Eggs, Sunflower, Cat

Lee-Anne was visiting this past weekend and stayed until Monday morning. Since we don't get to see each other as often as we'd like, we made sure to celebrate each day with a hearty breakfast. But this most important meal wound up being more indulgent than either of us anticipated:  

I bought a dozen eggs, and as you can see, each one had two yolks. I've never encountered this before. I wonder if certain chickens are just prone to laying double-yolk eggs; and from there, I wonder if one specific chicken lays a full carton of eggs.

You can see from the first two pictures that of the eight yolks, I broke one each time. It was the left-hand egg with the yolk on the bottom that broke both times too, so I wonder if that says something about how I crack my eggs. I finally got it on the third time, though. Eight unbroken fried yolks in four egg whites. I feel strong.

A few weeks ago, we visited the Kitchener farmer's market. Despite having lived in a sublet near it for five months after college, I'd never actually been. It was the closest I've been to being in a crowd since the pandemic. They had directional arrows on the floors and everyone was wearing masks. We bought bell peppers, mushrooms, and zucchini for kabobs. It was weird being in a place that only accepts cash, since most places have been phasing it out. Since the pandemic, I've transitioned to unlimited debit transactions, because it requires the least amount of physical contact. Another weird spot that still requires cash is all my local laundry options.

I managed to bloom a sunflower this year:

It's small, but still a sunflower! I didn't think I'd get any this year, since insects were really harsh and a number of them died in windstorms, but this one made it! Another one survived, but I'm still waiting on it to blossom.

This year, I got a handful of Thai Dragon peppers, which felt really nice because I've never managed to grow a pepper plant that produced before. The Ghost Pepper plant died early on, and the habenero survived but didn't produce. I got regular cherry tomatoes, but the regular sized ones are still unripe and I have little hope for them. The radishes grew very well, but didn't look like radishes, which is puzzling because I'm sure I understood the package when I planted them. When I went to the grocery store, I tried to identify a vegetable that looked like my radishes, and the closest resemblance was Swiss chard. Nor idea what I should do with that veggie, though. I had a number of developing cucumber, but looks like some critter ate all of them. My celery is healthy enough and I should harvest it, and the beans never grew in place of the peas All in all, I didn't overcrowd the garden and most things were healthy. I was glad about the peppers, but otherwise, kind of a weak crop.

I'm leash-training my cat Kieran. The first time I brought him out, I'd bought a leash that fastened around the midsection but not the neck. So one time, when he got surpised, he jumped backward and out of his harness. Since then, I've got one with two buckles.

Apparently some cats fall flat on their sides like a statue when you attach their harness, because of a self-defense mechanism in the event that they are attacked. Kieran only fought the harness until it was on him, and then he didn't care. We opened the back door of the apartment, and he did not struggle with the idea that going outdoors was taboo, and just trotted out.

He shuffled around sniffing leaves for the most part, but he tried to climb a chain-link fence twice and then a tree to get at a squirrel. Good thing the leash held firm.

Visiting Grandparents and Adopting Cassidy

A few weeks ago, me and Lee-Anne visited my grandparents in Toronto. We had been planning this trip since before the pandemic, but because they are in the vulnerable age category and living in a retirement community in the most population dense city in Ontario, they were put on full lockdown and our plans got put on hold.

Toronto is now in Phase 3, which for them means they are able to accept two guests into their apartment at a time. We had to complete some documents, make sure we were wearing masks, use hand sanitizer and have our temperatures checked before being allowed entry. It was a bit of a hike between their place and the subway station, and it was a pretty sunny day, so I was sweating fairly significantly before I got my temperature checked. I don't even know if it makes sense, but I was worried that I'd raised my body temperature by speed-walking through the summer sun, and that fear was exacerbated when the person checking me said "Let me try that again". However, I apparently passed the test on my second attempt, and we were allowed to meet my grandparents.

Not only was this their first time meeting Lee-Anne, this was also my first time seeing their new home. It was really nice, with a lot of the personal touches of their old house. We had brought some potted flowers, and it turned out that they had a shelf full of flowers in front of one of their windows, with one empty pot just the right size for the ones we'd brought.

We had coffee on their terrace, and then we had lunch at their club. As an effort to help diners feel safe during COVID, there was a tray next to each table, and servers offered a choice between setting the food on the trays to maintain physical distance, or to bring it right to the table. Their club is right by a lake where some members keep boats, and so we went for a walk on the docks afterward.

The hand sanitizer there was coconut-scented. That was my first experience with scented hand sanitizer.

So now, Lee-Anne has met my mother, my brother, a cousin, two of my aunts and a set of grandparents. She still needs to meet my two more northern grandparents and one more cousin.

