COVID and how you're doing!

Off-Topic
#21

We’re not nearly as locked down here in Vancouver, BC compared to other parts of Canada, let alone the world and they’re going to be reopening bars and restaurants later this month with restrictions in place. However I’ve continued working two jobs this entire time. My day job is at a machine shop that specializes in plexi glass so we’ve been up to our eyeballs making protective shields for grocery stores, pharmacies and face masks for health care works. On top of that I have about 25 private piano/guitar students who are all doing remote lessons via Zoom with me.

The band has basically come to a grinding halt however. I’ve been using my spare time to practice my mixing skills.

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#22

I have a few friends who are counselors/therapists, and their work hours have doubled or even tripled. They mainly take calls, and have even had to deal with several emergency calls in the middle of the night. Strange times though, I feel that people are doing alright and holding it together fairly well, but so many of my friends are on reduced hours and unemployment. There’s a lot of insecurity in the future.

As for work, I’m in the family plumbing business. We do a lot of renovations and remodels. It’s not my ideal line of work, but, I didn’t finish Uni and worked odd jobs for close to a decade, and this was the best paying job available. I made my bed there haha. With the whole COVID thing, most of our jobs have been cancelled, and we haven’t received any calls lately for future work. Currently I am fun-employed for the first time in my life at 33. It’s weird getting a paycheck for not working, it feels empty.

And as someone who is susceptible to negative rumination I’ve done what I could do distract myself and be productive. I’m reteaching myself web development and software programming. While my practice schedule is way off, I’ve found time to learn a few songs and riffs and challenge myself to music I felt intimidated by. I’ve found a sense of peculiar possibility in these times. I even learned to bake. And, of course, I had to learn to make pizza. I’m the pizza-everyday guy. I’m not confident enough to show y’alls my playing, but I am confident enough to show y’alls my pizza!

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#23

I hope you’re all doing well.

I live in Northern Ireland and I work for the NHS in an administrative role.

The COVID pandemic has created a lot of extra work for myself. I am allowed to work from home and I remember thinking, many years back, how much I would love to work from home. Well, in reality, it hasn’t been nice at all!! I struggle to keep on top of the extra work that the pandemic has created.

I supppose the upside that I should be thankful for is that I am still in employment and have job security.

I haven’t had a lot of time for guitar as work really eats up any spare time that I did have. I hope and pray things will settle down in a few months and we can all return to some form of normality.

