Quarantine - Day 16

Laura and Abbie in London February 2, 2020 long ago.

Abbie's puppet

DAY 16: Today everyone slept in a bit with morning Yoga getting started around 9:00AM, followed by remote learning for Ella that included an art lesson Skyped in by Nana. Abbie got busy editing video on Laura’s laptop and production resumed in earnest on our Online Learning. Abbie stayed up until past midnight working on puppets, and her creativity is in full bloom now with lots of ideas bursting forth. Our production value has definitely gone up a notch even as we are hampered with poor audio due to not having lavaliers. By the time we had gathered or dinner we had got one video done, three more in the pipeline, and had finalized the lesson planning so it is starting to take some real shape now. Not bad for one week’s work. The situation outside seems dire, so we don’t go there. I am starting to see more evidence of loan offers made possible through the relief bill. I am also seeing stronger evidence that what we are about to experience is more than just a financial catastrophe. The financial aspect can be solved with a shrug in comparison to what this illness is going to do with many people’s health, and our psyche as a people. The idea of American exceptionalism has become transparent. Seeing through it, we see ourselves now as we are — just as vulnerable as everyone else.

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Quarantine - Day 15

This was initially to be the last day of the official quarantine. This is only the last day of the first part of the quarantine unfortunately. Waldorf had tentatively changed their date of return from April 1st to April 20th, and now that seems remote as Illinois in general is starting to pivot towards possibly staying out the rest of the year, although it has yet to be officially addressed. We haven’t even told Ella yet that more homeschooling is in her future. She is dutifully going through her assignments, practicing her bass, and even doing gym by practicing yoga.

After solving a mountain of issues with all the computers and devices, and establishing a workflow to produce video and some rudimentary interactive content using ClassDojo and SeeSaw apps, we were finally getting back to producing and editing video when Abbie’s MacBook display stopped working. It had been repaired a year ago by Apple, and it certainly seemed to me like the repair had failed prematurely. However, Apple only likes to warranty their repair work for 90-days meaning they would be happy to fix it for another $500.00. I explained to Daphne in Ontario that was not a workable solution, and after 113 minutes of haggling we finally arrived at one. In the meantime, we readied Laura’s laptop with the software Abbie needs to edit audio/video, and Ella graciously let her mom use the old laptop that she inherited when Laura got her new one. We were back in business after only losing a half a day.

We are hoping that this content is considered adequate for the continued performance of our contracts so we can continue to be paid. The Mayor and the district superintendent were on the TV looking fairly uncomfortable and unsure as they outlined what the plan was for the rest of the year. They managed to give an hour long press conference without mentioning what the plan actually is. Apparently, the state is offering money to schools to help maintain their budgets and the federal relief bill will reimburse municipalities large and small for expenses related to the emergency. I am hoping that this wave of funding washes up somewhere close to my shoes enough to get them wet, but it may be that the wave breaks far before it reaches our little enterprise.

Abigail prepared a delicious dinner of chicken enchiladas and I spoke with my brother and my dad comparing notes across three state lines as to the progress of this thing. There is a consensus that it may get worse before it gets any better. It is galloping through cities now and, I think, the countryside won’t be spared either. Two weeks ago, on Friday the 13th, Illinois had 32 cases. I was concerned, but thought that the public healthcare system could certainly manage the outbreak. Now, they are readying McCormick Place as a hospital, and I realize how profoundly unprepared we were and now continue to be.

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Quarantine - Day 14

Since we are trying to meet a deadline, today was another work day.  The day prior, I had begun to suss out a better configuration for the backup drive, although there were still bugs to work out.  Abbie’s lap top was becoming unstable and had not been backed up in months.  It needed immediate care so we spent some time with it and got it backing up with a healthy drive once again.  Once we did, we realized while chroma keying some video that all our books have green covers and disappear when held up to the camera.  I wound up reprinting covers for them changing the color of the cover to read better on video.  We completely reset our humble film studio, which turned it from a rather ramshackle space to an effective working green screen studio, and as the day wore on, we finally began solving more problems than we managed to make for ourselves and much got done.

I went out to get a few groceries, and Trader Joes was clearly getting the hang of things with people evenly spaced out six feet apart and with only so many allowed in the store at a time.  Their carts were steadily being sanitized and re-sanitized and a full crew was at work restocking.  That said, I had to go to three stores to find flour.  When I got back, I received a text from TA.  She heard John Prine had contracted the virus and was intubated in critical care.  In Chicago, there are 2,026 people who have tested positive and 16 dead.  In the state, 4,596 are positive with 65 dead.  There are 142,106 cases in the US, and 634,835 confirmed cases globally.  It has now killed almost 30,000 people.

