Apocalypse shopping list:

  1. Keto blood test monitor (with strips) – not found at the local Walmart.
  2. PS4 controller – cost twice as much as it would’ve on Amazon
  3. 1/16 tablespoon measuring spoon thingy – also not found
  4. a tub of creatine – found it exactly where I thought it’d be
  5. malaria meds that may work on covid-19 – nope, only by prescription
  6. grapefruit juice – this was weird: the fine people of Pembroke love it, apparently. There was none left.

 

The trip to Walmart was mostly uneventful: a 30-minute drive from our cottage across a very quiet town of Pembroke, with shuttered businesses and empty parking lots. Gf decided to stay in the car: I put a balaclava over my nose and mouth to keep from touching it. Ended up scaring a few folks at Walmart.

The store was strangely devoid of activity. Things that were sold out: beef, grapefruit juice, Angry Orchard cider. A few people were out shopping, acting normally, not wearing PPE, not following the social distancing guidelines. The cashier said they’d be cutting their hours and would close at 8pm instead of 10pm going forward. The first hour would be only for the elderly; the last hour would be for the employees themselves to stock up on supplies.

There were a few signs posted around the store: they limited eggs to 2 cartons per person, toiler paper to 1 package per person, and were completely sold out of alcohol-based first aid products, hand sanitizers, surgical masks, and aloe vera. Hell if I know why someone would need aloe vera…

Gf and I spent a few days cataloging, reorganizing, and repacking my hoard of emergency supplies, med kits, and tools I bought back in the King County Search & Rescue, as well as along the way. I’m fairly certain the 70L backpack and the suitcase full of goodies could be sold for $10K CAD on Kijiji. Most of the equipment is first aid-oriented (so very, very much first aid), but there’s also enough gear to help survive in the wilderness for a fair bit. Nice bonding activity, in any case.

Slow day today… Sunday. We lounged in bed while reading the news together. The first day-over-day death reduction in Italy. At least two infected congresscritters. Senator Rand just got diagnosed positive after being exposed a week ago – he took zero precautions, didn’t self-isolate, and may well have infected half the senate by now. Someone in Mike Pence’s office tested positive as well.

…my degree is in political science, and I’m a virology fanboy. Given how contagious this virus is, how disproportionately it affects the elderly, and the median age of congresscritters and Supreme Court justices, I wouldn’t be surprised if quite a few major politicians (and likely more than just a few) end up dying from it. When the first major US public figure dies, things will get even hairier.

On the personal front, things are going well. Gf and I are having interesting conversations, playing Borderlands with our newly acquired second controller, trying (and mostly failing) to bake cookies. Her house back in Toronto has ~8 people living in the same three-story house. All of her roommates have lost their jobs or quit because they didn’t want to be dealing with close-contact retail customers during the pandemic. The only exception so far is the graphic designer roommate, but his job isn’t secure either. They’re all even more broke and depressed than before, and planning to start teaching classes (yoga, painting, etc) from their house. I’m positive that’ll be the new trend elsewhere, rendering the quarantine efforts counterproductive, generating strange new clusters of disease. I wish them well.