From western Canada (Alberta). The only thing keeping me sane is programming. It’s something to keep me occupied for at least 6 hours a day. We’re having an unusually late spring here and that helps too. I’m an avid golfer and if the weather was good it would be driving me crazy. I’m hoping my golf course will open - I would think that’s something where you could practice social distancing (my foursome always walks the course - no golf carts)
Tampa Bay Update: I’m just north of Tampa Bay. With State Wide stay at home orders, not much has changed with the order. There’s a bit less traffic. I’m closing on a selling a home in two weeks, so I’m traveling between homes and storage a lot to finish up the move. I did notice there are 2 to 4 times as many people in the Home Depot/Lowes parking lots than in the grocery stores. Walmart food pickup is working well. Liquor store delivers efficiently 
Southeast Florida is where it’s bad. Over half the cases and most of the deaths. Our neighborhood has lots of trails and there are more people out walking and biking than in cars. There are not as many golf carts as expected, people are really walking Off to Walmart for grocery pickup. Takes about 36 hours to get on the schedule. Beats going into the store.
David here checking in from Ireland.
The sun is setting here after a beautiful cool sunny spring day. There is a lovely stretch in the evenings. The garden is bouncing back to life, and there is great feeling of life and enthusiasm in the bird song and the bees, and anticipation of the season ahead. Spring is definitely in the air.
This contrasted by the constant threat of corona virus, the awful illness, death.
It is really difficult to reconcile the two. Ireland was fairly quick to respond, and the rates here are modest, but still significant, and hospital resources are now stretched.
We too are homebound, self isolating, minimal excursions, only for food shopping. Every non essential outlet closed. Pubs and restaurants were first to shut. Entertaining ourselves at home, board games, tv, netflix and amazon prime. Keeping up daily local walks, social distancing, happy to do it. There are four of us here - everyone cooking and helping out - its lovely - maybe this is the right way to do things? Lots of Zoom and Team going on to keep in touch with family and friends
From the day to day perspective, work is much the same - a bit busier than usual helping other people and businesses work from home.
Its all grand - but worrying and artificial - and we reckon it will be like this until June at least.
Take care
David
That southeast Florida that Gary mentioned is where I live… It’s 1/3 New Yorkers (complaining about EVERYTHING!), 1/3 third world country and the remaining 1/3 are normal people walking around saying WTF did I get myself into? It’s the kind of place where turn signals are considered completely optional and the stripes on the road are merely suggestions.
But dang! We do have great weather, especially during the winter months so we get tourist from all over the world so this type of outbreak was simply a matter of time.
By and large, I think the local governments have been trying to contain this but our state governor has only been good on TV (so bad the newspapers have been tearing him up!)
The food delivery services are slammed… most have 3 - 6 day backlogs. Usually easier to just walk to the store and grab the few things you need. The stores are stocked pretty well… they even had toilette paper! The pool guy came as scheduled as did the lawn service so all in all, my life is still unchanged.
Hi!
Here in Sao Paulo / Brazil we’re in lockdown too. Most people working from home (as possible) and strong dependency from delivery services. At least more 1 month in this situation…
Best regards and keep safe!
North Tampa update: The grocery stores are now stocked pretty much as usual. There are limits on tiolet paper, rubbing alcohol, none on liquor 
. The explosion of cases has not happened in Florida as a whole as expected (yet?). However, where @PPetree lives in south Florida is getting hotter everyday. Everyone is hopeful the stories that it is over in China are true.
It is also disconcerting to see New York State ranked above any other country in the world.
Many have settled into groups - once you’ve been exposed to someone, like a relative who keeps your kid one afternoon - The adults have, for the most part, given up on trying to keep the neighbor kids apart.
But if the numbers continue to stay level, then I guess we did a good enough job. Let’s hope.
It’s been almost 3 weeks since the last post. Tomorrow Florida lifts some of it’s stay at home orders. Restaurants are allowed up to 25% seating. It may go to 50% in 2 weeks if “it goes well”, as the Governor says. This week was an abrupt change from last week. The traffic was much more and I noticed cars parked at the small office buildings, where it was totally vacant 2 weeks ago. Stores have most of the supplies. Still a limit on TP and rubbing alcohol, but not on drinking alcohol 
The beaches and parks are now open, but you can only go there to walk/exercise.
