Quarantine Diaries: Day 2

Oh, the joys of living with a mass murderer. This morning, even before my first cup of coffee, I got to dispose of two dead mice in our basement and a chipmunk from the back porch. Adding to the fun, the chipmunk was merely mortally wounded. It was mostly still but twitched about once every ten seconds or so. So I put it out of its misery. All part of being a servant of The Dark Lord.

Our household includes a loveable 100-pound puppy as well as two cats. One of the cats (Bootsie AKA Boots AKA Murder Kitty) is a stone-cold killing machine. Mice, birds, baby rabbits — his slaughter never ceases. His brother (Frankie AKA Frankenstein AKA Piglet) would probably starve to death if the humans failed to feed him.

^{The Dark Lord at rest.}

I watched Trump’s train wreck of an address to the nation last night, live-streamed on YouTube. Is it just me, or did his breathing sound unusually strained? Hmmmm... we know that he has been exposed to the coronavirus, might he be at Walter Reed on a ventilator a few weeks from now, or has a steady diet of Big Macs, fries, and chocolate shakes reinforced his immune system?

During his address, Dow futures dropped several hundred points and then this morning, when the market opened, fell off a cliff and tripped the circuit breakers that halted trading for a bit. Later, more free fall. The Federal Reserve Bank’s massive intervention reversed the fall for what seemed like all of twelve minutes. The DJIA ended the day down 2,352 points, with the biggest one-day percentage drop since 1987. But it wasn’t just equities. There was a bloodbath in the crypto space too with a sea of coins/tokens down 20, 30, and 40 percent for the day. Even precious metals got hit hard. The only bright spot in my portfolio was from a bearish bet I made a few weeks ago, ProShares UltraPro Short S&P500 (SPXU).

My self-imposed semi-quarantine has of course altered my normal day. I resisted the urge to hop in my car and go food shopping (I’m one of those strange people who actually enjoys wandering the grocery aisles). But I got to take our dog for a nice long walk and saw this lone genius out on the thin ice of Christmas Lake:

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