BiSB: So... how was everyone's March?

Seth: Well the Michigan internet's doing well at College Football Risk again, so there's that. Pay no attention to Ohio State doubling up on us in that too.

Brian: Our backyard has a lot of loose pavers and such that I haven't thought about since we moved in seven years ago. I'm digging them all up, putting some more dirt under them, and then re-seating them. I feel like the old guy in a movie who has crucial information but doesn't want to be disturbed by the protagonists.

At some point I'm going to be doing this in the front yard when a delivery guy drops something off and I'm going to spontaneously moan "I never wanted to think about The Incident again. I TOLD THEM THAT WHY ARE YOU HERE."

BiSB: Weirdly, I watched two hours of the American Loose Paver Moving League National Finals on ESPN2 this week. It's actually pretty competitive.

Brian: I've pointed at the ones I've already done and yelled DOESN'T THAT LOOK SO MUCH BETTER to my wife.

Ace: I considered adopting a cat. The only holdup is it’d mean my brother’s dog probably couldn’t visit again, which is a dealbreaker.

Brian: Does your brother's dog eat cats or fear them?

Seth: You believe yourself safe from the headaches of lawn ownership with your fancy yard of stones and weeds, but you've only traded one application with an extensive troubleshooting background for one with very little. Yesterday I patched the parts of the lawn that various workers ran over this winter with soil and seed and a nice layer of peat moss so I can look out my office window and literally watch grass grow.

Ace: To be honest, it could go either way with her.

BiSB: I feel like this is where Seth tries to jump in with the prompt to keep us on task.

Brian: There is no task!

BiSB: But we ignore him, because NEW SOCIETY NO RULES.

Seth: Um: jump?

[After THE JUMP: Sensible advice from bearded people in comfortable pants]

LEAST SENSIBLE THING TO HOARD

Ace: I’ve been very conservative but I did get two 12-packs of Squirt, the greatest pop in existence.

Brian: I appreciate the grapefruit soda genre but am more of a Fresca person. We could be talking about the second weekend of the tournament.

Seth: Yard waste pickup bags. I have many, and with Home Depot closed I am the only person on my block with a nice row of end-of-March leaf bags. Except they canceled the yard waste pickup so instead I have a paperbag fence.

Brian: They canceled waste pickup? Don't you live in a tony suburb? That's like some mad max shit.

Seth: Not the garbage, just the leaves.

BiSB: They canceled recycling here. Which is... interesting?

Ace: What is Tennessee doing, exactly? (A question for the ages, I know)

Avoiding Rutgers

Brian: I thought I read somewhere that recycling had become untenable because China stopped buying all our old pizza boxes?

Ace: Did they hire Brady Hoke to coordinate their COVID-19 defense?

Brian: Oregon is next to Washington, makes you think. I should probably answer the prompt: I did not need to hoard anything because I am the kind of person who still has five bottles of Grey Poupon months after swearing I'd never buy mustard again.

BiSB: Watching everything around you spread while you hunker down? Does seem familiar.

Ace: Have you hoarded songs about this situation?

Brian: I have noticed that They Might Be Giant's "Fingertips" has a wide array of COVID-appropriate vignettes.

Ace: Perhaps while wearing a costume one might wear in an opera.

Seth: Some guy on the next street must have been hoarding all the fertilizer. He's probably feeling pretty smug right now. Ye gods that lawn is lush.

Ace: Oh, I have kinda hoarded one thing: Playstation chose an evil time to have a huge sale in their online store. And I simultaneously went retro and busted out the PS3 with NCAA 14 and College Hoops 08. So I have an upstairs gaming situation and a downstairs gaming situation.

Seth: Oh god he and his wife are going out running. I hate him so much.

BiSB: The most interesting thing to come out of this whole thing: that article about Americans changing their “pants vs. shirts” buying patterns.

Brian: Ah yes, the Steam conundrum. They updated it to stop showing you that you bought Dead Space in 2011 and are still never ever gonna play it.

Seth: If lawn care is to be our national sport this summer we're going to have to set some ground rules. Like over a certain latitude crab grass counts against you, and you get extra points for fending off a particularly dandelion'd neighbor.

Brian: I need a link to this article Bryan.

Ace: The world is adopting blogger style, we were ahead of the game.

