Random Babbling Thread 120

It's not like I have more free time with a stricter lockdown, though I haven't heard that they were going to do that in Belgium again (though it was always stricter in Belgium than in the Netherlands. Germany went stricter as well, but shops here only opened last week, so I guess now it'll be the other way around and we'll get lots of dutch in belgium for shopping, just as it was the other way around in the previous month

Anyway, house and kids take up pretty much all free time for now. Putting a drive way has a bit higher priority than playing games

 

The "Heide" (which translates to heather fields) in northern Germany, picture from WIKI near Lüneburg has a slightly different purple:

 

Funny thing, that sounds a lot like what happens in the United States. One State goes into lockdown, so the people swarm the shopping centers, bars, and restruraunts of the adjacent States triggering a lockdown there as well.

 

Slick....Sounds like your talking Illinois-Wisconsin..... I live on the I’ll side of the border South of Beloit. Everyone’s been flooding into WI for dinners and drinks. Then the numbers climb in the Rkd area and in the Beloit area. If people could just wait another month or two r can get past this and get back to a semi-normal existence. I for one can’t wait for normality to return.

 

What is normal?



I don't know how to do timestamps, but skip to 2:50 -ish

 

Yep, I live in the Chicago suburbs and since November I've been working in The Loop and commuting by train. It isn't just Wisconsin but also Indiana that have complained, and I would presume the other border States like Iowa and Missouri.
I myself have not gone anywhere in the last few months but work, the grocery store, the barber, and the library drive through, and occasionally buying overpriced takeout at work from Jimmy Johns, McDonalds, or Noodles & Co.
Oh, a couple trips to the hardware store for some repairs and Costco's gas station.
Does ordering pizza one night in November also count when I picked it up? That was to celebrate going back to work and getting an income.

 

@henkie Why would you want to skip any of it

Numbers are on the rise in my area but my son's on Christmas break and I just need to focus on packing so hopefully we'll be relatively safe. I never wanted to move in the first place but it's definitely not better during a pandemic.

 

I agree, why would you skip any of it, but I was trying to get the part about normality I love this movie, though.

Good luck in trying to move, it's always a hassle.

 

Normal equates to pre-COVID, working in office instead of miserably trying to work your professional job remotely with horrible server compacity,
all the while also being on the hook to be teacher of your kids because of e-learning and also working the unpaid, under appreciated 3rd job of officia

What’s normal? For starters - Going to work instead of remote zoom conferences, being social in public, hanging at the pub/tavern with friends, able to shop to actually see the product before ordering from a pic online and recieving a piece of shit.... I could list a lot more for instances that me feel whole.

 

I agree with your definition of "normal". Like it was 1 year ago. Still, I don't think everything will become the way it was once again. In fact, I sincerely hope we didn't go through all this without learning anything from it.

It's an interesting question: What good changes could or should come from Covid-19? Here, there are a lot of signals that working from home also has benefits. No time wasted by traveling to work and back again, less traffic jams for the people who do need to go to the office. Zoom-meetings can be effective. I remember people from organisations, all traveling one hour to attend to a meeting and one hour back to their own places because it was normal to be on a meeting physically. Same for all the business flights of people going to their divisions in other continents etcetera.

I guess when we are done with the pandemic, lots of people here will be more free do decide wetter they work from home or at the office. How much you like it will depend per function and what you like. Extraverts don't like to be home aline a lot, introvert people normally like it more. I can image working from home 1 day a week (out of 4 days) and I know people who would be fine with being one or two days a week at the office. As long as you are free to choose, I think that would be a good change.

Fun, I have much more time now. I'm lucky the kids can still go to school / day care so I can do my work at daytime. In the evening, when the kids are asleep, I have plenty of time to play games, watch television, read books. Normally I used to do sports twice a week.... and have some appointments / meetings / birthday parties etcetera in de evening. I can imagine with the kids at home, you'll not be able to do lots of work on daytime so people use the evenings to work.

I picked the image from the internet. It's the heide (we call it that way as well in the Netherlands) in my area. The image might be adjusted a bit, light conditions do affect the colors when you are making a photo. You're picture of the Lüneburger Heide looks quite familiar as well.

 

I understand your wish for normalcy, I also would like to be able to normally go to the swimming pool a couple of times a week. At least for me, the schools are opened, as is daycare, so I don't have to look after my kids while also working from home. Working from itself is pretty relaxing, I have a lot more energy now that I don't have to drive for two hours each day, plus I can pick up my kids nice and early as soon as I'm finished working.

