and oil rigs and power companies. They can't all stay home and play video games for a couple of months without mass death.
So much activity has ground to a halt, and so much of it absolutely must continue. I don't know if even the US federal government can fill in this enormous gulf with enough money.
I hope they will try. It is vital that they make the attempt.
A lot of people have suggested that rent and mortgage payments should be suspended. I think it's a better idea for the federal government to cut checks to all American adults and let them pay their bills from that, myself. But one little thing on the subject of mortgage payments: I am pretty confident that this is not an action that banks can take voluntarily. I don't mean "they wouldn't be willing to take it"; I mean "the regulations that govern banking would prohibit this." As a rule, regulators take a dim view of banks classifying loans as sound and collectible at the same time that the bank is not receiving payments on them. Yes, there are payment extensions, but doing these with no fees and no interest collected on massive numbers of loans would -- in ordinary times -- invite a cease-and-desist notice from the regulators. The federal government would actually have to step in and say that banks are even allowed to take such an action.
Oh, I almost forgot. I set two of my books to free on non-Amazon stores. Amazon has figured out that A Rational Arrangement is free and price-matched it without pulling it, so that's nice. (Amazon's official position is that you can only set books to free if they're exclusive to Amazon. If the book is reported as free, Amazon will either price-match it to free, or they'll remove it from the store. It's book-selling roulette!) Amazon hasn't figured out that The Moon Etherium is free yet, though. It's free on all the other stores. Anyway, the links will take you to either books2read.com's page or your favorite store, if you've already told books2read.com what that is. So if you want to get The Moon Etherium for free, you'll have to click here for Kobo or B&N , or Apple or wherever.
One thing I keep thinking is "We are not all staying home because it's the apocalypse. We are staying home to STOP the apocalypse. We are staying home to stop hundreds of millions of people from getting sick, and millions of people from dying."
It is a tiny, personal thing that we are all doing, a small sacrifice for some of us and a major one for others, as they lose their livelihoods and watch their business crumble. But it is also our moment of heroism; our moment of deciding, as a nation, that millions of lives are more important than trillions of dollars.
