The month everything goes crazy.
Late in the evening, Jan’s finishing up final preparations for an early-morning flight to San Francisco. He’s scheduled to speak at a three-day conference, conduct an all-day meeting with some colleagues, and get together with his brother Chris to celebrate Chris’ birthday.
Instead, he gets a message from Salesforce saying that all non-essential travel from Seattle is cancelled due to concerns about COVID-19. His whole plan for the week goes out the window.
Bree’s school announces that a school employee had been in contact last week with someone diagnosed with COVID-19, so they’re closing the school tomorrow for an extensive cleaning.
Tonight at dinner, Bree says she wants to good to the store to get potato chips – specifically, “Laser Ruffles”. Jan asks what Laser Ruffles taste like. Bree looks confused, then laughs. She’d actually said she wanted to buy “Lays or Ruffles”.
Jan’s still going to his office in Bellevue, but it’s starting to feel like a ghost town. On the plus side, for the first time in his life, Jan sees that most of the men are actually washing their hands before leaving the men’s room.
In the afternoon, he gives the conference talk he was supposed to deliver in person to an audience in San Francisco. Instead, he gives his talk from a conference room in Bellevue. It’s odd to be in a room by oneself speaking to 300 people — a little like radio broadcasting.
In the evening, Salesforce announces that the Bellevue office is essentially closed — everyone who can work from home should do so. Jan’s glad he happened to bring his work laptop home, as there are some things he can only do on a company computer.
Bree learns that school will be closed for about another week.
Jan leads an all-day project kickoff meeting that he’s been preparing for for over a month — but instead of the group being together at a location in San Francisco as planned, everyone has to call in remotely. It’s not a great way to kick off a project with a group of people that haven’t worked together before, but there’s nothing to be done about it. It goes okay, all things considered.
Aspen/Snowmass day 1: Angela arrives in Snowmass in the afternoon. Anya joins in the evening. While waiting for Anya to arrive, Angela checks out Snowmass village and goes grocery shopping. The condo (Hickory 2310) is so cute: one bedroom with a loft, with 4 twin beds in the loft. We love it! But the day takes a toll: the Crestwood Condos are basically staircase after staircase up from the Base Village, and Angela gets altitude sickness that night.
Liya’s school says that they’ll close on Monday so faculty can get prepare for possible remote classes.
Aspen/Snowmass day 2: explore Aspen, work. Anya had to finish up assignments for school so spent the day working. Angela was going to ski, but decides to take it easy due to altitude sickness. The town of Aspen is lower than Snowmass, so she decides to take the free bus and explore Aspen. She spends time at the John Denver Sanctuary and has lunch at the Grateful Deli, recommended by a condo shuttle driver. Walking back to the condo, Angela has an amazing crepe at The Crepe Shack. That night Anya and Angela eat dinner at Slice of Italy, in Snowmass Base Village.
Aspen/Snowmass day 3: ski/hangout. Finally, Angela & Anya get to ski! We head to the Village Express and to near the top of the mountain. On the ride up, Anya starts feeling queasy. We do a run to a mid-mountain lift, and decide to go back to the condo so Anya can lie down. Angela skis on her own for the rest of the day. Spring skiing, bluebird skies, 10 runs, a good day.
Bree’s school will remain closed through spring break, reopening April 20th at the earliest. They’ll start remote classes on March 11.
Jan’s mom Lyn lives in a Seattle retirement home. The retirement home learns that another home in its network has a resident who’s been diagnosed with COVID-19. That home is now in quarantine. Since the retirement home network shares staff across properties, there’s a reasonable chance Lyn’s place might end up being quarantined at some point.
Jan invites her to stay at our house for a while; she moves in to our guest room.
Liya’s school campus will be closed for the indefinite future. Remote classes will begin March 11.
Aspen/Snowmass day 4: Anya’s ski boots continue to hurt her feet. A visit to a boot fitter fixes the problem! Happy skiing for the rest of the day–except for a little altitude-induced nausea. So an easy ski day, only about 8 runs.
