Twelve Feet, Six Continents, One Year

Exactly one week ago, not accounting for time zones, I was at this very keyboard, in a different kitchen, in a different country, facing a very different set of challenges. Then, it was the deep insanity of booking flights when airports were closing and airlines were in the process of cutting 90% of their routes with nearly no notice. Then, the daily temperature range was 80-95 degrees (F). Then, I was intimidated by the intensity of the government's approach to social distancing as well as the degree of popular compliance. Now, it's a bizarre game of figuring out which online delivery services will bring me food from which restaurants and whether or not my children will eat it. (Okay, that last bit is a near constant, regardless of continent.) Now, the temperature range is 40-55 degrees (F). Now, I'm terrified by the modesty of the government's approach and the frightening lack of concern shown in my community. But the worst thing that is going on is jet lag. This ...

Look, I'm angry and sad and grieving and also angry but luckily there's still humor in the world. Elise has been harvesting Coronavirus memes over the last few weeks, sometimes as the only thing keeping her afloat. Possibly the only thing keeping our kids alive, too. Anyway, I agreed to turn her favorites into a blog post so here it is! I want to remind my future self that this was funny because between when we arrived in Malaysia and when the crackdown came, we were hitting the gym hard. The day before we evacuated I was planning to "borrow" some of the free weights from the gym. I'd have taken the treadmill too but they had cameras everywhere. I love venn diagram humor really any time I can get it. Look for the one on nerd/geek/dork to see why. I hate cats but I love cat humor. I subscribed to so many things during the first week of Coronacation. Some decided the bug should be called Kendra and that punctuation would make this less f...

March 24th arrived twice for us, first in Hong Kong, while we waited to board our 1am departure for San Francisco and then again in San Francisco, because we landed 3 hours before we departed, or 10pm on March 23rd. After spending the night at an airport hotel, we flew from SFO to PDX at 11:35am on 3/24. The only notable part of this flight was that we upgraded to First Class because it was approximately the same price as flying coach and paying for all the luggage we needed to check. The main perk was expedited everything: check-in, baggage handling, security, but not boarding. Not boarding because there were fewer than 50 people on our flight. The gate attendant called it, "Alaska Airlines Private Charter Number 427." He offered to board the flight according to quality of smile. Half the passengers were airline personnel being moved around. One pilot noted that he wasn't flying his usual route to Hawaii because they had cut back to a single wide-body, once a week, w...

3/23: 10am in Malaysia, 3/22: 7pm in Portland We pulled away a few minutes before 10 and drove to a gas station. Under the RMO, the pumps were operating but the store was closed. Fortunately, I was able to buy a toll tag (a debit card, really) and load it with the amount we were told we’d need for the drive (equivalent to about $15 plus some extra to spare). We got on the highway and drove to a rest area just past the first toll plaza. We waited there for our companions to catch up, coordinating by facebook messenger as a modern day CB radio! For the next three hours or so, we followed them on a nearly-empty super highway with a painfully slow 110kph speed limit. Every five minutes or so a Mercendes saloon would come roaring by going at least 150kph. I mused that it was undercover police since it seemed to be a parade of the same make and model, always tinted windows, etc. KL Rush Hour, COVID-style An interesting feature of the Malaysian freeway: motorbike rain shelters. Ev...