After this, I went to Guelph for the last bit of Summer Shutdown. I got to be present for the introduction of Cassidy, my mother and brother's new cat. I mentioned in a previous post that we had gone down to My Kitty Cafe and met some cats. After another visit and some consultation, they arranged a pick-up date, and I managed to be in town for it.

She was very shy and immediately chose a hiding spot under a table in Mom's room. We didn't get much more from her that day, but she at least came out at night long enough to find a hiding spot at the other side of Mom's room. Despite not wanting to come out in the open, she was receptive of physical touch, leaning into being pet and purring.

That's as far as she got while I was there. Since then, it's been over a week, and she is still very shy, but she has like, five hiding spots that she'll alternate between. She will eat wet cat food with the other cats, and enjoys perching in the windowsills. The older cat, Thor, just ignores her, and Blackavar is curious and social but has been respectful for the most part. She's not much interested in socializing with the other cats yet.

My phone apparently has a moist charge port and can't seem to dry or charge. But I managed to email these pics to myself before it died. Here's Cassidy:

My family sent these. In the last pic, she is relaxing in an open space, which is big improvement.

I updated Gryphood with my "Pandemic Pretzels". If you want to read the whole recipe with description, you have to click on "Read More". That's a feature of the new Blogger format, and as far as I can figure out, I don't have the option to use the layout that this blog uses. I guess this blog's format has been kind of grandfathered into the new Blogger system.

Another criticism I have of the new Blogger format, is that when I'm on this blog, there is a "New Post" button that allows me to make a new post. Gryphood doesn't have that. So the only way I've figured out to make a post on Gryphood is to click "New Post" on The Gryphon's Perch, then try to exit the page, which brings me to a list of posts from the blog, which gives an option to toggle onto my other blogs, including Gryphood. From there, I can make a new post. So if they force a change to the new format, I don't know how I'll update any of my blogs. There's got to be a way, but it's not very intuitive.

Anyway, here's the new post, don't forget to click "Read More" to see the full entry: https://gryphood.blogspot.com/2020/08/pandemic-pretzels.html

If you've got a recipe you would like me to try, and potentially publish, send it in a comment or by other means if you've got my information.

Pandemic Phrase Guide 2

A while back, I did a Pandemic Phrase Guide explaining some terms that have become popular during the COVID-19 Outbreak. I described Social Distancing, Self-Quarantine, Flatten The Curve, Zoologic Spillover, and Hoarders and Panic Buying.

I admit, Zoologic Spillover didn't pick up the way I thought it would. It picked up a bit, but mostly in more scientifically-inclined groups instead of meeting the mainstream the way I predicted. Also, the correct term is zoonotic spillover, not zoologic. I probably misremembered the term, but I can't find the original article I read it from, so I can't guarantee it wasn't their fault.

People do in general believe that the disease started because of a bat or a pangolin. If anything, pangolin should have gotten into the phrase guide, because so many people have just learned what those are.

If you don't know, this is a pangolin:

It's a little armadillo/aardvark type guy!

The United States 25 cent coin for 2020 depicts a couple of bats:

So as you might imagine, conspiracy theorists are finding a lot of material to work with with that.

I also mentioned that social distancing was a very frightening term, and that physical distancing was preferred inside my organization. This is because being socially active by video, phone, or with appropriate distance is still healthier than full isolation, even during this pandemic. Well, physical distancing has picked up some speed, and now it is sort of equivalent with social distancing in terms or what people and organizations are using. Kind of like how there isn't a clear winner between COVID-19 and Coronavirus in how people refer to our current predicament. I'm sort of in favour of COVID-19, because it's more specific than Coronavirus, which is a more general term for the family the virus belongs to. But I don't like writing COVID, because it feels like I'm yelling.

Now let's jump into some phrases

Covidiot: A covidiot is someone that forgoes basic safety measures, sometimes intentionally. Examples of these are the people in Japan who flocked in large crowds to view the cherry blossoms, the people in Florida that could not bring themselves to miss out on going to beaches, the Million Maskless March, held in Illinois, and the 200+ party that got busted in Brampton. We even have our own group of covidiots gathering in Kitchener, today in Victoria Park, calling themselves "Hugs Over Masks".

In that vein, people who refuse to to wear masks are being derivatively refered to as "anti-maskers" in a similar way that people against vaccines are called "anti-vaxers".

Super Spreader: A super spreader is someone who managed to expose an abnormally large number of people to COVID-19, or in an especially damaging way. They are distinct from the covidiot, as the emphasis is on the damage they caused, but not necessarily their intent or carelessness. An example of some super spreaders could be the two women who visited New Zealand from Britain to attend a funeral. New Zealand had just declared itself as one of the first highly populated nations to fully recover from the Coronavirus. They had removed all restrictions except for keeping their borders closed, only allowing in people for essential work or for compassionate reasons.

