whiteraven191 | Recent Entries

One…uh…benefit(?) of being stuck at home all the time is that I do not have to pay for gas money. Normally, I would be driving a half hour each way between home and campus. That adds up pretty quickly in terms of gas. I have decided to use that spare money to help people as much as I can. Charity is the obvious way, but there are other things I can do besides that. If I order food, I leave a 20% tip instead of my usual 15%. I am now trying to find ways I can support my favorite online content creators, either through becoming a patron of theirs on Patreon (basically a website that lets people become patrons to content creators the way people gave patronage to artists back in the Renaissance) or commissioning art. I do not currently have a job, so I can’t give a lot, but hopefully even a little bit of extra cash will help someone.

I think the thing that weirds me out the most about this pandemic is the toilet paper hoarding. Why is that the thing everyone lost their minds over? According to Google, toilet paper was invented in 1857. Did people during the Spanish Flu epidemic also start hoarding the stuff? Or is that just our generation being weird? Another weird thing is the fact that there still isn't any toilet paper available in stores. For a while there, I couldn't buy eggs or bread, but the grocery store got a new shipment eventually. Why hasn't that happened with toilet paper? I will listen to Charmin's horrible adds with bears being way too enthusiastic about going to the bathroom every day for the rest of my life if it meant fixing that shortage. Thankfully, my mom found a solution. She ordered my family a box of those giant toilet paper wheels that gas stations and rest stops use in the public bathrooms. Which just makes it all the more weird that the normal kind of toilet paper isn't available. It's the same stuff, just in different quantities. If the companies can make the industrial size, why can't they seem to make the normal kind?

My dad works for a company that programs dialysis machines. He has been able to work from home with (almost) no problem. However, he hears things from the companies that are using the machines his company works on. Normally, when people go in for dialysis they are packed in pretty close together. In order to do social distancing, dialysis places are having people sit every other chair. Unfortunately, that does not change the fact that the same number of people need dialysis treatment at the same frequency they did before, so dialysis centers are having to be open far later in the day and opening far earlier in the morning so that everyone can have their treatment done on the correct day. That means that the staff are not getting enough sleep which means they are at a higher risk of making a mistake and exhaustion also hurts your immune system, so they are at a higher risk of catching the coronavirus. So far, I haven’t heard about anything too awful happening, but I feel like this is a whole separate health crisis that might be on the horizon.

I risked my life for some noodles and a snickerdoodle cookie the other day. To clarify, I went and picked up an order from Noodles and Co. Even though I have been putting off making an eye doctor appointment because "there is a plague happening!" I decided to go and get some noodles (and a cookie. Noodles and Co. makes ridiculously good snickerdoodles). It probably seems like a ridiculous thing to risk getting COVID for, but I had my reasons. I am autistic. I really like schedules. Before the pandemic, I would go to a Dungeons and Dragons game every week and grab Noodles and Co. for dinner. Since the pandemic, I haven't been able to go anywhere. We play online now, so I just make myself some food from whatever is in the fridge or the pantry. I could not even order delivery from Noodles and Co. until recently because my parents had just got back from traveling overseas, so we were quarantining even harder than most people. I just really wanted something to remind me of before all this. And I worry that the restaurant might not survive the pandemic. It is a chain restaurant, so it has a better chance than a lot of places, but I can't help worrying anyway.

There is this thing I have seen floating around the internet where people are like "oh wow, carbon emissions are down! The canals of Venice are clear! Isn't it great?" I get that they mean well. I think people who say that sort of thing are going for a sort of "finding a silver lining" thing, but that isn't what I hear. What I hear is people saying that it is a good thing that the coronavirus pandemic is happening. That the canals in Venice being a bit clearer is worth the thousands of people dying (fun fact - the reason the canals are cleaner is because the gondolas aren't stirring up the water. The only way we could keep them that clear is if no one ever used them for travel ever again). It seems like a very privileged point of view. It also tells me that people who are posting stuff like this are not thinking about who might see their messages at all. I can't imagine how upset I would be if I had a loved one who was in the hospital or who had died and I saw someone acting like the pandemic was a good thing.

