QuarantEAFy Day

 Wednesday of last week was EAFy Day. I'm sure I've covered it the past two years, but EAFy Day is an annual team building event at Extend-a-Family. Each year has a theme. Last year was Choose Your Own Adventure, and the year before was Choose Your Happy. Clearly leaning into the value of honouring choice.

Normally, because of my unorthodox work schedule, I'm not able to join committees, and we usually try to keep each of them limited to one WALES member. However, this year, because of COVID and the complications surrounding hosting an event like this, there were fewer volunteers to help organize it than usual. This, combined with my schedule being changed so drastically, and because this specific committee had a finite end date, allowed me the opportunity to sign on.

We chose our theme this year to be QuarantEAFy Day, because we've all been caught up in quarantine. We were initially upset because we usually host the event at a location outside our office, and the venues at our disposal were all closed due to COVID, despite our numbers being allowable based on the social gathering rules at the time. We wound up hosting the event in the office parking lot.

This turned out to be well-received, though. See, usually the day is an opportunity to get out of the office, but this time the office is where everyone has been held back from. It was like coming back home.

That being said, there were some people who didn't feel comfortable joining us in person, and so we made sure to offer remote options. We hosted Jackbox games online (a casual online game platform that has become popular for people who want to socialize while in quarantine), and we had a livestream for people who wanted to participate in either yoga or Thai chi. We also covered our morning press conference on a live stream for people who wanted to participate remotely. This was done in the style of a Doug Ford press conference. I was the Minister of Schedules and Logistics.

Obviously, for everyone that chose to celebrate in person, we had physical distancing and sanitization procedures in place. We even supplied everyone a mask with our agency logo on it.

I wound up in charge of mini golf, axe throwing, ordering lunch, and some public communication pieces. Axe throwing turned out to be pretty popular, and for lunch, we had EVO boxes. These are some kind of classy gourmet lunch boxes. Here, take a look at the menu:

https://www.evokitchen.com/menu/gourmet-boxed-lunches-2/

I got the antipasto platter with assorted crackers, artichoke and asiago caponata with pesto crostini, fresh fruit, summer berry snack, and San Pellegrino.

It was pretty good! Although the artichoke and asiago caponata was a little overpowering. In a strange coincidence, everyone who got the antipasto platter wound up sitting with each other.

I thought I would have to be on-site all day, but turns out, committee members are allowed to partake in activities. In the morning, I did a mural art walk in downtown Kitchener. It was cool, because I've spent a lot of time there, and I've seen most of the murals, but usually I'm in a rush or I'm distracted. It was cool to learn about the background and attention that's put into so much of what's around me. It was kind of like getting a tour of our own neighbourhood, but by someone who knows it better than you.

It was good that we celebrated when we did, because this week our Prime Minister officially declared that we are, nationwide, in the second wave, and the Premier of Ontario has put provincial restrictions on social gatherings that wouldn't have allowed for EAFy Day to happen.

Shorts, Guelph, Credit Card

Back in Katimavik, when I was moving between Summerside and Thunderbay, Air Canada lost all my luggage. Because of this discovery, I was a little distracted and didn't pay too much attention when my group came across the group leaving their Thunderbay rotation. I did however, notice that among them was someone a little taller and larger than me, and with a pin hat that had more pins than mine. Being the tallest and largest in my group, and having taken on a project to collect and attach meaningful Katimavik pins to a toque, my insequrities briefly spiked, and I silently wished to myself not to cross paths with this man again, before resuming my anxious thoughts about my luggage.

Air Canada never found my stuff and didn't honour a claim I made for what I lost, even though they directed me through it. Instead they gave me an incredibly minimal blanket reimbursement. Like, $140 for over $1000 worth of lost luggage (Katimavik's list of recommended items to bring was pricey). I made the best of it, but things move fast during Katimavik, and it was a while before I could schedule a trip to the Salvation Army, so I needed a wardrobe quick. Fortunately, the previous group had needed to leave behind some of their clothes before moving to Chisasibi, so I got to pick through their discard pile.

Unfortunately, throughout the duration of my Thunder Bay and Chisasibi rotations, I would find myself continually compared to "Big Rob", the giant man with the crazy pin hat. Turns out, in addition to the pins and physical stature, he was also the Katimavik Communication Counsel Chairman, like me, and he kept a dream journal, like me.

He also lived in Southern Ontario, and I wound up working in the city he lives in. We're good friends now.

I didn't put the pieces together at the time, but since he was the only person my size, and because I needed to take clothes from a discard pile from his rotation, that means I was probably wearing his clothes until my belated trip to the Salvation Army.

It also means that the hoody with the greyed-out skull that I gave my mom, and the basketball shorts that I've been wearing as summer pyjamas and as a swim suit for years, originally belonged to him.

So it's with a heavy heart that I must announce, after ten years of use (and never telling him I was wearing them) that I finally tore my friend's basketball shorts irreparably.

This loss was softened somewhat, when my girlfriend suggested that we go to Giant Tiger to get a new pair. For my international readers, Giant Tiger is a Canadian department store, with very cheap prices and a lot of store-exclusive brands. Because of changes to bus routes and because the pandemic has limited my movements, I hadn't been to a Giant Tiger in a long, long time. In fact, this would be the first time since the pandemic that I would take a city bus. While we were waiting at the stop, I did an Easygo text to see when the next bus would come, and I saw that the last time I'd used this feature was March 12, my brother's birthday, about half a year ago.

Anyway, I got new shorts. I have since slept and swam in them.

Not too long ago, my mother, brother, cousin and me got take-out from Crafty Ramen in Guelph. Because of this, I saw how the layout of downtown Guelph has evolved since the pandemic. Since it's mostly made up of small food establishments and specialty stores, they blocked off traffic and put picnic tables in the roads, so all the small businesses can safely abide by the patio-only rule. It's actually really nice, and it's not such a hassle for vehicles because Guelph is such an abnormal city, traffic isn't really reliant on downtown anyway.

Speaking of Guelph, they've recently opened at least six locations to buy cannabis for recreational use, with more opening soon. It was really funny earlier in the pandemic, when there was a division of "essential" and "non-essential" businesses, and cannabis dispensaries were considered "essential", despite a year earlier being illegal.

I recently got a new credit card, and boy am I relieved. I won't share my new information, except that the CV code isn't "666" like it was last time, or "666" like it was the time before that.

Twice in a row, even though the numbers are supposed to be randomized. Here's a game for you guys to play. Google "random number generator", select the range to be between  "100" and "999" and just keep spinning until you get "666" two times in a row. Let me know how long that takes you. Keep in mind, this happened to me when there was one chance over several years.

At this time, "The Devil" card was showing up a lot in my tarot readings, and one time I was at a KFC and my order number was 666. It really messed me up. But a while back, The Devil in reverse showed in my future, which means a release from the devil, and the new credit card backs me up by having a CV that is anything but the number of the beast.