I guess I would describe our current situation as one. Number one, there's a very serious medical thing that's happening and we're all trying to do our best to respond to it. I guess we're all is a not not necessarily the truth. People — a lot of people are coming up with these big things to do because it's very serious, we have to respond to it somehow. But because of maybe because of the way that the internet feeds all the information to us kind of on equal terms, there's this idea that even though the medical field is coming forward and saying “Wow, is this serious. And yeah, we definitely have to respond. And here's the here's the best way to respond,” at the same time, kind of regular people that I know have come forward or whatever have have said: “Well, I'm not sure that's really the case” or “How can we really be sure that that's helping?”  And I guess to me I think well, I suppose we can't be sure but I'm not sure that that's a reason to ignore what's being said or to say I certainly would not be somebody who would say oh, this is like a conspiracy or I'm doubting whether this is really necessary what the government is doing. I think the government is trying their best. Generally, the shutdown is a response to things. It may be imperfect there. Maybe have been moments where people said “This is helpful or not helpful” and then they had to come back and say, “you know that wasn't really accurate what we said, it is helpful where it's not helpful, even though we kind of set the opposite before.” But I'm I just don't have it in me. I don't have the type of personality that that spends a lot of time wondering whether the general message that I'm receiving is really accurate.

I was watching a TV show the other day and there was a woman, the main character. She was in an arcade trying to get this specific toy for her child. She thought her daughter would really like this specific pink plushie toy, so the scene is her trying to get this toy. And the camera pans to her peering into the glass looking all excited, concentrating, and then shows her hand touching the handle or the joystick or whatever — the stick you use to move the machine around. And my immediate thought was “oh she shouldn't touch that, it hasn’t been disinfected” and I realized that and I paused and it just struck me how this pandemic is affecting how I view people's actions in TV shows, like how crazy is it that my first thought is, “Wow this character, who doesn't exist, who lived in the world before this pandemic ever happened, should be focused on disinfecting this handle before she plays this game.”  So just a strange thing that happened.

Have you or anyone close to you had to change or cancel any big plans because of this? I'm going to say that's a real big Yes. I proposed to my then-girlfriend, now-fiancee last March and our wedding date we decided on was May 9th. So clearly some changes were in order there.When things first started to lock down around mid-March, we had a discussion at the time and we -- we rolled it over for a few days and talked about it. The idea of what we might do what we might need to postpone or change or cancel whether we wanted to to limit the number of people, or what might be the best way. And as things kept progressing and getting worse that we we came to the decision that rather than try to keep crunching down our plans smaller and smaller and end up with something that was really half-baked or or not even, you know, not not even worth doing at all.We just decided that we were going to do two things. The first of them was keep the same wedding date. All of the associated, you know, the friends the family the party all of that is all secondary to the actual purpose of the day, which is being married you know, joining ourselves together. We're going to have a a church wedding and and you know, if the priest is there and two people are there to sign the marriage license that's that's really the minimum. So rather than cancel. We are delaying our reception to next May. Hopefully knock on wood next May everything's able to happen.We were able to push everything back to next May. we're going to do up d the whole thing right. Right down to the party bus, you know, my my now fiance and and by then she'll be my wife will be in her wedding dress again. We're going to have all the bridesmaids and groomsmen we push back our our rentals for our tuxes and we'll all be in in the full shebang, the party bus to get pictures taken. We're going to try and get back to the church. Unless someone else is having a wedding that weekend. Try and get back into the church and do some pictures in our full with everyone there in the church that on campus and places like…

I'm an owner-operator of a Veterinary Clinic here. I am considered an essential worker, so I'm still going to work every day. But, at the clinic we're only allowed to do sick animals or chronically ill, injured. Nothing that's routine. And we're doing everything curbside off, so clients stay outside the building, we get a history on the phone. Then we go out and get the animal, with the mask on and the people are supposed to be wearing a mask. And then we bring animals into the clinic, do whatever we need to do, and then I talk to them on the phone again, and we take them back out. It's very inefficient and a little cumbersome. So we're actually working a fair number of hours, but doing about half the amount of work that we typically do. But it's getting a little bit easier every week. I feel like as the owner, it's my place to to look calm and like everything's under control and like we're all going to be fine and try to be the cheerleader, but it was particularly difficult. I wasn't sleeping very well at night and just getting different headaches at the beginning but it's hard to stay in crisis mode for a long time. So as each week has gone by and this is starting to feel a little more, the phrase is "The new normal". We're getting more comfortable with it. I'm almost to the point now where I think even if the governor were to say things can open back up again, I would be reluctant to do that. I think we'll probably let other people try that first and then stay with the curbside telemedicine and sick things only, for a little bit longer and just see how it goes.