Corner of Bourbon & Division

 

 

Okay. There is not a ton going on with me that I haven’t already covered.

 

Clerking for Ministry & Counsel is proving pretty challenging. The one guy whose wife appears to be using him as a puppet/mouthpiece has been kind of AWOL for a while, and instead of that taking the pressure off, his wife has decided to insert herself back into M&C (she was the clerk a few years ago) and is trying to “force” me to do things her way. So I’ve been having delicate conversations in which I am trying to let her feel heard while simultaneously maintaining boundaries and not catering to her every whim. She’s already produced a two-page written document about how much she hates the hybrid Meetings (I’m paraphrasing), and insulting the people who attend online (she called them “auxiliary” to the Meeting, which made my blood boil), and is insisting that the proposed Claremont Dialogue be help on the date and time of her choosing, which may simply just not be practical at this point. Bah.

 

We’re having a minor drama with a new attender, who shared personal ministry during a Meeting when I was at work that had a lot of people worried she might be having thoughts of suicide. The two active remaining members of M&C spoke to her and asked her about it point blank, and she denied it. She then apparently went on a fairly long tirade about how the Meeting needed to become vegan as it’s “the only ethical choice,” and they gently suggested that not everyone in the Meeting would agree with her, although of course everyone would respect her choices and do their best to accommodate her (we have lots of vegan Friends!). We thought that was the end of it, but it seems she took the conversation very poorly, and she emailed the new M&C email that I created and said she was “accused” of being suicidal and that she was ordered not to talk about being vegan because others would disagree with her. Which, uh, is not what happened. Anyway. I wrote back and am waiting to hear what she hopes will happen next in order to help the situation.

 

I did finish the first draft of the State of Society Report and have sent it off to the Clerks for review at the next Meeting for Worship for Business, which is this coming Sunday. Hopefully it won’t require too many edits once Meeting has finished ripping it apart.

 

In the meantime, I still haven’t heard whether I’m still going to have a job at the end of March. I am definitely not stressed about this at all. Nope. Not one bit. Apparently if they don’t respond by the end of February that means that my contract will automatically renew, but even then it’s uncertain whether they’ll renew me for one year, two years, or just four months to cover summer vacation and training. WHO KNOWS.

 

In brighter news, I’ve been doing a decent job at exercising on a regular basis. I’ve been a bit hit and miss with the weight lifting, but I’ve been pretty diligent about getting on the treadmill and have steadily increased my walking speed until I can comfortably walk 2mph and still work without getting noticeably out of breath. I am in fact writing this while on the treadmill! I’m continuing to lose weight after the surgery, albeit more slowly than my numbers-obsessed brain would like, but my brain doesn’t necessarily know what’s good for me. When I visited my parents a couple of weeks ago I took advantage of the fact that their condo has a pool in the basement and went for a 1km swim two days in a row. I was very sore afterward, but it reminded me how much I enjoy swimming, so I will be looking into finding a local pool where I can do laps or something in the coming weeks.

 

My parents are doing pretty well, overall. They haven’t said anything about moving into a smaller apartment for a while, and I’m not sure if that means they’ve given up on the idea for now, in the face of political uncertainty which might make the value of their condo plummet (and thus prevent them from living off the interest of the proceeds). I am not convinced they have the stomach and the energy for a big move like that anyway. My mother is turning 89 in a couple of weeks, and my father will be 85 in September, and moving is extremely hard and stressful, even if they hire a company to pack and unpack everything for them. They need to downsize most of their furniture and a bunch of other belongings, and while they have been making some progress in getting rid of some stuff (mostly books), I am having trouble imagining them “sacrificing” all the antique furniture and art pieces they’ve been collecting for over 60 years each. You never know, they might surprise me!

 

 

I have been torn between trying to purchase farm-related equipment now, while I still have a job, and saving money. I am leaning toward the purchases, because if I can get everything set up in time, then I will theoretically have the means to grow and raise more food at home in the spring and summer and preserve a lot of it to hopefully last us through the winter. I have so far been kind of failing at the whole “eat what you grow” thing, but as long as I don’t lose the house as a result of being unemployed, then I have a pretty good chance of setting up some more permanent infrastructure to help with becoming more sustainable, at least from a food standpoint. After that, depending on finances, I will start looking into becoming more energy efficient and sustainable—a wood burning stove, maybe some solar panels, or some sort of backup generator for the house.

 

I’m trying not to bite off more than I can chew, but the temptation is very high. If the weather cooperates, the optimistic part of me wants to spend every spare hour of sunlight I have available building infrastructure in the spring like the fence I so desperately need, raised beds, chicken coops, rabbit hutches, etc. I also need to set up a good water catchment system, since our area is prone to drought in the summer and I plan on having a fair bit of livestock that will require a lot of water. Given how much time each of these projects could potentially take, I am a little worried that it’ll just take all summer to get things built and I won’t be able to actually get the livestock installed before the weather turns again. We shall see, I guess. I am, as we all know, extremely prone to wildly overestimating both my abilities and energy levels as well as wildly underestimating the time it will take me to do stuff. So, this could all be a serious problem for me when the snow melts and the mud dries enough for me to be able to start work.

 

I really hope I can live up to my own ridiculous standards for once. I am pretty sure that the main barrier I’m facing is my woeful lack of good physical condition, which is one of the many reasons I’ve been hitting the treadmill and the weights to a lesser extent. If I can manage to do more building and assembling without throwing out my back or otherwise being in constant physical discomfort, then I might have a snowball’s chance in hell of accomplishing what I want. These days I have found I have a very low tolerance for manual labour before it becomes painful or at least intolerably uncomfortable because I am just not flexible in the slightest and my back objects to bending for more than five minutes at a time. So I need to drastically improve my endurance and flexibility if I want to get things done.

 

 

*gestures wildly*

 

I don’t even know, friends.

 

It’s the Olympics, yay! The world is on fire, aah! The Epstein Files are being released but not released but redacted but not redacted but sort of kind of something something can we overwhelm everyone with the horror? ICE is gunning down people in the streets and not complying with lawful orders to release people in their custody. Trump has threatened to seize half of the Gordie Howe bridge which Canada paid for in its entirety and has an agreement with the State of Michigan, because somehow Canada has been “unfair” to the USA, even though Trump himself approved the bridge in 2017.

 

Yesterday British Columbia had a mass shooting in which 9 people died and 25 more were injured. The whole country is reeling, because mass shootings are rare (but not unheard of), and already the internet is alight with misinformation. It’s all so goddamned terrible.