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#24

Greetings from Denmark from a fellow guitar nerd.
I hope you are staying safe in these crazy times. Here in Denmark, the government was relatively quick to take action, so things have been kept relatively under control compared to many other places.
However, my office mate at work, caught the virus without knowing it, and we had a 5-hour meeting where I sat right next to him just two days before all of Denmark was shut down. At the time the shutdown was announced, I thought that the shut-down of more or less the whole country was over-reacting, but when my office mate called and told me that he (and his son) had tested positive, I isolated myself in one end of the house. Already the same evening i started getting a slight fever, so I assumed that I probably had caught it. At that time, only realy sick persons were tested here (that strategy has since then changed), so I was just told to isolate myself, which I had already done. Luckily the symptoms did not get too bad for me. Headache, a bit of fever, sore muscles in the whole body and a bit of coughing. And then after some days this strange side effect: I lost my sense of smell, and everything smelled a bit smokey to me. I thought it was kind of weird, but it made sense when I later found out that a lot of cases like that were reported from Italy. So I was pretty sure I had the Covid thing. After five days of isolation, the other three people in my house (my wife, my daughter and her boyfriend) also started having symptoms, so I was let out or “my room”, which I was getting quite fed up with :slight_smile: . So I had infected all the others; probably before my isolation :frowning: . As expected/hoped, the younger ones got over it REALLY fast (actually my daughter’s boyfriend had so slight symptoms that they wouldn´t have been noticeable if we didnt pay extra attention. This virus has a REALLY clever strategy for spreading itself!). My wife, on the other hand struggled with the virus for close to two months. She has tested negative now. Her symptoms were not too bad either, but after one month the headache was getting a bit to her. She lost her sense of taste pretty radically, but that is also almost back again now.
One thing that I didnt think of at the start of the pandemic was the other implications that this has. Unfortunately, my father got really sick (his liver is barely working), and was hospitalized. Due to the covid, we were not allowed to visit him. So when he got too weak to be able to speak over the phone, we were completely isolated from him. This is one of the worst experiences of my life: having a loved one being all alone in the hospital, and not being able to comfort or just be near him in any way. A very unexpected and nasty “bonus” of the pandemic. In the end my dad was what the doctors consider critical, so we were allowed in there to possibly say our goodbyes. He was so sick that we couldn’t get through to him, but even though it was horrible to see him like this it was still a thousand times better than to be isolated from him. In the night when I was home and going to bed, I had the feeling of being at the wrong place, so in stead of going to sleep, I went to the hospital and sat there in the dark, holding his hand. For some reason it seemed like the right thing to sing him a lullaby, so I did that. After a while it felt a bit better, so I got up and put on my jacket. All of a sudden he opened his eyes and looked at me, and I told him I was just there to wish him a good night. Then he just replied our version of nightynight! It turns out the first thing he remembers is me singing that lullaby for him. This was a magic moment to me. And I’m sure for him too. Despite being from a musical family, I have never sung for him even though we have made a lot of music together in the past. It is very poetic that he would wake up hearing me sing for him for the first time.
After this, he got a bit better, but the recovery seems to have stopped now. However; he is considered “stable” now, so now only my mother is allowed to visit him (due to the damned pandemic!). However; having my mum being able to visit him is clearly better than having noone there by his side. So now we’re all just hoping for the best.
This post got very long-winded. I guess I had a lot on my mind regarding the covid. Sorry for that.

I just hope you are all well out there in the world.
We will get over it even though now kind-of sucks.

-Mac

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#25

Nobody I know has been directly affected in this way, but it’s the thing about the pandemic I think about the most: people in hospital (whether for COVID-19 or other reasons), who aren’t allowed to have visitors. I understand why it’s necessary, but I especially think of older adults with cognitive issues who may not be able to fully comprehend why it has to be this way. In Canada, I think at least early on they made a lot of exceptions for parents to visit kids under a certain age, but I don’t know whether that has remained the case.

The other thing I reflect on is how kids feel the passage of time differently than adults do. For adults, waiting can suck, but we are equipped to cope with it. For kids, especially say 6 and under, a week can feel like forever. Especially when they can’t visit their friends, or go to the playground, or play sports. I imagine a lot of kids are passing the time playing videogames and watching internet videos. And internet video chat is a big step up from the old landline phone.

More recently I was thinking about single people who live alone. Being in a bubble of just one person has got to be emotionally draining, even for a well-adjusted adult. Or how challenging things are for people who were in the early stages of romantic relationships but weren’t living together yet. I suspect a lot of those folks, especially in their early 20s, are simply refusing to isolate, which is of course a problem for everyone.

Nobody I’m close to has experienced anything approaching COVID-19 symptoms, but I worry about my parents (both still around, but on the wrong side of 70). Especially my mom, as she has pretty bad asthma even under normal circumstances. She’s basically gone into “never leave the house” mode while this continues to unfold. I don’t live in the same city as them, but they have other good supports, which makes it a bit less worrying. But under normal circumstances, I’d probably fly out to visit them a couple times a year, and of course that’s out of the question for the foreseeable future.

