Being retired, our life has not changed dramatically. Like everyone else except those Senators and House members who fortunately for them sold stock before the market crashed, our retirement took a significant hit, but we will just need to plan to die 5 years before we were planning. I usually get up and ride my bike about 20 miles. Although I cannot ride some of the same routes, I am still able to get my ride in. The biggest change in our life is that we are unable to go to the beach or walk on the boardwalk, so paddle boarding has been out. We live in San Diego and those are closed. We continue to get take out from our local places and go to the grocery store and Costco, although instead of going once or twice a week to Ralphs and once a week to Costco, we are going about every other week to both. We have a daughter who lives about 45 minutes up the coast in San Clemente, and the biggest change is that we have not visited her or our grandkids. I have always joked about having e-Church, so this is kind of my dream come true with regard to Church. I am confused about the stay-at-home order. The gardeners in our area seem to be working, the builders are still building, the car repair shops are open, etc. I have been to Home Depot once and it seemed as busy as ever. We were never big clothes shoppers, so I have no idea whether Malls are open. I assume they are not. We took a drive over to Coronado the other day and our favorite ice cream shop was open and doing a booming business. The bike/walk path that runs between Coronado and Imperial Beach was packed with walkers, runners, riders, etc. Maybe not as crowded as a normal, sunny Saturday, but pretty darn crowded. I would be interested to hear from those of you who live in Salt Lake how things there with a stay-at-home order differ from Utah County where there is no stay-at-home order. Iām guessing that they are not too different. Anyway, I would be interested to hear how your lives have changed.
The main thing that has changed is no going out to eat, no going to the movies, and no playing trivia during trivia night at the bar.
We are both semi-retired. But at this point my wife isnāt working since they cut out the part time people. I am still working my two days a week delivering auto parts. For some reason, that is considered āessentialā.
Edit to add: We also have to shave a few years off of our lives due to hits to our IRA.
We have a 2 month old and a 20 month old at home.
Having a 20 month old has been extremely hard. She doesnāt understand what is going on, and she plays as hard as ever. But weāve lost everything we did to entertain her. No zoo, aquarium, aviary, friends, nothing.
Weāve lost all our support system. My wife has spent her maternity leave stuck at home.
Iāve gone back to work but itās work from home. I havenāt been at my desk since mid February. My job is much harder working from home. My wife actually went back to work, remotely, early as she felt it was silly to be burning time just to sit at home.
We have many friends who havenāt met our son. And we donāt know when theyāll be able to.
Itās changed our life a lot.
Iām pretty lucky. This is one situation where having a lot of kids makes life easier. We do lots of things together - video games, movies, cooking, playing in the yard.
My kids are at a great age for this - ages 4-13. It is so much harder with only little kids. Little kids still need a ton of parental guidance, and their attention span is 0. It would be exhausting with only kids that age. But my kids play together for hours at a time. Itās pretty easy.
Two of my kids are more social than the others, and they miss school. But the homeschooling is pretty easy; the teachers have made everything clear and manageable. We have settled into a daily routine that includes school, reading time, music, outdoor exercise, and video games. Our church recently asked the kids to set goals for themselves, and they work on those each day.
Iām able to work from home, so that is fine. I do miss my co-workers.
I have a Dad and two siblings who are alone. I talk with them every day. I think their situation is tougher than mine by a mile.
Iām something of a homebody anyway, and I think I could do this indefinitely. I love spending this time with my wife and kids.
Edit: let me add this: I do miss sports. I know itās silly and selfish when so many are suffering in so many ways, but I miss having something to watch. I canāt really get into any TV shows.
Iām fortunate in that I already had the ability to work from home whenever I wanted to. I didnāt do it often because I find myself getting wildly distracted when working at home, but itās definitely doable. The kids already know that when dadās in the office with the door closed, it just like when heās at the office and we donāt bother him. So that system was already in place.
Plus, Iām a hermit by nature so being alone and spending all day in front of a computer is my default state anyways. Years of video gaming have uniquely prepared me for this moment. 
Mrs. SkinyUte worked retail 4 days a week, and that job has unfortunately completely gone away (with the expectation that sheāll start up again once this is overā¦if the store is still around). Sheās now shifted to being a full-time homeschool teacher for the kids, 11 year old and 6 year old twins. Sheās a very social person to begin with (the opposite of me), so I think sheās going a little stir-crazy.