 

IT’S A LOT.

 

Okay, this has gotten pretty long. I’m going to leave it there and come back later with more updates.

 

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

 

 

Okay, I missed a few days, there. I blame the sleep deprivation, because I just forgot about posting for three days and only remembered a few minutes ago. Oops? I’m going to give myself a bit of grace, there, because the last few days of night shifts were rough AF, as the kids are saying these days.
 

There’s actually not much to report since I last posted, at least. The State of Society worship sharing went well, even though I had some moments of frustration beforehand. The current set of Friends who are “in charge” of things are really bad at communicating with me. It could just be that my very neurodivergent brain is not picking up on all the neurotypical subtext that’s happening, but they act as if I should somehow read their mind and know when they are going to deviate from the standard operating procedure, which I cannot do. My ESP has never been as well developed as other people would like.
 

The same Friend who has been bitching about hybrid meetings suggested, less than half an hour before the worship sharing, that we should postpone it, because there was a clothing swap happening at the same time which had been “on the calendar for a really long time!” I had to forcefully remind myself that the Peace Testimony is an important part of being a Quaker, and that it would be very un-Quakerly indeed of me to reach through the computer screen and strangle her. Luckily another member of M&C who was there in person gave her a very firm “no,” because we have very tight deadlines for the SoS report. When the Friend pushed back, the M&C member gently but firmly told her, “If you would like to come to the worship sharing late, that is a choice you are welcome to make, but we will be starting on time.” Shockingly, she did not come late.
 

I tried to attend the Continuing Meeting of M&C in the afternoon, but the Zoom link didn’t work for me, and since it was right in the time that I needed to be preparing for work, I decided after 15 minutes of trying that I didn’t want to spend any more time on it. I had already been up for 26 hours by then and did not have the wherewithal to fight with emails and Zoom and what have you. I will try again next month.
 

I don’t think I mentioned it before, but KK gave me an Oodie for my birthday, which for those of you who are not immersed in American apparel companies, is basically an oversized hoodie made out of fleece that is extremely cozy. Mine is teal coloured and has lily pads, tadpoles, and frogs in various normal-to-weird poses on it. It is VERY cozy. Knowing that I was exhausted after not sleeping since the previous day’s threshing session on Israel and Palestine and the Apartheid-free communities pledge, I anticipated that I was going to get very cold at work. I am generally a person who runs hot unless I’m very tired or getting sick. So, I decided to bring it to work with me, which was both a genius idea and a terrible idea. It was genius in that I was very, very warm and cozy. It was a terrible idea in that I was so warm and cozy that I kept nodding off at my desk because the shift wasn’t very busy and so I didn’t have anything to work on to keep me awake. My shift partner was very understanding about it, luckily.
 

We had a mandatory Town Hall meeting on Monday, where our execs blue smoke up our asses and then pissed on us and told us it was raining. Okay, I am exaggerating ever so slightly, but it was 45 minutes of them patting themselves on the back for all their cost saving measures, and oh, by the way, we did sort of kind of lie a little bit when we said we wouldn’t be cutting jobs and your managers will be in touch with you over the next few days to tell you if you’ve been affected. Oh, but WE EMPATHIZE WITH YOU and we want to make sure you know WE’RE IN THIS TOGETHER except that, of course, we execs are keeping our jobs, and it just sucks to be you, sorry not sorry. Blech.
 

Yesterday I got to sleep in a bit, then puttered around the house, then had a therapy appointment, and then I went for a walk with my friend Jan and her dog Lightfoot as well as Peggy and Pixie. It was a very nice walk, but poor Peggy was having a “clacky hip day” (she has hip dysplasia) and was struggling a bit by the end. We let them romp around in a field at the end of the walk, and Lightfoot and Pixie had a blast chasing each other through the snow, but Peggy was tired and sore and didn’t want to run, so she got quite cold standing still, and we called it pretty soon so that she could go inside and warm up. Next time I will bring the Brittanies’ winter coats with me to help keep them warm for longer. They’re usually okay in the winter, but I think we pushed Peggy a little too hard.
 

Today was a very quiet day too. I did some shoveling, took the recycling away from the curb because they changed the schedule on me over the holidays and so I’ve been putting the wrong recyclables out and my cardboard boxes were blowing all over the countryside. I spent most of the day hanging out quietly with the dogs, took some time to refill the quail’s food and water, and did some dishes. Nothing to write home about.

KK has bought herself a walker with wheels (purple, naturally) and is looking into acquiring a motorized scooter as well, for getting around outside the house. We’re not sure if our insurance will pay for both or only one, so she’s holding off making a claim until she gets the scooter and will go from there. Hopefully that will improve her pain levels while outside the house, because that’s been an increasing problem for her for the past few months. She got x-rays taken a few weeks ago, and the arthritis has progressed to her hips and her back, which is not good news. I’m hoping she and her doctor can discuss better pain management than what she’s been getting so far (which basically boils down to a lot of NSAIDs and Tylenol Arthritis). I don’t know at all what the future holds there.
 

2-State of the Smallholding
 

Apart from shoveling and quail, there’s nothing major on the home front. Given KK’s deteriorating health and pain levels, I am seriously considering talking to our local handyman about what it would cost to install a ramp in front of the house. Apart from KK my friend Amy is also a wheelchair user, and my mother’s mobility is getting steadily worse as well, so it would make a certain amount of sense to make the house more accessible. That being said, cost is going to be an issue, because I am not made of money, and while there are theoretically grants available for making your dwelling more accessible, I am above the income threshold where that would be available to me. The threshold is very low, meaning I would basically have to be unemployed or making minimum wage to qualify, which is luckily not the case. It’s one of those situations where I don’t have enough money to afford the thing, but I have too much income on paper to qualify for any kind of assistance in affording the thing. Oh well. So, yes, I will be taking to AJ (the aforementioned local handyman) and asking for an estimate and we will go from there.
 

3-State of the news
 

The entire internet is creaming its pants about Mark Carney’s speech at Davos yesterday, and all I can do is roll my eyes at all the people who apparently cannot see beyond the surface level of his words. The speech was a very pretty one, and definitely an understated “fuck you, we’re not playing with you anymore!” to the USA, so naturally Trump has his panties in a twist over it. However, anyone who knows even a little bit about Canada’s history, its current political state, and the current state of the world, would have to side-eye that speech quite a lot. It was a speech that was designed to comfort the comfortable, and all those comfortable people at Davos gave it a standing ovation. There have been a few very well written critiques already, and I may post or link them in future entries for future reference (because the internet is only forever for things you never want to see again).
 

