The Howdygram 2: China City had the gall to shut down on day one of the Coronavirus pandemic.

It’s a fresh, new day here at Howdygram headquarters. Today is Saturday, just a few minutes past “high noon,” Sam is asleep on the sofa, the weather outside is dark and depressing — no sunshine? what the fuck! — and I’m enjoying raspberry green tea and ordering tasty shit from Amazon. Because that’s what I do when I’m bored.

Because China City had the gall to shut down from day one of the Coronavirus pandemic — GAHHH! I’m having a NERVOUS BREAKDOWN! — here’s what I decided to order a little while ago from Amazon: 1) a case of eight Maruchan Teriyaki Beef Yakisoba Noodles; and 2) a case of six bowls of Maruchan Hot & Spicy Shrimp Ramen Noodle Soup. Incidentally, if you’ve never tried either of these products, you really should. They’re TERRIFIC.

I also ordered a package of sugar-free chocolate wafer cookies, because occasionally there are times when dessert can be equally as important as Asian food. (And sometimes a good Danny Kaye movie is better than food altogether!)

Once again, I’m trying to survive the COVID-19 pandemic by surrounding myself with “favorite things,” such as free fonts and high resolution digital background collections. I already have thousands of each … but it’s still never enough!

So, here’s my latest herd of free fonts. We’ve got some terrific display fonts (“Party Dance,” “Chicken Lovers”), scripts (“Style,” “Bellaboo,” “No. Seven,” “Montana”), hand-drawn fonts (“The Kiddos,” “Survent Atrious”), a traditional sans serif (“Stephanie”) and a layered font (“Smilen”). They’re all fabulous, and I know you’ll grow to love them as much as I do … particularly since they’re kosher for Passover and pair nicely with horseradish. You’ll find the requisite download links after the graphic. (FYI, “Montana” and “Stephanie” are two separate fonts in the same download folder, like a teeny-tiny font bundle.)

Chicken Lovers • Party Dance • Style Script • Bellaboo • Minerals

Survent Atrious • No. Seven • The Kiddos • Blamo • Rhapson • Smilen

The Woofey • Montana Stephanie

One of my favorite shops on Etsy.com (Things by Lary) had another half-price sale this weekend, so I treated myself to four collections that turned out to be far more beautiful than I expected. Wow.

42 Rose Gold Foils
32 seamless Glitter Net Overlays
100 Sparkling Chunky Glitter Textures
32 Radiant Gold Glass Textures

They’re all absolutely gorgeous, aren’t they?! I can’t wait to use them to design cool shit for The Howdygram Store, such as iPhone cases, greeting cards, night lights, padfolios, spiral notebooks, bathroom ceramics, light switch covers and so on. Stay tuned, because I’m itching to get started.

It’s early Sunday evening, and Sam is making a gigantic cheese omelet for two. He’s the king of omelets around here, and this is just about the only food he cooks from scratch. And he does a damn good job of it, too.

Originally we also wanted to throw in some of the freeze-dried breakfast sausage crumbles that we ordered from Thrive Life a couple of weeks ago when the Coronavirus hoo-hah first flared up, but we’ve had absolutely ZERO success rehydrating this crap! Instructions on the container tell you to allow 10 minutes in warm water, but it doesn’t take “minutes” at all … it takes HOURS! Tonight’s omelet, therefore, will be eggs and cheese, period. And if you continue reading below you’ll find my official Food Review for Senior Citizens.

I’ve been diddling again, boys and girls. While I don’t know whether or not you’ve been able to discern the latest changes, I’ll simply say this: I’VE ADDED FOUR PERCENT. This means, until about an hour ago, all of the darkest graphic areas in the Howdygram (subheads, sidebar section titles) were actually 96% — not 100% — black (i.e., charcoal gray). The illustration below demonstrates the difference. I decided to make the change because 100% is sharper, crisper and a lot more entertaining in general. (Plus, 100% black makes all the other colors “pop.”)

I’m probably not completely through with my tweaks, upgrades and color changes, so please hang in there, okay?

Sunday was definitely one for the record books around here, especially if you take a look at the complete list of everything I craved and ate. Holy shit.

Sam’s Choice Organic Cashew Butter
Pepper Jack Cheese Omelet
Strawberry Cheesecake
Pitted Greek Kalamata Olives (an entire jar, sans labels and liquid)
Campbell’s Tomato Soup
Banquet Chicken Pot Pie
Four-Cheese Rice-a-Roni
Quinoa with Sea Salt
Sugar-Free Cherry Cordials (two)

Please keep in mind, however, that I didn’t eat very much of anything on this list except the Greek olives. This is definitely my pandemic addiction.

Here’s the food review I promised you for Thrive Life’s Freeze-Dried Crumbled Pork Sausage. I honestly couldn’t do better than a two-chopper rating because we had no success rehydrating this stupid crap. Directions printed on the can say: “Add ¾ cup of warm water to 1 cup of sausage and let sit for 10 minutes, stir, and then let sit 5 minutes more until tender.” However, after soaking in warm water for HOURS the sausage was still rock-hard, annoying and virtually tasteless.