There’s a lot of talk among business owners about reopening now, not in a couple weeks. Many want it open now, as they are dying from lack of income. In Florida we have a death rate of 0.006% of the population. And in the last 6 weeks our population effected financially, eg, unemployment, increased by 9.4% of the states population. As I said in the beginning, our leaders have some tough decisions.
I have a funny post that talks about the stay at home orders: https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/g5u99d/wow_this_sums_up_everything_we_have_been_told_so/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
And a post from a doctor in the Bronx who has another view on the situation: I’ve worked the coronavirus front line — and I say it’s time to start opening up
Good luck. Stay Safe.
The lockdown continues here in Canada. The curves have flattened, but the country won’t open up until the health experts say it is OK. (The politicians here are respecting the experts). They’d like to see the infection rate and death rate drop to half of what they are now before any reopening. Even then, it will be a gradual and measured process.
People are in good spirits and are supporting the lockdown for as long as it takes. Money is flowing to individuals and businesses in need.
When this is over, the world will be a different place.
The boat ramps opened yesterday! I have fresh mackerel!
When “the other” returns we’re having Rum Runners by the pool!
The local hospital is going to restart elective surgery, the local grocery store (Publix) still has ZERO toilette paper. Meats are increasing hard to find but my butcher shop (Doris’s Italian Market) had EVERYTHING I needed so I stocked up and I can get through the next 6-8 weeks without buying any additional meat (which is good since there’s no toilette paper to be had!)
Those under 40 years old continue to congregate around our neighborhood while those older continue to keep our distance and shake our heads in bewilderment.
Iguanas have taken over and destroyed our vegetable garden. If I showed you what they did to 6 kale, 1 zucchini and 1 cucumber plant your mouths would drop! (I ordered a BB gun yesterday.)
I have a tentative offer on my company and 4 weeks to cross the finish line.
Good luck with the acquisition.
The 40 year old comment is definitely the case. It’s hard to walk the neighborhood without having to avoid a street because there is a gaggle of kids and their parents playing street hockey, baseball, flag football and all those things I want to do too (but the body says no, and so does common sense). Many have compared this to living under communistic rule. Tomorrow they open up a on a “limited” basis. I doubt it will be as limited as mandated, I see people just pushing their way into whatever it is.
Tomorrow the community pool reopens. Not the fitness center, or cafe, or bike shop. I’m a bit confused by this, but I guess since you’re outside it’s aok. (I’m going to go by the pool tomorrow and see how crazy it is). Everyone already bought up all the blowup baby pools.
It seems over the last week that our street, like many of the others, has become a gathering spot for the families. Our neighborhood is mostly new parents with 1, 2 or 3 rugrats or yardapes. And they are now congregating in the early evenings. Nobody, especially the kids, are distancing. 25 to 35 people. And dogs.
In our county, we have 9 deaths, 380 cases total, and currently 18 in isolation. We’re just not seeing the problem, so I’m sure that’s why everyone is simply over the distancing. And no masks or gloves. Even when they get a package now, when 3 weeks ago you saw everyone wiping down packages with gloves.
I can imagine the feelings are quite different in NYC, Spain and Italy. My daughter is a infectious disease fellow at Vanderbilt Medical Center (soon to be the chief fellow) and she lost another patient to the virus this week. Her view point, after seeing the death of many patients, including John Prine - country singer, is much different. And I can imagine the care givers in the really hot spots are also viewing this differently. I see many of them suffering from PTSD after waging this battle.
Stay safe.
Me and “The Other One” actually had to go out today and the stores were packed! While everyone wore masks, there was no pretense of social distancing. This is gonna blow up in our faces in a BIG way!
In the mean time, we’re gonna continue to isolate, work from home and do what we’ve been doing.
And the pool is too cold to get in and the mosquitoes are out in force but alas, we have Rum so all is not lost.
It’s been three more weeks and we’re now in phase 2 in Florida, except the Miami/Dade/Broward coast. Bars are open - 50% seating. Restaurants went from 25% to 50%, and 100% outside. Many ware masks in public, but many don’t. Even less gloves. Our death rate has dramatically gone down, but the infection rate is somewhat level, or even possibly over the last week increased slightly. In our county we had 28 in quarantine 2 weeks ago, it’s now 43. We’ve had 15 deaths, 3 about a 10 days ago. Nursing homes, especially one of them (I’ve told everyone don’t put me there ) had 14 staff and 14 patients tested positive. Some of the details are just not availble.