The kids are making the best of it and their actual teachers have done a remarkable job shifting over to online school on a dime, but itās been really hard on them. 11 year old randomly broke down in tears the other day because she ājust misses her friends so muchā. Trying to contain the energy level of twin boys is difficult, but theyāre doing pretty well with it so far. We get some major pushback when it comes to things they donāt like (writing assignments are the worst), but with most of the learning moving to interactive exercises on the computer, theyāre still definitely learning.
Weāre doing pretty well, all things considered, and I consider myself extremely fortunate. Work has become far more difficult because I sell in-person leadership training to federal government agencies, but weāre making some adjustments for online delivery that seem to be going well. I expect that things will bounce back in a big way if/when things open back up.
My company was pretty early at getting most people to work remotely and we have been 100% work from home since March 17. My wife is a school teacher so she has been busy creating lessons to email out and doing tutoring by video everyday. Kids are doing school online which is kind of a bummer for my college senior who is missing out on some engineering milestones like Senior Design Day and graduation. Also his favorite classes that had great class discussion just fizzled with online. There is a lot more TV and movie watching. Fewer trips to the grocery store. I havenāt bought gas since the day of the earthquake. I still get out to walk around the neighborhood but I miss going out for dinner on Friday nights. I miss the in person interaction with coworkers. Video conferencing is fine but not a great replacement.
Same here. I start my car up once a week and drive it for about 5 minutes, but otherwise havenāt left the house except to take the dog for a walk.
The one thing Iām not missing is getting on a plane to DC every other week. The travel was, by far, the least favorite part of my job, and I donāt miss Delta airlines or Marriott hotels one bit. Going back to that part of the grind is going to be super difficult when this is all over.
I work in healthcare and still going in, but do not have to work in the ICU or the ER at this time. That may change and Iām happy to support my colleagues anyway that I can.
Weāve always been pretty frugal Donāt go out to dinner all that often, if ever, and are finding a lot of projects to do at home.
The biggest thing I miss (which is a minor inconvenience) is that I have not rolled in Jiu-Jitsu for over 2 months and I used to swim regularly as well. Daily walks are a reasonable alternative and push-ups, situps chin-ups (The Herschel Walker routine) will suffice.
Iām happy to spend time with my wife. We both cook and clean together. We have a pergola but we need to sand and stain. Weāll find the capital projects to get toā¦
As an extrovert, I miss interaction with my colleagues - the daily reparteā¦ I find it sureal going through the hospital with remarkably reduced staff.
But itās so much harder for patientās to come out of surgery and not have their family members present and a recent cancer diagnosis or reccurence. Itās a privilege to be able to provide some kind of comfort.
We donāt have kids, but we have a ton of new families on our neighborhood. We also have a ward on our street and although weāre not members, thereās a wonderful mixture of neighbors. Itās a very eclectic, supportive neighborhood and it almost reminds me of Italy where people are maintaining social distance, but out on their lawns at night and walking; making sure that weāre all doing okay.
The other day we had a āvirtualā Easter egg hunt where we all put eggs on our houses for the kids to see/ āfind.ā
Still workingā¦still going to meetings (though they are all electronic now), though working through 3 emergency events have been hard at best.
Miss eating at restaurants on the weekends for Saturday breakfast. Miss going to Costco and walking all over the store. Miss watching live sports. Miss road tripping to Southern Utah to visit the National Parks and monuments. Miss being able to vacation in April - I need one after the legislative session and all the extra meetings the first quarter of the year brings.
On a positive note, having all of these electronic meetings beats the hell out of driving all over to meetings. I am going to make that one a keeper going forward for administrative stuff.
In some ways our lives havenāt changed at all. I still work on, build bikes, and run my biz from home. Although much more limited in the number of worked on bikes. Mrs. CCU has worked remotely for years. We still get out and walk the dog, or ride. We even get to visit our neighbors, outside of course. Weāre still the ācoolā adults, so neighbor kids like to stop by and hang out with us. We do like that, itās good to see the kids in the neighborhood out and about doing kid things.
One big change is that Mrs. CCU has only officiated 1 race this year, and Iāve officiated zero. With USA Cycling not permitting races until at least May 31, weāre unlikely to officiate again until July or August, there are that many officials in NC who live closer to what races there normally are.
Another is shopping. Especially since Roy Cooper added a new Exec Order on the number of people in āessentialā stores, ie grocery or hardware. This one definitely irritates the living snot out of me. Not so much the social distancing in the store, but the line created to get into the store. Itās to limit the number of people in the stores, but instead forces folks into lines where they are less likely to distance themselves, human nature at work IMO.
