![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
In Which We Buy Toilet Paper
Kauai, Day 93. Shelter-in-Place, Day 10.
Today was supposed to be my first day of "personal work". I've given Skotos somewhere between 2-5 weeks of my additional time, to finish transitioning the Skotos and RPGnet web sites, but in exchange I'm now taking Fridays for my own personal work (which was supposed to be getting most of my time starting this week: but I'm determined to leave Skotos and RPGnet in good shape.)
Well, the new plan didn't actually work out either.
I wanted to get back to my DnDClassics work, which I'm planning to turn into a multi-book history of all of D&D's official products. So I jumped right back into the "World of Greyhawk", where I was expanding and splitting up my old writing on the product into individual histories for the folio put out in 1980 and the box put out in 1983.
I got down to my office at 7.30, which is my normal start time, as I wanted to have the best work hygiene possible for my personal work, even if I don't put in a full day like I would for Skotos, RPGnet, or Blockchain Commons. But I was only able to work until about 9.30. So, two hours for my first day of work. I worked my way through everything I'd written thus far on the 1980 folio, and started in on the next sections, but there was only so much I could do.
This was not unexpected, sadly. Yesterday I got a call from my physical therapy office, and they let me know that my therapist was self-isolating, and so all of appointments were cancelled. I didn't ask too much about this self-isolation, because I really didn't want to know right now.
I managed to get Kimberly and myself a new set of paired appointments, one after the other, but they were at 10.15 and 11.00. Hence the early end to my first day of writing.
Physical therapy was fine.
My knee is actually doing better than it was last week by a noticeable amount. I dunno if that's my exercises, natural healing, or the previous therapist taping up my knee to keep it from moving in the direction that was causing pain. I still don't know if it'll be able to get entirely better on its own, but that was encouraging.
And today I got massages with rolling pins, stretches, new exercises, and more tape.
And then we had to go to Walmart for a new prescription for Kimberly and to Costco for food for us both, and that was less fun than being attacked with a rolling pin.
First up, there were lines to get into both stores. Walmart took me about 20 minutes, Costco took us 30.
As I'd feared would be the case, those lines look like petri dishes for disease, the exact thing that these restrictions are supposed to be avoiding. Walmart was pretty decent, but the way the barriers were laid out that guided the lines, it was easy to be within 6 foot of people, depending on how people were aligned in the zig-zag rows on either side of you. Costco was worse, because the back-and-forth just before the door put you maybe 4-5 feet from people on the other sides, with no way of avoiding it.
So good job, idiot Kauai mayor. You've replaced casual interactions with people within the store with long-term interactions with people while you stand in line for 20-30 minutes, and we know those long-term interactions are how COVID-19 spreads.
In the Costco line, the lady in front of us commented that we might be safe from COVID-19 now (questionable), but we'd all have melanoma in 10 years. (Because we were standing in line in the direct Hawaiian sun.)
Which I agree with. I actually had previously stood in the Walmart line slathering myself with sunscreen while I waited (which was probably too late for that line, but likely helped out later).
And I thought: "Having to put on sunscreen to get a drug prescription is perhaps the most ridiculous thing ever."
The line at Costco also had one other delightful feature: it ran all the way to the back of the store, then looped back into the parking lot ... blocking all of the handicap spaces.
I was pissed at the people at first, but as we were forced to get into the same line I realized that none of us had any power to prevent the problem at that point.
This is the continued fault of our aforementioned idiot mayor in Kauai, who has now amended the local interpretation of the shelter-in-place order twice, but has done absolutely nothing to protect the rights of the disabled, and all it would take is a reminder that these new regulations still need to respect the ADA.
But even more obviously it's the liability (legally) of these stores, in this case Costco, who was requiring a line to enter the store, then allowing it to block their handicapped spaces.
The stores were both more crowded than I expected.
The Walmart I would guess only had 50 people last time I was there, which would have reflected v1 of the mayor's emergency decree, and this time I think it had 100, which reflected the day-two, oops I messed up, v2 of the interpretation. Despite the annoying line, it was probably the right number to help people maintain distance in the store.
