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Post by Hobby Drifter on Jul 20, 2023 6:10:26 GMT -5
I don’t *think* this violates any of the rules set out in the sticky thread.
Yesterday was the first day since early 2020 that I didn’t wear a face covering even once during a 24 hour period. And it got me thinking about just how much has changed in my personal life since the start of the global-bastard in early 2020. I thought it might be fun and maybe even a bit cathartic to share some of the (non-prohibited) memories from the height of the pandemic.
One that stands out to me was watching Bill and Ted 3. Somehow, it wasn’t region-locked, so I was able to buy and watch it legally as soon as it was released. I paid like $30 for it and, through some weird luck, it was the same day my partner brought home a bag of Spicy Doritos (not available at retail here). I watched Bill & Ted and ate my spicy Doritos (one of my favorite snack from when I was a kid) and drank Dr Pepper and felt for about two hours just perfectly happy for the first time in a very long while.
I’ve got a bunch more that I’d like to share, but does anybody else?
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Post by dirtyoldman on Jul 20, 2023 6:23:49 GMT -5
Sitting at home, playing video games and getting paid for doing nothing. It was great.
Didn't have to pay child care cause we were all at home and place was closed. Which was good because I always felt bad that since he was 5 months old he spent 4 days a week with strangers (thank God for granny and grandpa taking him on Mondays). He had Just turned two when the lockdown kicked off and we all did so much more as a family even if it was watching Blippi on YouTube all day.
True, loads of people died and all so swings and roundabouts.
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Ultimo Gallos
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
Dreams SUCK!Nightmares live FOREVER!
Posts: 15,320
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Post by Ultimo Gallos on Jul 20, 2023 6:45:15 GMT -5
Pretty much everything has been back to normal in MS since 2021.
Does feel odd now to go grocery shopping and not picking up food for 3 or 4 houses.
I do not miss the days of having to keep track of 4 credit cards and receipts. then making sure the right bags got dropped off on the right porches.
Oddly I watched more new weekly wrestling from 2020 till 2022 than I have since I was a kid.
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Post by BorneAgain on Jul 20, 2023 7:13:41 GMT -5
I knew had really become the proverbial old man when I wasn’t working for almost a year and yet was still getting early consistently.
Outdoor projects and lots of neighborhood walking are my big pandemic memories.
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Sephiroth
Wade Wilson
Surviving
Posts: 29,314
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Post by Sephiroth on Jul 20, 2023 7:57:51 GMT -5
I was working mail service in a corporate office that got closed down due to some cases on the upper floors. Myself and the other mail clerk were set to go on a rotating schedule, two weeks on, two weeks off, but he came down with a kidney infection so it was just me for six weeks. Outside of receiving incoming packages and sometimes being asked to go up to the office floors to reboot terminals, I pretty much sat reading or surfing the web all day. It was actually a tad spooky at times when I went up to reboot terminals, was just waiting for the tumbleweeds to blow by.
At one point my brother called to check in on me. I told him that it really wasn’t a huge change of life for me; wake up, go to work, come home, chill, go to bed. Rinse abs repeat. He sighed and said “It’s an introvert’s dream come true!”
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bob
Backup Wench
The "other" Bob. FOC COURSE!
started the Madness Wars, Proudly the #1 Nana Hater on FAN
Posts: 80,592
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Post by bob on Jul 20, 2023 8:15:49 GMT -5
after schools shut down I:
rewatched a lot of physical media I own
took completed some online courses - which I still haven't paid for the certification of completion for them
exercised a bit more because I had a lot more free time
and was basically bored
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Post by Hobby Drifter on Jul 20, 2023 8:19:19 GMT -5
I promise that not all of mine are movie related, a big one was Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0.
The first of the rebuild movies was released shortly after I moved here. It was the first movieI watched in a theater without subtitles. I saw 2.0 on opening weekend. Enjoyed it so much that I invited somebody out on a 1st date to see it a few weeks later. 3.0 suffered from quite a few delays, but the timing worked out that we were able to see it on our 1st wedding anniversary.
The final movie suffered from a *lot* of delays, including one that was COVID-related. But it was finally released during a downturn in cases. I saw the movie at the first showing on release day. The whole experience, getting my ticket from the kiosk, buying a bunch of merch, buying popcorn and a drink, and sitting in a theater *with PEOPLE* made me want to cry. The movie having an EXTREMELY uplifting ending was just that little bit more emotional because of the experience of the last few years (to say nothing of the 10+ years previous).
