I thought I’d take a break from our normally scheduled shenanigans to address the elephant in the room.

The title of this post should be indicative of the subject matter to follow, but is still poking some light-hearted fun into an otherwise deadly-serious topic.

The Corona Virus, or COVID-19 when its feeling all fancy pants, has hit the shores of all continents here on Earth. It’s a pandemic. It’s a version of a flu virus that they talk about before the world plunges into darkness. And yet, here in the States, life hasn’t changed much. Sure, there are panic buyers, those who are not satisfied with owning ten year supplies of toilet paper along with several gallons of hand sanitizer. Those who stock up on water bottles when they could literally fill up the old ones with *gasp* tap water. We still have power, we still have gas, we still have Internet — for now.

Depends on who you listen to, what you choose to research and what you choose to believe I suppose. I guess this is a Public Service Announcement in a way. You should probably get your information from a legitimate source. Remember when they said Wikipedia wasn’t good enough for citations in college? Remember when current events were only gleaned via news outlets such as the papers or what they play on cable TV? 2020 is a whole different animal. Think of it like this: The national news media (print and film) is now Wikipedia.

Social media will turn things around on its head really quickly. Do you think it’s scary that this new virus has mutated from an animal virus and has since mutated to spread rapidly and replicate itself quickly? If you think that’s fast, just think about how rapidly stupidity flies around the world via these applications? I hear about new confirmed cases every single day, and most of the time they are getting closer and closer to where I live. I’ve heard several reports of COVID-19 in my town. But a quick search of the Centers For Disease Control (CDC) website finds zero cases in our town and very few in the county. I’m just saying, do your homework people. Don’t freak out. Maybe wash your dirty ass more often, because your lack of TP is assaulting my nostrils.

The place of business in which I find myself employed has been deemed non-essential, so we closed our doors about a week ago. The plan was simple: open back up come April 1st, everyone gets paid for the time off, and life will go back to normal. During this past week I’ve had a much needed vacation, and I count it as a blessing not needing to use my PTO for the break. Rumors started that other similar places of business would probably stay closed longer term. Today I received word that we too, would have an extended break, until April 13th. Now we do have to use some PTO and I’m glad that I ended up having plenty to spare, but if this continues on there will be financial implications. I’m sure I’m not alone in hoping that this thing passes sooner than later. I will have enjoyed the time off without losing everything in the process. If we’re still talking about closures come May 1st, there’s going to be issues.

Stress is at a high all over, and yet this is a great time to really disconnect from the worry, stay at home and reconnect with our loved ones.

I was fortunate to be gifted a couple of new games during this time and have dug in. I have much that I want to write about in the coming weeks.

Stay safe. Wash your hands. Stay at home as much as possible. Take up or reinvest into hobbies. Soon life will go back to normal and we can live our stress again. For now, let’s all just take a deep breath and relax. Cheers.