*sigh*
 

I’m hoping to get a good night’s sleep and get a bunch of stuff done tomorrow. I would like to get in a workout, do some tidying around the house, and I need to do a bunch of work on the State of Society Report and finish up my D&D character’s history to send to my DM. So much to do, so little time!
 

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

 

Holy Hannah, I am TIRED, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. I woke up on time for the threshing session and managed to stay alert and pay attention for the whole two hours of discussion. It was the usual blend of informative and frustrating, the way all group discussions tend to be for me. I’ve found lately that I don’t have as much patience as I used to for listening to people who don’t listen to instructions or speak only to repeat the same thing four other people have already said or to only talk about themselves when the subject matter is about a much larger issue.

 

This is not a flex, as the youths say these days, it’s a character flaw that I am working to correct in myself. I need to find more compassion and understanding and make space for people who are interacting with the world in a way that I think is incorrect. I recognize that this is an example of rigidity in my thinking, but I’m having trouble with the praxis part of things these days. I don’t have the emotional reserves to hold that much space for people I don’t know well and who are getting under my skin for their perceived flaws. Work in progress, I guess.

 

I got the announcements done for tomorrow’s Quaker Meeting, and since no one from M&C has volunteered to be the Greeter, I will have to forgo most of my sleep tomorrow in order to get up in time for the start of Meeting. If I’m lucky I may manage to get a one hour nap before Meeting, and then I will have to be awake for the rest of the day until I get home around 08:00 Monday morning. I will have to invest in some caffeine, I think, to make sure I get through my shift and also don’t kill myself accidentally while driving home. It’s not ideal.

 

Speaking of work, there is a mandatory all-staff meeting on Monday at 13:30, because of course there is. So that means even less sleep, since that’s the time when I would have been recovering from my night shifts. *sigh* It’s a meeting addressing government cuts and what’s called “Work Force Adjustment,” which is the government’s fancy way of saying “layoffs.” This doesn’t affect me directly, as WFA only applies to indeterminate employees and I am a term employee. They can simply not renew my contract, and it ends there, whereas an indeterminate employee subjected to WFA is subject to different regulations and still has some rights. Still, it will be interesting to see what our execs have to say, since they swore up and down that they would be addressing budget shortfalls without resorting to cutting positions, and I am quite sure that that was horseshit. I am cynically curious as to how they are going to spin this.

 

In unrelated news, I have been putting off three things of varying levels of importance because they all involve having to make phone calls to people I don’t know. The least important is calling a local(ish) hairdresser to address the absolute disaster that my hair has become in the past year (it’s been at least that long since my last cut, and our well water is very hard and does my poor hair no favours). I also need to make a long overdue dentist appointment and am hoping to find someone local(ish) so I don’t have to drive all the way to Ottawa every time I need to get work done. I haven’t been to the dentist in a long time and am quite sure that my teeth are… not in great shape. I had a referral years ago to a periodontist for receding gums, and since I didn’t have $10,000 at the time to spend on treatment (still don’t), I can only imagine things have gotten worse since then.
 

Last but not least I need to make an appointment with my doctor. She and several other doctors left the clinic where I was a patient for over 10 years without so much as a by-your-leave, moved even further west from where I live (so that now it will take me at least an hour and a half to drive there), and are now charging an arm and a leg for a bunch of services they used to offer for free at my previous clinic. I was never offered the option of staying with my previous clinic, which is very frustrating, and now I can either pay out the nose and individually for things like forms and faxed prescriptions or pay a yearly “flat fee” for the privilege of accessing medical services. I fucking hate the slow creep of privatization in our healthcare system, it SUCKS. And of course when they moved their booking system was down for nearly six weeks and I can’t even access it without having to call first. I was supposed to get an appointment six weeks after my surgery, but since there was no way to contact them (no phone, no online system), it’s now been three months with no follow-up to make sure that, for instance, my blood pressure medication doesn’t make me violently ill the same way it did to KK. *sigh*

 

If I had even a little bit more energy (and a lot less anxiety!) I’d consider running for office, because things have absolutely gone to shit in this province and if I’m going to bitch about it I should probably try to do something about it. Of course, I don’t think I’d win. I am a terrible public speaker with the charisma of a boiled potato. However, I feel like the effort needs to be made in some way. Of course, I’d probably have to go and lock down all the fanfiction I wrote all those years ago, which all seems like a lot of work. ;)

 

 

The water heaters I got for the quail somehow got unplugged, so the poor things had no water when I check them this morning—everything was completely frozen over. I plugged everything back in and added some fresh water to tide them over while I waited for everything to melt again. I have no idea how it got unplugged—the only explanation I can think of is that I must have accidentally pulled on the extension cord when I was changing out the food and water at some point.

 

Sometime tomorrow I also need to make a point of putting out all the paper and cardboard recycling as well. I missed the last collection day, and things have really started to pile up.

 

There isn’t much else going on right now. I’ve been very passively trying to think of how to get help with “farming” things now that KK appears to have more permanently injured herself. She’s looking into getting herself both a walker and a motorized scooter to help her get around outside the house, and whereas in the past she was able to at least walk over to the garage to turn the light for the quail on and off and sometimes even check their water and food levels, she now either can’t or won’t do it. That means that when I’m working evening shifts or weekend night shifts, or in cases when I’m visiting my parents in Montreal, I will need to find someone else to come look after the quail and eventually the other animals I want to get. The original plan was that I was going to be primarily responsible for all the smallholding stuff, but that KK would be my backup on the rare occasions I wasn’t available or if I was ever ill. Obviously that’s no longer the case, so I need to find a new solution for that problem. 

 

 

There hasn’t been anything really new since my last post, just updates on the current (very) long list of global garbage fires. Greenland, Ukraine, Iran, Palestine… it’s a depressingly long list, really.

 

Our Prime Minister is now in Doha, talking trade with Qatar of all places. After China, I suppose it wasn’t that big of a stretch for him to decide that we can absolutely ignore all those pesky human rights violations and atrocities if it means making the big bucks. *sigh* I was already side eyeing the deal with China a little bit, but Qatar is in a league of its own when it comes to human rights violations. I remember the horror stories that came out during the last FIFA cup, and I am disappointed but not surprised that our PM continues to prove himself a Conservative wrapped in a Liberal trenchcoat.

