I do. I've got 2 kinds: The basic uncooked kind and the kind that's in a tightly rolled tube, precooked. Bought another roll last week.

Thinking of having the procooked kind for dinner Monday, in fact. I slice it, fry in olive oil, then lay out the fried/browned slices in a baking dish, cover with marinara and mozzarella and bake.

I was standing in a line to check out in the supermarket yesterday and, as usual, chatting with the guy behind me in line. I kept backing up trying to maintain a 3 ft distance. He kept moving closer. Felt a little annoying, even frightening. I came very close to asking him to stay a little farther away. He didn't cough or sneeze so I guess no harm done.

My newspaper comes in long, thin plastic bags--perfect for covering your hand and forearm. I've been slipping one over my hand before touching the touch screen on credit card readers, door handles and anything else I have to touch in public. Nobody has stared at me like I was wierd.

One thing the US has for it is our sprawling car-reliant cities and no real public transportation in 99% of the country. It’s a built environment designed for social distancing.

I’m hearing more and more people calling this a “hoax.” My girlfriends cousin, who wants to pursue a masters in public health, said we were foolish for deciding to cancel our attendance at a big group dinner at a restaurant last night. She lives in a two flat with her sickly mother...

My dads business partner doesn’t want to take any special measures at their office and is putting up a fight against allowing anyone to work from home, run any kind of shift schedule, etc. because it’s a “media conspiracy...”

Luckily I think the messaging around why these types of “social distancing” measures are necessary is getting better, even if we’re not all on the same page yet. I went for a run with the dog yesterday and bars were packed for St. Patrick’s Day....


On the other hand, both the Trader Joe’s and Jewel near my place are almost picked clean.

Because my church has moved services online for at least two weeks, I'm getting to scratch off "attend church naked" off my bucket list. I'm watching the service on Facebook Live right now.

If you split screen, you might be taking in porn on one side and church service on the other. Is that the idea?

lolla.

Yes, schools are closing tomorrow too all over Quebec, no more large gatherings of 250 or more, all shows and museums are closed. That's the way to beat it.

I'm not ready to vote for totalitarianism, but this freedom and democracy thing isn't handling the crisis well. The country is full of idiots like your examples, and they're putting us at much higher risk. For example it's possible to keep an office open but pay way more attention to cleanliness, keep the sick people home, avoid major meetings, etc...basically the official advice these days.

If the dictator (or any national leader) is an idiot, that of course compounds things...policy, the lack of public belief/understanding, confusion, lack of resources...

We should have been testing at least the known at-risk people several weeks ago...people inbound from hotspots, people starting to develop symptoms, etc. The CDC's 13,000-tested stat is apparently mostly people with symptoms...we don't test until you've been communicable for days, and we never test non-symptomatic carriers.

My state and city started shutting things earlier than most, since we're a hotspot and also run by intelligent people. As for the rest of the country, there are probably tens of thousands of infections that are unknown right now, and they're in every state. Basic precautions would dramatically limit the chance of infection both personally and societally.

meatpacking is a dead zone. we were the only ones in a coffee shop today.


https://i1340.photobucket.com/albums...psok0wvuuf.jpg

No need, because i took care of carnalities when my husband got home from work this morning. Instead, I spent the time looking for chili recipes. That's my "dinner for the end of the world" strategy: trying to cook more stuff that yields a lot and can be frozen so you get two suppers out of one afternoon of cooking. If you pushed me to the wall right now, I have enough food in the house to last a good three weeks, including three casseroles and a thing of beef chili (tonight's is chicken) in the freezer.

On another note, I saw where the city and county schools will be making meals for kids and others in the community who don't have enough to eat while the schools are shut down, with shipments of meals delivered by schoolbus to drop off points in farther areas of the county. At least two restaurants are also offering free meals to children while the shutdown goes on. I actually teared up reading that.

Hoboken, Jersey City, and Teaneck sound like they are very near an Italy-style lockdown. Bars are no longer allowed to be open in Hoboken, and restaurants are only allowed to serve delivery and carry out. Teaneck is asking all residents to self-quarantine.

For whatever reason, De Blasio and Cuomo have been really dragging their feet on closing the NYC school system. That seems like a big mistake, as closing the school system is often the first thing to happen in a true state of emergency. And, since it seems almost inevitable that the system will have to shut, doing it in an orderly fashion would at least give people the opportunity to prepare.

Wow! That was Ground Zero for the HIV epidemic 35 or 40 years ago. Sure looks different now.

Meatpacking? It was a industrial zone full of warehouses until the 1990s...

Silly boy! It was home to several notorious gay bars and sex clubs from the late 1960s until the late 1990s. They co-existed happily with the sides of beef hanging on conveyors being loaded on and off trucks. There was also a ton of action going on underneath both the abandoned overhead West Side Highway and the abandoned rail line now known as the High Line as well as in the crumbling and empty piers on the other side of the highway. There is a great deal of information about this era to be found online. The Mineshaft was the most notorious, but there were two large and popular leather bars under the highway and another half dozen sex clubs in the vicinity of Little West 12th and Greenwich. There was a rather famous club called The Anvil that featured live sex and un-mentionable sex acts that drew a celebrity audience of voyeurs, supposedly including the likes of Jackie Kennedy on at least one occasion.

https://psychnsex.com/mineshaft/
http://www.back2stonewall.com/2018/0...1974-1986.html

Interesting. I've been to the restaurant now at 835 Washington St. several times. Didn't know the building's history as a gay sex club...

Today, Sunday, 3.15.20. Drive-through Mass/Communion at St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church, Altadena, California. (Not my photo.)

Per Sylvia M. Gribbell: "You park and listen to mass. Cars are parked with space between them and Eucharistic ministers bring communion to your vehicle.
There will be a noon service in Spanish."
https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...5f&oe=5E93935C
From Hidden Los Angeles Facebook page via Sylvia M. Gribbell

What are your communities doing to help small businesses in event of prolonged shutdowns like in Italy, Spain, and France? A web designer here launched a clearinghouse for local businesses to sell gift cards if they have to cease operations for weeks: Asheville Strong. The site launched yesterday and already has 75 participating businesses of all kinds.

In other news, cases in North Carolina have jumped from 25 yesterday to 32 today, including one in a county I have to regularly visit.

Good, that's a better solution.

Québec is not the hardest-hit province but it has the most aggressive measures right now.

The Premier (François Legault) just announced the mandatory closing of all bars, cinemas, gyms, concert halls, spas, saunas, librairies, ski resorts, amusement centres and buffet-style restaurants.

Regular restaurants can stay open but only at 50% capacity and with 1-metre spacing between customers.

There is also a showdown brewing between Legault and Justin Trudeau, with the former finding the latter way too lax when it comes to borders and travel. Which according to an IATA table someone posted in the Canada forum, appears to be among the most lax countries at the moment.

Just an hour or two ago Justin Trudeau was opining something like "why oh why should I prevent people from coming in the country right now?..."

I rented a cabin in the woods from Airbnb. Stockholm is but a memory.