The Dallas County emergency order is in today's paper and there's something truly frightening to see in smudgy black and white where - in too much haste to retype the order? - the forbidding of gatherings of "500 persons or more" has been crossed out and amended to read "fifty." Then the entire paragraph explaining that this does not apply to, for instance, office buildings has also been XXXed out. (Which makes a certain architectural office I know that's refusing to let its employees work remote all the more maddening. It's unsafe.)
So here I am, typing, self-isolating like a good girl.
Yesterday I did briefly shop for food - and toilet paper, ha! - and model building supplies. Today I'll drop a couple pay checks at the bank only because I'm out for a doctor's appointment that, more and more, seems like a bad idea. But theater can be pretty hard on knees. In my case it's due to standing on ladders and stepping up and down and up and down onto stages raised juuuust a little too high for my short legs - some tendons or ligaments or something have stretched painfully once too often. For a few years it's been an occasional problem, now it's sore almost daily. Last week talking to a doctor about it seemed sensible... but today?
I also started the taxes, beginning with the tangle of my professional receipts. Always depressing. (Both the taxes and the tangle.)
On the brighter side, I'm rereading Ben Aaronovitch's new Rivers of London novel, False Value. It just came out last month after a long wait and it's good... maybe a bit dry though, sort of abstract, compared to others in the series, I think that's because he's setting up the next Big Bad for upcoming books and readers just can't have as much emotion invested yet as had accumulated in the earlier part of the series. Also, the world of computing is just not as visceral as the first, shocking encounters with magic and Punch or the Faceless Man. I still highly recommend his work, just be sure to start with Rivers of London.
I'm thinking of next rereading the new Stephen King, The Institute. (I race through books the first time and enjoy catching more nuance on a second read). But I'm looking around for a new novel - new to me anyway - preferably a series. Have you noticed the usefulness of a really gripping, page-turning, long series when times are difficult? I still have fondness for the Hunger Games books, simply because they engrossed me when I really needed distraction from a family health scare. There's a line in another Stephen King book (Misery) that describes a writer "typing until he made a hole in the page he could fall into." Well, a reader can certainly find the same escape hatch through the page, into the right book.
(That quote is paraphrased probably.)
I've done another pretty sketch for The Silver Chain:
Castle Wyvern view - copyright retained by Clare Floyd DeVries and J. Trask
I'm still looking at this one... it may get revised. Perhaps it's a bit too cheerful and sunlit? Then again, that's all the more contrast for the later, darker adventures.
At home we marked the first day of coronavirus seclusion (well, my first day because certain stupid offices are still open, endangering others) by a tastey long-prep-and-cooking dinner and drinking wee little Coronitas.
When stocking up include beer.
