this state-imposed "social distancing" (let's not sugarcoat it, it's essentially a quarantine) wouldn't be so bad were it not for the fact that i have a roommate who's now here all the time working from home. this lack of personal privacy is going to drive me insane. yes, kevin keeps to himself for much of the time, but just the fact that there's somebody else in the house prevents me from fully relaxing. on this day - day 1 of a 3-week social distancing - it wasn't too bad because i was out for much of the day.

i woke up at 6:45am to use the bathroom but couldn't fall back to sleep after that. i spent the next hour surfing from bed, until i got drowsy enough to take another crack at sleep. but when my father accidentally called me at 9am, i decided to just wake up for good.

i was trying to figure out a meal menu for the 10 days of the predict 2 study beginning on thursday. half the time i have to eat the preset meals (specially formulated muffins), but the rest of the time i can eat whatever i want, though i have to log all the ingredients and weigh the portion sizes. to make it worthwhile, i figured i should eat a variety of my common meals, so i can find out how my body metabolizes them, everything from the healthy to the not so healthy. however, i wasn't planning on going head-to-head with coronavirus panic buyers emptying the supermarkets; i figured i'd be lucky to get half the things i wrote on my grocery list.

before i could go though, i had to fix the flat rear tire on my cargo bike. i took the wheel off, removed the tire, and stripped out the inner tube, marking the location of the puncture so i could find it and put everything back the way it was. the hole was tiny, but enough to pierced through the tire and the inner tube, most likely a nail of some sort. that's actually good because there was nothing embedded in the tire that could repuncture the tube. after sanding down the puncture, i covered it up with some rubber cement and a standard tire patch. i reassembled the tire and inflated it to see if any air was still leaking.

i came back a bit later to check, the tire was still good, so i put it back onto my bike and headed out to market basket.

i was a little bit worried, after having experienced the crowd of panic buyers last friday at star market. if it was crowded at star market, but much worse would market basket be? i could usually tell if it's going to be crowded by the number of bikes parked on the rack, which weren't that many. i was surprised, but it seemed like the typical market basket crowd, which wasn't bad. i must've seen 4-5 people with masks (shockingly none of them asian), but most people didn't have them, though i did see 1-2 people with scarves wrapped around their faces. most of the cashiers wore gloves, which is good, i'm worried about them contracting the coronavirus since they're on the frontline.

it was business as usual for the most part, with only a few empty shelves. a lot of the packaged shredded cheese was gone, though there were plenty of other solid cheeses. the instant noodle shelves were picked clean, the canned soup section was 2/3rd empty. people cleaned out the pastas, leaving behind only lasagna noodles. and most of the frozen vegetables were gone too. toilet paper (market basket brand), eggs, milk, and even bread, they were fully in stock. over the PA the manager was saying something about customers were limited to 2 of a certain item (i didn't catch what it was), and he also apologized for some empty shelves and said they were trying their best to get everything restocked soon.

i left with $46 worth of groceries. i didn't even think i was buying that much, but whenever i had doubt i grabbed it, not sure when the next panic buying spree will hit, better to have it then to come back and find out they're gone (or worst fear, find out they're closed). i made sure not to touch my face, but i grabbed my phone a few times to take photos, and i kept wondering if i hadn't accidentally covered my fabric phone case with coronavirus. first thing i did when i got home was to wash my hands thoroughly.

after unloading my groceries into the fridge, i went back outside to work on the bike. it was a brisk day, temperature in the upper 30's, and i could see my breath, but i felt warm enough to leave my jacket inside, didn't want to get it dirty anyway while i was working on the bike. i noticed it when i took it out of the basement, but the rear brake pads needed to be readjusted, they were too far apart to catch the rim anymore. i noticed earlier when working on the tire that one of the spokes had broken. that meant the rear tire wasn't true anymore, but the minor amount of wobble was still okay. i managed to adjust the pads so now my rear brakes have the same stopping power as the front brakes, which will even out the pad wear.

i was back inside by 2:30pm, in the cozy confines of the living room, sipping my hot tea, surfing the web. in the late afternoon, around 4pm or so, i began to get really drowsy. i was tempted to go into my living room and take a nap, but i toughed it out.

still later i felt really cold even though the heat was on. i was afraid i was coming down with cold chills, and the fact that i only had a yogurt for lunch didn't help, so turned up the heat early, before it got dark.

latest coronavirus news: the UK finally regained their senses by dropping their herd immunity approach over the more traditional quarantine approach. since nobody's riding the MBTA anymore, the MBTA has shifted to a saturday schedule. and today the dow jones dropped nearly 3000 points.

for most of today it was similar to yesterday, a crystal clear almost dark blue sky. later in the afternoon a few clouds started appearing. despite the slight dips, we managed to make more electricity than yesterday with a production of 45.97kWh, another 2020 record.

i threw a pair of french bread pizza in the oven around 6pm because i needed fuel to warm up my body. after i finished dinner i felt a lot better, finally able to warm up again.

with all the late night talk shows on coronavirus hiatus and NBA temporarily suspended, there's not much to watch in the evenings. it's a good opportunity to go to bed early and get some more sleep to improve my immune system.

i did finally finish watching swallow (2019) starring haley bennett, a housewife who develops pica, a psychological disorder where one eats strange objects. it took several days to watch, there were some very cringeworthy scenes, like when she eats a push pin, or fistfuls of dirt. it plays as a psychological horror, these eating forbidden objects an act of defiance against her controlling husband and in-laws.