Okay - admit it, you are feeling a bit anxious. I know I am. You open your local newspaper or turn on the television and the impression your left with is things are getting worse. It’s probably fair to say that some places in the world have taken this issue more serious than others. In the UK they just recently closed the schools and pubs - duh?

From watching mainstream media you are left with the impression that the USA is a bit behind the rest of the world with taking precautions. Here at home (Toronto) the government continues to pass new rules closing everything but essential services - mind you it does look like the list of essential services is quite long.

My wife works at a hospital and she tells me it is very busy there and the staff are anxious and on edge. When she gets home she likes to have some space, call her family and generally unwind and she has earned that right.

I have tried (failed) to limit my exposure to the news. Clearly, you can get very depressed with everything/anything you read.

I don’t have any great ideas on what you should do but one thing I have tried to do is to continue to keep some sense of a routine. I think one difficulty people are facing is that there has been a change in their normal day-to-day routine. Yep - it’s not easy.

Every day, I try to continue with a few simple things. Get up out of bed - have a shower, make the bed, make a good breakfast and read the Globe and Mail online. That knocks off about an hour. :).

The “kid” is home from school so she is bored but she has WIFI, and her world seems to revolve on the images in her phone - sigh. We had to have a serious chat the other day explaining why she can’t see her friends. It’s not easy for them to understand, but you have to be firm on these things. Hopefully it will pass sooner than later and they all live on FACETIME anyways. I don’t like to be the bad guy but I told her “this is serious stuff” so hopefully she got it.

Her school is locked down but they are starting up on Wednesday with some sort of regular classes online. We have been getting communication from the school explaining how it will work and I’m assuming the kids have been getting the same or hopefully more. I doubt there is a master plan for this so we’re thankful that they are working hard to figure this out. I think it’s great as they need to get back to their routine.

This may sound funny or stupid but I have been trying to accomplish one thing per day. Yesterday it was cleaning out the closet on the main floor of the condo. It didn’t take that long and I wasn’t sure what was in there (lot’s of tennis balls). I managed to move things around, put some articles in the downstairs locker and actually throw out some stuff. (Spring cleaning comes early.)

We’re stocked up for food and wine so that’s not a problem. We don’t have a full sized freezer, so we do tend to shop every 2-3 days and we have not gone to Costco to load up because we simply don’t have the room.

While doing my cleaning I was feeling a bit optimistic so I pulled my fold-up bike out of the basement locker hoping that if the weather warm’s up, I might be able to do a ride around the neighbourhood. It is still fairly cold out and its been raining on and off. I think its supposed to warm up eventually (please) and once it does we can at the very least get outside on a more regular basis.

Will have to see how this works out.

Beyond that, I have not ventured out too much. A trip to grocery store and to the LCBO to stock up on some more cheap red wine. Yesterday I went there and we had to actually line up outside. It was pouring rain and so we dutifully lined up six feet apart (like good Canadians) - as they were operating under a one out - one in policy.

There are a lot of other things that we typically do in a normal day or week that we have been taking for granted. I used to go over to the tennis club at night to engage in some sort of human contact - a glass of wine and conversation with friends. Even though I have a few tennis injuries, I still tried to go over and make sure that I continued to see people. Now that we can’t do this - something that I would have considered normal and quite simple is missing. So, yesterday a good friend sent out an email chain inviting a group of people to join in a ZOOM chat online.

We had a pretty diverse group of people on the call - lawyers, financial investors, information technology and me - the retired bum. We managed to keep it going for about 30 minutes and the technology worked very well. There was a few stumbles but eventually we managed to get up and running. I found it interesting to get people’s insights not only on their daily life but also on their perspective to the short/long term future. On the financial side, it was clear that there is concern that the markets need to stay open and the economy has to keep going, while from the medical position there was a sense that we need to get tough quickly and if so, we can work this out so that economy will keep going.

I have been hoping to write a few blogs of restaurant reviews but it does seem a bit pointless. However I do need keep myself busy so I will start up tomorrow.

Meanwhile, many small business are trying to find ways to keep it going. It’s not easy as I have friends who are concerned. They have to worry about how long they can keep paying their employees, to pay the bills that will come due and at the same time worry about their own families. There is going to be a domino impact to all of this.

This post popped up on my Instagram feed the other day. They were advertising takeout options on their menu.

This is one of my all time favourite restaurants. Located in Montreal, they are a classic French style bistro and I ALWAYS have the steak frites. Since all the dining establishments are closed some are offering takeout/delivery options. We actually did this last week with a local Mexican place. Anyways, I replied to the Instagram post with this and I even got a “like” back.

I will do a spin class on my spin bike using the https://www.onepeloton.ca and I highly recommend it. I am missing my daily visits to the gym however this is working out pretty good. I also ordered some elastic fitness bands and will give them a try when they arrive. I should own stock in Amazon.

Stay safe, relax and let’s work together to get through this crazy time!