Thursday night. Well, at least we’re talking again. Had a good sit-down talk about the importance of communicating exactly how you’re feeling instead of being a stoic badass on the outside (her), as well as not being a panicky dumbass (me). The fate of the relationship is still unclear, but at least this is some good day-over-day improvement.
Gf had another health scare today, on the verge of passing out… This is a strange time: if we drive to the hospital (40 minutes away), we’ll run the risk of catching covid19 in their waiting room. If we don’t drive to the hospital… Well, gf’s condition is bad but not life-threatening – at least according to her. We spent the evening reading studies on CSWS (cerebral salt-wasting syndrome) and the impact of long-term dehydration: there’s a lot of counter-intuitive science, and chugging a glass or two at once is far less efficient than sipping a few ounces every 30 minutes. We’ll try to do hydration and sodium intake smarter, not harder.
There’s some kind of religious holiday tomorrow. Passover? Easter? Never really paid any attention to that stuff. (In fact, still not entirely sure if Christmas is on the 24th or the 25th… Folks take 36 hours off for their alleged celebrations.) Either way, there’ll be an awful lot of Twue Believers (TM) flocking to their favourite megachurches, even despite all the warnings and admonitions, especially in the south. Especially in Florida. A whole lot of clusters will be traced back to this upcoming weekend.
Another 6.6 million Americans applied for unemployment. That’s 17 million total thus far, making the Y axis of all the prior charts utterly ridiculous. Congress passed a $2 trillion (USD) bill to get some money going, but only $1,200 each will go to taxpayers. Not a whole lot, considering what all the other countries are doing. The stock market has been inching higher these last few days. No more 7% downswings. I think that’s a dead-cat bounce. Almost 2,000 more Americans died over the past 24 hours: the new total is 16,719 as of right now. (509 in Canada.) This will likely get worse. Wall Street appears to be convinced the worst is all behind us now. There’ll be no trading due to the holiday tomorrow, so it’ll be a long 3-day weekend for stocks. OPEC+ has just agreed to cut their oil production by over 20%, so the oil prices might bounce up by Monday: I have some money riding on that.
Almost forgot to mention: my car has been fixed. Reddit thought it was either the battery or the alternator. CAA drove up again (only an hour spent waiting in the snow!), confirmed the alternator was fine, and gave my battery another boost. I caaaaarefully drove to a mechanic six miles away and got a new battery in no time. (The price seemed reasonable, too.) Since I was in the actual town, I went to the SAQ and spent 10 minutes standing in line outside: they had rather strict rules that included “you touch it, you buy it” and 2-meter distancing, which everyone followed once inside, and abandoned once they got past the clerks’ field of vision. They didn’t have the Portuguese Dao wine that gf likes, but they did have some exotic cider I’d never encountered before.
The town’s grocery store was a whole different story: no one was allowed inside, and cars lined up in impromptu lanes, with shopping carts and homemade posters and “danger” tape separating them. The concept was ingenious: a guy would walk up to each car and give the driver the cellphone number of one of the store clerks. Then the store clerk would talk to you on the phone, picking your order for you as they went. You’d pick up the order outside once they called your name. I chatted with a fellow named Morris, whose English wasn’t very good: given their low stock (no baking soda, spinach, or ground beef), that made for an interesting conversation. I’m still not sure if Morris screwed me over or if that was an honest mistake, but later on, at home, I figured out that the $107 bill for the groceries was so high because he billed me for eight bags of tangerines instead of just one. I want to think that was an honest mistake, but 1 and 8 are nowhere near each other on the keypad… Low-key misdemeanors in the time of pandemic, eh?
Stay healthy, y’all.
Grigory Lukin.com 