The Costco theoretically only was allowed 100 people, but I'd guess there were 200 or 300 in there. Which was the right amount for the size of the store. (The idiot mayor's decree just gave one allowed patron count for all stores larger than 50,000 square feet, and the typical Costco is three times that size.) There was no change to the proclamations, so either Costco is ignoring the mayor's idiocy, and just doing what's realistic to keep everyone separated in the store (and the numbers inside were 100% OK), or else they've cut a deal under the table. I don't care which: they've done what's necessary for everyone on the island to actually get food. If Costco had instead listened to the mayor's proclamation (especially the really stupid v1 which would have limited Costco to 50 people), I honestly believe there would have been food riots starting in the Costco parking lot.
Oh yeah, there was toilet paper.
In fact, generally, the shortages seem to be resolved. Which makes sense, as it's been about a month since the anti-cooperators began panic-buying hordes of materials at the expense of the rest of the citizens. And so, with some time to produce new resources and ship then in, supplies have returned.
I bought a regular pack of toilet paper at Walmart, our first stop, but then I saw at Costco they had what I really wanted, which is Costco's massive pack of 30 rolls.
Not hoarding, honest, just buying what they had, then what I really wanted.
I suppose I could have stood in a 20-minute line at Walmart to return the first pack.
(Not likely.)
Funny story, every cart at Costco looks like the owner is hoarding.
Because it's Costco.
But I saw one freakish human actually really genuinely stockpiling at the expense of the rest of the people in the store. He literally had 8-9 rotisserie chickens in his basket. (My dad thinks that Costco is actually limiting people to one rotisserie chicken right now. I certainly hope the chicken hoarder got turned back at the register.)
And crazy hoarder heard us talking about refried beans, which were only available in flats of 8 cans, which we did not want. (Because we'd either never use them, or we'd eat EIGHT CANS of refried beans.) And when we said we weren't going to get them, he said we should because YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN THEY MIGHT DISAPPEAR OFF THE SHELVES AND NEVER BE SEEN AGAIN.
Enjoy those chickens and refried beans, dude. And I'm sure the 7-8 people who didn't get rotisserie chickens because of you would say the same.
(Not.)
Generally, Lihue was much more crowded than expected. Certainly, areas like the mall had tumbleweeds rolling through their parking lot, but Costco and Walmart had their parking lots about 60-75% of their normal occupancy. Home Depot looked if anything fuller. There was a drive-through line at Taco Bell (where we grabbed some take-home lunch) that ran a ways into the parking lot. The roads were about as busy as I'd expect at the times we drove, maybe a little less, but not much.
And I increasingly understand why this pisses people off so much. Because I'm sacrificing. I'm not gaming. I'm not going to my folks house on Sundays. I'm carefully limiting my trips into Lihue (and they'd be almost non-existent if not for that physical therapy.) I'm not building shelves with my dad. I'm not swimming with him. And here are the jackasses acting like it's all a f***ing holiday, presumably because they're not working. So I'm sacrificing, and it's not just that these other people aren't, but they're doing the things that will either force me to sacrifice longer or make it pointless.
If there's actually COVID-19 in the community here on Kauai. Because that isn't clear yet. We went three days without new cases, and then had one new one today and two new ones presumably that will show up on the stats tomorrow.
All still travelers? Probably.
But one of the problems is that Hawaii is becoming either increasingly secretive or increasingly incompetent at reporting out stats as time goes on. It looks like the latter, because after a few weeks of not talking about the origin of COVID-19 cases, we suddenly got some charts that showed travelers vs. community spread vs they don't know. But the specifics are very short. For example, as of Kauai case #13, the mayor said that there was still no community spread, but for #14 + #15 today, he didn't say anything, and those charts even if up-to-date aren't precise enough to tell.
So, that's a pretty big deal, because there's a wide difference in danger between travelers having COVID-19 and it actively spreading in our community, and our mayor is refusing to tell us which state we're in as of today.
I'd kind of hoped to get back to that World of Greyhawk / DnDClassics this afternoon, to make up for losing most of the "work" today, but I fiddled around and played some PACG when I got home, then went for a walk in the golf course, then generally putzed around this evening.
(Golf course: also super busy. It's had maybe twice as many walkers as usual the last two times I've been there, and more annoyingly, people hanging out in the pavilion, talking and enjoying themselves in violation of the shelter-in-place.)
But with that toehold of new work, I think I can at least finish those two Greyhawk product histories this weekend ... and then we're off to the races again.
(And I've got other stuff too, because it's just been hard to be productive lately. I should offer some comments on a RWOT paper that I was involved with, and there are chores to be done around the house, and I need to get some paperwork into the folks who'll be my new brokers as long as our house sale goes through ...