BiSB: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/03/28/walmart-coronavirus-…

 

ADVICE FOR WORKING AT HOME FROM PEOPLE BORN TO IT LIKE FRIGGIN BANE

Ace: First of all, to hell with anyone who says you need to wear real pants. Be comfortable.

Seth: real

Ace: In that case, mind your curtain situation.

Seth: They're all too enraptured by my lawn.

Brian: This is an entirely different question for people with and without children. Without children this is a question about finding your best self without societal pressures that keep everyone in a relatively narrow box. Lifting the restrictions of an office environment can be incredibly liberating; if that liberation means "I'm gonna binge something on Netflix while working" you might find freedom turning into a kind of undisciplined hell.

With children this is a question about how long you can keep them in another room before someone starts making a noise you have to deal with. 10 minutes and counting right now.

BiSB: Yep, that “hear a thump, pause for reaction” dynamic is strong. The best advice I’ve gotten thus far was “eat constantly, regardless of time of day.”

Brian: uh

BiSB: Yes, I've gained a few pounds. But I assume it's mostly beard.

Adam: One of my kids just threw a very large, very heavy Buzz Lightyear figure at me. I have no advice. The inmates run the asylum now.

Brian: They throw books at me!

Seth: It took a disaster but the kids now have tablets. They watch YouTubes of people playing with Elsa toys. But I have great unused lesson plans if anyone wants them. Right now they're doing the —>Go/<—Blue! callback thing at me except the words are CAN/WE PLAY/WITH/THE/WATER?

Brian: Did you know books are very pointy! But they have learned that when mommy and daddy are working that the best way to guilt them into doing something with them is to hurl books at us.

Ace: My place is so quiet it occasionally startles me when the heat turns on.  I’m acutely aware of all activity in the parking lot.

Brian: So you're innocently (go to hell ace) typing about 2022 hockey prospects and all of a sudden you get some schlocky book about love to your temple.

BiSB: I think it's fair to say that the children'd households and the non-children'd households are dealing with the opposite ends of the spectrum.

Ace: Indeed.

For those whose free time is not spent wrangling little ones: make sure you build in breaks. I find it’s really easy when working from home alone to work at a slower pace while forcing yourself to stay on task, and at least for me that just ends up being a crappy day of staring unproductively at a laptop screen until it’s time to go to bed.

Every 30 minutes or an hour, at least stand up and walk around your house or something. Do something mindless. Eat something. You probably forgot to eat something.

BiSB: (I did not forget to eat something)

Brian: This is why I'm thinking about breaking out the level when I put dirt under blocks in my backyard.

Ace: As someone who absolutely hates doing large-scale cleanups, tidying my house in bits and pieces has been a good way to break up days.

BiSB: You need to tamp that dirt down hard. Add some gravel if you can.

Seth: I cannot get the kids to stop eating. The wife made a spot in the garage for grocery items to sit until they're properly sorry for being out in the world that wants to kill us, so once the store rooms and the closets were finally locked beyond their picking skills they found the garage stock. That was a fun afternoon.

Ace: My nap schedule has really thrown off my dinner schedule. I’m going to be drawn and quartered by the end of this chat.

Seth: Nah, the whole fun of an execution is it's done in public.

Ace: twitch.tv/mgoace

Why am i suggesting this?

Try one-upping this one, John Beilein

Seth: Also the headsmen haven't swung an axe in weeks. You can't just jump right back into that sort of thing.

Brian: So a public service: the chances of transmission from food packaging is very remote. The exponential works in your favor in regards to a hypothetical virus load on cardboard or plastic. I'm taking reasonable precautions as well but you can just put your groceries away and then wash your hands and unless you, like, go around licking everything you'll be fine. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/26/dont-panic-about-sho…

Ace: Yeah, this was a huge concern for me since I rely on getting groceries delivered.

BiSB: I saw a video suggesting you scrub your fruit with soap and water.

Ace: That MLive article going around had me quite alarmed. The fruit bit makes sense since people touch that food directly.

Seth: That guy from Grand Rapids right? I had my coat on to leave for the grocery store when my wife got that.

BiSB: I also saw a city council member in Florida suggesting you aim a hair dryer up your nose. Advice... uh... runs the gamut at this point.

Ace: “Politician or Instagram Influencer” would be a hell of a game right now.