 

Okay, time to get some other stuff done. I have to figure out a reading for tomorrow’s Quaker Meeting, and then if there’s time I have some personal projects I want to work on. I need to write up the background for my new D&D character, and I’m also working with some other people on a Soopar Seekrit Prodgikt which could possibly turn into a TV show (probably not, but the chances are not zero), so I have some writing to do this week.
 

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

 

 

 

You know, the Almanac swore that we were going to have an especially dry winter, which had me all sorts of worried about drought next summer, but it sure doesn’t *feel* like a dry winter. I think we very slightly exceeded the average for December and we’ve had several inches (I don’t know exactly how many) since last night with no sign of the snow stopping until tomorrow. Now, maybe the “dry winter” means we won’t have much snow from here on out, so I will reserve judgment for the moment, but I have been shoveling way more snow than I was led to believe I would.

 

Yesterday was a day of even less sleep than Wednesday. It was slow going to get home because of the snowstorm, and I had a bunch of things to do. As I’m pretty sure I mentioned in my previous post, I decided it would be a good idea to run some errands before going home because I needed to get gas anyway. I did that, then wandered around Canadian Tire and picked up some not-quite-essentials: a small plunger, a small drain snake, two more water storage containers (more on that later), and a few impulse buys in the shape of some wrist weights, new scrubby brushes for the dishes (one of ours broke and the other is on its last legs after many years of loyal service), and an apple corer/slicer that was on sale that will hopefully make my life a lot easier next year when I’m processing the apples I harvest from the local trees.

 

Then, probably in a fit of madness, I decided to stop by Ritchie’s Feed & Seed on the way home. In fairness I am down to my last 5-gallon bucket of quail feed, and because of my work schedule it would mean a deliberate 2-hour round trip to Ottawa just to get a bag sometime in the next two weeks. This way I at least got to save time and gas, even if it meant getting home even later than I’d planned. As I mentioned, we got a bunch of snow dumped on us today, and driving home was a much slower go. I arrived close to 11:00 and did a bunch of shoveling, because otherwise getting into the house was going to be a challenge.

 

I had originally planned to take a nap for an hour or two before my appointment with the bariatric clinic, but since that appointment was at 11:30, that did not happen. Instead, I finished shoveling, let the dogs out, and logged on a few minutes early. I thought I was supposed to meet with the nurse practitioner, but it turned out to be with the nutritionist instead. Not a big deal, really. I asked about my blood test results and she said she’d spoken with the nurse practitioner and that they are not worried about my values as a certain amount of fluctuation is to be expected in the first 3-6 month post-surgery especially.

 

I finally got to sleep around 1:00pm, but Rika (KK’s chihuahua) decided that I was not allowed to keep sleeping. She started scratching at my face a couple of hours after until I got up and let the dogs out to pee, so I put her in KK’s bedroom in the hopes that she would settle on the bed and nap. No such luck. She barked and squeaked and shrieked and threw herself bodily at the door at intervals until I finally gave it all up as a bad job and just got up. So, in short, I am quite sleep deprived. I’m hoping to get a decent amount of sleep today since this weekend will involve next to no sleep due to all my [censored] Quaker commitments. 

 

Work has been quite busy tonight. I may have to cut this post short so that I have time to finish and post it before the end of my shift.

 

I’ve taken a break after finishing the last Expanse novel and listened to Where Are the Children by Mary Higgins Clark, which was a slightly jarring change of pace. It was a fun thriller, but a lot of it felt a little dated, and I couldn’t tell if the rampant misogyny was intentional on the part of the author or just simply a product of an author writing in 1970s America. I’ve only ever read one or two of her books, but they are quick and easy reads, so I may continue with some more if I can find them.

 

 

I feel very lucky to have a generous neighbour who comes and clears our driveway with his tractor whenever it snows. He has saved me so much work already this winter! I don’t want to take it for granted, however, so I will have to whip up a baked good or something as a thank you soon.

 

Something has gone wrong with one of the quail waterers, because I’ve noticed it gets emptied within hours compared to the other two which take anywhere from 2-3 days to be emptied (for a comparable number of quail using them). It doesn’t have a leak, so maybe the quail are flinging the water around or maybe causing it to leak as they use it somehow.

 

Today’s plan after I get some sleep is to head to the Martintown Market for more produce and maybe stop by Alexandria for a few other essentials I can’t get at the market. I don’t know if I’ll make it or just opt for more sleep. We’ll see how much willpower I have to drag my sorry carcass out of bed later. The market only opens at 4pm on Fridays, so it’s not like I can go before then anyway.

 

 

I’ve been a bit under a rock today due to all the errands and appointments and aborted attempts at sleep.
 

Iran’s complete internet blackout is in its second week. European military personnel have started arriving in Greenland in response to the US’s threats, which does not bode well. Trump has threatened to use the Insurrection Act in Minneapolis and has apparently declared that the US “shouldn’t even have an election,” surprising exactly no one who has been paying attention to his regime. Maria Corina Machado gave her fucking Novel Peace Prize to Trump, presumably trying to play nice so he’ll “allow” her to actually run the country that fucking well elected her. It’s so gross. And Russia has been targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in their continuing efforts to annex the country.

 

That’s it for now, I think.

 

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

 

Yes, it’s only been a couple of hours since my last post, but since I’m working night shifts I figured I would take advantage of the relative peace and quiet to do a bit of writing. As such, I expect this will be a short post, but it will allow me to feel less rushed when I update tomorrow night so that I don’t feel compelled to backdate my post. I know I don’t have to, but it feels weird and wrong to post on the “wrong” date. There’s probably some rigid thought processes in there that I should unpack at some point in the future.

 

This is another update from the treadmill at work. There’s a sign-up sheet for all the treadmills so that people don’t double-book during the day or keep the treadmills for longer than their allotted time slot, but so far this year my name is the only one on the sign-up sheet and I haven’t even been using it during the day, since I’ve been exclusively working evenings and night shifts for the past two weeks and change. I know at least one other employee is using them, but he apparently doesn’t seem to feel the need to use the sign-up sheet. I’ve been diligently filling it out because this is a pilot project, and collecting accurate data is important so that they will continue to provide the means for employees to be able to implement healthier habits at work. I want to encourage my work when they do good things! Anyway, I still like the treadmill at work. I can do a gentle 1 mph rate for a couple of hours without any difficulty, and although my personal data isn’t comprehensive enough to draw a good conclusion yet, I am tentatively hypothesizing that I feel a bit more energized after the shifts when I use the treadmill. Obviously more study is needed, but I am cautiously optimistic.

