Holy Cow! Earthquake!

Friday evening around 5:20ish, J. asked 'do you want some wine?'.  I said 'no, I'm fine' but he looked disappointed...so I said 'if you want wine, go ahead and open a bottle and I'll help you drink it.'

At 5:33PM, we heard a huge BOOM and I said 'what was that?'.  Then the townhouse started moving and shaking and we realized it was an earthquake.  Initially reported as a 5.0 about 6 KM south of Carson City - but updated to be a 4.5.  It felt HUGE - seemed to last forever.  It finally stopped and the cats appeared looking completely freaked out.

We were, too.  We drank the entire bottle of wine.  Guess we'll be seeing if we can afford earthquake insurance for the new house.  On a good note, the townhouse (same builder as our house) weathered it fine - not a single crack.  Felt like the house sort of 'rolled' with the quake.

We had another quake the following night - same thing - big BOOM with a little shaking.  This one was only a 3.5.  For entertainment, I checked earthquaketrack.com and saw 10 earthquakes south of Carson in the past 4 days.

GREAT....we left California thinking we'd left earthquakes (mostly) behind us only to find out there are (apparently) some pretty active fault lines not too far away.

Had a great Facebook chat with my friend S. in California who said she was so glad to read this blog.  She mentioned that I referred to 'our President' and our current President is not 'ours'.  So many of us can't understand how he got there and why he's still there.  I feel the same.  I can't describe the degree of ineptness he displays on a daily basis - ongoing, repeated instances of his complete lack of any leadership or humility.  He fired all the people who would have had the job(s) of working through how to deal with this pandemic - and he's winging it, literally.  Guess I will use 'the President' - because S. is right - there is no collective belonging with this nincompoop.  He is destroying our country.

We are doing our best to 'shelter in place'.  We left the house together today and made a Savemart run.  Thinking that with two of us splitting up, we'd be super fast.  We were but....I still worried because we shouldn't be out at all - but we needed groceries.  We felt like we got lucky - J. was able to find distilled water which we've been looking for weekly since the pandemic started.  They also had toilet paper and I was tempted to get some but we are OK for now - reminded myself to stop panicking and leave it for someone else who is truly out.

I'd wanted to get carrots to make a carrot cake for our anniversary - but J. convinced me to just get a carrot cake square from the bakery and call that 'done'.  OH - and we were able to find flour, FINALLY!

Compared to Walmart, Savemart was very well stocked and we found most of what we needed.

Yesterday, I caught up with my friend C. via a phone call - always so great to talk to her and share the things happening in our lives.  These are super crazy times and I'm so glad to have someone to listen.  She's experiencing the same thing in California - bare shelves.

Part of me thinks that it is truly the 'herd' mentality - I know when I went to Walmart and saw empty shelves, my approach of 'just get a few things' turned into 'buy anything and everything you can find to get us stocked up for whatever is to come'.  It's really scary to be unsure just how much you need to feed a family of two for weeks.  I also think that the lack of communication from our country's leadership is contributing to the panic shopping.  We're all unsure if/when we might be ordered to completely stay in our home and absolutely not leave - and in the absence of guidance on that, people are just stocking up.  If I had 4 kids and needed to provide food for two to four weeks for six people, holy cow!  I'd be sweeping the shelves, too -

Flattening the curve is the goal.  Stay home so the rate the virus spreads is slowed to allow our medical system to keep up.

While we all flatten the curve, the economy is in a complete and total free fall.  The stock market has lost all the value gained in the past 3 years - and now it's losing even more, day after day.  I feel very concerned on a daily basis - but we are relatively still OK.  Only two years before I can claim social security and while we hope to wait a couple years for the annual bump delaying provides, if we can't, we can't.  What goes down will likely return to up and we're glad to be able to wait it out.  Fingers crossed.

The President is now toying with the 'let's not shelter in place as long' to mitigate the economics of no one eating out, going to movies, gambling, shopping, etc. .  Right, let's kill more of us 'cuz that's the way to go.

An economic aide package is being put together and as always, the Republicans build in a ton of funding for businesses with no limitations on what they can use it for and no transparency about how the money will be used.  Sending a payment to all adults in the country to help mitigate the impact of the pandemic is an idea - but tying that to giving big business money they will most likely use for bonuses or buying back stock shares seems wrong.  The Democrats have voted down the aide package twice and of course, the Republicans position it as 'we're trying to help people and the Dems won't allow us to'.  Bull shit.

This is the scariest time in my life.  I know we are living through history and have no idea how it will play out.  Some schools are talking about calling the school year over now.  Not returning from this extended break at all for this year.  I feel so sad for all the seniors and 8th graders whose special events and graduations will not be happening.  Colleges are announcing virtual graduations.

Thank you to all people who are working daily to help us get through this. Essential jobs - medical professionals, police, fire, store clerks, etc. - staying on the job to ensure the rest of us have what we need.  It takes a village.