Photo by Jeremy Yap on Unsplash

Good morning, thank you for joining me. Won’t you come in from the cold and join me for a cup of steamy hot coffee with some whipped cream on top?

If we were having coffee, I would tell you it has been especially cold here in Utah, the temperatures in the last week have been so unusual for the end of February. When I say, “Good morning,” to my Echo Dot each morning, Alexa would tell me the current temperature to be 14 or 15-degrees Fahrenheit (about -10-degree-Celsius). I tell you, that’s cold for the end of February.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you it’s been a strange week. First of all, it was a 4-day work week because of President’s Day which meant I don’t get overtime this week (which is a good thing).

Secondly, this week is health wellness week at work. Thus, meetings, events, free lunches, and disruption to my work.

Last but not least, my aunts and uncle didn’t get President’s Day off and as much as they complained about their fear of being laid-off due to lack of work, they worked all through last weekend and this week. Since they work nights, the afternoons and nights almost felt like the times before they immigrated to the U.S and disrupted my life with their chaos. It was strange but nice not having them around.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you my mom is freaking out about the Coronavirus. Because of the virus, her germophobia had gone from annoying to irritating for me. She had stopped touching doorknobs at work, made me open the door instead, tried to push the crosswalk button with her foot, and threatened to have me quarantined after I got a package at work from Hong Kong.

Receiving packages from other countries happen to be part of my job description. I work in the accounting department of a dispatching software company and part of my job is to receive paper recertification exams in the mail, scan them into the computer so I can bill people for the exams later. Those exams come from world-wide and this week, I received 177 exams from Hong Kong.

When my mom heard about it, she told me I must put those exams through a 4-day quarantine in case those exams contain the virus. However, from all I read from Google, packages are safe from the virus. So I put on gloves and got to work on those exams the next day.

“I can’t wait around for 4 days.” I told my mom later. For all I know, those dispatchers’ certifications would be expired by then, then who will dispatch ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars?

Since then, my mom had been freaking out. She even went as far as wanting me to toss my clothes into the garbage and/or burn them. “I’m not doing such thing to my clothes.” I told her. Besides, from all the videos I’ve watched about the virus, it doesn’t look like it can be spread by simply touching a package.

If we were having coffee, I would thank you for joining me for another #weekendcoffeeshare. For now, I guess I just have to wait 14 days to see if I show signs of having the virus but I’m quite confident I don’t.