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I was on FaceTime with Danielle for a while last night, while I prepared burgers for dinner just before Shobhit got home around 7:45. Speaking of which: what used to take Shobhit about half an hour to drive home, it now takes him about half that.

Anyway, Danielle kept telling me this should count as a Social Review point, and this is sort of borderline on that front; it depends on what we're doing on a video chat, how long it lasts, and whether or not it was something we scheduled. Obviously some of the regular rules bend under the circumstances; this was hardly different from a phone call except that we were also on FaceTime, but we must have been on for around an hour. I'd really like to know exactly how long our FaceTiming was but my iPhone's FaceTime app suddenly randomly decided to stop showing call durations in its call histories, which I find a little crazy making. I even got on a support chat with Apple this morning to ask about it, and the person spoke to kept asking me questions I had already answered in previous messages, so I spent a lot of time just wanting to find that person and murder them.

So, whatever. It was a pretty long FaceTime call. Danielle gets a point. During the call she texted me a photo of what she looks like in the protective gear she wears when sitting in a room with a COVID-19 patient. She mentioned to me that she has yet to have any sign of getting sick, which is good. I still worry about her more than I worry about anyone, given that she's a nurse working in a hospital.

My spirits had been lifted up significantly by what was probably the best weekend I've had since the "stay-at-home" order began, but I saw and heard a few things this morning that brought back a bit of a feeling of being dispirited. On the Savage Lovecast podcast, he noted that the minimum six feet of social distancing may actually "not be adequate," which really drove home that I should order some masks online. I still haven't done that. And then, from my regular morning digests of articles from The Washington Post, I scrolled a little through this article about the first 1000 deaths, which ultimately felt like a mistake. This bit haunts me: "By the time it burns out, it’s possible that most everyone in the country will know someone who has died of covid-19." That's fucking terrifying.

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The burgers were Shobhit's idea, and he came home with a takeout order of fries. We ate dinner while watching this past weekend's episodes of Westworld and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, the latter of which ended with a segment about "rat erotica" that was fucking hilarious. I about hurt myself laughing.

I had a second cocktail with my dinner, having already had one before and during my FaceTime call with Danielle. I had such an unusually stressful day at work yesterday, I decided I would have a drink practically as soon as it was 4:30 and my work day was done. That was another thing noted on this week's Savage Lovecast podcast: sales of alcohol have skyrocketed. Big surprise. My consumption of it has increased fairly dramatically too. I keep thinking about the annual Aetna health assessment and how it dings your score if you have more than five drinks a week or something. I forget what the number is, but there is a threshold. Hey, at least my second cocktail was only a single shot and not a double!

(Side note: it occurred to me that it's not vodka vs. rum that affects me worse, but the quality of the liquor regardless of its type. We have Bacardi Gold right now and that one is not affecting me negatively, whereas the brand of vodka we have right now, it's not treating me as kindly. We had been getting that brand at Total Wine because it's more affordable, but I may want to get back to Ketel One next time just to make a comparison.)

Shobhit has both today and tomorrow off of work, so he made lunch, with a garbanzo bean base with vegetables and rice to mix it with. It was really tasty, so that perked up my day a little, at least. And work hasn't been nearly as stressful as yesterday. Things are looking up in my tiny little world!

It's just . . . you know, it's been a month. More than a month. Day 33. Currently the "stay at home" order is through May 4, but that could easily be extended, yet again.

As I said, the video chats do make a world of difference. But still. I miss everybody.

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[posted 12:24 pm]