D.C. — along with nearly every other city — has responded quickly to the threat of the corona virus, announcing on Friday that schools and libraries would close for at least the next two weeks beginning on Monday. Gatherings of more than 250 people have been ceased, which means most cultural activities have shuttered, although bars remain open.

The universities told their students not to return from spring break and most tourists have wisely also remained home, which makes the region, which should be full of school groups pouring over our sidewalks and amiable suburbanites stopping two steps off the top of the metro escalators to consult their maps, oddly empty.

We were told on Thursday to prepare to work at home for the next two days, although most of us expect that that edict will also expand into April.

If Europe is any indication, this is not the end of the restrictions, but the beginning. Cities are particularly vulnerable for any transmissible illness, because we literally live on top of each other, so it won’t surprise me if we eventually build up to a “don’t leave home unless you’re going to the grocery store or for medical assistance” model.

I know these are reasonable precautions given this illness’ rapid spread, but it is not easy. The whole reason to live in a city is because of its amenities. No one actually enjoys living in the tiny amount of real estate allotted to each of us — and my subterranean dwelling is going to get to me fast once they tell us never to set foot outdoors again.

The one good thing that may come of this is that Rudi and I are going to have to do a serious tidy of the apartment. There’s no way we’re going to be able to function here 24 hours a day 7 days a week in its current state.

But at least we have the internet, right?

Honestly, this is just going to suck.

Three beautiful things from what has been a remarkably anxious week:

1. There are flowers everywhere.

2. As I was walking back from the local watering hole this evening, I passed a family on the main drag just as an ambulance went by. The little boy was so full of joyful excitement, that he imitated the siren and flashing lights with his whole body, running back to tell his father who was a few feet behind that he had just missed this tremendous vehicle.

3. Rudi and I went to two movies — Emma and My Spy — on back to back nights this week and enjoyed both quite a bit.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

That right there is not a nearly completed pair of Sock Madness socks, close to being finished by Saturday’s noon deadline so I can advance to the next round.

Nor is it a nearly finished single Sock Madness sock that will allow me to keep receiving patterns.

But what it is is a start to a sock I’m enjoying making. And that will just have to be enough this year.

I’m several chapters into The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, which I’d like to be enjoying more than I am. I am hopeful that now that we’ve introduced everyone and set up the plot the story will pick up a little more, but so far it’s a bit thin and thinks itself a bit more clever than it actually is. If it doesn’t improve, I may just let it go back to the library.

I finished Louise Penny’s Fatal Grace on audio and now have Tara Westover’s Educated to start and Helen Hoang’s The Bride Test to finish.

Head to As Kat Knits for a roundup of what others are reading and crafting.

Tonight on Twitter, a meme was going around asking us to share our top nine albums from the 1990s. Lists like that are arbitrary, and, much like any list, will vary from day to day as to what my response will include.

Like many of my Gen X friends, the ’90s was a crucial decade for me. It ran from high school, through college, and into my first years of adulthood — and my major years of concert attendance. But because my high school years extended into two decades, I had to check which decade some pivotal albums came out. (Maybe sometime soon I’ll consider my top 8 albums from the ’80s…)

But for tonight, these were my answers:

1. Boys on the Side soundtrack: While out with my volleyball teammates a couple weeks ago, we were considering all-important questions of places we wanted to visit and places we’d recommend. One asked if there was a specific song that we associated with being on vacation. I couldn’t think of one, but I associate this soundtrack with roadtrips and sunny days heading down the highway. This would be my convertible album, if I owned a convertible.
2. Rites of Passage, Indigo Girls: This isn’t my favorite Indigo Girls album, but is probably the one I know best.
3. Little Earthquakes, Tori Amos: Tori was the first artist I discovered in college and this angsty, heart-rending album epitomizes my first year.
4. Automatic for the People, REM: This was the first cd I bought just before heading off to college.
5. River of Dreams, Billy Joel: I can remember Grey Kitten and I going into Caldor’s to buy this the summer after my first year of college. “Lullabye (Good Night My Love)” is one of my favorite songs.
6. The Honesty Room, Dar Williams: This album brought me back to my folkie roots. Dar’s written many other great songs and albums that I’ve loved, but no more so than her first commercially successful one.
7. Beauty and the Beast soundtrack: What bookworm didn’t see Belle on the screen and immediately see herself reflected back at her? If someone offered me a yellow ballgown to this day, I would immediately say yes, because I would know that there were hours of reading and waltzing in a magnificent personal library in my future. Who’d have guessed, indeed…
8. New Moon Shine, James Taylor: J.T. has many great great songs that date back before I was born. But this album seems to finally find him feeling comfortable in his own skin and his own place in history, and I appreciate that.
9. Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morissette: If Tori started the early ’90s with a feminist yowl, Alanis picked it up in the later half of the decade, giving voice to so many of women in their 20s.

In true definitive list format, as soon as I was writing this I realized I’d left off a crucial album: Kenny Loggins’ Return to Pooh Corner. For years that album sang me to sleep and soothed me through stressful moments, and I don’t know how I could have overlooked it. Which album would it replace? Maybe J.T., if push came to shove. But no one is going to push or shove, and so my list comes in at a round ten.

Do you have nine albums from the 1990s you consider to be part of you? Or a similar list from another decade that’s more meaningful to you?

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share authors we have fun following on social media. I don’t know that I have particular fun following these folks on Twitter, but I do follow them:

1. Rainbow Rowell
2. Jason Reynolds
3. Angie Thomas
4. Laura Lippman
5. Tim Federle
6. Becky Albertalli
7. Adam Silvera
8. Eliot Schrefer
9. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
10. Jasper Fforde

Do you follow any authors on social media?