Coronavirus Diary: May 3rd

For a few days there, I was taking breaks from work to rearrange my apartment and toss things into the garbage. After going through part of my closet a couple weeks back, I've stop that home chore. I really should get back to it. My apartment is way too crowded and there are a lot of things I could probably toss. I should go through my desk drawers and such and see what I can toss from there. Take this period to just downsize just a little bit, I say. I hope I move out of this place someday in the near future (near future probably meaning 1 to 3 years). And the less I need to move, the better.

I finished reading a book called "The Feather Thief" by Kirk Wallace Johnson. It is a true story about a college student named Edwin Rist. He was a fanatical fly-tier. For those who don't know (and I surely didn't know this), various designs use feathers from exotic birds. (SOME MINOR SPOILERS FOLLOW.) Well, this college student decided to break into the British Museum of Natural History and stole hundreds of dead birds that dated as far back as 150 years ago. The first half of the book was interesting. The writer discussed the history of how many of these birds went extinct or nearly extinct. He looked into the crime and how for awhile it looked like Edwin was going to get away with it until there was a random chance encounter encounter that led police to Edwin. The second half was boring. The author decided to do further investigations on his own into the missing birds as not all birds had gotten tracked down by the police. (Edwin had sold many of the birds to other fly-tiers.) To me, it didn't add anything to the story. In fact, if felt like the 2nd half of the book was really meant as a guilt trip to anyone who might still be holding these museum birds. Well, I definitely don't have any of those birds and didn't really feel like reading the author's guilt trip attempt.

Having finished that book, I've switched over to "Revival" by Stephen King. I've only gotten through the first chapter so can't really give my thoughts on that book.

In my last post, I mentioned I was binge watching HBO's Ballers. Well, I did do a whole lot of binge watching, because I finished up the 5 seasons. I obviously enjoyed the series as I watched it so quickly, but I also found it irritating how minor characters just disappeared and then story lines just ended without a clear resolution. I'd say this especially occurred in Seasons 3 and 4. The coolest thing was watching Reggie mature as a business person.

In terms of real life, I try to take daily walks. I don't go out every day, but most days. I'm always wearing a face mask. I'd say only about 25% of the people in Glendale are wearing face masks.

Also, I'm finding that I often forget what day it is. This happened pre-coronavirus, of course, but it seems to be getting more of an issue now. The problem is that there aren't specific time stamps anymore. Like I used to always go out on Monday nights to catch the various band/artist residencies. That's not there anymore. I can't say, "Hey, this is my Monday."

Finally, I do believe I used my car only twice during the month of April. Both times I went to the grocery store.