When the movie hit Amazon Prime, I watched it again and again. The song towards the end has become one of my favorite karaoke picks.
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Post by WoodStoner1 on Jul 20, 2023 8:39:39 GMT -5
I'm going to try to be positive here, believe it or not. I think the stuff like anxiety, feeling like quitting because nothing would ever get better, etc. is pretty much obvious to lots of people. Then there's the stuff that happened regarding the situation, and other different situations happening at the same time, that we should not talk about here as per our rules. Suffice to say it's made certain splinterings even worse to this day.
Well, we went from working at home to curbside pickups at the library, until we gradually then fully let the public back in. The latter made me feel more positive about helping the public, actually, as I missed seeing everyone. When I was at home, I was continuing one of my side projects of checking local newspaper back issues for obituaries and death notices.
I completed a Census form for the first time.
Obviously I couldn't go to the gym, so I was walking my dog more frequently. Honestly I've seen more results doing that. I let my gym membership expire as such, and walking (both with pet and alone) is now my most common form of exercise. Back then I usually did it at night. As the phone company was giving us free data then for obvious reasons, I used this time to watch videos while walking (I since got unlimited data). Dark Side of the Ring S2 was on then, so I was catching up with that.
I did an email thread with a longtime online friend about things we remembered and were obsessed with. Talked with others whenever I could...some I haven't in a long time (sadly, one such friend since passed away).
I hung out with a close friend I could trust, by her work place, which was in a seaside town just a half hour or so away from me. Since she was the only person there, I'd come to her work and help out a bit, look at some of their books. We'd order from the Irish pub nearby for carside delivery.
Watching-wise, like others I had to check out Tiger King ;-) I was also following The Stranger, also on Netflix, and I really need to finish that when I remember. There was a Masters of the Universe documentary I got to watch as well. Binged Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated. I also remember us watching a lot of YT compliations of MST3K Host Segments, season by season. I met Jackie Daytona, regular human bartender, said (a lackluster, honestly) goodbye to Modern Family, and Buzzr had just got the Jack Narz version of Concentration (and Match Game/Hollywood Squares reruns were still relatively new and a novelty).
I also, erm, came to appreciate plus size fashion vloggers and social media.
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clifford
King Koopa
Shingo Takagi stan
Posts: 10,692
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Post by clifford on Jul 20, 2023 8:56:51 GMT -5
the first few months were kinda...nice, I'm not going to lie. Not to gloss over anything bad or health-related that happened to anyone during these months, but there was a sense of...togteherness...at the start of it all- get through these few months (lol I know) and look after each other and we can all do this, and do it together. The weather was nice, my wife was at home on pay from her job and for the first time since we had our daughter we had unplanned time off together (she works weekends, I work weekdays)
We spent those first few months hanging out, enjoying each other's company- watching movies and tv shows we'd never seen together, doing BBQs at the weekend and sitting outside our back garden in the evenings, keeping in contact by phone with my parents and zoom calls/quizzes with my friends...it was actaully, nice.
Then come the autumn it all became apparent the mess we were really in and the rolling lockdowns came in and everyone started turning on each other and well...yeah. f*** that time.
But those first few months- man, it was actually nice.
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Zone Was Wrong
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
Currently living off the high that AEW brings every Wednesday and Friday
Posts: 17,391
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Post by Zone Was Wrong on Jul 20, 2023 9:27:09 GMT -5
Have to give the Pandemic one thing, if not being confined to my home for months, I wouldn't have been able to marathon Critical Role and be as big a fan as I am today. Kinda changed my life.
Will say, it did end up derailing my post-college career path. All my internships dried up and ended up finishing school without doing any internships. Curious what would have been if I could have been able to do my internship instead of spending months practically begging for a job after college.
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tirtefaa
Unicron
If you wanna know the truth, you gotta dig up Johnny Booth.
Posts: 3,265
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Post by tirtefaa on Jul 20, 2023 9:33:51 GMT -5
After offering everyone a chance to relocate to another location, which half the crew did, they told everyone we were permanently shutting down and I lost my great job of 11 years.
I have nothing but bad memories of the pandemic.
