Being home all the time leads to looking in the refrigerator every ten minutes, which leads me to suggest that manufacturers create small doors within refrigerator doors, sort of like doggy doors, so that you don’t open the whole door so many times a day, thereby conserving the cold inside the appliance.

First thing every morning I eat an entire bulb of garlic, which not only lets me know whether I still have my sense of smell, but also helps keep others from invading my social distancing space.

When leaving my abode, I’m now wearing only one disposable glove in order to conserve them until I can go through my neighbors’ garbage to find more. The unintended consequence is that I have to resist the urge to moonwalk, which could be a dangerous form of exercise for a senior citizen.

I’ve invented a new game, where I stand at a corner that has a stop sign and wave cars to proceed, whereupon they inevitably wave back that I should cross, whereupon I reinstate my wave, sometimes adding a nod for effect. I repeat this dance over and over again with a car until the driver gets fed up, gives me the finger, and drives on. My current record is 23 times back and forth with a single driver. I’ve written Guinness World Records, but haven’t heard back.

Now that the CDC has recommended wearing masks, and a shortage of same still exists, people are getting very creative in making their own. I didn’t want to get too close to get a better look, but today I thought I saw someone wearing one that was either a strip steak or a dead pigeon.

Major league baseball, intent on having a season, has announced that catchers’ masks have been proven to block the passage of baseballs, and therefore should have no trouble stopping a one-micron virus.

I have heard rumors, not only of an in-the-works mask-making competition television show brought to you by the same people who produce Iron Chef, but also that there will be a flood of participants using mask-making as their talent in the next Miss America pageant.

With everyone wearing masks, serious discussions also are underway to have Halloween and Mardi Gras differentiate themselves by being the only two days each year when no one wears one.

On my daily, do-whatever-you-can-to-maintain-your-sanity walk today, I passed by Kiki’s Bistro, which brought back fond memories of the last time I ate there, with a group of friends, when, in the middle of our meal, the manager came over and asked us to quiet down, as there had been complaints from other tables that we were having too much fun, and added that he didn’t want to have to kick us out.

That memory further reminded me of the time a group of us went downtown, during winter break from college in 1969, to the now long-defunct Roosevelt Theater (1979 – so not our fault) to see the movie Marooned, of which Mad Magazine said, One astronaut sacrifices his life to escape the film critics.” Given reviews like that, it wasn’t surprising that the movie didn’t fare well, and that my friends and I were the only ones in the theater for the matinee we attended. And yet, an usher came by during the movie to tell us we were making too much noise and, yes, he didn’t want to have to kick us out.

As I haven’t been anywhere other than the grocery since March 10, the threats have stopped, for now, but I’ve noticed that I’ve been laughing out loud a lot at home, even though I’m alone, and, psychiatric concerns aside, I’m worried that I might have to ask myself to leave before I finish binge-watching Tiger King.

After finishing my A-list binge-watching, I had to decide what would be the least painful next way to pass the time in the loop we’re all stuck in, Groundhog Day revisited, where every day is the same, is the same, is the same.

I thought about logging on to an online dating service, which would be another place to ply my borderline creative writing skills, given that there would be no pressure to meet anyone in person, although anyone with whom you corresponded would have a lot of time to search the Internet to uncover all your lies, I mean half-truths, I mean exaggerations. It would be akin to a prisoner with a pen pal, who also is a prisoner, so there wouldn’t be any conjugal visits, though you might get a fruit cake with a face mask baked inside.

I decided to adopt a less drastic way to change things up. Every day, when getting on my computer for whatever important purpose, whether it be to get the latest update on Tom Hanks’s health or learn how to start a hydroponic garden in my bathroom so I don’t have to go to the grocery, I sit in a different chair. Once I spend a day in each of the chairs, I’ll start over, but first will rearrange the chairs, close my eyes and spin around, thereby sufficiently confusing myself so that each chair will now seem like a new and wonderful experience.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I’ve been doing all my personal business online for years anyway, so now I’m burning all my mail, just in case it’s contaminated. It’s not really a big deal, except for the catalogs (good thing Sears stopped sending their whopper out in 1993), then it starts getting a little smokey.

And now, for the first time in thirty years, I cracked open some eggs today. They were just as I remembered them, but not at all like they are when someone at the diner brings them to my table, fully executed. And I did it in one try. (In anticipation of this day, I’ve been working out – especially wrist exercises.) Tomorrow, I’m going to do it again and, if all goes well, move to step two, scrambling them. The next day I might get adventuresome and add cheese, if I’m feeling particularly empowered. Then at some point, I’ll actually eat them. But I haven’t investigated that part online yet and I don’t want to get it wrong.