This is the first thing you said today that I disagree with. I think personal contact is important. In my mission country, Peru, guys greet with a hug. It was awkward at first, but I soon realized it was a feel-good system.
Also, Iām a āpower through itā guy. I get colds all the time, and I cough for weeks (sometimes 6-8 weeks). I have to power through it. I donāt have a job that allows me to miss work for illness. Also, itās good for people to tough it out, and for common colds, I donāt think itās such a big deal.
First off, weāre both retired so being home a lot isnāt new. However, weāre a bad measure because family issues made it so we were out and busy a lot from the middle of March until just this past week. During that time we tried to be careful as best we could, and senior care facilities have been extremely cautious and since most of what we were doing out had some involvement with those we were in a pretty safe environment, we think. We started wearing homemade masks on 4/6 when we went out to businesses. Iāve definitely seen weāre in the big minority. Iād guess itās only between 10 and 15% of the people in stores are wearing them, and that includes store staff.
We were planning a two week trip to Peru that would have started Friday. Thatās off. We have another two week trip to Europe in July to ride from Prague to Vienna. I think thatās 50/50 right now, although the IHME models look positive for that.
Since Friday itās started to feel more withdrawn and boring. Weāre working in the yard which is nice, and weāre taking some bike rides. Planning on a 20 mile or so one this afternoon, in fact. Iāve watched a lot of movies and old TV show re-runs. Canāt stand watching the daily COVID briefings. The biggest thing I miss is the music stuff I was doing: cover band rehearsal on Mondays, church band rehearsal on Wednesdays, choir rehearsal on Thursday, and then the church choir and band on Sundays. The people I do those with are mostly wonderful and I really miss interacting with them and putting multiple parts together into a single good thing. Iām going to try to start filling that void with working on some programming for my amp to get some new tones that I want, and maybe finally follow through on my threat to learn slide guitar.
Our companyās primary sales metric is the number of face-to-face meetings we have with clients.
As someone who has to spend a whole day on a plane just to get to a meeting in DC, I absolutely hate it. I can get just as much done on a webinar or call as I can in person. I feel like Iām wasting SO much time and money by making so many trips back and forth.
Iām really hoping this crisis will help shift our CEOās paradigm of needing to shuffle back and forth just to close business. I doubt it will though.
Yeah, I get it bad too. I just donāt have other options with my job. I can accept going back to the kind of normal we had before. I donāt want us to start thinking āquarantine!ā with every cold that comes along. I have accepted that I will spend a good percentage of my life coughing.
We also had a trip to Peru scheduled for the end of April. No more.
My wife has the same problem, a cold becomes bronchitis, sheās sick for weeks, and worse, too often they become pneumonia. She was raised as a very small child in an environment with a LOT of second hand smoke - her doctor attributes her problems to this.
A couple of times, a cold lead to hospitalization. Weāve had to ask her boss to allow here to work in an isolated part of the office, or at home during cold and flu season as so many people are expected, or choose to go to work sick.
She is working at home for the duration of COVID-19; I wonāt let her leave the house, and strictly control everything that comes into it.
Weāre re-booked for next year. Between the travel company and Delta Airlines weāve fronted a lot of money for next yearās fun already. May even be more to a different plan after the final charges for our Trek Travel ride comes due in a week.
Well, we have some friends that own a 5 acre horse ranch outside of Phoenix (actually Ostertagās old place - apparently he trashed it). They called us 3 weeks ago to see of we wanted to come stay while they went back up to their house in SLC. We (wife, kids - 6 and 2) jumped in the truck at the end of March and drove straight down.
I already pretty much worked remotely from home office and my wife is an RN (aesthetic injector) and was essentially furloughed since their med spa closed for the next little bit. She works as our sonās āteacherā in the morning and then pretty much pool parties every day. We have also both loved excercising outside - there are some weights and a TRX which has helped us get our gym fix. I have been working/taking conf calls from the patio, and taking breaks to hangout with the family, go out on hikes behind the house. Have gone out once a week for groceries/wine/etc - definitely am not going to miss wearing gloves and a mask. Hardly watched TV except at night when we get in the hot tub after putting the kids to bed and then listen to the coyotes howl.
In short, this has been pretty awesome for us as a family. All ending tomorrow though, getting up at the crack of dawn and heading back home. Home is great, but going to miss the warm weather.
So help me if we get a snow storm in Aprilā¦
Donāt look at Thursdayās forecast for SLC.
Dammit!