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#26

Hey everyone.
I’m living and working from home in North NJ.
I have 2 boys. The oldest is a private chef in Boston, and the youngest is a high school senior. My wife works from home too. Because we are opposite personalities our working hours have been a comedy show. Since this crisis I have become a fan of working from home.
I’ve been playing guitar for awhile, and the past year I have really been studying Malmsteen and learning to play like that.
I first heard of CtC a few years ago, but learning to play like Yngwie wasn’t a priority.
It is now, I’m focused on playing the songs that I love and grew up with.
Be safe, see ya on the boards.
Troy

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#27

I am studying at the university and I have to support my son and my wife.
This scholarship is everything to me. Thank you, since I don’t have a stable job and my country has limited the times you can leave your house.

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#28

I live in New Mexico and I work in Healthcare. We’ve been impacted in so many ways. Restaurants closing, people losing their mind at the grocery store, and our local economy taking a hit. Our numbers have been dropping but unfortunately, people are still passing away.

One challenge I have is that there’s a number of people out there “following this woke” movement. Gosh I hate that word. The fact that people are passing away should be a big sign of the severity of this situation. I worry a lot about my parents since they’re getting older.

I’m lucky that I have a job but the workload has been overwhelming at times. I try my best to get up about 1-2 hrs before work to practice guitar because frankly, I feel exhausted after work. I end up noodling and getting nowhere.

I’m just renting away at this point. Just my humble 2 cents

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#29

Hi all,
Living near Paris, France, I work as a web developer at an online education company, we’re about 180 people there, and we had 25 COVID cases, 5 severe, but all are now ok. Company went full remote 10 weeks ago, and luckily for us business is fine, as there has been a high demand for online education for adults. Working remotely spares me 2 hours of public transport everyday, which translates to finally having time to practice guitar, and go back to the learning content at CtC which is a good thing. As far as the situation here, the lockdown has been lifted 2 days ago, many people have started gathering outside again and it will probably have consequences. A second lockdown is clearly possible. There still are a lot of restrictions here (can’t move more than 100km away from home, must wear mask, parks are closed, restaurants are closed, all entertainment industry and events are stopped … ), but obviously a lot of companies are continuing their remote work policy, as public transports and roads are not saturated as usal.

Stay safe @Troy & all of you, let’s hope some good comes out of all this in the end.

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#30

Shit, Tom, I’m so sorry to hear about your grandmother. :frowning_face:

That is a great-looking pizza, man! How are you baking that, and at what temp? I’ve been using this time to work on my own pizza recipe, and while an oven that goes up to 550 and a heavy baking steel help a bit, I’d love to have a proper wood fired pizza oven or something that could get up to even 750 or so, to really get that right oven spring for a Neapolitian style pizza. Here’s my last batch, courtesy of IG:

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#31

Wow, that is a handsome pizza yourself good sir. Following you on IG now! Hope you don’t mind, haha.

And, I broil the thing with a 45 minute pre-heat, though I think 30 minutes is plenty with a broiler. I have a steel, it’s on the second highest position. You can get a hotter temp if you pry the oven door open a bit and trick the broil element into continuously operating, they shut off at around 550 for most ovens. I’m also looking into an oven, and am torn between building one or just getting an Ooni Koda.

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#32

Go nuts! Though I’ll warn you, it’s like 90% pictures of my bike leaning against things, 9% pictures of bread, pizza, or pasta, and 1% guitar, haha.

Not bad - I should try that. My broiler is, weirdly, electric (the range is gas) so I’m not sure if it’d work the same way, but I’ve been preheating the last few minutes under the broiler, baking at 550 for a couple minutes with the pizza untopped (just sauce) until the crust has just started to turn gold, and then pulling it, quickly topping, and finishing under the broiler, the process Ken Forkish recommends in his “The Elements of Pizza,” which is awesome. Just eyeballing yours, though, it looks like you’ve got a process that works - great rise and oven spring on the crust, the golden color and crumb both scream some sort of extended fermentation method, the cheese is melty and not blackened… Whatever you’re doing is definitely working. :+1:

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#33

So I cheated a bit. The golden color is mainly from semolina flour. 20% of the dough is semolina and the rest is plain AP. It’s just a stretch&fold over 2 hours and then a bulk for another 2, shape then proof overnight. Nothing too fancy.