Choate announces that they will extend their current spring through March 24. After that, they’ll conduct remote classes for at least a few weeks.
Aspen/Snowmass day 5: Anya’s feet still hurt so we end up getting orthotics for her boots. This makes things much more comfortable, but she still isn’t up for a full day of skiing. After lunch, Anya heads to the condo and Angela has one of her best ski runs of the season! In the evening, we shop, eat crepes, and watch the Korean movie “Parasite” together.
A theme for each day is what’s happening with the Covid-19 Virus. Today, Anya’s school announced that students should expect to not return to campus until April 6th at the earliest, with online classes being held the week prior. Anya wonders if she should return to Seattle, risking a chance of being asked to self-quarantine rather than starting classes with everyone else. After consulting with Jan, we decide this is an unlikely scenario and that Anya should return to Seattle for the rest of spring break.
This evening, while out to dinner with Jan, Bree orders a soda. That may not sound like a newsworthy event, but it is for Bree. Her entire life, she’s avoided fizzy drinks — she just doesn’t like the fizziness. But this restaurant serves a line of sodas (Seattle Soda) that are only a little bit fizzy, so she gets one herself.
Remote classes begin for Bree and Liya. It’s a bit of a circus. Neither school has ever done remote classes before, so teachers and students have zero experience all around.
Bree gets ready for the start of the school day.
Bree’s first class — math — begins without too many bumps.
Bree’s not excited about the prospect of doing class from home, and it worried that it’ll be too easy to get distracted at home. She does fine, although by the end of the day she’s really tired. The initial remote class schedule puts one class right after another — the usual time given to move from class to class is missing. So there are few breaks, and no opportunity to get up and move up and down stairs between classes.
As expected, it’s also a little rough to get everyone to focus and get anything done. The entire 6th grade is sharing a single schedule, which means that the math teacher (and every other teacher) has to try to teach 45 kids in a single giant video conference. This is not ideal. And not every student’s set up for this kind of thing — one boy doesn’t have a microphone, another has spotty wi-fi, etc.
Lyn finds out that one of her good friends at a different retirement home has been diagnosed with COVID-19.
Washington State governor Jay Inslee announces that all private and public schools in our county must close until April 27. Liya’s high school cancels the school trip she’d been scheduled to do in late May. They’d previously cancelled the trip she actually wanted to go on — to China — and rescheduled her on a domestic school trip. Now that’s cancelled too.
Meanwhile, we hear from Jerry, a friend of Anya’s from Choate whom we’d planned to host for the second half of Choate’s spring break. Jerry says that, given everything that’s going on, they’ll need to cancel their trip. Jerry’s from China, and suspects that Choate might not reopen again this school year, in which case they may as well head back home to China.
Jan learns that a friend of his has had contact with someone diagnosed with COVID-19, so that friend has self-quarantined themselves at home.
Liya and Jan take advantage of a sunny day to go for a hike outside — one of the dwindling number of safe activities. They drive up to Cama Beach Historical State Park on Camano Island, then make the walk up to Cranberry Lake. The walk is shorter than Jan had hoped, so it’s not much of a workout, but it’s still a pleasant hike. Afterwards they walk down to the beach on Puget Sound.
They’d planned to eat at the park’s Cama Beach Cafe, but it’s closed due to the pandemic. They stop instead at The Baked Cafe, which serves amazing breakfast sandwiches.
Those breakfast sandwiches were probably the last meal we’ll eat out for a while. In the evening, Governor Inslee issues an order suspending dine-in service in all restaurants across Washington.
Choate announces that their cancelling on-campus classes for the entire spring term. Anya’s scheduled to begin remote classes on March 27.
The school has not yet cancelled Anya’s graduation at the very end of May, although that now seems inevitable. It’s sad that Anya won’t be able to spend her senior spring term with all the friends she’s made at school — it’s likely that she may not see some of them again.