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Quarantine - Day 13

Ella paints another picture.

Every one got a bit of a late start in the morning. Rain, thunderstorms with possible hail and tornados were in the forecast and the wind was kicking up. I once again began trying to correct the configuration of the backup drive to determine why the backups were failing, and tried to delete enough files to get the lap tops working again. We gave up trying to shoot after getting only a few takes. Rose and Aedan came up to hang out with Ella. In Illinois, there are 3,491 cases and 47 fatalities. In the US, there are now 122,686 cases. Worldwide there are 591,971 with 26,990 added in 24 hours. It has doubled in number in six days.
We got started shooting video after lunch but immediately ran into storage issues on all computers and devices, some were becoming unstable.

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Quarantine - Day 12

Picture that Ella Drew

In the morning, I went out to get lightbulbs and dish washing liquid. Bath tissue and sanitary wipes are still not in supply generally, but everything else seems to be. Another full workday shooting videos (with a newly purchased green screen) but once again running into issues with overflowing data on practically all drives and devices, and backups stalled because of all the storage issues. I spent the day and late into the evening attempting to solve these riddles.
We did take a break for dinner with takeout from Lou Malnati’s which was doing brisk curbside business. We later watched the movie “Farewell” and “Making the Cut” Once again, we made the effort to pretend it was a normal Friday night. The girls were quizzing Laura on her knowledge of internet abbreviations (I had passed the quiz earlier) and her answers started a case of giggles. They laughed until their insides hurt. There are 3,026 Illinois cases including a member of the faculty at CWS, 104,661 cases in the US, and almost 600,000 cases globally.

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Quarantine - Day 11

Today we made payroll paying a full amount of what would have been owed to our teaching artists had they worked.  Meanwhile, one of our invoices that was dated prior to the start of this all happening was not remitted because the “checks can only be cut in the office, and the office is currently closed.”  They can also not foresee when they will be able to process payment.  So there’s that.  This was a full day of homeschooling while Abbie prepped a video to submit as a finalist for her LA internship.  After spending the morning trying to solve cash flow issues, we participated in a webinar on what the SBA loan situation may look like in our sector.  I have one loan request already in and working, but now that the latest relief bill has been passed, we are possibly looking at another.  I am wary of financing anything with no promise of future revenue to satisfy the loans. 

As much uncertainty as our business has faced in its nine year history, nothing really compares to this in my mind.  This pandemic is like a huge reset button on all expectations.  It is also a reminder to not take things for granted of course.  Still, Ella had tears late in the evening as she does not like how much things have changed.  She misses her friends, gym class, circus club, and the life she was used to.  I tried my best to cheer her up, but I don’t think I was very convincing, because I’m not sure I was fully convinced myself in what I was saying.  Saying that things will one day be back to normal doesn’t make it so.  For the first time, the US has surpassed every other country in its caseload with over 85,600 known cases out of 531,860 globally.  We now have almost 4,000 more cases than China.  Cases have surged in Illinois to 2,538 with now 26 fatalities.  Almost half of the state’s cases are in Chicago. 

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Quarantine - Day 10

Today was a perfectly sunny day outside and a grey, gloomy day inside. The relief bill finally was passed late at night. There are 1,865 confirmed cases in Illinois and 19 fatalities. 69,018 cases in the US, and 471,518 cases globally.

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Quarantine - Day 9

We took a walk today along the river to the North and found some, but not a lot, of people out enjoying the sunny afternoon.  Abbie went to the grocery, which was well stocked (except for toilet paper).  Our neighborhood coffee shop installed a Dutch Door and the bottom remains closed while the top half is open.  They serve you coffee with gloved hands, and life carries on. 

Today was another fairly busy day.  Ella is doing a regular schedule of school activities from home.  Today she did knitting, math, an art lesson delivered via Skype from Nana, and gym class (our river walk). Abbie is officially off for Spring Break.  Laura and I received good initial response from our clients on our Online Learning page, which is still slowly evolving.  We have no firm word yet on whether our effort to provide content online will be counted as full billable sessions as we have proposed, but we shall see.  Only a few other providers have content up, and we are hoping to help guide the discussion with others as this gets worked out with CPS. 

