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I will say that this whole “don’t touch your face” things has done wonders for my nail-biting habit.

i called in to work, set up the students with student omeka accounts. Mostly tried to keep my anxiety at bay.

SOLR/arclight is misbehaving and I’ve not yet tracked down why.

It snowed, so I took out the trash on the theory that most people would be indoors. Saw Bella’s human and told her that if they needed dog stuff feel free to ask because we might have extra.

Watched Kingsman II with Chris. It was a bit too on the nose about the current situation.

I’m still having chest tightness and mild headache. Blood oxygen is normal, temperature is normal.

Fairfield County is up to 270 lab-confirmed cases. 15 are in Danbury.

Today was pretty quiet.

• Slept in,
• did some light cleaning,
• played fetch with Elvis.

• Talked with friends online,
• noticed the denture cleaner in my order from Walmart was the wrong flavor (I use them to clean my nalgenes. Mint nalgenes are gross)
• Learned that simple laundry washing may be insufficient to kill the virus. From now on, outside clothes go into a 3-day quarantine prior to washing. I also bleached the washing machine. Slightly freaked out about that, since I was moving laundry from washer to dryer without precautions.
• Ate 4 hazelnut M&Ms. They were tasty.
• Cooked rice. Ate rice with veggie packets, and with
• Talked with friends online
• Listened to The Saga Thing podcast

Symptoms

Acid stomach. I need to take more pepto. Still a bit of sinus mucus/drainage. Oxygen levels high, temperature normal

Fairfield County is up to 140 cases. The city of Danbury has 4.

I went shopping

• Went to the pharmacy to pick up my generic Zoloft.
  • This was terrifying.
  • I suited up in a
    • hoodie,
    • surgical mask,
    • goggles,
    • gardening gloves over
    • vinyl gloves,
    • hoodie,
    • long socks, and
    • pants
  • Rite Aid was not crowded. Maybe 10 people total. I got my meds and a few other things (pepto bismol for my constant upset stomach, snacks, seltzer water, Flintstones Chewable Vitamins with Iron)
  • I gave up on the goggles because they kept fogging up
• I next went to the Trader Joes next door
  • It was a bit more crowded. I think they were limiting the number of people in the place because there was a greeter.
  • There was a “2 per customer” restriction on items they were visibly low up
  • Starting tomorrow, it’ll be a “2 per” on all items
  • I picked up more snacks to add variety to our soylent diet.
• When I got home,
  • I picked up a package from the Amazon Hub
  • Stripped my outwear directly into the laundry machine as I walked in
  • Put non-refrigerated items into a closet to quarantine for 3 days (the virus can live on plastic and stainless steel surfaces for 3 days)
  • Washed the frozen peas in soapy water before putting them in the freezer

Other news

• Connecticut is seeking donation of PPE (personal protection equipment) for hospitals and nursing homes.
  • Go to 211ct.org/DonationsCOVID19 and fill out a form to let them know what you can donate
  • Source: https://portal.ct.gov/coronavirus
• I got in contact with our downstairs neighbor. Now they know how to get ahold of us, in case we start playing DDR or something inconsiderate. Or if they need anything.

Fairfield County is up to 122 positive cases

What I Did

@ Work

• Skyped with my boss
  • Talked on about next week’s class (this week is spring break).
  • Chose items for him to scan today so the students can ‘digitize’ them
  • Talked about the ‘digitize something in your house’ assignment
• Applied updates to the server and restarted services. Got Arclight back up and running (ruby didn’t shut down cleanly, so it was a little awkward/unintuitive)

@ Home

• Joined the code4lib happy hour at 5pm EST. Lots of nice people. One person said his boss started *Monday*. That’s rough.
• Watched part of the Indigo Girls live-from-the-living-room concert. My internet connection/computer wasn’t dealing well with it, so I’ll hopefully watch the live concert later when I can buffer it.
• Ordered dog food, dog drugs, and pee pads from Chewy. They’re backed up, so I ordered early. No idea when it’ll come.
• My generic Zoloft (aka Sertraline HCL) prescription was filled at the local Rite Aid. I plan to go get it tomorrow. This prospect fills me with anxiety, but I’ll take all available safety precautions. I’ll also stop next door at Trader Joe’s and see if they have anything on my shopping list.
• Talked with a friend “Joey” and my partner about my worries regarding my partner visiting “Joey”. I’m very anxious about anyone leaving the safe zone that is the apartment. “Joey” was understanding. My partner might visit “Joey” next week, once both households have had 2 weeks of confinement under their belts.

Symptoms

Eh? Anxiety. Nothing major. Minor headache. Pepto seems to be working up the sour stomach.

Fairfield County now reports 102 cases.

