reset to day zero again

My job is less than 100% certain now. Our world headquarters sent an all staff email yesterday announcing pay freezes for the next full year and pay cuts at the top of the ranks. I guess I'll hold onto my savings for now instead of buying a few upgrades for the house. Continuing to pay the house mortgage is more important than any other changes at the moment.

I went out for groceries and gardening supplies this morning. I had to scrape ice from the car windows. Not frost, but ice. It rained and froze last night. The temperature is below freezing today, currently -3C/26F. It doesn't feel like spring season yet.  There was more car traffic than I expected, but most businesses were still closed, which is good. I got home, put items away, got a full shower, put on fresh clothes, then disinfected door handles.

I bet you hadn't heard the news that protesters in Mexico are trying to shut down the USA border, working to prevent Americans from entering their country.

Residents in Sonora, south of the US state of Arizona, have promised to block traffic into Mexico for a second day after closing a checkpoint for hours on Wednesday. They wore face masks and held signs telling Americans to "stay at home".
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52053656

As I expected, poor neighborhoods will be hit hardest in this first round of the pandemic.  They have worse healthcare options, and rich people can more easily work from home or flee to remote locations.  Yahoo Finance accidentally gives a clue why the federal government seems slow to provide proper resources to the big cities up north: poor, racial minorities tend to vote Democrat.

https://time.com/5814360/poor-new-york-city-neighborhoods-coronavirus/
https://grist.org/justice/how-vulnerable-is-your-community-to-coronavirus-these-new-maps-reveal-a-familiar-pattern/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/detroit-coronavirus-hotspot_n_5e7e7e2ac5b6cb9dc1a05f33
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/03/us/coronavirus-stay-home-rich-poor.html (archive)
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/coronavirus-covid-cities-second-homes-rural-small-towns

I'm expecting things to get really bad here in my local warzone, as illness starts spreading here and economic hardships grow even worse.  Here's a recent screenshot from the Citizen app on my phone.  There were more sirens than usual driving around, so I was still up at 1am watching tv, when I recorded this screenshot.  There is a lot of local violence.  It's still cold out there, and we already have bad summer crime levels.



Also, stay tuned for Utah as a new hotspot of COVID-19 issues.  They're showing up on the smart thermometer map as a location of interest.  Florida is still aglow too.
https://healthweather.us/?mode=Atypical