Friday, March 20th 2020
Day Four:
I woke-up at 4 am, made coffee and worked on my website all morning, but the internet was at a crawl. My phone was doing fine so I downloaded the mobile app for editing, and finished moving the blog from Google Docs to Square Space. Now I'm finishing up by writing directly to my website on the laptop and the internet seems pretty fast. Oops it just went away again…
I’m still waiting for word from my job.
Erin and I went for our daily walk. The amount of other people walking, and running was light. Our landscapers were doing their work as usual keeping up the grounds. I am glad that they still have their jobs. It is the perfect job for a situation like this, because they always work alone around the complex. Of course the other benefit is that our place always looks great. The weather is beautiful, as it has been all week, around 60 degrees with blue sky’s and puffy clouds.
We got home and Erin made molasses cookies, and we munched on some salami. Erin took a bath and I worked on the website. Three packages came today, yarn and knitting needles that Erin had ordered just the day before. Amazing! We also got a wooden board game that Erin cleaned with bleach just to be careful.
Still no word from my work…
Erin was on the phone upstairs and I tackled the closet under the stairs. The first part cleared away about five years of empty boxes. They were from things like; cell phones, computers, and other stuff. I always save boxes until we make sure they work. The problem is that they never get thrown away, I am terrible at that. I finally got to the heart of the subject, the boxes that were in our storage while we lived on the boat. About three years ago Erin and her friend cleared out our storage unit in Oakland. They did it over a couple of weeks. I had no idea that it was happening. It was a pleasant surprise for me, because even the thought of it was terrifying. Now for the project at hand, going through the boxes of old stuff. Erin is the one I depend on to kick me in the ass to get me started on things, without her I would be lost. Once I get going I do just fine. It’s like breaking a dog sled loose from the ice, once it's done the dogs have no problem pulling the sled, without it they just stand there. I moved the five large boxes and other miscellaneous crap out of the closet, hitting my head on the slanted ceiling several times. Ouch! I then divided the boxes into segments to work on over the next few days. I was going to call it quits for the day, but decided to tackle the largest box. I worked on it till evening and finished it. I made a Gin Ricky and sat in my chair reading about ten newspapers I had saved. They were from 1969 through 1974. These papers covered: the Moon Landing, Chappaquiddick, Watergate, Vietnam, Patty Hearst and the SLA, and other topics from the times. The adds in the Oakland Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle were a blast from the past.
My phone rang, and it was our general manager from work. My heart skipped a beat, and I answered. He informed me that I was laid-off, effective immediately. And that I would be receiving a letter from the company tomorrow with a check covering wages and vacation time owed. He also said that our medical would end on the 30th, and a Cobra application would be included. Shit! Erin and I would have to scramble to get our medical transferred to Medicare for me, and Cover California for her. We will probably have to pay at least one month’s Cobra to make this happen, and it’s expensive. Oh well, it is what it is, and we are fortunate we have options. Erin got online and worked for about an hour on the forms for hers. When she finished she submitted it and there was some sort of snafu, it wasn’t accepting it, so she has to call them tomorrow. Damn-it!
We went to bed…