Day 50

Here's a little chronology of my voluntary shelter-in-place day today, as reconstructed from memory and the meticulous over-documentation by my iPhone:

Alarm clock goes off at 7:00 a.m. but I sleep until 9:00 and lay in bed until 10:00 checking email, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and Next Door.  To be honest, I pretty much spend most of every day compulsively monitoring email and social media.  Between that and checking the news on The Times and The Guardian, my cell phone screen time is now up to an astonishing average of 4 hours and 51 minutes a day. 

Put on some coffee and drink it black with a plain bagel (no cream cheese or butter).  Download and listen to the "Song of the Day" from three radio station websites (KEXP Seattle, KCRW Santa Monica, and Minnesota Public Radio).

Meditate (30 minutes).

Walk around the block twice for a total of 0.56 miles (like almost everything else in my life, from screen time to crossword puzzle stats, my phone tracks my walking distances down to the hour).

Second cup of coffee plus a banana, an orange, and a cup of yogurt.

Go on line, pay a few bills, and check on my IRA.  I don't want to talk about it.

Play Far Cry Primal for a short while, really just long enough to capture one outpost and refill my supplies.

Walk a second two trips around the block.  According to my phone, this time the trip was 0.48 miles long for some reason. 

2:30 p.m.: Eat a late lunch (chicken-and-sausage gumbo fortified with some jasmine rice) while reading David Quammen's article in The New Yorker on the 2003 SARS pandemic 

Listen to the 2009 album Daughter of Darkness V by the French drone band Natural Snow Buildings. Write and post a review of it over on the music blog.  

Back outside for my third walk of the day.  This time, I log 0.64 miles.  The block is either expanding along with the natural universe, other incidental mileage around the house is getting included with my walks, or the odometer function on my phone is erratic.  I suspect a little of all three.

Read a couple short chapters of the novel The Harrows of Spring by James Howard Kunstler.

Solve the N.Y. Times crossword puzzle in 10 minutes, 39 seconds.  Since I solve it using the app on my phone, I know that my personal best for a Tuesday puzzle is 8 minutes, 11 seconds, and my average time is 18:16.

Replay a mission in the game Hitman 2.   Assassinate all three targets in Mumbai, seemingly without being detected, but the game once again refuses to award me the "Not Spotted" or "No Bodies Found" bonus points.  I'll have to try again tomorrow and be even more careful than I was today.

7:00 p.m.: Feed the cats and scoop the litter.

While outside dropping the scooped litter into the garbage bin, walk the fourth and final set of laps around the block.  The day's total adds up to 2.5 miles (6,443 steps according to my phone). I'm sure that wandering around the house looking for my glasses must add something to the daily total.

Dinnertime: tortellini with marinara sauce and grated parmigiana tonight.   Simple but filling.

Cocktail hour begins! Actually, it began when I uncorked a cabernet to go with dinner.  But most other days, it begins at 8:00 p.m. with an old pal.

This present moment, right now, finds me posting to Water Dissolves Water.  Obviously.  Later tonight, I anticipate a little binge watching, most likely a few more episodes of Season 2 of Netflix' dark comedy Dead To Me, and probably some MSNBC,  The Daily Show, and Stephen Colbert.

I'll probably do most all of the same things tomorrow, just like I did yesterday and the day before and the day before that, although not necessarily in the same order.