Seth: I should note the stores in the garage are mostly for various mothers and grandmothers. I'm basically resigned to our household getting it eventually, but we're being extreme with anything that goes to Grandma Boo's.

So we have given no good advice.

Ace: Set time limits on your social media apps. I don’t follow this but I should.

Brian: lol

Just publish the results like we do and then it's work.

Ace: Working from home advice: when you think about it hard enough, you can justify most anything as work. Showering is brainstorming time.

Brian: I've been working from home for so long I don't even know what to tell people. Also my work habits are insane. I get a lot of stuff done after midnight.

Ace: Same here, I feel both overly prepared to give advice and woefully unqualified to give good advice.

Brian: Don't screw around and just get Adobe stuff if you need to manipulate video. That's my advice.

Ace: Mute your microphone.

Seth: Start with the little tasks is my one useful motto. I used to have yellow notepads I'd check off but that went by the wayside. Keep your work area clean.

Brian: Unless you're supposed to be offering commentary on the Kansas game.

Ace: There are exceptions, yes.

Seth: The one hardest thing about transitioning to work at home was convincing everyone in my life that when I'm home I'm working, not available to do lunch or airport pickups. That's hardly applicable right now.

Ace: Yeah, when I had roommates I had a really hard time with that. It doesn’t help when you’re watching football and that’s actually work.

THING YOU MISS ABOUT SPORTS

Ace: The emotional release. It’s harder to find that when you can’t leave the house.

There’s not a lot of “escape” right now unless you totally unplug.

I miss big moods, basically.

Also X.

Brian: I miss all the stupid crap. Pat Fitzgerald running down the sideline trying to dissuade the worst punt in history from going out of bounds and visibly deflating after he fails. Otto getting sniped. Getting livid about officiating. Sports is an amazing font of #content

BiSB: Sports are also a thing to care about and get emotionally invested in that you know deep down don’t REALLY matter.

Brian: They're excellent at providing "lookit this thing!" moments

Seth: This is going to sound so sappy but I was JUST starting to get my kids into the rhythms of Watching With Daddy. They put on Michigan pajamas and come and yell "Who's got it better than us?" at me. They ask me stupid kid questions that are a joy to answer.

Look at me I'm daddy! Wanna hear daddy's sports words?

BiSB: Which would be really useful in light of [/gestures wildly]

Ace: YouTube is having a moment.

BiSB: I think I’m going to miss a season of coaching little league baseball with my son, and I’m only gonna get so many of those.  Sports are one of the ways we connect with people. And despite often not liking people, I kinda miss people.

Ace: There’s something intoxicating about sharing the experience of caring about something with so many other people. Whether in person or watching on TV. There aren’t many things that can get 100,000 people cheering at once.

Brian: And also we have a whole post about Pat Fitzgerald's soul getting obliterated.

A shutout buttwhoopin' so anomalous in this recent stretch that the wrong Northwestern staff member—Some Guy—ended up featured in the game's most memorable GIF, when Jourdan Lewis' ganktastic pick-six blew a random staffer's mind.

BiSB: God I miss schadenfreude.

Seth: The kindergartner at some point picked up that Mark Donnal has soft hair, because she decided this from going over the players on that shirt of all the guys' heads. She asks during games "Is that Mark Donnal?" And then magically during one our recent twitch streams I shouted YEP! THAT'S MARK DONNAL!

Ace: Oh man

Brian:

Ace: This was in the comments of the Pat Fitzgerald post: https://mgoblog.com/content/jared-sullinger-and-tim-hardaway-jr-screaming-each-other

*preview:

LAST WEEK ON "JARED SULLINGER AND TIM HARDAWAY JR SCREAMING AT EACH OTHER" AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRR AAAAAAAHHHRHHRRRRRRRRRAAA AND NOW… OUR THRILLING CONCLUSION! YAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH YA YA YA YA YA AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHHHHHH! YAAAHHHHHH!!!!! YAH! RARARARARARRRRRRRR! RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRARRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!! YARRR!!!!! ORK? Nerk. FIN

Brian: I'm glad I reminded myself of that because it's gonna get me through the next three weeks.

Ace: You can hear Vince Guaraldi playing in the background.

Brian: Anyway: stay away from people, packages are fine just wash your hands, and remember that time Pat Fitzgerald was incredibly sad about a 5 yard punt. Good luck out there folks.

Ace: Never have children!