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#34

Maybe we should start our own pizza thread here, haha, but honestly, the single biggest improvement in my pizza crust I have made yet was an overnight fermentation. Or at least a very long one - I’ve tried a same-day 10-12 hour recipe that gets you to about the same point, but there is a huge and very visible difference in the color a dough will take as it bakes when you’ve done a lengthy fermentation than when you just give it a few hours. If you’re ever bored and want to make an underwhelming pizza, at the “shape” step in your recipe, take one of your dough balls and go straight to baking then, while hold the other two overnight (at least, with a recipe using refrigeration to delay the fermentation - it’d be trickier to do an a/b with a room temp fermentation that just uses a tiny amount of yeast). The color is totally different - a very even creme going to medium, rather than the more mottled gold-to-deep-brown you’re seeing here and yes I realize I sound like a crazy person, haha. The crumb is very different too - lot more open and spacious, rather than the tight dry crumb you get with a short fermentation.

Anyway, we’re going way off topic, but that pizza looks great!

#35

Hey all. Ari in Brooklyn NY. My band business is currently my largest source of income, but myself and my wife teach also so thats still going. On the COVID side my whole family (wife and kids) have been quarantined and I was the only one that got it for 2 weeks with symptoms but nothing too bad just headaches and mild fever. All of my boys have anitbodies and my wife and daughters don’t (as of yet gonna get them tested again). Go figure. Also have a mother with a collapsed lung who’s at home and needs help but we can’t really go in and help her so its been rough with that.
On the music end its been insane-wedding cancellations, cant keep the band working, and negotiating deposits/postponements with no one really knowing what the future will hold as far as parties and group gatherings is insane. On the flip side, got a little money from PPP, enjoying my time with family, and my alternate picking is way up at least to me. This is a great group of guys with a really healthy common interest here, lead by Troy! Good luck to all of you and stay safe. And thank you to all medical responders!

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#36

I’m from the U.S and I had just landed in Heathrow airport in London, a week after this madness started. Here in England is impossible to make a living at the moment and things are rough, nothing is open and it’ll be like that till God knows when.
Normally in the music profession one must always hassle, you never know where the next paycheck is coming from. I wonder how this is going to affect our business and what’s going to be the new normal for musicians, I’ve worked in the cruise industry as a last resource cause gigs in land are getting harder and harder to find but that industry was the first casualty of this pandemic.
Any of you make a living playing? Any thoughts?
I’ve taken this time to refresh my knowledge studying harmony and thanks to you guys polishing my technique, when you play covers it’s always about learning songs that not always or perhaps never challenge one’s abilities on the instrument and so I took this quarantine as a opportunity to study and rediscover myself as a guitarist.
Thank you mates at cracking the code for the good energy and enthusiasm.
All the blessings
Cheers

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#37

Hey man, sorry to hear you’re struggling. I think for the near future the only stable work for players is in remote recording sessions, meaning you record yourself for money. I worked on a film score production that was supposed to be recorded in early April in London, and of course covid-19 shut that down. We also couldn’t get any players to come to our studio, so we let some good players we knew record themselves remotely. A cellist from London, viola from Berlin and violin from L.A. This turned out rather great. and although we finally managed to get an orchestra session recorded in Iceland under ridiculous circumstances, most of the remote solo stuff is still in there. Its a way to make good money from your home even under quarantine, but of course it takes a while to build a clientel, and you have to buy some gear of course. I hope things get better for you soon!

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#38

That’s brilliant mate! Thanks so much indeed.
I’ll look into it, even if it takes time to build a clientele it is worth doing it.
Cheers…

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#39

A lot of musicians used to offer that kind of service on fiverr, maybe it is still worth checking out. At least davie504 is still prowling it😁

#40

I was thinking about this thread on my journey to work this morning and am wondering @Troy, @Brendan, @tommo has the COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to any interview your team had in the pipeline?

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