What I Did

Work

• This was my first full day working from home. I had a webex with my boss. We showed off our doggos and we talked about what we could do remotely.
• There was a whole-library webex. The biggest takeaways were that no one is allowed on campus after Friday.
• don’t forget to pick up your plants.
• I got remote access to my desktop machine, which is still on campus. This means I can remote into my machine and then putty into the archives servers. It’s awesome news!

Personal & Mental Health

• Started online therapy with Talkspace (referral link).
• Got several packages from the apartment’s mail hub.
• Looked ridiculous while getting them.

• After I picked up the packages, I was very anxious, nearly hyperventilating. I might be developing agoraphobia (but is it a phobia if the outside world is really covered in danger?)
• One of the packages I picked up contained a pulse oximeter. It tells me whether I’m actually having trouble getting oxygen into my blood. I’m not, I’m just stressed. Having a tool tell me so helps relieve my stress.
• Watched the Dan and Faith live concert on facebook.

Symptoms

Weirdly enough, once I figured out it was all anxiety most of my symptoms went away. I’m left with a sore throat due to acid reflux. *jazz hands* Pepto-Bismol through the day cleared that up.

Thermometer reports no fever.

One of the packages I picked up contained a pulse oximeter. It tells me whether I’m actually having trouble getting oxygen into my blood. I’m not, I’m just stressed. Having a tool tell me so helps relieve my stress.

My hands are red and raw from all this hand washing. I’m experimenting with different moisturizers to see if any help. My partner of the naturally oily skin reports no such problem. *glares*

What I did

• Fell into a hole of anxiety
• Scheduled a telemedicine appointment. The next available was 10pm.
• Set up the balcony as a “walkies station” for Elvis.
• Forgot to eat until 11 am because anxiety. Ate a soylent. Tried eating again at 1 pm, nursed that sandwich until 6pm.

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• Talked to a fellow autist on Reddit about what they’re going through, suggested some ways to regain structure.
• Found http://stayathomefest.com/ . It’s awesome!
• Went to the Dropkick Murphys – Streaming Up From Boston liveshow — me and my 153,903 closest friends!
• Picked up my knitting
• Installed the Calm and Headspace apps
• Took a hot bath
• Dyed my hair purple

Today’s Symptoms

• Sore throat
• Very mild fever (98.9°C)
• tightness in the throat
• sinus gunk
• sore back
• nausea

None of these symptoms is debilitating and they can all be explained by anxiety. I have so much anxiety. In about 2 hours I’ll talk to a nice doctor from Tennessee and see if she thinks it’s just anxiety.

Update: telemedicine was a failure. The video call just wouldn’t connect. I rescheduled for Wednesday.

Also, Fairfield County is up to 48 presumed or confirmed cases.

WCSU has taken a “work from home as much as possible” stance in light of Covid-19. I’m still getting set up for remote work. I can check email, but that’s about it.

Today’s accomplishments:

1. I set up my home office.

2. I re-potted my ZZ plant. Now I have 3 ZZ plants.

3. I took cute picture of my dog

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Covid-19 Stuff/Symptoms

Since coming back from the code4lib conference on 11 March, I’ve come down with what is probably a cold. It’s all up in my sinuses. I have some joint paint, but that might just be from awkwardly sleeping on the train. I also have an embarrassing number of bruises, also likely from the train. I’ve been sneezing. I have a very minor cough first thing in the morning. I also have a slight sore throat. No fever. My symptoms line up nicely with the “it’s a cold” column of the flu/cold/covid-19 chart that’s floating around.

I’ve been quarantining myself as much as possible–the dog still needs walking, and I made a dog food/human meds run on Friday. I wore a mask because I have a mask and I have a cold. Friday, I was the only one I saw in a mask.

I’ve also been keeping separate from my partner Chris. This is because he planned to go to NJ to visit a group of 3 friends over the weekend. This was a very important mental health thing for him. So, we considered the risks and decided to minimize risk to them by minimizing Chris’s exposure to whatever germs I have.

Now that Chris is back, we’re still limiting our exposure to each other because now he has NJ germs and I have Pittsburgh germs. We recognize that if either of us has Covid-19, the other will, too. The hope is that we can delay transmission as long as possible because it means there’s hopefully one halfway-healthy person to do what needs doing. It’s a mini “flatten the curve”.

The apartment complex wanted to do energy efficiency improvements in my apartment today. It was scheduled out weeks ago, before covid-19 became impossible to ignore. Fairfield County has 16 cases as of yesterday evening. I told the complex that I did not want a bunch of people in my apartment who had just been in someone else’s apartment and were about to go through a third. I don’t want to get anyone else sick, I don’t want to be sick myself, and, while my balcony door is drafty as all get out, energy improvements can wait.

I hope this finds everyone safe and well.

Update

As up this evening, Fairfield County has 29 cases.