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Nov. 20th, 2020 09:46 amSpoke with my folks on the phone yesterday. Told them I was sending people masks instead of Christmas or other holiday cards this year. This was pleasing to them. The topic of Thanksgiving was never in doubt; Mom asked right off the bat how I felt about a Zoom call like back at Easter so we could all have at least a bit of Thanksgiving dinner time together. I was good with that, although I fumbled a bit by asking what time (holiday dinners at my parents' house tend to be at 3 PM, which for me is usually closer to lunchtime; I tend to eat dinner very late at night).
Then she asked if I had considered anything about Christmas. "Well," I said, "I've been trying to figure out the best way to find out what $SISTER's kids want, so I can start ordering now, because-"
I didn't get as far as talking about shipping times. Mom was startled that I had assumed I would be spending Christmas alone and said that she had raised the possibility with Dad of me renting a car and taking my computer with me and coming down to New Jersey, because I work remotely anyway and I could quarantine for two weeks before going back.
....
.......
uh.
"I'll be okay here. I have Yvette, and we can do a zoom call. I don't want to take that chance."
Some more discussion. I mentioned the Canada graph and the fact that I am a 9/11 responder and every time I think about this kind of thing I keep remembering my lung function test telling me that I had the lung output of a 53 year old when I was, you know, 45 at the time. Mom admitted it was understandable, and that yeah, $NEPHEW and at least one $NIECE have asthma, it was best, but she just didn't want me to be all by myself.
Dad was very much of the 'do what you have to in order to be safe' school of thought.
We wound up agreeing to work out some kind of a Zoom arrangement. I said I'd probably be taking to the company of online friends of the Pagan and Jewish persuasion. (Didn't realize until after the fact that Mom probably didn't hear the capital P and as someone who grew up in pre-Vatican II Catholicism may have thought that I was being weirdly disparaging; I'll explain it if it comes up.) Things currently stand at pretty much okay.
What I did not say to either of them: To rent a car I would have to go to Logan. Zipcars aren't available for extended rental like that. I would have to navigate an airport busy enough to be Class B airspace in order to get to the rental counter. I would have to get to the airport in order to start the navigation process, and that would require mass transit, because the alternative is a taxi ride- a small enclosed space with one other person- or bicycling. I would then have to make a six hour car trip without ever coming in contact with another human being, which could theoretically be done but which does rule out getting gas while in the state of New Jersey, due to NJ's laws not permitting self service gasoline stations. I would have two options upon arriving in New Jersey anyway: one, making it a one-way rental and acquiring a different car to go back, and two, holding onto the rental car for the entire two weeks.
One-way rentals have painfully high fees. $93.11 'drop fee' according to the Enterprise page I'm looking at now; it would probably be marginally less expensive, even including gasoline prices and allowing for the difference in gas mileage, to rent a Penske moving truck for a one-way trip. I would have to arrange two rentals for about a day each, with drop fees each time. As for holding onto the car for two weeks... well. Enterprise Rent-a-car is $116.41 per week with taxes and fees of $175.71 for that time period for a basic Hyundai. That is for people who have their own driver liability insurance. I only have insurance via Zipcar; it does not apply to a rental from any other company. I would have to add the insurance, which I believe is $15/day for liability insurance and $6/day for personal accident insurance (I could be wrong, I don't speak Terms and Conditions very well); that's an additional $21/day for 14 days for a total of $294 if I held onto the car. So that's $421.07 for the baseline rental plus $294 for the insurance for a car that would be sitting on my parents' driveway for two weeks while I was quarantining.
Add in the fact that 'quarantine' does not mean 'stay in the house and hang out with everybody there, just don't go outside', it means 'stay in the house and interact with other humans as little as possible, including using a completely separate bathroom from everyone else', and just...
Not worth it. Not worth it even a little bit.
I'm sticking with Zoom.
Then she asked if I had considered anything about Christmas. "Well," I said, "I've been trying to figure out the best way to find out what $SISTER's kids want, so I can start ordering now, because-"
I didn't get as far as talking about shipping times. Mom was startled that I had assumed I would be spending Christmas alone and said that she had raised the possibility with Dad of me renting a car and taking my computer with me and coming down to New Jersey, because I work remotely anyway and I could quarantine for two weeks before going back.
....
.......
uh.
"I'll be okay here. I have Yvette, and we can do a zoom call. I don't want to take that chance."
Some more discussion. I mentioned the Canada graph and the fact that I am a 9/11 responder and every time I think about this kind of thing I keep remembering my lung function test telling me that I had the lung output of a 53 year old when I was, you know, 45 at the time. Mom admitted it was understandable, and that yeah, $NEPHEW and at least one $NIECE have asthma, it was best, but she just didn't want me to be all by myself.
Dad was very much of the 'do what you have to in order to be safe' school of thought.
We wound up agreeing to work out some kind of a Zoom arrangement. I said I'd probably be taking to the company of online friends of the Pagan and Jewish persuasion. (Didn't realize until after the fact that Mom probably didn't hear the capital P and as someone who grew up in pre-Vatican II Catholicism may have thought that I was being weirdly disparaging; I'll explain it if it comes up.) Things currently stand at pretty much okay.
What I did not say to either of them: To rent a car I would have to go to Logan. Zipcars aren't available for extended rental like that. I would have to navigate an airport busy enough to be Class B airspace in order to get to the rental counter. I would have to get to the airport in order to start the navigation process, and that would require mass transit, because the alternative is a taxi ride- a small enclosed space with one other person- or bicycling. I would then have to make a six hour car trip without ever coming in contact with another human being, which could theoretically be done but which does rule out getting gas while in the state of New Jersey, due to NJ's laws not permitting self service gasoline stations. I would have two options upon arriving in New Jersey anyway: one, making it a one-way rental and acquiring a different car to go back, and two, holding onto the rental car for the entire two weeks.
One-way rentals have painfully high fees. $93.11 'drop fee' according to the Enterprise page I'm looking at now; it would probably be marginally less expensive, even including gasoline prices and allowing for the difference in gas mileage, to rent a Penske moving truck for a one-way trip. I would have to arrange two rentals for about a day each, with drop fees each time. As for holding onto the car for two weeks... well. Enterprise Rent-a-car is $116.41 per week with taxes and fees of $175.71 for that time period for a basic Hyundai. That is for people who have their own driver liability insurance. I only have insurance via Zipcar; it does not apply to a rental from any other company. I would have to add the insurance, which I believe is $15/day for liability insurance and $6/day for personal accident insurance (I could be wrong, I don't speak Terms and Conditions very well); that's an additional $21/day for 14 days for a total of $294 if I held onto the car. So that's $421.07 for the baseline rental plus $294 for the insurance for a car that would be sitting on my parents' driveway for two weeks while I was quarantining.
Add in the fact that 'quarantine' does not mean 'stay in the house and hang out with everybody there, just don't go outside', it means 'stay in the house and interact with other humans as little as possible, including using a completely separate bathroom from everyone else', and just...
Not worth it. Not worth it even a little bit.
I'm sticking with Zoom.
