Diary During the COVID-19 Crisis
Well, I've been writing a series of one-off segments in my journal posts, mostly involving anecdotal observations during this stay-at-home regimen under the novel coronavirus crisis. So this is more of an organizational change to categorize them under a "Diary" theme.I got a jury summons for mid-month before MD Gov. Hogan issued a stay-at-home policy (and before that a closure of "non-essential" businesses). I've only been called a couple of the times; the first was in San Antonio during my early 20's and I got dismissed without being selected. I think I got selected in South Carolina after I had already moved to Arizona. Now I suspected that trials were on hiatus, but to the best of my knowledge, there was no proactive effort by the state/county/local government to follow up; I noticed a phone number for a jury coordinator, and there was an outgoing message that basically said if your appearance was within a certain date range (mine was), your summons was canceled and wouldn't be rescheduled. Still, with all these warnings on noncompliance with jury summons, I wish I had something more tangible than a voice message.
I made 2 grocery runs over the weekend, one to Lidl, the other to Walmart (I forgot a few items on my first trip), My checkout clerk at Lidl was wearing a face mask and gloves. Lidl was generally well-stocked except out of stock on certain paper products, in particular, toilet paper. (I don't need to purchase any for several weeks, but it's something I regularly check.) My rough estimate across Lidl and Walmart a high plurality of customers and personnel wearing masks, maybe about 40%, a definite uptick over last week. Meanwhile, Walmart had eggs back in stock but only a few dozen rolls of paper towels, no toilet paper, in the paper products aisles. You can still find a lot of food to buy, but there are huge "bald spots" all over the place, whether in meat cases or on the shelves. This is mostly anecdotal, not on my list, but for instance a lot of Walmart's "Great Value" (budget label) items, e.g., chips/snacks, cereals, etc., were largely depleted. Overall, I think the inventory stock is the worst I've ever seen to date at this particular location; your mileage may vary.
You may have seen me reference this on Facebook or Twitter. My estranged cousin's daughter Alexis, a nurse living in Connecticut, I believe, has been infected with COVID-19. She's young and resilient and seems to be coping with the virus. The situation has sparked my creative juices and I'm currently working on a song, not based on her own experience because we haven't been in contact since my late aunt's funeral. It's not completed yet, not sure if I'll perform it/release it on my Youtube channel; I'm more of a lyricist than a composer. I've occasionally flirted with the idea of vlogging and/or starting my own podcast.
My Family Tree
My 2 brothers have been particularly interested in tracing our family tree. I knew my great-grandparents on both sides emigrated from French Canada/Quebec. I think in a past post I mentioned my Uncle Roger, a Catholic priest and my Mom's older sibling, had maintained a copy of the family tree dating back to the family's emigration from Normandy/France in a strongbox. (My uncle wasn't a materialist and lived fairly modestly. If anything, money bored him. So there were no valuables in that strongbox in any conventional sense. I don't know what else he kept there: old family photos?) So when the strongbox was stolen, I have to laugh at what the thief thought if/when he managed to open the safe: who would care about the genealogy beyond my own relatives? It really didn't bother my uncle; he had no interest in getting the genealogy redone.My brother mentioned 3 spellings of our surname, although I only see two: 'Guillemet' for one interim ancestor, obviously a clerical error. He may be referring to two intermediate uncles whose typoed surname was 'Guilmette'.
So he managed to trace both family surnames back to latter 17th century France, Picardie on my Dad's side, a region bordering the northeast coast, north of Paris; Haute-Normandie on my Mom's side, bordering west along the French coast.