After that, the next logical step, given the increasingly frightening thought of going to the grocery, will be to start a chicken farm on my balcony (as soon as I get the nerve to go out on it) – two hens should be enough. Research tells me that I can get 5-7 years of laying from each, which should get me well past the end of any further extensions of the shelter-in-place order (I hope).

“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).

I read the news today, oh boy. So let’s talk about something else.

I’ve attended a class via Zoom and scheduled a piano lesson via FaceTime, and am now considering using one of those platforms for a much-needed haircut.

As sheltering-in-place lingers on, I find that I no longer have the need for clothes, so am considering turning my walk-in closet into a gym, complete with a sauna fueled by my humidifiers and space heaters.

I’ve memorized up to page 70 out of 2264 in Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary (2003), but hundreds of new words and definitions are being added each year, so I may never complete my task.

With inspiration from Iron Chef and the old Shell Wonderful World of Golf, I’ve constructed a miniature golf course out of pasta shells in my living room, but have no one to play with.

As demonstrated above, I have decided to start ending sentences with prepositions, with the hope that it will, like the more dangerous task of shaving with my non-dominant hand, help form new synapses between neurons in my brain (synaptogenes), with the ultimate goal of finishing the dictionary by increasing my brain function, somewhere short of the expansion, however, achieved by Scarlett Johansson in the movie Lucy.

And finally, each day, as boredom inevitably sets in, I consider cleaning my oven, which I’ve never used and defrosting my freezer, which has no frost.

Seeing two guys playing frisbee in the park reminded me of the under-appreciated 1994 Coen brothers movie, The Hudsucker Proxy, and made me wonder where all the people with their hula hoops are.

MLB is now considering playing quadruple-headers in an effort to play a full 162-game season. Knowing that such an intense schedule could give rise to an increased likelihood of injury, the league has retracted its ban on performance-enhancing drugs. In order to speed up play to squeeze four games into every day, it has eliminated manager challenges and trips to the mound; instituted a new rule whereby hitting a foul ball with two strikes results in a strikeout; eliminated commercials, except for products that can be bought online, given that all stores are closed anyway; and, in a move that also will alleviate the concerns over electronic sign-stealing, it has banned the giving of signs. The Houston Astros have announced their intention to appeal that decision, but since appeals are no longer allowed, they are expected to fail.

With the news that local jails are releasing hundreds of prisoners (and thus thousands nationwide) in an effort to protect other inmates and staff from the coronavirus, I’m waiting to see a conspiracy theorist declare that the virus was created in order to engineer a massive, elaborate jail break. If we really were living in a DC Comics world, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine the Joker masterminding such a scheme.

Now that Las Vegas has instituted drive-through peep shows and nude hand sanitizer wrestling, what’s next? Send your suggestions to Washington, where they’re trying to figure out ways to reinvigorate the economy.

I’m trying to limit my trips to the grocery store, so I’m stretching out my food supplies, but is my yogurt supposed to be turning green?

If baseball hadn’t announced a delay to the start of the season, would anybody have noticed?

Trying to find Purell is pure hell.

I’m thinking of buying an invisible-dog leash, so I can walk through the park without getting stopped by the police.

Then I’m going to get that invisible dog to teach me how better to sit and stare out the window all day.

Now that I’ve watched all eight Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies, what next? Why haven’t we had a movie teaming up the Avengers with James Bond?

I couldn’t get interested in the new television show Dispatches from Elsewhere, but I love its catchphrase – divine nonchalance. As Sally (Kristen Chenoweth) from You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown would say, that’s My New Philosophy.

a better night’s sleep. For the first time since the defecation hit the fan, I had trouble sleeping. But it wasn’t because I’m the Prisoner of Zenda, or because my IRA is so far in the red this year that it crept off the right side of the visible spectrum, or even because I consider myself to be an abject failure for not knowing the answer to 11 down in the last five consecutive New York Times crossword puzzles I worked on, but rather because I’ve been hit so hard emotionally by the four thousand ASPCA television commercials for neglected and abused animals that I’ve seen in the last ten days.

more room in my refrigerator, at least for a day. As I couldn’t sleep, I decided to grab my ID and head to Whole Foods for their senior hour, looking for some action. I’m proud to say I was the first one in the door and the first one out, maneuvering the aisles as if I were a stunt driver in Ford v Ferrari. I would have lingered, but they weren’t playing any oldies on the sound system and there were no two-for-one drink specials.

rid of my pet tapeworm, which will clean out the refrigerator too quickly. Think about the effect sheltering-in-place would have had on Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors. (Even with all the theaters closed, I can still sneak in references.)

someone to help me with the little things, like the intern employed by Seinfeld’s Kramer, who, like me, was “a solitary man with a messy apartment that may or may not contain a chicken.”