Hi y’all! It’s definitely been a crazy week for us! Dallas officially got a shelter-in-place order and we’ve been staying put with my Dad. It is challenging handling everything at once, but Johnny and I have a roll-with-the-punches attitude about everything so we take it all in stride. Even though the both of us have been work-from-home for a while, Johnny does tend to leave in the morning for meetings, etc. so it’s been nice to have him home all the time!

The three of us are drinking and making a ton of coffee. In an effort to save some money where we can and to be self-sufficient, we got a cold brew maker. It’s been a huge gamechanger for us! We want to start playing around with different beans and find our perfect blend!

NEW TV, WHO DIS?

When Johnny and I saw the floorplan for our new home back in October, we knew we wanted a Samsung Frame TV. Technology has come so far and what makes this TV special is its slim profile, which makes it look like a picture or art frame hanging on the wall when the TV is off. It comes with some free art choices, including classics such as Monet and Degas (my favorite) and contemporary images. You can also upload your own photos. We got an incredible deal on Facebook marketplace, but my best friend got hers on ebay for an awesome deal as well! If you’re looking into this TV, I highly recommend the ebay links below since you’ll save a ton of money.

We will not be mounting this beast until we get to the new house for a few reasons. One, I really want our deposit back in this apartment. Two, both Johnny and I really want to only mount this once. It’s definitely a statement piece and my Dad’s speech therapist, physical therapist and nurse all ask about this TV! I usually change the art every day since it’s still a novelty to me.

Being Efficient

It’s not always easy to be productive at home. After all, most of us are blending work and play with the quarantine. However, Johnny and I are quickly learning to designate different zones for different parts of the day or tasks. For example, if we both have to be on a call at the same time, we’ve chosen who will stay in the office and who will move to the living room. If one of us needs to take a break, we go to the kitchen or patio since the weather is nice so we aren’t distracting the other person.

Rather than getting frustrated with each other, let’s practice some compassion and remember we’re all in this together. If you hear kids screaming when you take calls, let the parents on the other end know it’s okay and you understand. We are all adapting and having a good attitude about it all will go a long way to being productive and surviving this.

A Few House Mistakes

In our new house build update earlier this week we dished all the details about our custom appliance garage and some changes we made to our kitchen to make it feel a little more custom and high-end. Since Dallas is under a shelter-in-place order, Johnny and I haven’t been able to check on the house. It’s crazy and tugs at my heart because this is the fun stage but also where a lot could go wrong. Tiling, flooring, finishes are going in and homeowners tend to notice little mistakes or issues builders won’t.

We have an awesome construction manager and he’s constantly sending us progress photos! I literally cannot stop swooning over our master shower where we went with subway tile in a herringbone pattern all the way up to the ceiling. Worth every penny. However, it’s thanks to these photos we caught some mistakes and raises some questions. I’ll dive into this deeper in another blog post, but we have extra molding/trimwork on our range hood, the exterior paint problems and a few other things. We are hoping when we leave to get my Dad’s medication on Monday we can also stop by the house and get all of this sorted out so they can move forward.

Johnny’s Saturday Thoughts

The Tipping Point

Monday was memorable. It’s the day we got our new Samsung Frame TV! We got a great deal. On the flip side, we had the TV getting delivered and tested in our apartment at the same time Hoang-Kim’s Dad had his first in-home physical therapy session. This was all originally scheduled one after another so we could make use of the space and not have too many people in at once.

It didn’t go as planned and we ended up with five people in our apartment (all hands washed, etc.). Imagine a full house of all of us at the edges of the room standing 6 ft (ish) apart for about 30 min-45 min. I could tell we’d be working our way up the hill this week after this experience.

After that it’s been a bit of a blur of coffee, work, cook, eat, work, cook, sleep or some version of that. I’m sure there have been a few times this week you’ve mixed up days. For me, I usually get lost somewhere between Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday since it’s the soft center of the week. Not much on either end to demarcate time.

We moved the old TV into our office and now that it’s taking up another ~60″ of space on the wall, our office has officially hit the tipping point. It’s a hodgepodge of items needing serious spring cleaning and organization. A messy office leads to a messy mind. We’re planning an apartment tour, so I’m glad to hit this tipping point where we’ll make this a priority.

Potential Tipping Point in this fight with COVID-19

I’ve been tracking COVID-19 related news and data constantly this week. I got introduced to the Domo COVID-19 tracker that’s better than the John Hopkin’s edition. I think we might see the tipping point here too if we stay the course and stay aggressive. We need to flatten the curve. We need to stay inside. We need to physically distance. One thing for sure is that we can’t do it forever. We all have lives to live. Work to do. Families to take care. As of today, there’s a slowing of the daily growth rate, which is the first leading indicator of truly flattening the curve. We finally saw a decline in new cases in the US. My hope is Saturday and Sunday hold the same news.

One tidbit that came out at the very tail end of the week was Abbott Labs announced they have a 5 minute test that’ll ramp to 50,000/day by next week. We are cumulatively testing more than South Korea and Italy and are on our way to testing as much on a per capita basis. This is fantastic news for everyone. Hopefully this allows us to get visibility on what is an invisible enemy.

The stimulus bill also got cleared late Wednesday evening in the Senate and was passed and signed into law on Friday. My hope is that it at least fills as much of the hole as possible that’s been dug by shelter-in-place orders that have completely halted business as we know it for many small business owners.

Moment of Delight

On a lighter note, something that absolutely tickled me was on Friday evening, Hoang-Kim read my mind. Twice. First, I was talking about what I was cooking for dinner. I was going to make a simple vegetable and tofu soup and one more dish on the side. She said I was going to make fries in the air fryer. Considering that dish is not complementary at all, but a household favorite, I was floored because 30 seconds before I was just thinking about it.

Second, we were watching TV after dinner and I was thinking about getting an ice cream bar. 10 seconds later Hoang-Kim said, “Would you like for me to grab you an ice cream bar?” For those of you in the know, usually, I’m the one grabbing things during TV time, so I was floored that she offered and said it exactly at the moment I was thinking it. I’m delighted to have a partner who apparently can read my mind.