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i had some granola with yogurt for breakfast this morning, followed by another egg-ham-avocado bagel sandwich for lunch. the bagel sandwich was good, but not as good as yesterday, maybe lost that element of surprise. later when i checked the blood glucose monitor, there wasn't as much a sustained graph line in the "normal" blue region as there was yesterday, not sure why that is when i'm basically eating the same thing. i saved the avocado seed, put it in a water pot hoping it might germinate.

i didn't see kevin all day, thought maybe he was mad at me, stayed in his bedroom with the door closed. he finally came out in the afternoon around 4pm, hoping to catch the mailman redelivering his signature-required package. when he finally came around 4:30pm, kevin was waiting behind the door, like the package would magically transport inside. that's not how you do it dum dum! as the mailman left, i chased him down outside with the delivery slip to ask if he had the package. he said it left it at the post office, and that i could pick it up there.

kevin finally managed to pay his rent via paypal, once he got his text messaging working. it might take a day or two, but this would spare his from having to visit the bank, i know how traumatic it is for him to be outside, with his burgeoning agoraphobia on top of his germophobia. he's too young to be scared all the time.

speaking of scared, soon after i spoke with the mailman, a UPS van pulled up to the house and dropped off a large box on the doorstep. sensing it was heavy, i told kevin about the delivery so he could bring it inside and i wouldn't have to hurt my back. turns out it was 30 lbs. worth of brown rice, 6 bags each of 5 lbs. jasmine brown rice from thailand he ordered off of amazon. one of the bags was ripped and i helped him funnel this rice into an old rice bag. so on top of the 40 lbs. boxes of rice he already has, he's adding another 30 lbs. on top of that. not to mention the 15 lbs. of potatoes, or the large box of oatmeal. i didn't want to break the bad news to him that brown rice only keeps 6-8 months (rice white on the other hand? can be kept indefinitely), and i don't know if he's going to be able to eat 70 lbs. worth of brown rice before it all goes bad.

having said that, this morning he cooked some brown rice in my rice cooker. ever since he used the rice cooker for the first time earlier this week, he finally realized it's the much easier option when cooking rice. i've told him about it for months now, but he always cooks his rice on the stove, which makes a big mess because it always overflows and rice water gets everywhere, scorching and staining everything. even when i expressed my annoyance, he didn't bother to change, and eventually i gave up. what i don't like is the fact that he left the rice in the cooker to heat for hours, instead of eating it right away. that's a waste of perfectly good electricity. he also leaves the rice in the cooker container, like that's his personal cooker and nobody else can use it. finally, running the rice cooker is like having a diffuser in the house, except instead of the scent of fragrant essential oils, the whole house smells like rice. i have that to look forward to as he sets some kind of world record in brown rice eating.

today was supposed to be my annual physical, but it was re-scheduled 10 days ago, when mass general hospital started cutting off on all non-essential appointments, to keep as many people away from MGH as possible. my physical got rescheduled to mid-july, while the time i was supposed to get an appointment now became a phone call from my doctor. a nurse called me earlier this morning, i thought it was either to remind me or possibly cancel the call, but she asked if i could take the call earlier at 1pm instead of the 4:30pm appointment time, i said sure, wasn't doing anything except being trapped at home.

when my doctor called me at 1pm, at first we had some technical issues, as i could hear him just fine but he could barely hear me at all. after a few aborted attempts at clarity inside the house, i ended up standing outside on the sidewalk to get good reception. we just a chat, not much he can do remotely, asked me how i felt health-wise over the past year, went over the drugs i was currently taking, asked about my blood pressure. i told him it was on the high side, averaging 130/90 most of the time, i rarely see a perfect 120/80. he ended up increasing my amlodipine dosage from 2.5mg to 5mg. he wrote in a prescription for flonase. finally, he sent out an order for lab tests, but i had the option of either coming into MGH (which he recommended against) or do it at the waltham MGH branch, across the street from the costco. since talking makes me cough, i ended up coughing a few times, and some neighbors saw me, so they probably think i have coronavirus now.

before the call was over, i asked my doctor how he was doing, being on the frontline of the coronavirus pandemic. he paused, then told me "in full disclosure" that he was actually working from home because he might've contracted the coronavirus. his symptoms began with a sore throat the likes of which he'd never experienced before, followed by a few days of body aches. he didn't have a fever, but started not being able to taste anything when he ate. finally he got tested on monday (easy to get when you're a doctor working at MGH) and he was supposed to get his results today. he didn't know how he got it, though there's been a few outbreaks at the hospital. he was also speaking with a neighbor who had coronavirus symptoms, maybe he got it from him.

so my doctor might be the coronavirus! though out of all the people i know, he's probably the highest risk since he's an MGH doctor.

i was planning on going to market basket today. why market basket? well, it's where i normally go, despite the always crowded nature of the place. plus, i wanted to see what it was like, one of the few places remaining where people can gather and potentially the coronavirus. when i called my parents to ask them if they needed anything, they flipped out, said it was dangerous, and eventually talked me out of it. i still have food in the house for weeks, but i was just looking for some variety. i could always go to the star market across the street if i really needed to, which seems to be always empty, but where's the fun in that?

instead i left the house around 3pm to take a 35 minute walk around the hills of somerville. the weather was nice, blue sky, sunny, temperature in the 50's. a lot of other people were out walking or jogging, i even saw some parents with children using the playgrounds, even though they've been off-limit for a while now. the weird thing is whenever somebody walked by me, i'd unconsciously hold my breath, like perhaps by breathing in the same air i could contract their virus. this is the new normal now i suppose. at one point i saw an elderly couple admire a flowering cherry tree. when i turned around to let them know it was an okame cherry, i saw the woman visibly lurch backwards in order to keep her distance from me. i wasn't mad, it's just everyone's a little on edge right now, every person you meet could potentially be a coronavirus carrier. it's made me realize how close people normally stand next to each other when they talk. you start missing the little things.

today was a good production day, didn't set the record but it was close, despite some cloudiness in the afternoon.

today the US surpassed china in the total number of coronavirus cases. i thought the US would first jump over italy before overshadowing china, didn't realize how quickly things escalated. we're only just starting. kevin told me he thinks the US will hit the million mark when this is all over. i don't believe the china numbers are accurate - there's been reports of coverups of initial cases - but even with accurate china numbers, the US would still surpass china eventually, since it wasn't testing for weeks while the coronavirus was already spreading through the population.

for dinner, i reheated two slices of quiche. i still have two slices left, but i'm all quiched out at the moment, i'll probably put them in the freezer and eat them so other time later in the future. i was so full afterwards, i went without dessert.