But it's hard to do stuff with the looming uncertainty of the world.)
Today was supposed to be my first day of "personal work". I've given Skotos somewhere between 2-5 weeks of my additional time, to finish transitioning the Skotos and RPGnet web sites, but in exchange I'm now taking Fridays for my own personal work (which was supposed to be getting most of my time starting this week: but I'm determined to leave Skotos and RPGnet in good shape.)
Well, the new plan didn't actually work out either.
I wanted to get back to my DnDClassics work, which I'm planning to turn into a multi-book history of all of D&D's official products. So I jumped right back into the "World of Greyhawk", where I was expanding and splitting up my old writing on the product into individual histories for the folio put out in 1980 and the box put out in 1983.
I got down to my office at 7.30, which is my normal start time, as I wanted to have the best work hygiene possible for my personal work, even if I don't put in a full day like I would for Skotos, RPGnet, or Blockchain Commons. But I was only able to work until about 9.30. So, two hours for my first day of work. I worked my way through everything I'd written thus far on the 1980 folio, and started in on the next sections, but there was only so much I could do.
This was not unexpected, sadly. Yesterday I got a call from my physical therapy office, and they let me know that my therapist was self-isolating, and so all of appointments were cancelled. I didn't ask too much about this self-isolation, because I really didn't want to know right now.
I managed to get Kimberly and myself a new set of paired appointments, one after the other, but they were at 10.15 and 11.00. Hence the early end to my first day of writing.
Physical therapy was fine.
My knee is actually doing better than it was last week by a noticeable amount. I dunno if that's my exercises, natural healing, or the previous therapist taping up my knee to keep it from moving in the direction that was causing pain. I still don't know if it'll be able to get entirely better on its own, but that was encouraging.
And today I got massages with rolling pins, stretches, new exercises, and more tape.
And then we had to go to Walmart for a new prescription for Kimberly and to Costco for food for us both, and that was less fun than being attacked with a rolling pin.
First up, there were lines to get into both stores. Walmart took me about 20 minutes, Costco took us 30.
As I'd feared would be the case, those lines look like petri dishes for disease, the exact thing that these restrictions are supposed to be avoiding. Walmart was pretty decent, but the way the barriers were laid out that guided the lines, it was easy to be within 6 foot of people, depending on how people were aligned in the zig-zag rows on either side of you. Costco was worse, because the back-and-forth just before the door put you maybe 4-5 feet from people on the other sides, with no way of avoiding it.
So good job, idiot Kauai mayor. You've replaced casual interactions with people within the store with long-term interactions with people while you stand in line for 20-30 minutes, and we know those long-term interactions are how COVID-19 spreads.
In the Costco line, the lady in front of us commented that we might be safe from COVID-19 now (questionable), but we'd all have melanoma in 10 years. (Because we were standing in line in the direct Hawaiian sun.)
Which I agree with. I actually had previously stood in the Walmart line slathering myself with sunscreen while I waited (which was probably too late for that line, but likely helped out later).
And I thought: "Having to put on sunscreen to get a drug prescription is perhaps the most ridiculous thing ever."
The line at Costco also had one other delightful feature: it ran all the way to the back of the store, then looped back into the parking lot ... blocking all of the handicap spaces.
I was pissed at the people at first, but as we were forced to get into the same line I realized that none of us had any power to prevent the problem at that point.
This is the continued fault of our aforementioned idiot mayor in Kauai, who has now amended the local interpretation of the shelter-in-place order twice, but has done absolutely nothing to protect the rights of the disabled, and all it would take is a reminder that these new regulations still need to respect the ADA.
But even more obviously it's the liability (legally) of these stores, in this case Costco, who was requiring a line to enter the store, then allowing it to block their handicapped spaces.
The stores were both more crowded than I expected.
The Walmart I would guess only had 50 people last time I was there, which would have reflected v1 of the mayor's emergency decree, and this time I think it had 100, which reflected the day-two, oops I messed up, v2 of the interpretation. Despite the annoying line, it was probably the right number to help people maintain distance in the store.
The Costco theoretically only was allowed 100 people, but I'd guess there were 200 or 300 in there. Which was the right amount for the size of the store. (The idiot mayor's decree just gave one allowed patron count for all stores larger than 50,000 square feet, and the typical Costco is three times that size.) There was no change to the proclamations, so either Costco is ignoring the mayor's idiocy, and just doing what's realistic to keep everyone separated in the store (and the numbers inside were 100% OK), or else they've cut a deal under the table. I don't care which: they've done what's necessary for everyone on the island to actually get food. If Costco had instead listened to the mayor's proclamation (especially the really stupid v1 which would have limited Costco to 50 people), I honestly believe there would have been food riots starting in the Costco parking lot.