Some have spoke that the death rate compared to the tested positive rate has diminished considerably. Florida numbers seem to support that. Maybe it has mutated like the SARS virus did into a less deadly form.
Good luck - stay safe -
A few of you know I’ve an offer to buy my company so I’ve been under tremendous stress and working ungodly hours. Such is life.
Well, one of my few respites is that once a month, all of my old college friends get together for an online zoom happy hour.
A little back story: During our college years in Germany we spent countless hours debating the ills of the world and planning our futures (like any of that planning worked out for any of us! LOL) At some point during our second year of uni someone suggested a trip to Tenerife. That trip led us to plan a trip for most every break from college. We “eurail passed” all over europe exploring every museum, beach, bar etc. After graduation we spent a few years not really staying in touch and one of the ladies reached out by regular old mail (that’s all we had back then as compuserve hadn’t even been invented) and suggested we all come “home” to Frankfurt for New Years. We did and that started a 35 year tradition of staying connected by meeting and celebrating new years in cities all around the world. We’ve done Paris, Tokyo, Madrid, Rome, Rio, NYC, Sydney etc. Not everyone can attend every year but hardly anyone misses two years in a row. The group size has grown considerably because now we have spouses, kids etc.
Back to fishing… During COVID, we started having a monthly happy hour via zoom. Because of all the time zones of the group, we try to balance the timing so that’s it fair to everyone. So, on Friday morning at 8:30a I found myself drinking Bloody Mary’s and eating banana bread. We finished up around 10:30a EST and then I got a knock on the door and a neighbors fishing buddy cancelled at the last minute and I (under the influence of alcohol) threw caution to wind and accept the invitation to go fishing.
By noon we had this 30 year old boat in the water:
By 12:30 we were anchored in 50’ deep water and had a few lines baited when out of the blue this 100’ sailboat kept coming at us… on collision course. We were yelling, whistling etc. trying to get their captains attention. All of a sudden he pops up, grabs the wheel and steers his boat clear of us. He missed us by about 15 feet. After catching our breath, we went back to fishing.
For those who don’t deep sea fish, live bait works best and live bait is hard to find (especially now) so we spent a fair amount of time casting a net for ballyhoo, which is a small fish with a very long “beak” and it’s used for trolling and generally attracts much larger fish. After the first few net casts we had about 12 ballyhoo and promptly put a few on hooks within minutes we got our first hit, a barracuda.
Large barracuda really taste nasty so we decided to cut him loose. I controlled the cuda while my buddy cut the hook. No injuries, the cuda swam away.
We managed to pull in a few red snapper before the winds kicked up and we had 2-4 foot swells and I got sick (twice) - apparently banana bread and bloody mary’s don’t mix with rough seas… who knew! It was about 3:30p anyway so we decided to head back (thank god!). By 5p we had the boat hosed down and back under cover and were filleting the fish.
That was my first break in weeks and my first REAL outing in months! I’m debating if I will ever leave the house again. 
Great story! Thank you for sharing.
Nowhere near as glorious as it may have sounded in my response to @Neil_HNF last night… but you wanted to hear more! LOL
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This story is not as great. A long time friend and owner of a very upscale Italian restaurant is closing in a week because he can’t cover costs at 50% occupancy rules. He hopes to reopen in September.
That is truly sad. Sometimes I think back when I owned my bar (early 80’s) and how dependent we were on tourists (Colorado ski resort) and think about:
A) how much I miss those mountains
B) how much I don’t miss the cold
C) how in the hell I would survive with this season coming up. I guarantee you there’ll be no tourist this fall/winter and if there is, you really wouldn’t want them!
I can’t imagine how stressful this must be for bar and restaurant owners today. It’s not just their livelihoods, it’s their life!
I have a daughter in Denver and we are visiting in a two weeks. I tried to get a room in the ski areas - Breck, etc - and nothing is really available - had to get a house in Crested Butte (western Co). It’s very full right now and fall is fulling up.
Cold - that’s why we are both in Fla.
My bar was in Dillon (Keystone, A-Basin). I loved Denver, that’s where I lived before I found the mountains. LOL Colorado is the only state that has never had a quarantine or social distancing… probably explains why their cases are skyrocketing.