I am hopeful that a relief bill gets passed.  Although the idea of a $500Bn slush fund controlled by the Treasury Secretary and the president in which no one gets to see where the money went for six whole months seems like a grotesquely bad idea.  I begrudgingly admire the brazenness of how it was proposed that no workers would get their $1,200 checks unless the slush fund was agreed to.  Trump seems itching to get workers back working, but at this point that seems like it would only increase the body count.  I am not sending my kids out until I get an “all clear” from a valid source, and at the moment that is not the White House.   

There have been 415,113 cases globally with 108,294 of those recovered. There are 50,029 in the U.S with 636 dead. We have 1,285 active cases in Illinois 12 fatalities.

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Quarantine - Day 8

Just finished dinner with the family on a sunny afternoon.  We achieved our deadline of getting up online content for our students stuck at home.  It was a team effort, but Abigail especially was instrumental in getting it done on time.  She handled the bulk of the video editing as I just did the opening and ending credits.  She edited the scripts, directed the shoot, and edited each video. Additionally, she came up with a delightful opening theme riff, and Ella did the incidental music for the Warm Up video.  We did a brief social media campaign and let our schools know the content was available.  It was a full workday.  It was not a full workday for the Senate on the relief package.  They are stalled in their work.  There are now twelve deaths in Illinois and 1,285 sickened.  The US now 43,214 people exposed in the US, we are third behind China and Italy in total number of cases.  Globally, 375,458 people have contracted the virus. over 35,000 more than yesterday.

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Quarantine - Day 7

Today was not a happy day. We spent the day shooting more content and editing video. I began work on a title sequence and my computer ran totally out of memory. In trying to fix that issue, I realized that at some point I had lost data. This caused a wave of consternation and I began to feel the deadline pressure while simultaneously monitoring the news of more cases, and less action from Congress on a relief bill. This was an especially potent cocktail for my bad mood. It began to snow hard outside. I grumbled and moped about making sure everyone was aware of my general uneasiness. Abbie rallied and came up with a great opening theme for the title sequence, and I jettisoned enough old files to enable my computer to begin working again. We edited until midnight and turned in. 339,000 globally now have the virus with 35,211 in the states and 1,049 in Illinois. 471 Americans have died out of 14,705 global fatalities.

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Quarantine - Day 6

The morning got off to a slow start.  One of our bank cards got hacked and needed shut off.  Around 11AM we all got started on trying to put together some online content.  It was a family project turning the dining room into a makeshift video studio.  Abbie served as line producer and I worked as a gaffer while Ella composed theme music and Laura was the on-camera talent.  We went to work making five clips to get things started online by Monday, and by 3:30PM we had made some real progress. 

It was a sunny day outside, so Ella went out after coming up with some great incidental music using Garage Band.  Later she Skyped with Cousin Aeva while Laura roasted a chicken.  We haven’t driven each other crazy quite yet, and it’s looking like we might be able to pull off some good content with our extremely humble set up.  We got good news from Ingenuity.  They are thinking about freeing up some funds for teaching artists, and that couldn’t come at a better time, as I am sure many are needing the assistance now. 

We checked on our neighbor Constantine and he is keeping busy on Facebook and doing his taxes.  The neighborhood seems to be doing OK as people adjust to our strange new universe.  I try to keep myself away from the current events as I have been on a bit of a news binge recently.  None of the news seems very good anyway.  Another person died in Illinois bringing the total now to six.  753 have tested positive statewide. With 25,493 testing positive in the US, we now lead the world with the fastest increase in new cases. There are 303,816 infected globally, double what it was on Monday.

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Quarantine - Day 5

Another day of quarantine begins.  There is talk in Washington about relief for small businesses, and small businesses don’t get much smaller than ours, so I start an application for relief loans and read through the new Families First Coronavirus Response Act or Emergency FMLA.  Laura resumed her morning dance routine, and also resumed writing LLMM.  Abbie had papers due and past due plus online learning, and Ella started distant learning from her school.  We are still trying to piece together what our online content may be.  Trump was in a mood picking fights with the press at another of his oddball press conferences.  He is taking this all too personally, complaining that no one gives him enough credit and getting peckish and snappy with those who dare to challenge his grasp of the situation.

Mark Zeus calls, and he is still wanting to find a cheap flight into Chicago to stream a house concert online possibly.  Southwest Airlines has just cancelled their flights into and out of Midway because the ATC in the tower experienced an outbreak temporarily making Midway and uncontrolled airport.  In the late afternoon, Governor Pritzker announced a Shelter-in-Place order with Emily Landon, the chief infectious disease epidemiologist at University of Chicago Medicine giving an especially heartfelt plea to stay at home.  We left and went to the Rockwell Grill for dinner and they handed us our takeout from a respectful distance.  We watched “Yesterday” on HBO and pretended it was a normal Friday Night.  There are now over 275,429 cases globally, 19,624 in the US, and 585 cases in Illinois with 5 fatalities statewide. 

