21 March 2020 Saturday

[KathyB]

Lots of snow is melting today. I got Chinese food for the first time in ten days, and it's delicious. I left something like a 35% tip because I felt bad for them, although their business is based mostly on takeout anyway, so I don't think their business model is changing much. But I felt like supporting them. Normally I tip $1 or so on a $7.50 takeout order because I'm the one who's doing all the work--they're basically just taking my order and handing me a bag, and they're not like waiters, making less than minimum wage. I admit that I don't really know the rules of tipping for takeout, and I suspect they vary depending on the specific establishment.

Something positive for today: I got my last tax form in the mail! Hallelujah!

[scenicdesign71]

Tonight I was to have seen Oratorio For Living Things, an Off Broadway something-or-other that looked interesting, with a new friend about whom I'm not sayin' nothin'.  And tomorrow I was going to see Love Life at Encores!.

Next Friday would've been Caroline at Studio 54, possibly with the same new friend.
(What??  He's just a friend, maybe.  Probably.  ...maybe.    )

This past Tuesday would've been Company.  With my mom.  Who also had tickets for Caroline, again, on April 14.  And on the 4th I would have seen Whisper House, with someone -- I hadn't even figured out who yet.

Assassins has been postponed entirely, so my tickets for April 29 are useless.

And somewhere in there were a couple of NTLive cinemacasts that have likewise been suspended.

<sigh>


Attempts to use some of this new free time to do some more work on my website have been faltering.  But before much longer I will have to face, and attack, the horror that is my living space.  Because I will NOT go through this craziness only to emerge from it having to admit that even a global pandemic wasn't enough to make me clean my f***ing apartment.

The possible good news is, I might end up getting paid for the first two weeks of the shutdown, depending on how the higher-ups at my job decide to interpret a certain obscure question of timing regarding the position I had been filling recently.  I can't really say more, but the difference between getting paid for two more weeks at union minimum versus just getting unemployment benefits for those two weeks is significant.  For the foreseeable future I can probably squeak by on unemployment, and I have saved up some over the past however-many-months I've been working, which will definitely help.  But those two additional checks, should the decision come down in my favor, would give me a little more peace of mind.

Taxes.  That's the other thing I've been meaning to do with all this free time.  And the expected refund gives me some motivation.