Oh yeah, there was toilet paper.
In fact, generally, the shortages seem to be resolved. Which makes sense, as it's been about a month since the anti-cooperators began panic-buying hordes of materials at the expense of the rest of the citizens. And so, with some time to produce new resources and ship then in, supplies have returned.
I bought a regular pack of toilet paper at Walmart, our first stop, but then I saw at Costco they had what I really wanted, which is Costco's massive pack of 30 rolls.
Not hoarding, honest, just buying what they had, then what I really wanted.
I suppose I could have stood in a 20-minute line at Walmart to return the first pack.
(Not likely.)
Funny story, every cart at Costco looks like the owner is hoarding.
Because it's Costco.
But I saw one freakish human actually really genuinely stockpiling at the expense of the rest of the people in the store. He literally had 8-9 rotisserie chickens in his basket. (My dad thinks that Costco is actually limiting people to one rotisserie chicken right now. I certainly hope the chicken hoarder got turned back at the register.)
And crazy hoarder heard us talking about refried beans, which were only available in flats of 8 cans, which we did not want. (Because we'd either never use them, or we'd eat EIGHT CANS of refried beans.) And when we said we weren't going to get them, he said we should because YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN THEY MIGHT DISAPPEAR OFF THE SHELVES AND NEVER BE SEEN AGAIN.
Enjoy those chickens and refried beans, dude. And I'm sure the 7-8 people who didn't get rotisserie chickens because of you would say the same.
(Not.)
Generally, Lihue was much more crowded than expected. Certainly, areas like the mall had tumbleweeds rolling through their parking lot, but Costco and Walmart had their parking lots about 60-75% of their normal occupancy. Home Depot looked if anything fuller. There was a drive-through line at Taco Bell (where we grabbed some take-home lunch) that ran a ways into the parking lot. The roads were about as busy as I'd expect at the times we drove, maybe a little less, but not much.
And I increasingly understand why this pisses people off so much. Because I'm sacrificing. I'm not gaming. I'm not going to my folks house on Sundays. I'm carefully limiting my trips into Lihue (and they'd be almost non-existent if not for that physical therapy.) I'm not building shelves with my dad. I'm not swimming with him. And here are the jackasses acting like it's all a f***ing holiday, presumably because they're not working. So I'm sacrificing, and it's not just that these other people aren't, but they're doing the things that will either force me to sacrifice longer or make it pointless.
If there's actually COVID-19 in the community here on Kauai. Because that isn't clear yet. We went three days without new cases, and then had one new one today and two new ones presumably that will show up on the stats tomorrow.
All still travelers? Probably.
But one of the problems is that Hawaii is becoming either increasingly secretive or increasingly incompetent at reporting out stats as time goes on. It looks like the latter, because after a few weeks of not talking about the origin of COVID-19 cases, we suddenly got some charts that showed travelers vs. community spread vs they don't know. But the specifics are very short. For example, as of Kauai case #13, the mayor said that there was still no community spread, but for #14 + #15 today, he didn't say anything, and those charts even if up-to-date aren't precise enough to tell.
So, that's a pretty big deal, because there's a wide difference in danger between travelers having COVID-19 and it actively spreading in our community, and our mayor is refusing to tell us which state we're in as of today.
I'd kind of hoped to get back to that World of Greyhawk / DnDClassics this afternoon, to make up for losing most of the "work" today, but I fiddled around and played some PACG when I got home, then went for a walk in the golf course, then generally putzed around this evening.
(Golf course: also super busy. It's had maybe twice as many walkers as usual the last two times I've been there, and more annoyingly, people hanging out in the pavilion, talking and enjoying themselves in violation of the shelter-in-place.)
But with that toehold of new work, I think I can at least finish those two Greyhawk product histories this weekend ... and then we're off to the races again.
(And I've got other stuff too, because it's just been hard to be productive lately. I should offer some comments on a RWOT paper that I was involved with, and there are chores to be done around the house, and I need to get some paperwork into the folks who'll be my new brokers as long as our house sale goes through ...
But it's hard to do stuff with the looming uncertainty of the world.)