funny how the world can turn around so quickly. just yesterday it seemed like if you could go on a cruise, you had lots of money, and that was all cool, and you could come back with a tan and good stories about port cities like kingston jamaica, or maybe san juan. you were riding high and you spent a couple of weeks relaxing in the sun and in the beautiful caribbean. now this was not something i ever aspired to, and that was lucky because now, you have this batch of travelers, some went on the princess, some went on some other one, and they're all suspect because of coronavirus.

or here's another example. you can own a fine restaurant in town, and get lots of business, but people are close to each other, and sit in confined places. well that kind of place is going to be unpopular for a month or two, or maybe three, or all spring and all summer. i'm not really sure how this all will pan out. but panic is setting in across the country and there's no way to know how long it will last.

the schools that have more stuff online are the ones that will have more stuff going on; anything that's online can keep being online and keep going. anyone who's not online might have to think about getting online, or getting used to sitting around for a while while they wait for the whole thing to subside. but why should it subside? they are still struggling to get tests to all the places they need it, and track down where it's been, and where it's going next. it will be a while before they know it's gotten everyone it's going to get.

the schools are really our biggest concern. we live way out in the country. we've been stockpiling, but we do that anyway because we get snowed in and lose power for days at a time. we have four kids in two schools, but they only come into contact with maybe a hundred people a day each. it's a small school. so far not much of life has been altered. school has gone on as usual, and tourists are continuing to fill this little mountain town.

but i can see trouble on the horizon. new mexico hasn't had a single reported case, but it's surrounded by states with cases - arizona, texas, colorado, utah, oklahoma. it's all over the place. my guess is it will be in new mexico today or tomorrow. as for our town, it may take a few weeks before it gets to our town, but with the tourists and all, i'll say a week on that too. it'll be here in a week.

i watch the news obsessively now, and since i check in maybe six or seven times a day, i lose track of how much can happen in a day or how quickly things can get so bad. the stock market, for example, is crashing again, more, eleven thousand before it even opened, as far as i can tell. all of a sudden retirement plans, college funds, life savings, all gone up in smoke, by the trillion. now you can be an alarmist, like i am, and say this will change life as we know it, or you can shrug it off, buy low, and watch it come back to some kind of level. i'm not buying low; i'm not buying at all. i'll put my life savings in toilet paper.

when biden beat sanders the stock market hesitated for a while, on its way down, and even went up for a day. it was like people were saying, hey wait, the poor people won't come after us after all, they won't raise taxes on the rich, and we'll be able to keep robbing the system and taking our sixteen trillion every year. but then they woke up: hey wait a minute. the president is telling us everything is fine, there aren't enough tests out there, and the cruise ships are docking because he doesn't want to raise our numbers, or that will spook the markets. if he's worried about his legacy, this will be his legacy. he told the cdc not to warn us retired folks, so they didn't, so the retired folks went out and spread the disease.

it's the retired folks who are on the cruises, the ones with the money, the ones with the stock portfolio. it seems to be hitting them all at once. and apparently once they get it, they become a pariah. some of those cruise ships are still docked; they can't come home, they can't even get off the ship. they are marked for life as being on the princess.

that doesn't answer the question of whether we, out here in the country, will be ok, and the whole thing will pass when the weather turns, and we can go back to life as normal. my guess is, life will not go back to normal. my daughter says that parents in her kids' school are removing their children for the rest of the year, but in seattle they couldn't close the schools, because all the doctors and nurses needed the schools in order to go to work. big shortage of people in the medical community, as they rush around trying to get tests, and find a place to put people who are quarantined. we assume everyone can quarantine at home. but we have six here: what if one needs quarantined, and the others are ok? is there a point where you just say, well i've been exposed, but i'm going to go on living my life as usual?

there are already stories coming out. there is no more usual.