 

On an unrelated note, I’ve been wondering about recurring dreams lately. My dreams don’t recur in the classical sense, but I have noticed recurring themes over the years. I have a lot of dreams about travelling, about taking public transit (usually buses but sometimes the metro or a train), and about moving house. I also have a kind of recurring dream in which I discover a pet or multiple pets that I’ve somehow forgotten about that’s either died or else managed to reproduce (usually hamsters) and are now overrunning part of my home. I can trace all of these themes going back about 25 years, or ever since I moved out of my parents’ home and started living on my own. Also, I don’t know about you, dear readers, but I have lots of dreams in which I am watching events unfold like a story being told to me, rather than my being the POV character. Interestingly, in the dreams with recurring themes I am almost always the POV character, but not in the “stand-alone” dreams. I have also had a lot of the “classic” anxiety dreams of being in school for final exams and realizing I haven’t attended all semester, teeth falling out, etc., but those ones aren’t as common for me. I don’t know what any of it means, I’ve never been much into dream interpretation, although I do find it interesting in a vague way. I don’t think my dreams have any psychic or supernatural meaning but subscribe to the more common understanding that they’re just a way for the brain to process information it absorbed the previous day. That being said, I’m not sure how typical my experience is compared to others. Brains are weird, y’all.

 

I’ve been making my way through The Expanse audiobooks. I am really enjoying the series, even though it’s a little bit “crunchier” than what I usually read. I’m finding the worldbuilding reminiscent of C.J. Cherryh, although not the same at all in terms of the contents. It’s more of a vague vibe than anything else. I should do a C.J. Cherryh re-read after this. The Expanse novels have been a bit of a slow go, as the novels are quite long and I’ve been listening to them in audio format. I will confess to listening to them at increased speed, because the narrator is a bit slow for my liking, even if it does make the voices sound a bit odd and distorted. The novels themselves are compelling but often have parts that bog down seemingly interminably before the pace picks up again. I’m on Book 7 out of 9 (Eeeeeey, inadvertent Star Trek reference!), not counting any of the novellas, and this book began with a 20-year time skip, and I’m not sure what to make of it. Time skips can be tricky to navigate, and I’m only just starting the story, so time will tell. The skip probably means that my favourite character has died of old age, but there’s no confirmation of this and it is set in the future, so she might still be alive if people in the future have significantly longer lifespans (I don’t recall it being mentioned one way or the other in previous novels). I guess I shall have to wait and see!

 

 

Obviously, I’m still at work, so I don’t have any actual updates about the property. However, the new coworker who brought me borscht and I had a conversation about urban chickens and other poultry, because he’s thinking about getting some chickens. I warned him that I’m far from an expert but that I was willing to ask more experienced friends any questions for which I don’t have a solid answer. He then very generously offered to help me build the new chicken coop(s) I want to put in place this summer. Now, I don’t know whether he is the kind to follow through on this sort of promise, nor do I even know if we’ll still be in touch come the summer, since I may not be employed here anymore, but it was a very nice thought.

 

Our conversation reminded me that I’ve been planning to research more chicken coop plans online and find ones that are beginner-friendly while also meeting the chickens’ needs and my needs. And other poultry too, obviously, but my plan is to start with chickens. I’m hoping I’ll be able to snag a bunch of birds at auction over the summer. There are also plenty of Facebook groups that seem like they will provide some good leads on acquiring some lovely heritage breeds.

 

It's actually quite interesting to see how many of my coworkers have similar interests to mine in terms of growing their own gardens, acquiring a small number of livestock, and generally living a semi-independent lifestyle. It’s been nice to find like-minded people at the office. Several of them are also D&D geeks like me, which is delightful and hilarious when we all get going talking about nerdy things.

 

 

You will be relieved to know that nothing of substance has happened in the past couple of hours, so I will leave this section to be update after I’ve had a chance to sleep and then do other things.

 

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

 

 

I got called in for overtime tonight, as I mentioned in my previous post. The OT money is nice (albeit not as much as it could be since it’s “only” an extra four hours this week), so I will take what I can, when I can, especially since I might be unemployed come April. Every little bit of extra money helps, after all. (I’m totally not stressed about being unemployed. Nope. Totally fine, nothing to see here, move along.)

 

The supervisor on duty made a bit of an oopsie with the OT today, which is hilarious but also a little annoying. I am the “early” shift tonight, which means my shift partner arrives at midnight and I come in an hour before. I was asked to come in at 8:00pm to cover a few hours, but they forgot or didn’t notice that the person who was working evenings was ALSO the early shift, and therefore scheduled to leave at 11:00pm, leaving me alone for an hour with only a trainee as backup. OOPS. We are risk-managing the situation, because it would have meant approving another hour of OT otherwise, because it’s impractical to ask someone to come in to cover that one hour, since it would take them longer than an hour to even get to work. Yay risk management! /o\

 

Luckily tonight hasn’t been too busy, and weirdly enough this same situation happened to me at the RCMP AND we happened to have a proper crisis happen when I was alone with a trainee. I handled it like a fucking champ at the time, and I actually had a lot of fun (it was the kind of “crisis” where no one got hurt and no one’s life was immediately at risk, which is the best kind of crisis to have!). Whenever I go to job interviews, it’s my go-to answer for the almost universal question of “Tell us about a time when you had to manage a stressful situation at work!” and it never fails to impress people. :)

 

Other than that, there’s not a ton to report. I did find a suspicious rusty looking stain on my shower floor today, which makes me think either Octavia or Juno might have a urinary tract infection. I really hope not, but cats hide illnesses super well, and Juno hasn’t been gaining much weight back since her dental surgery at the end of last May, unlike Octavia who has filled out again nicely. So I bought some hydrophobic sand/cat litter and a couple of urine sample collection kits and my cunning plan is to sequester each cat separately to see whether I find bloody urine (KK tells me she’s found diarrhea in the litter boxes, but it’s impossible to tell who from) or anything else, and then once I have identified the victim I will call our local vet to schedule an appointment and bring a urine and/or stool sample with me. Ah, the glamorous life of a pet owner.

 

I keep swearing to myself that I will stop burning the candle at both ends during my night shift weeks, and then life keeps throwing responsibilities at me. It’s very annoying. So in spite of my best efforts, I will be sacrificing my sleep for several days this week. Tomorrow afternoon I have meeting with another member of M&C to discuss a workshop we both went to on resolving conflicts in Meetings, and we’ll be preparing a report to present first to M&C and then to Ottawa Monthly Meeting if there is interest there. Then on Wednesday at 10:00am we have a Worship Sharing for Health concerns, which is a fancy Quaker name for a support group for people dealing with both acute and chronic illnesses, as well as people who are caretakers for ill and disabled people. But since I’ll be getting home around 8:00am it means I’ll get maybe an hour of sleep before I have to attend, and then go back to sleep afterward, which makes for a pretty broken “night.”