Aside from not being able to freely go visit my mom, because she lives in another country, I don't really miss the rest that much. I'm perfectly fine sitting at home with my wife and kids.

Well, usually by the time my kids are asleep, its already 9 o'clock, if I'm lucky, and then I might be able to do some stuff, if it doesn't make a lot of noise. But then I also have to take a shower, go to bed on time (because I start work early), so if I have a half an hour each evening, it's already pretty generous. And half of the time the youngest wakes up again before I go to bed, so that any additional time is lost, anyway.

 

My kids were in school for a couple of months but are back to remote learning. Which is tough for me as my old lady works in the medical field so I am working remotely for a company that is a system supplier for mostly commercial aircraft OEMs. We are tanking because no one is flying so we aren’t selling parts. Which means VSPs and ISPs/layoffs and those of us still left are getting crushed and must pick up the pieces. Throw the remote learning experience on top of that and my weekdays are crushing as teacher support is minimal. My utility bills are rising, my home internet is taxed, my work VSP is overloaded so working remotely is mostly watching the ‘blue skinny circle’ all day long alongside the wonderful Microsoft ‘Not Responding’ message that loves to rear its ugly head. Let alone migration to O365 at work that is implemented remotely in a half-ass fashion by an outsource group that we call the ‘Helpless Desk’. Now we can’t IM, open Microsoft/PDF docs created by others, etc.....

I am desperately in need of a return to work, return to school, return to activities for my kids for both their sanity and the sanity of the wife and I.

 

Yeah that sounds bad, when a company isn't prepared for so many people working from home. Here, you can still have daycare / schoolcare if one of you has a "vital" job like working in health care, food distribution, supermarkets, media etcetera. And there's financial compensation from most company's to compensate addidional costs (coffee, toilet paper, keeping the house warm and to upgrade your internet speed if needed :-) Well good luck, stay strong, it might take half a year before we are a bit back to normal.

Ah how old are your kids? Mine are 4 (5 next week) and 2. Usually I have them sleeping at 8. At the moment, they both sleep well, though we recenlty had some issues with the youngest one waking up a couple of (random) times in the evening and night. Fingers crossed. Never going to bed before 23:30 so that leaves me some time in the evening.

 

Work goes on. Only March was quiet. Our numbers are in the black, half of the office works at home. I work(on the floor) in the receiving area of the warehouse and it is almost business as usual. I work for a large automotive company that works for several Japanese car brands. We have a lot of different locations and companies in the group so communications had to be good before Covid 19. Our own IT branch has everything under control.

People with small children are coping. our work times are flexible. The ones with small children do not have to be at work on fixed times as long as you make your hours(and you are actually doing what you need to do.)

 

Yeah and you can try to handle and educate the kids as much as possible during day time and do lots of work in the evenings but it will drain you're energy level quickly. Everybody has to make sacrifices so I also expect companies to be a bit forgiving towards parents who are not able to work all the hours they would normally work. And not something like: So, you missed 5 hours a week for a couple of months, so say goodbye to your summer holiday....

 

Blades, I do understand your wish to return to some form of normalcy. When the schools were closed over here earlier this year, we were lucky that my wife was still on maternity leave for the youngest, so it was manageable to have the eldest stay at home as well. Also, the eldest is still young enough to not require home schooling very much. If they'd close the schools and daycare now, one of us would have to take a day off, or accept that we spend less time at work.

One and five. The eldest could go to bed earlier, though he'd lie awake for some time. It's mostly our fault that he goes to bed after eight, but if I have to do some work on the house, I usually have to do that after my wife and I finish work, which usually means from 18:00 to 19:00 I have some time. If the youngest falls asleep at 20:00, she's guaranteed to wake up an hour or two later, and then one of us will have to sit with her until she falls asleep again. Hopefully until 23:00, but it could be 0:00 as well. And I get up early, so I'd like to go to bed between 22:00 and 23:00. So usually it's better if she falls asleep at 21:00 or after, because then she will still wake up, but usually falls asleep more easily afterwards.

Although she will normally wake up 3-4 times at night anyway, and of late usually stays more or less awake for maybe 2-3 hours, if we're unlucky.

And she sleeps comparitively better than the eldest did at her age. He only started sleeping properly at night once he stopped sleeping during the day.

 

Thanks Tal, and Happy holidays to everyone from me as well. Hope you all have a good end of the year, even with the current circumstances being what they are.

 

ugh I have the most annoying song stuck in my head