“In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream” (tagline for the movie Alien, which, despite my having very little to do, I couldn’t watch all of the other day because it’s still too scary). Did anyone hear me scream this morning? I woke up without an Internet connection. You can survive weeks without food (and days without water), and, if you’re Sigourney Weaver, the most disgusting creatures imaginable over the course of several adventures (why did Ripley keep going back for more?), but in the coronavirus era, one day without the Internet may be enough to kill you.

Nevertheless, I remained relatively calm, taking deep breaths that served not only to help in that regard, but also now as part of a routine, daily health check. I unplugged everything I could find that might even remotely affect my connection – my router, my modem, my electric toothbrush (you never know) – and then, after counting to several hundred decimal places of pi (which I memorized a few days ago after running out of episodes of Picard to binge watch on CBS All Access), I rebooted everything but my galoshes.

All those years of clean living were not in naught as my tablet and laptop sprung to life, causing me to put away the bottle of pills I was going to swallow if virtually left home alone (by the way the bottle was empty and made of plastic, so I probably would have survived, especially with a little BBQ sauce on it).