It’s interesting reading Facebook and blog posts from just a week ago and thinking, ‘how quaint’.  Things have changed so quickly.  For instance, worried about freaking out recruiters by asking about telecommuting.  I had a couple of calls with a recruiting company last Thursday where they said, ‘normally this job would be onsite but it will probably be telecommute to start until this virus thing is over’.  OK, then.  If you prove you can do the job telecommuting, then it’s easier afterward to say, ‘do you mind if I work from home tomorrow?’.

I’ve had more than one experience lately of there being a flurry of activity around a possible job and then radio silence.  I suspect what is happening is between step 1 and step 2, things got so weird re coronavirus that the actual company said, ‘ya know, let’s not deal with this right now’.  And that’s fine.  So it may take longer to get a new job than I thought – I have plenty to do at home, and some career-based learning I can do in the meantime, and financially, I’m OK for a while.  (I also suspect that current boundaries and restrictions about unemployment insurance will be relaxed.  I’ve already had an upcoming visit with the Dept of Labor postponed indefinitely.)

C had been given the go-ahead to work from home for the foreseeable future, and then that became organization-wide, so…

I didn’t have a lot of stuff scheduled upcoming, but it’s all postponed.  The first show I was going to play with Utopia is now tentatively pushed back into the second show’s slot, but I suspect it will be postponed further.  The rink first cancelled group lessons for two weeks (but left the rink open), but is now shut down completely.  Good thing it may warm up soon – I can get the bike up and running – and there’s always powerwalks and Jane Fonda, so theoretically I can get more in shape.  (Let’s not talk about how badly I’ve been eating.  It may be time to go back to Weight Watchers once I have an income again.)

I spent a long weekend in South Jersey with my friend whose parents died, one after the other, in the space of a couple of months.  She finds herself having to deal with the estate and the house and the two extra cars and stuff just as this virus stuff hits and she’s unemployed, and it’s a giant shitshow.  She’s an only child and is having to deal with all of this alone and (unlike me, who would retreat from social contact if I were going through this) needs people.  So I thought I’d be helping box up stuff or whatever, but really I was just a willing ear and someone to remind her to eat and to take deep breaths.  She does tend to go to catastrophic thinking and worst-case scenarios much more quickly than I do, so there was a lot of me saying, “well, I guess that could happen, but it probably won’t so why don’t you put that aside for now”.  Didn’t work, but at least I tried.  🙂  It was nice to get out of my own house for a while and to do something helpful.  I figure that, with my own job hunt being up in the air and everything higgledy-piggledy re the virus, I can probably find some volunteer stuff to do for the new few weeks that will continue to give me a sense of purpose and actually be helpful to someone else.

Media consumption: I’m rereading Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar books and am chuckling as I remember how Vance and I would joke over some of the stuff when I read them the first time.  They’re fun reads, but there’s definitely some mockable stuff in there.

We watched Bombshell, that was really good.  But, OMG, we are still going through The Handmaid’s Tale season 3 and it is just blowing me away.  Last night, we watched the episode where Bradley Whitford’s character and his wife and June are essentially forced to have their baby-making ceremony even though it’s the last thing any of those three characters want.  So full of tension and fantastic acting.  OMG.  And that show just puts its all behind design stuff: costumes and sets and cinematography and it’s so amazing to look at.  Wow.

Sibling Sam was supposed to come up this week to visit, but he cancelled, probably for the best.  Dad is scheduled to come up for Easter weekend, and that’s still on for now.  He probably shouldn’t fly (he already has a ticket), but he could drive easily if he made it a two-day trip.  I’m letting him make the call.  Of course, once he’s here, not sure what we’re going to be able to do in terms of sightseeing or whatever.  Well, if he drives, we’ll have a car and we can drive to parks or seaside or whatever to walk around and not get near other people.  Must ponder.  No shows or movies or anything, clearly.