 

Then on Thursday at 11:00am I have my three-month follow-up after my bariatric surgery (thank goodness it’s a virtual appointment, at least!). It’s the whole reason I went to get blood tests done on Saturday. I already got my results back, and my hemoglobin, MCH and RDW are all out of whack (albeit only marginally so), meaning I am probably back to being slightly anemic. *sigh* I’ve always struggled with my iron levels, and I knew this was a risk with the surgery. Boo. I will chat with the nurse practitioner on Thursday about what to do about this. I also have slightly elevated ALT (2 U/L higher than normal), which the internet tells me is potentially a sign of liver cell damage like fatty liver disease. Unfortunately, the internet’s solutions are to drink less alcohol (I already don’t drink anymore and haven’t in a year, and before that I could count on my fingers the number of drinks I had in a year), to eat more fruit and vegetables (yes, already doing that) stop taking OTC pain meds like acetaminophen (I haven’t had any in, like, two months), drink coffee (I’m not really supposed to drink much coffee now due to the risk of ulcers), and consume more folic acid. I will check with the nurse practitioner about that too, I guess. Stupid body, I am TRYING to take better care of it, and this is how it repays me! :P

 

Speaking of trying to take better care of my body, I got in another workout today using FitBod. The app is hilariously optimistic about how much weight it thinks I should be able to manage with my noodle arms. 15 to 18lbs for each exercise, whereas I can barely manage 10 right now. Luckily it allows me to modify the weights in the exercise, so I can track my progress a little better. I think I will be happy if I can progress to the prescribed weights by the end of the month. My hope is that by the end of the year I will be using the maximum amount of weight allowed by the locking dumbbells I bought a couple of weeks ago (which is 50lbs, for those of you following along at home). I think that’s a pretty reasonable goal over 12 months. I will be hitting the treadmill at work tonight as well, maybe in a couple of hours when the 2:00/3:00am blahs kick in, especially after I didn’t get a chance to nap before work today because of the OT.

 

I began experimenting with different forms of wraps today. I love wraps so much, they are often a go-to for me for breakfast, but my new stomach does NOT like flour-based tortillas. They make the new stomach super duper unhappy, to the point where I often have to lie down afterward for at least an hour and wait for things to stop hurting. It’s not ideal, but I keep hoping against hope that today might be the day I tolerate them again! Alas. Anyway, I consulted Reddit and got a bunch of neat suggestions. One person suggested I try egg wraps, and since I wasn’t planning on a grocery run today I decided to make my own at home, since it’s pretty straightforward: two eggs, 1 tsp flour, 1 tsp water, salt and pepper to taste, cook like a super thin omelette. Easy and filled with protein! Unfortunately this, too, was rather too heavy for my stomach to tolerate, so I am going to try different kinds of lettuce to see if they cooperate any better, and then after that move onto different recipes (there’s apparently a lentil wrap made with red lentils and chickpea flour that has potential) and maybe rice paper or nori. Experimentation, ho! I am also wide open to suggestions from my delightful friends here, too! Your suggestions for tuna salad were great!

 

 

I am having to fight off my tendency to build castles in Spain. My ambitions, as usual, far exceed my time, energy, and financial resources. Like, right now I am barely keeping up with my daily responsibilities, but someone on Facebook put up a halter-trained pregnant Jersey Cow and I found myself briefly tempted to contact the seller, even though I have no money to buy a cow, no vehicle with which to transport it, no barn, no equipment, and no fucking clue how to handle a 1-ton animal that can kill me with one well-placed kick. Good fucking Lord, self. 

 

I am considering moving my tools to the garage from the workshop until I can figure out why the workshop doesn’t have electricity anymore. The garage isn’t heated, so I might have to invest in some thermal underwear and fingerless gloves so I don’t freeze to death, but it might at least give me the opportunity to get some woodworking practice in and maybe get a small project going before I start tackling the really large stuff later this summer. My main concern is the quail, because I think the sawdust is not good for their sensitive little quail lungs. I did spot a portable dust extractor at Lee Valley  Tools (a very dangerous place to shop unsupervised!) for $475. Not the cheapest ever, but certainly in the realm of affordable (as long as I don’t lose my job) by my current standards. Having a portable one would allow me to place myself in the furthest possible corner away from the quail to try to limit their exposure as much as possible, and then when I get electricity back to the workshop I could simply move it back there.

 

My hope is to build a bunch of sturdy, weatherproof enclosures in the early spring and summer for more poultry and meat rabbits. If I start working on it all in March, that gives me a fair bit of time for trial and error during the cutting/preliminary assembly process and eventually for the full building/assembly process outside where I want the structures to be “permanently” installed. I use the term “permanently” very loosely here, as I am quite sure I will have different opinions over the years about where things should go.
 

I haven’t yet fully decided where the enclosures should go. Ideally, they wouldn’t be too far from the house, because it’s kind of terrible to have to trek all the way across your property in the dead of winter to do animal husbandry of any kind. The quail are right across the way in the garage and even that is kind of miserable, and this winter hasn’t even been that harsh! I don’t want future!Phnee to curse me for forcing her to schlep through the snow and ice at -35°C during a serious cold snap in the coming years. :P It would also be helpful if the enclosures were partially sheltered from the wind, so it might make sense to put them up near the house, but I also wonder if that might not have unintended consequences for the walls/structure of the house (bird droppings and rabbit urine and general moisture come to mind). It could be a problem, or it could be nothing, but I simply don’t know. I will have to talk to more experienced owners and get some educated opinions. I could also put the enclosures just on the other side of the garage, but since I will have to tear down said garage in a few years, I am loath to do it. Mind you, I could also just do that and have it be a problem for future!Phnee, as long as I accept that she will likely curse my name when the time comes. It’s a quandary, for sure.

 

Because I understand my propensity for building castles in Spain that are well above my actual capacity, what I am trying to do with this planning is to eliminate as many of the barriers I know can and will crop up that would prevent me from tending my animals properly: inconvenient clean-up is a big problem, as is access to water and electricity. I will have to make sure that all the enclosures are close enough to an electrical source so that I can heat the water dispensers in the winter, and also not have to schlep dozens of gallons of water super far so that no one dies of dehydration. The ease of clean-up will be largely dependent on the design of the enclosures, so I will have to do more research on the best designs that are also relatively beginner-friendly, or I may have to ask some of my more experienced friends for help with some of the cutting and building.
 