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Post by edgestar on Jul 20, 2023 9:45:22 GMT -5
A retail job I had, was still considered essential, so I still worked there for a few months. They pushed me out, and I'm at a MUCH better place, now. And, was still able to work.
I got married in 2020, and our reception hall could literally only have just us, our parents, and the dj, there, so my aunt and uncle opened up their backyard, for both in-town families. We celebrated agai, with everyone we originally invited, in 2021.
I've had covid, twice. The first time was definitely the worst. The second time, I knew what to expect.
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Post by KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!! on Jul 20, 2023 10:33:22 GMT -5
I’m an essential worker so while a lot of people stayed home I was regularly working 100+ hour weeks. Not that odd for me since I do that a lot anyway, but it was an increased work load as about half the people in my company quit and never came back.
I work in healthcare and was working directly with Covid positive people. At one point we got hazard pay for a month, but then that stopped though we were still working with Covid positive people long after. I’m not complaining as I know other healthcare companies didn’t offer any hazard pay.
Healthcare companies like mine definitely still have lingering effects from the pandemic. To be honest when half the people quit it was mostly the kind of folks you’d expect that from AKA the worse half.
But a misconception is that when the dead wood gets cleared out, finally competent people will replace them. Instead for a long time no one replaced them. Then when people finally did come in they weren’t properly trained because management worked from home and a lot of SOP trainings were shut down. When things started to normalize these newer people had been doing things without being properly trained for so long it’s next to impossible to get them up to the standards of pre-Covid workers.
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Post by Instant Classic on Jul 20, 2023 11:04:26 GMT -5
I wasn’t fortunate enough to get to work from home, so the biggest thing I miss is no traffic.
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Post by The Summer of Muskrat XVII on Jul 20, 2023 12:17:46 GMT -5
I remember very little, I was hammered for most of it. It’s probably where I really lost control of my drinking, there was nothing stopping me from drinking every hour I was awake.
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Gunhaver
Team Rocket
"Gunhaver! You actually have a gun!"
Posts: 870
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Post by Gunhaver on Jul 20, 2023 12:29:46 GMT -5
Since the pandemic started I've only had to take two covid tests, and it was maybe the most difficult medical experience of my life thus far. I simply couldn't sit still, and there was genuine concern that I was going to involuntarily start throwing punches at the poor nurse tasked with the job. I pride myself on being able to handle invasive medical procedures, surgery, needles, etc., but those damn tests, man.
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Futureraven: Beelzebruv
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
The Ultimate Arbiter of Right And Wrong
Spent half my life here, God help me
Posts: 15,444
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Post by Futureraven: Beelzebruv on Jul 20, 2023 12:29:46 GMT -5
I remember very little, I was hammered for most of it. It’s probably where I really lost control of my drinking, there was nothing stopping me from drinking every hour I was awake. Similar but more weekend binges, hit the hardest I ever have, luckily as part of that found a community that are like family now, what started as fun got too much for all of us and we supported each other through it.
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Post by The Summer of Muskrat XVII on Jul 20, 2023 12:33:51 GMT -5
I remember very little, I was hammered for most of it. It’s probably where I really lost control of my drinking, there was nothing stopping me from drinking every hour I was awake. Similar but more weekend binges, hit the hardest I ever have, luckily as part of that found a community that are like family now, what started as fun got too much for all of us and we supported each other through it. It took me a while to recognize how bad things had gotten, but thankfully quit drinking earlier this year. Living in a small town, being sober is not easy but it’s definitely worth it and I have a wonderful support group around me
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Futureraven: Beelzebruv
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
The Ultimate Arbiter of Right And Wrong
Spent half my life here, God help me
Posts: 15,444
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Post by Futureraven: Beelzebruv on Jul 20, 2023 12:38:41 GMT -5
Similar but more weekend binges, hit the hardest I ever have, luckily as part of that found a community that are like family now, what started as fun got too much for all of us and we supported each other through it. It took me a while to recognize how bad things had gotten, but thankfully quit drinking earlier this year. Living in a small town, being sober is not easy but it’s definitely worth it and I have a wonderful support group around me Glad you've got a group and are doing much better.
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Post by Confused Mark Wahlberg on Jul 20, 2023 12:53:53 GMT -5
Not sure what it says that my life hardly changed.
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