Salesforce holds an all-company virtual meeting. Although the company is tuned to the needs of remote workers — many of the employees regularly work from home — they’ve never held a virtual meeting on this scale, and there are a number of glitches. Some 7,000 people manage to connect to the live stream. Jan’s not one of them, so he watches a video they post afterwards.
It’s interest to see a roster of company executives giving briefings from their own homes, in some cases in what looks to be their bedroom, their dining room, or a spare room. Company founder and CEO Marc Benioff speaks for a bit, although even he’s experiencing technical problems — it looks like he’s got a laptop in front of him, but it’s not working, so he’s holding up his phone and talking to the company through it.
The new upside-down world is producing rippling 2nd-order effects (and 3rd-order effects, etc.). As we all spend much of the day inside, Anya and Angela’s cat allergies are beginning to get worse.
Indoor cats generally live much longer lives than outdoor cats, so we’ve always kept our cats indoors. But given the circumstances, we decide to try letting Mojo and Moxie out for part of the day.
They’re as happy as cats can be. They spend hours exploring the backyard, which is full of springtime smells and sounds. Moxie’s more courageous than his brother, so he’s mostly in the lead, with his brother following him.
Our internet connection — our primary connection to work and school now — goes down in the middle of the afternoon. Last night, Jan installed a newer, faster cable modem and wi-fi hub to accommodate the constant, heavy network use. Everything works fine this morning.
Around lunchtime, Jan goes out for a walk with a friend — and the network goes down while he’s out. Angela calls to tell him that Bree can’t connect to do her remote classes. (Liya has no classes today.) Jan hustles back, but can’t the network back up. He eventually arranges things so that Bree’s computer is the only one that’s online. For one of his own remote meetings, Jan has to text his colleague to call him on the phone. “Wait, on a phone?”, the colleague replies.
Jan finally gets the network back up, but determines that he needs to replace an old network router. He calls his knowledgeable friend Bruce for advice, and gets a recommendation for the equipment he needs. Amazon Prime service, normally two days, is now estimated at a week. Jan finds he can order the equipment straight from the manufacturer. The “overnight express” shipping option will take four days.
Governor Inslee finally issues a state-wide order for everyone to stay home (with the now-common allowances to go out for food, exercise, etc.).
In the evening, Jan spends another fun three hours installing a new high-speed network router. He finally gets it working, mostly by random chance. He’s happy it’s working now — but is also afraid to touch it ever again in case it stops working.
For the past two weeks, we’ve been making daily outings to pick up to-go coffee from Madison Kitchen down the street. We’ve also been buying some pastries, lunch, or dinner entrees. This short outing is about the closest thing any of us have to a daily commute.
When we go today, they have a sign posted saying that today is the last day they’ll be open for at least the next couple of weeks.
Our neighborhood Red Apple Market installs sneeze guards at each checkout stand, along with tape markers on the floor to show how far apart customers should stand while waiting.
Choate resumes after an extra-long spring break, and Anya joins here sisters in spending hours in front of her laptop. Out of consideration for its West Coast students, the school starts classes at 10:00 am Eastern Time — 7:00 am our time.
The Madison Park Starbucks is still open for take-out orders. With all the chairs and tables put away, the space looks barren.
The lesser-known CORVID-19 illness turns people into corvids*.
*members of the crow/raven family
Jan learns that one of his teammates, who’s been out sick for two weeks, has been sick with COVID-19.
In the evening, we learn that one of our friends acquired COVID-19 on a trip overseas earlier this month, and has been fighting it at home. They’re getting better, but it was sad to hear they’ve had to go through such a terrible illness.
Anya’s now heard back from all the colleges she applied to. She was accepted at a number of them, including 4 that she could see herself attending. She is carefully avoiding sharing any preference about which of those 4 colleges she’ll pick. She has a month to decide.
She has held her cards very close to her chest through this whole process. We’ve reminded her that she’ll have to tell us her decision at some point so we know where to send the check. :)
Bree and three of her friends have a Zoom meeting lunch.