25 thoughts on “McSweeney’s Working From Home Bingo”

  1. I haven’t actually shuffled a deck of cards since the last time I was with one of my brothers. Many, many years. The electronic game meme doesn’t just infect kids. I may have played a plethora of spider solitaire and even more of freecell.

    How much should I regret the loss of family entertainment provided through ownership of Hoyles Book of Games? Growing up, I learned and played Hearts, Spades, Gin, Rummy, Canasta, Pinochle, Euchre, Pitch, and all the children’s games like Go Fish and Crazy Eights and Old Maid. As an adult I learned Bridge and refined skills in poker and blackjack. Now, I don’t even own a cribbage board.

    Be well, Arghers.

  2. I might have even laugh-cried a little bit from reading that. Thank you.

    Also, I really feel like Angela Lansbury doesn’t get credit for her range. She was super creepy in that movie.

    1. More like terrifying. I first saw that when she was starring in Murder She Wrote and all I could think was how badly her talent was being wasted on TV.

  3. Existential dread? Practical dread? Absolutely! But putting on pants for a conference call is pure newbie.

  4. Meetings lost all meaning when my employer mandated daily, first thing, in-person meetings. So glad I’m retired.

  5. A haughty 12-year-old Maine coon cat visited us with his owner the other day. While we gabbed with his owner, who loves him dearly, we kept checking for his whereabouts because he has sprayed in the past (specifically, in the breakfast nook).

    Eventually, we forgot about him and he felt he needed to make a grand gesture, so he jumped high onto the chessboard. Not being a game player, he did not know that the board was slippery and that the seemingly inanimate Lewis Chess pieces replicas would fling themselves in all directions, projectile berserkers intent on cat attack.

    Even his beloved owner laughed at him, and the formerly arrogant cat slunk behind the sofa. Best game of chess I’ve seen in awhile.

  6. I’m not working from home yet, but I feel it is just a matter of time. I am consolidating my stuff and putting it where I can get to it from home

    1. Me too. They still won’t let me work from home even though about 70% of the office was given permission to, but I was packing go-bags at the office after I hear about the Bay Area shutdown (I’m a few counties away), and I’m driving to work tomorrow when I normally don’t so I can pack my shit home.

  7. My employer and my husband’s have each decreed that as many workers as possible should telework during this pandemic period. It shaves up to an hour of commuting from the day for each of us, but I have to say it’s dreary. Work creeps into your home, and home begins to feel like a prison.

    I am, though, heartened by all the cooperation in the neighborhood around helping one another get groceries, pick up prescriptions, and so on. People (those around here, anyway) really do seem to feel that we are all in this together.

  8. We’re on rotation in the office, half the team WFH and half in the office, then rotate the following day with the other half now in the office.

    We’re expecting that will change by next week as schools will start to be shut down and then we’ve got most of the parents in the teams looking after kids.

    I work in IT so my team is used to remote-ing, and we’re well setup for it. Most of the teams we support aren’t used to it and are panicking about what Skype, or Teams, is as they’ve never used either. Fun times.

    I’m looking forward to actually getting some work done when it’s my turn from home!

  9. Took my desk plant home. WFH currently optional, but most of the company took them up on it, I think. It was amazingly light traffic going in to work today. Looking forward to no commute tomorrow!

  10. Working from home is my old normal. I have noticed that more doctors are doing telephone follow ups which is good. Anything that keeps the healthy and people who are chronically ill but stable in their homes is a win. So very glad to see that supermarkets and pharmacies are adopting “seniors hours” and making it safer and easier for people to get what they need.

    1. I wonder if increased telemedicine will be one of the lasting changes (and hope so). I think a lot of the resistance in the past has been because insurers wouldn’t pay for it like an office appointment, but now that they are paying for it (I believe I read that Medicare/aid rules were changed to allow it), they’ll be able to see the benefits, and maybe it will stick around.

      1. I should explain that I drive 4 hours round trip to see my specialist, to spend five minutes confirming my ongoing meds and symptoms haven’t changed, so she can renew my specialized scrips and order some bloodwork that I do locally. Total waste of time for both of us. And it can take months to get an appointment with her — I just changed an appointment, and the earliest was almost four months later, despite my being an existing client (longer for new ones). If she was doing 5-min teleconferences (or 10, including reviewing her notes and adding to them) instead of 20 minute in-office visits, she’d have time to see more patients sooner.