So a couple women were given the greenlight to enter for compassion reasons. They were required to do a 14-day self-quarantine, but got the okay to leave early since they weren't showing symptoms. They were in close contact with hundreds of people that day, came back, and received test results stating they were positive for the virus. It will take vigorous contact tracing and at least a few months for NZ to get back to where they were.

#withme, #bettertogether #stayhome: I don't really know what these mean and a quick Google search didn't help much, but they seem to be popular hashtags, that you attach to content to increase visibility. What they seem to communicate overall is to be safe, to take relevant precautions, and to support one another while doing so.

Essential vs Non-Essential: These are old phrases since most things have opened up, but I didn't really cover them. During the initial stages of the pandemic, many people had to stop work due to being considered "non-essential". This caused Canadians to reevaluate the importance of some occupations. Before, we tended to judge how respectable a person's position was based on how difficult it was to attain that position. However, during the pandemic, we began to change the focus of respect from level of difficulty to level of necessity. For instance, we were pretty used to respecting doctors and nurses and this didn't change, but during the worst of it, we learned to put grocery store employees and truckers on a similar level of respect.

There were some hurt feelings from people working in fields that were labeled as "non-essential" and a lot of fear about job security. Some people working in essential positions felt they were being taken advantage of, with the government financially incentivizing them to put their lives at risk by continuing their work. You were only eligible for CERB (Canadian Emergency Relief Benefit, $2000 per month) if you lost work to the pandemic, which didn't include quitting because of fear for personal safety. So many underpaid grocery workers were being asked to handle crowd control and expose themselves to the virus while being paid less than those who were told to stop working and hide in their homes.

Another criticism of CERB is that you don't qualify for it if you live on Disability, which offers far less. Odd that the government believes the necessary income for a decent standard of living is so much higher for people who don't have disabilities.

New Normal: We are being taught that when the pandemic ends, things won't  quite go back to the way that we are used to. This concept frightens a lot of people, but honestly, I will be mighty frustrated if everything does just go back to the way things were. Scientists were already saying that the event of a global pandemic was not a matter of "if" but "when".  We need to change a number of our practices and step into the future more intelligently, or we've got more coming to us.

Second Wave: We keep comparing COVID-19 to the Spanish Flu, which happened about a century ago. That's not an adequate sample size to make accurate predictions with, but it's also really hard to ignore. The Spanish Flu hit in three "waves", and stayed in the Earth's system over the course of a few years. So even though in Canada, where we've got our infection rate nice and low and we've been able to mostly reopen the economy without consequence, we're told to brace ourselves for a second wave. This is because the Spanish Flu died down for the most part during the summer and then came back even harder in Fall. Scientists are saying we will almost inevitably see a second wave this Fall, with students returning to classes and the cold weather bringing people indoors, but since we're practiced in safety measures now, and because we've developed so many remote work options, the second wave doesn't have to be as mean as the first one.

Remember when I talked about the phrase "Flatten the Curve"? That referred to the attempt to stop a line on a line graph from spiking with rapidly increasing rates of infection. So when that line starts to sink, with people recovering faster than they are being infected, and eventually nearing the bottom and stabilizing there, that is when we've completed a "wave". When the numbers start to spike again after a period of stabilization, that's referred to as the "second wave".

The United States, after initiating safety measures, saw a decline in rate of infection, but before they could stabilize near the bottom of the graph, they relinquished a number of safety precautions and the rate of infection increased again. There's some debate about whether or not the US should be considered in their first or second wave, but it's really all semantics. Spiking rates of infection should be handled the same way, regardless of which "wave" they're considered to belong.

Plan-demic: This indicates a specific video of the same name, which strives to prove that COVID-19 was planned. The general idea is that it was created in a Wuhan laboratory. I haven't watched the video, but there have been a lot of conspiracy theories in this vein. Some people feel the virus was developed as a biological weapon to be used against the protesters in Hong Kong, and it got leaked. Some people think it was a move by the Chinese government to weaken the United States, as China is coming out of this stronger than the US. It gets as wacky as some people believing the virus was developed so that once a vaccine is introduced, they can plant us with a microchip administered via syringe, which will allow us to be controlled mentally through the use of newly developed 5G cell phone technology.

I don't subscribe to any of the above theories. I understand how upsetting the circumstances are, and how it causes us to doubt, mistrust, and question the intentions of world leaders, but this is far from the first time we've dealt with a virus of pandemic potential, it's certainly not the first time in history that a global pandemic has swept the globe, and scientists have been predicting this for awhile.

Expect another update from me soon. My family in Guelph just adopted a cat and my girlfriend met a set of grandparents. So I should be writing about that next.