Life in the quarantine cottage

The fever hit on the evening of March 12. Wife and #3 got sick a little later. I have a clear vector, so it's probably C-19.

We were already kind of isolated in our holiday home so we decided to stay here. Very few neighbours and not much real contact. It's not really that remote so we're close to big hospitals, just in case.

We're all still here and still coughing when I'm writing this on April 10. The symptoms have been mild, though, and we're mostly OK. It's just that we should probably not be in close proximity to anyone else.

We have been careful with contacts with other people. We have lived on stored food and ordered some that we prepaid and just fetched bags at a storefront, several meters from store staff.

Since I haven't been that ill I mostly kept on working. I've been working from here before. It's fairly ergonomical, even though I miss my height-adjustable desk the most.

Not much has changed for me, really. I've been working remotely for years. $DAYJOB is rather mature when it comes to using video conferencing, issue tracking systems and instant messaging. Even though I don't necessarily like all the technical choices I get by, typically by working around them and/or integrating them with, say, Emacs.

Most of my social contacts have been over IRC anyway (yeah, I know…), and we kept on with the weekly hacker's lunches, but now over video. I've also had a couple of video beers with friends, but that's not unusual even when there's not a global pandemic going on.

I have my feder with me so I've been able to get some practice.

It's been hardest for #3. The school is definitely not prepared for remote education. We start each morning together by going through all the school assignments, then select one to start with, check in when it's done and walk through it, then a short break, and repeat throughout the day. I'm a bit surprised the school haven't used chat or video conference at all with more than half of the pupils at home.

My work has been understanding that I have had to shift my work day a bit because of having to help mentoring #3.

Personally, I think it's not all bad. I sleep much better here, for instance. It's so quiet. I also enjoy sitting by the fire and reading in the evening.

I also started being active on my previously dormant Mastodon account. You can find me on @mc@mastodon.sdf.org. I'm enjoying it much more than Twitter. Feel free to follow.