None of that is going to happen this week, of course. This may be a project for next week, which is my first week off after my night shifts, or it might have to be pushed to the last week of January, depending on time and energy levels and just how much “disposable” money I have after most of my paycheque goes to everyday expenses. Life has become very expensive indeed. *sigh*

 

 

 

Well, Trump is still threatening to use military force to seize Greenland “whether they like it or not.” For fuck’s sake. Denmark’s Prime Minister is not having it, unsurprisingly, and both Germany and Sweden have spoken up in defense of Denmark, so things could get very interesting, diplomatically speaking. The NATO Supreme Allied Commander has also stated that alliance members are “discussing Greenland’s status.” Not ominous at all, nope.

 

I haven’t talked much about Iran, mostly because I am embarrassingly not fully up to date with what’s going on there. Right now almost 650 people have been killed in protests there since December 28th. As far as I understand it, the protests began in response to rampant inflation but quickly transformed into general protests against the country’s regime and spread across the country. The US has, of course, threatened to intervene if Iran uses force against the protestors, which has as far as I can tell only fanned the flames, although it appears Iran is making somewhat conciliatory noises in their direction. The Grand Ayatollah Khamenei has basically told Trump to mind his fucking beeswax, and of course Trump does not wish to mind his fucking beeswax, because his fucking beeswax is full of pedophiles and fascists and he would like people to not focus on that, please and thank you.
 

In the meantime, Prime Minister Carney is off to China to try to diversify our trading portfolio and attract new investors, since the US is becoming an increasingly volatile and unreliable trade partner. I’m a little conflicted about this, mostly because the Chinese government is, well… *gestures expansively* But it’s undeniable that China is one of the great global powers to be reckoned with, and they are pioneering a lot of green(er), environmentally sounder initiatives, among other things. Their foreign policy, especially with regards to Taiwan, is personally abhorrent, but I also understand why our PM would not want to snub them from an international relations perspective. It’s complicated, I guess!

BC is either flooding or under flood warning, depending on the area. The Chilliwack River area in particular has been hit hard by the floods, and the residents are under an evacuation order at this point. I hope everyone makes it out safely.

 

Speaking of BC, there’s a case going before the Supreme Court now that’s going to be challenging the constitutional validity of a provision that prohibits MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) in publicly funded faith-based institutions. Right now, if an institution is faith-based (i.e. probably Christian) they can refuse to provide MAiD on their property and force terminally ill patients to be transferred to another hospital in order to end their lives. Now, I have very mixed feelings about MAiD. I think that, in principle, it is an excellent idea: everyone should have the right to choose their manner of death if it’s feasible (sudden and accidental deaths being a common enough phenomenon). However, there has been a lot of evidence over the years that the system is being used/abused in order to target lower income and disabled people, especially those with long-term but not actually terminal diagnoses, and to pressure them into accepting MAiD in order to relieve the system of the “burden” of their care, and that is abhorrent. If it’s an issue that could be solved by better access to health care services, then MAiD shouldn’t even be on the table. Also, medical practitioners should not, in theory, ever suggest it to the patient, the patient needs to bring it up themselves. Since the system exists, however, I do agree that religious healthcare institutions, if they are publicly funded, have a duty of care to all members of the public. It’s for the same reason I firmly believe they should not be allowed to deny birth control or abortion care: health care should be evidence-based, not faith-based. Faith is wonderful (I am a practicing Quaker, after all), but it should be there to support people on their journeys and not needlessly add to their suffering. I am interested to see how this court case goes!

 

There was apparently a pretty massive anti-immigration rally in Toronto this weekend as well as a counter-protest, all of which ended up with eight arrests and 29 charges being laid. It looks like it started with a “Stop Mass Immigration Rally,” which is laughable because the federal government has already slashed immigration quotas and the country is suffering because no Canadian citizen wants to do the low-paying jobs typically taken on by foreign worker programs and other marginalized folks who have come to this country. Like, is the mass immigration in the room with us, buddy? Are you feeling okay? Do you need some water? Anyway, things got out of hand, police are blaming “both sides,” and everyone is scheduled to appear in court at the end of February.

 

I do NOT like the direction in which Canada is going. We’ve had a growing problem with the far right, exemplified by the so-called “Freedom Convoy” of 2022, and it appears nothing is being done about it. I must confess I’m at something of a loss as well about what I can do about it personally, but there must be something I am missing. Maybe I will check in with some activist friends and see if they have concrete suggestions for me. Otherwise I can easily see us going the way of the USA if the right “charismatic” leader comes along.

Oh, and in “no one is surprised” news, Ontarians have continued to drink way too much since the inception of the pandemic. Weekly binge drinking is up 3.6% since 2019, hazardous or harmful drinking (i.e. early signs of alcohol dependence) is up 3.3%, and symptoms of alcohol dependence increased by 4.7%. There’s also been a spike in the abuse of illicit AND prescription drugs, and a spoke in people reporting mental distress and poor mental health. Suicidal ideation increased from 3.9% to 6.4%, too. Gosh, I wonder why ALL THAT could be? The article, of course, blames it on social isolation from Covid, which is such contrived bullshit, I cannot even. We have not socially isolated in five years. People are getting multiple Covid infections a year, which is wreaking havoc on minds and bodies. Inflation is out of control, people are getting priced out of being able to live under a roof, let alone comfortably, and all around us people and governments are sliding into fascism. PEOPLE ARE STRESSED OUT BECAUSE OF COLLAPSE, BOB.

 

*rips out hair*

 

ANYWAY. In more neutral news, I wasn’t able to go to my town council meeting today because of the overtime at work. I have marked my calendar for the next meeting, and I will make a point of reading the minutes when I get a chance.

 

I wonder if I can find some good news on which to end this post. Otherwise, it does feel horribly depressing. Ooh! Apparently, there’s a generic version of a very expensive Cystic Fibrosis drug becoming available! From what I can see the name brand costs a horrifying $300,00 to $370,000 a year, which the pharmaceutical company claims is based on their trying to recoup the costs they incurred while producing it. However, a Bangladeshi pharmaceutical company will be offering a generic brand for about $6,750 a year for adults and $2,000 for children, which will make it a lot more accessible (although it still won’t be free, which would be the ideal scenario). This is very exciting news and I am very pleased that I found it so I can end this post on a high note.