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Quarantine - Day 4

I woke up at 8AM tired from the 832 mile drive the day before, and Laura is wanting to get started on putting up content for online activities. Our temp Kat Douglas reports she has not received her direct deposit, so I start trying to track that down. Halfway through my first cup of coffee, Abbie needs to retrieve items from the van so we head down to load her stuff into the garage. It is a wet, cold, gray day, but loading her things into the garage goes fairly quickly. I finish confirming that Kat’s problem is on her end, and outline a loose plan for online content. I then start working on updating the website and finding out how best to host video based content. Abbie has online content ideas aplenty. The day proceeds as a regular work day for the most part. Trump is getting testy with reporters who question some of his questionable assertions. A bailout is in the works, but has yet to take shape fully. There are now over 240,000 cases globally, 13,680 in the US, and 422 cases in Illinois.

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Quarantine - Day 3

Abigail gets word on her internship.

DAY 3: I get on the road around 7AM and head north to retrieve Abbie. My folks,are thinking they will get on the road tomorrow as they quickly try to wrap things up in Florida and head to Indiana. My brother and sister-in-law are planning on leaving the Space Coast and heading back to St. Charles, Missouri as well. It has now become evident to me after tossing and turning and being unable to get to sleep for a while the night prior that we are likely not going back to school this year. The John’s Hopkins Interactive Map suggests that the US is adding in excess of 1,000 cases per day and it looks as if stricter quarantine efforts may not only be necessary but on the horizon. Traffic is light getting out of town and I drive straight through with no stops 400 miles to St. Olaf where Abbie has the contents of her room already carried down to the entrance of her dorm. Our load out is done quickly and we stop for some Culver’s and also a stop at Target to pick up her prescription. Target is busy and some shelves are getting sparse (toilet paper and cleaning supplies). Laura wants Coconut Milk, but there is none to be found. We head back south while she debriefs me on her abbreviated year. On the trip back she gets word that she has been accepted as a finalist for her summer internship in LA, which is anticipated to move forward. She is really excited for the opportunity. South of Rochester at the on-ramp of I-90 off of 52, we see four semi rigs being searched by five or six state troopers. I wonder if this is somehow connected to the border closing with Canada which had just been announced. There are 9,250 cases in the US and 288 cases in Illinois.

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Quarantine - Day 2

DAY 2: It’s Primary Day in Illinois. It is also the first official day of our quarantine now that PIAB has no sessions. Last Thursday, I signed up for us to vote by mail but Laura’s ballot has not arrived. I go through my ballot and try to review the candidates as much as I am able, but it doesn't take long for attempting to be a good citizen to be a rather murky exercise. I contact my folks who are planning to leave Traveler’s Rest in Pasco County, Florida and head back to Indiana at some point. They aren’t sure when they plan on leaving but think it will be by the end of the week. We are thinking about continuing with some online activities for PIAB and trying to review our receivables and think ahead as much as possible. It looks dark ahead. I complete my Census form online. Abbie calls and St. Olaf is suggesting that students leave as quickly as possible. We move up her pickup two days earlier than planned. There are around 6,400 cases in the US, and over 160 known cases in Illinois.

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Quarantine - Day 1

The kids build a Leprechaun trap.

Clear, bright, cool day. Sunshine w/ 40 degree temp. No CWS, so Ella is home. Laura is scheduled to go to Skinner West and SSFAA, but is not feeling well. She has shortness of breath, allergy symptoms, but no fever. We schedule a doctor’s appointment for her while the stock market crashes nearly 3000 points. Aedan and Rosie did not go to school so they come up to play and Caroline joins a bit later when Cookie agrees to cover Laura’s session at SSFAA allowing her to attend her doctor’s appointment. At the appointment, the doctor thinks that her shortness of breath is likely tied to allergies but issues her a face mask, which they only have a few remaining, for her just in case. Later I retrieve some prescription Flonase from Mariano’s which is packed and running low on some items. Ella has requested ginger ale. I try three stores to find some. There are around 4,600 cases of COVID-19 in the US, and 105 reported cases in Illinois up from 32 on Friday. Globally there are over 153,000 people who have been exposed to the virus.

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