I have a shirt that says "What Is a Weekend?" It is a reference to the show Downton Abbey. The character asking the question is a noblewoman who has never worked a day in her life, so the concept of a "weekend" is completely meaningless to her. I can't help wondering if we are returning to that. We are all staying home all the time. So far my parents have stuck to the "work Monday through Friday" schedule but there is no actual reason to do that. I suspect that, as the quarantine keeps going, people's work schedules will become less and less rigid. Since we are home every day, they are all starting to feel the same. I think that is part of why the month of March felt like it lasted several months. I imagine that April will feel even slower since we will be in quarantine the whole time.

There was some sort of birthday parade outside my house. I don't know if it's all for one kid or if multiple people are celebrating birthdays. On the one hand, I'm glad they're getting some sort of birthday celebration. On the other hand, the parade is very loud (they're all in cars and honking their horns) and makes it hard to concentrate on my school work.

nd I am a giant nerd. I love playing Dungeons and Dragons. The plethora of sites like Discord and Zoom means that my friends can still play virtually. I worry, however, that other aspects of the gaming community might not be faring as well. One of the places I used to play Dungeons and Dragons was at my local gaming store. It's closed at the moment, of course. I hope it will be able to reopen when the pandemic dies down. It's not just the store I worry about, though. I also worry about the companies that make all the games. Card games like Magic: the Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh! make their money by selling the cards and by hosting tournaments for people to come and play. Obviously, the tournaments will not be happening any time soon, but I doubt people are buying the cards, either. After all, what's the point of buying new cards and building a new deck if it isn't safe to play with anyone?

I had a whole entry planned for today, but I just saw a news story that freaked me out, so I'm going to talk about that. You know how I mentioned how my parents just got back from a cruise to Panama? Well, there is another cruise ship out there that went to Panama that did have a COVID outbreak. There have been multiple deaths and the healthy passengers aren't being allowed to disembark yet and that could so easily have been my parents on that boat.

Do you know what really makes this feel like the apocalypse? The libraries are closed. I don't think I've ever seen the libraries close for non-holiday reasons. And even when it was Christmas or whatever, you could still use the drive-through book drop-off. Thanks to Coronavirus, even that's been closed.

Back when the first few cases were popping up in Virginia, I went and got a bunch of supplies to prepare for the inevitable quarantine. One of the things I did during that preparation was to go to the library and check out a bunch of books. That being said, I didn't really think that I would need them. Also, now that I can't return them, I guess they're mine for the indefinite future. That's going to add up to a lot of library fines. It's a good thing my county library system has a lot of eBooks. We have a lot of books at home, but I don't like most of the stuff my parents like to read.

My parents were on one of, if not the last cruises. Most cruises run for seven days, but theirs was longer since it went all the way to the Panama Canal and back. I don't know if there were any other cruises still sailing those last two days my parents were at sea. If the cruise industry never recovers, I can't help wondering if their cruise will become historically important.

I feel bad for the cruise workers. Apparently, the Island Princess and a few other Princess ships are just hanging out offshore of Princess Cruises' private island and none of the crew can disembark. Since a lot of the people are from countries that have closed their borders, they have nowhere else to go. It's such a weird situation.

The Caribbean is one of the safer places right now in terms of the coronavirus, but my parents had to go through two airports to get home, so they decided to quarantine themselves for two weeks just to make sure. Since I live at home, I'm breathing their air, so I'm doing the same. Honestly, I didn't go out much before the pandemic, so the only real change is having my parents home 24/7.

Hello, everybody! Welcome back to After. Last time, Tessa went to college while making rude comments about everyone and saw, but was not formally introduced, to her "love interest". Riveting. Let's see what awaits us in the next chapters! ( Read more )

Hello! Today I will be talking about a terrible, terrible fanfic-turned-novel called After by Anna Todd. It is the story of a ~~sweet, innocent girl~~ judgmental bitch named Tessa going to college and meeting ~~a hot Bad Boy~~ an abusive asshole named Hardin. Originally, this story was fanfic about the band One Direction, and Hardin was Harry Styles. I don't have a copy of the book yet, so I'll be working from the fanfic version for now and going back and editing once I do have the book. ( Read more... )

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whiteraven191

April 2020

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