 

Catch you on the flip side, friends!

 

 

 

My new-to-me app gave me a “leg day” workout, and now my legs hurt. Who could have predicted this? I discovered that one of the muscles I engaged today is one of the same muscles I use when pressing the brakes and gas pedals on my car. Owie. Bodies are so, so silly.

 

I am working on integrating more protein into my diet, which is especially important after bariatric surgery (mostly so my muscles don’t atrophy and so my hair won’t all fall out), and I’ve been experimenting with tuna, because I love canned tuna. I know there are concerns with mercury, but I’m not eating it in quantities that are of concern since I’m neither pregnant, breastfeeding, nor a child. I’m perfectly happy to make a little homemade tuna salad, and my go-to recipe just involves diced celery, a little mayonnaise, and dill. Still, I figured there must be some pre-made tuna kits out there, so why not give some of those a try for days when I’m in a bit of a hurry? So yesterday I tried out the Ocean’s SnacKit, and was very pleasantly surprised (it comes with six rice crackers and a little wooden spoon!). Today I tried a Clover Leaf tuna salad with quinoa and olive oil, but it wasn’t nearly as good. I think the olive oil made it feel greasy in my mouth, and it was edible but not texturally pleasing. I have a couple of different Clover Leaf tuna salads to try, but I may end up sticking with the SnacKits for now. I should look up other tuna salad recipes to try out on days when I have time to make them at home. If anyone reading has a favourite tuna salad recipe, please tell me so I can give it a go!

 

Speaking of surgery, I need to go get blood tests done soon, because I have a follow-up appointment next week with the nurse practitioner. I will probably go on Saturday, because I have a Ministry & Counsel meeting at 9:00 tomorrow morning and I am not confident that the blood tests will be done in time for me to get to work if I go afterward. Cornwall is about a 35-minute drive from my house, which would put me there at 11am (give or take), and I have to leave for work from my house at 2pm in order to give myself a good buffer to be on time, taking weather and traffic into account. So while I don’t think it would take three hours to get a blood test done, I also can’t guarantee that tomorrow won’t be somehow really busy, so I’d rather go Saturday when I can be confident that I won’t be rushed.

 

In “let’s shorten Phnee’s lifespan” news, I got an email yesterday from the bank that provided my mortgage saying my insurance company notified them that my home insurance had been cancelled. Now, we DID have a payment not go through in November because KK didn’t put any money toward expenses in the joint account for reasons that I still don’t fully understand and which she’s never explained save to apologize rather halfheartedly but also didn’t tell me about until several payments bounced. I had to pay a lot of NSF fees in November, let me tell you. So, the insurance company threatened me with cancellation, but I was able to rectify that situation and I thought all was well. Turns out no, they sent the SAME letter to my mortgage people, but they only sent confirmation that it wasn’t cancelled to me. I called them today, and the nice girl I spoke to sounded somewhat embarrassed and apologetic and said it’s “just how they work.” So, yeah, that shaved about 10 years off my life, I’m pretty sure. At least I got it sorted out pretty quickly.

 

 

 

I don’t have much to report on the home front today. I’ve been working evenings all week and have done very little around the home. The quail are doing okay in spite of that one death earlier this week. At this rate, though, I may be on the lookout for more auctions in April to add a few more birds to my flock to diversify the bloodlines. I really hope the rest of them live through the winter and I’m doing the very best I can to keep them alive, but the learning curve has been rough on the poor birdies.

 

Apart from that, my plans for the weekend remain the same. Get some bloodwork done (blech), try to figure out the snowblower and why it’s not working, try to get the outdoor GFCI outlet reset (I still don’t know what KK did to trip it, nor why it’s refusing to reset, but I’m going to try flipping all the breakers and seeing if that fixes it, otherwise I’ll have to call the electrician about it), and then spend the rest of the time doing some tidying and organizing. Somewhere in there I will also very determinedly continue to get some exercise in, whether it be taking a walk or doing some strength/balance training.

 

 

There’s been a fair bit of fallout after yesterday’s shooting in Minneapolis. As I said before, this was a Nice White Lady that was shot, so all the news outlets are still talking about it. ICE agents also shot two (not fatally, thank goodness) people in Portland, Oregon, and killed a 41-year-old black man a week ago. Minnesota governor Tim Walz, whom most of us remember better as Kamala Harris’ running mate for VP in last year’s presidential election, has apparently authorized the National Guard to start staging in the wake of the shooting. Several other Minnesotan politicians have spoken out strongly against ICE, and there’s a lot of online chatter about whether Minnesota and/or other states will actively resist the federal government. If that happens, we may well be looking at a civil war, or at the very least localized violence. It’s easy to forget that the United States is enormous, so fighting in Minnesota wouldn’t necessarily have a direct physical impact on other places in the country. There would be ripple effects, of course, but it’s the same as when BC and Alberta get wildfires while Québec starts to flood in Canada. Same country, very different regional impacts.

 

The Trump administration is also continuing its slash-and-burn approach to international diplomacy.  The US is leaving 66 global organizations and has said a firm “fuck you” to anything to do with addressing the reality of climate change. *headdesk* The withdrawal from international climate negotiations is probably going to face legal challenges, but the entire administration’s motto appears to be “I DO WHAT I WANT!” so I guess we’ll see if the courts can make it stick. It’ll take years of proceedings to untangle it all anyway, by which point we may all have cooked to death regardless. 

 

In news that will surprise absolutely no one who was paying attention, the Calgary water main break continues to be a shitshow. Calgarians have been urged to conserve water, and they have responded with “SHAN’T!” by the looks of it. Apparently, they’ve known about the weaknesses in the system since at least 2017, but every city council kicked the can down the road until they couldn’t anymore. There’s been a similar situation happening in Montreal, but it hasn’t been as dire there in terms of impacts to the population. From what I’ve heard from my parents there have been some water main breaks, but nothing on the scale of what’s happening in Calgary.

 

Doug Ford wants to build what sounds to me like another white elephant (correct me if I’m wrong, anyone who’s still reading this) in the form of an underwater electricity line for Toronto through Lake Ontario. Like, I get that Toronto is demanding more and more electricity, but this seems… well. Like I said, white elephant. There’s no better way to do this? It’s not nearly as bad as some of his other projects, but his track record isn’t exactly great.

 

I really need to find a less depressing way to conclude my posts. XD
 

Catch you on the flip side, friends!