Cost Plus did better today: “We have self-care items, fun games and more to help you and your family.” Good job.

THE LAWN GUYS ARE HERE AGAIN AND I STILL CAN’T GET AWAY ARRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH. Also, it is a rainy day, why are lawn guys here? Ah well, another excuse to not leave the house.

I am back to working on Baby Yodas again, which is something I feel guilty about because I got as far as making a bunch of Baby Yodas but not their little coats before well, you know. I am trying to squeeze in a few more of them just in case...a year and a half later if anyone still wants one, mind you. I realized that I’m about out of the shade of green I was using for them and then started undoing and fudging the last one so that the areas covered up by the coat are done in some other yarn entirely so nobody sees it. Hopefully that works. I also found a slightly different green shade in a partial skein that I can use too.

I watched an astrology lecture, "Where's the Money?” today, that went well. Intermediate basic lecture on stuff I probably already knew, but hey, free entertainment value.

I signed up for some online class in Storytelling for Social Change but haven’t started it yet. I also saw that Matthew Dicks is offering an online storytelling workshop next month and signed up for that...even though it starts 6:30 my time on a Saturday (oyyyyyyyyy).

I heard from Ashley today--she’s staying in, she’s still attempting that tank top--and then she said she and her dad were doing karaoke online and invited me into a current Zoom meeting. So the three of us tried doing karaoke that way, since Jim could get the screen to load in the meeting. Only went for 40 minutes, but we attempted quarantine songs. Btw, the lyrics to “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” get worse and worse and creepier and creepier the farther you go into that song... like daaaaaamn, ewwwww. I sent them some links I found on doing karaoke online, so maybe we can do this again sometime, possibly in a longer duration.

Jim asked how Scott was doing and I was basically all “yeah, I have no idea.” .... yeah, Jim has fucking figured it out, hasn’t he. Sigh.

Then I spent some time getting Meg set up on how to use Zoom, or at least “how to get into a meeting,” since she mentioned the other day that her friend Joya did some Zoom performance that Meg paid for and could never get to work. I had doubts this would work with her old laptop, but she found a more current desktop to attempt it on and eventually got it to work after a half hour.

I have been asked for the Shakespeare thing to try to come up with a blank white background and good lighting for this. I can really only do the latter of that. I have no way to hang a big ol’ white sheet or anything at all behind me, the closest I can get is to sit with my boogie board behind me, and even then you can still see the edges of things. I have no solutions for this. Also it turns out my laptop is too old to use “virtual background” in Zoom, so that isn’t the option I thought it would be without paying $60-110 to order a green screen online. Would rather not do that right now and it’d be a little late anyway. So...shrug emoji on this?

Today’s poetic writing: The Last Best Time, or how John Scalzi found out while on the JoCo cruise that everything had changed since Monday. And I like this quote: "As a friend of mine put it, ‘I’m tired of being part of a major historical event’ and we all are."

”Cabin fever sucks, for sure, but it could be worse. It’s maddening and boring and nobody is having an ideal experience right now, but of all the things to be at the moment, “going a bit crazy with tedium” is fairly luxurious. Like, if being stuck at home is the worst thing currently going on, then you probably haven’t lost a loved one or had your life implode financially, in which case, while this is absolutely easier said than done, try to enjoy yourself. Plus, you’re at home. You’re not in prison, or stuck down a Chilean mine. You’ve got all your stuff. Christ, imagine if this had happened 15 years ago, before streaming and delivery services and every fucking entertainment option in the world was just seconds away.”

The whole thing is reminding me of reading the occasional book on World War I, for some reason. I keep thinking of how my pink hair is going to be like when Rilla of “Rilla of Ingleside” bought herself a nice green hat right after the war broke out, got shamed for doing so, and then swore she’d wear it for three years or until the war was over, whichever was longest....and then kicked it around the room once the war was over. I will sadly always think of it now as “quarantine hair” rather than the “fun hair” it was intended to be. And also I’m reminded of reading a few Maisie Dobbs novels, which I always (kinda joke) say boil down to, “THE GREAT WAR SCARRED US ALLLLLLLLL.” Except in my generation it’s gonna be like “I was stuck in my home with ample Internet for months to a year,” rather than “I watched every boy of my generation lose limbs when they got blown up” or uh, whatever.

Tonight I watched an online magic show. They were LA magicians doing sleight of hand stuff and then showing you how they did tricks, which is cool beans. Bonus points for “destroying” a $50 bill rather than a $1. I was also amused that they asked kids to demonstrate their own tricks. They “called on” a few folks in the audience, but not me, thank goodness. They also offered free passes to the Magic Castle that you’d have to use before the end of the year, which I normally would have found very cool but instead got depressed at the time limit.

Quotes from the show: One guy said he’s lived in Florida, Las Vegas, and LA, so “I’ve only lived in places that are hot and fake.” And later someone asked if there was a ball pit at the Magic Castle and the response was, “There is no ball pit, but there are five bars.”

After that one ended, Linda sent out email to all the volunteers (16), scheduling online rehearsal for this Tuesday. Huzzah! I really should finish reading the script... my attention span for reading that has been kind of like my attention span for reading books lately: only a few pages at a time, because that doesn’t involve combing the Internet for virus news, or entertainment to distract from virus news.

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