        1. Totally. I was very fortunate when I had to see an endocrinologist that she did all her follow ups with out-of-town patients via phone. It’s very frustrating, I hear it in the voices of the doctors I transcribe for and their patient’s voice it as well, to have to do that. Many of the patients fly to Vancouver from the Yukon and they and the doctors work to coordinate appointments with other specialists. Yes, if you have new symptoms or need special tests you need to see the doctor but if you are fine, you should be able to just have a phone visit.

  11. Was in Spain (Tenerife in the Canary Islands) for the last three weeks. On Friday we learned that at midnight on Thursday all harbors and ports on the Canaries had been locked down and that the Spanish government was going to invoke a clause in their constitution to basically shut pretty much everything down on Saturday. Our flight home was on Saturday and we were a bit worried. We did get home, with an hour’s delay due to the fact that there was a personnel shortage in the air traffic control because of virus issues. Our home airport(Cologne-Bonn) was pretty empty when we arrived.

    My employer had sent out notices last week that anyone traveling from a “risk area” could request for self-isolation, so Monday morning I wrote asking about staying home, which my dept head okayed. Then a few hours later there was a message that everyone should basically work from home for at least the next 4 weeks. They closed the company canteen until mid-April as well. We’re having working group meetings via webex. Have been told that any absolutely necessary presence at the institute should held to a minimum (i.e., if I run in to get files, I do that and bugger off home immediately after that).

    Conferences and other meetings are being delayed/cancelled, meaning all my travel this spring is cancelled.

    Hubby’s employer is leaving it up to the employee, so hubby is doing a couple of days there (has a private office and the building is pretty deserted) and a couple of days here.

    However, I am very happy to be home. I can potter in the garden (spring has really sprung here) and, other than videoconferencing, I can time things the way I want. So daylight hours can be used for gardening and after dark for writing. Suits me fine.

    Plus I am well stocked with yarn and beads and expect in no way to be bored. In fact, gotta say that I am delighted that extrovert hubby will not be pressuring introvert me to “get out and do stuff”… 😁

    I told my folks it’s like Christmas came early for me!

  12. I just got out of the shower, and realized that’s the only place I currently feel completely safe. (All that SOAP!)

    My little office has been teleworking for a week because of a failed office move, but has now moved to a “don’t come in” footing. The larger department, like the rest of the federal government, is “maximizing telework.” Unfortunately for many federal employees, the exact interpretation of that phrase is being left to department managers, many of whom have differing ideas about who can telework and why, what it means when your kids are home with you, etc etc.

    I could go on and on, but I won’t. It enrages me.

  13. Stages Of Working From Home

    1 – Yay! I get to work from home!

    2 – It would be nice to talk to people.

    3 – I hope that pigeon sits in the window today. – A href=”https://www.10memes.com/2020/03/stages-of-working-from-home.html?fbclid=IwAR2N5h9bLrI8d3tTFp7ToPsIqk59T9MOfIDyfLFBkkKvuvr9YPKHAJSPEhg”>source

  14. Morning Arghers! Hope you’re well wherever you are in the world. One of our local media outlets produced this excellent graphic on symptoms of covid/flu/colds and I’m sharing it widely because, it really is excellent, especially for those with anxiety and in the Southern Hemisphere as we head into cold-and-flu season.

    The graphic is embedded in this article:

    https://thespinoff.co.nz/science/18-03-2020/siouxsie-wiles-how-testing-for-covid-19-works/

    BTW practically everything this scientist/columnist has written about covid is worth reading.

    2. I’ve just read through several of her columns. Such a smart lady. Thanks for pointing us to her.

      1. You’re welcome Jenny and Jane. And yes, she’s wonderful. She was nominated as New Zealander of the year last year. Go science! I liked her ‘world on fire’ piece as well. Tony Morris (the cartoonist who drew the graphic) is a gem too.

    3. Ooooh, that is so good. Scientists and artists make magic together. Of course my allergy suffering friends say “she needs to add a row for hay (etc) fever sufferers.” I feel their pain (gesundheit!).

      Thank you for the link and tip about the excellent Dr Siouxsie Wiles.

  15. My family has been home for 24 hours. I need need to go back to work at the ICU, much less stress for me.

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