Halloween 2021

This was my first Halloween spent at the new place. It's also the last landmark date to experience for a first time here, since tomorrow marks a full year since we moved in. There was an overlap month and we moved in slowly, but November 1st was the day we got our keys.

So since we missed Halloween last year by a day, we had no idea how many trick-or-treaters to expect. We live in a basement apartment, so it wasn't likely that people would come in and knock n our door, but I went outside with a bowl full of tootsie rolls, tootsie pops, and airheads that I bought last minute from a local drug store, and waited.

Our upstairs neighbours have young children, so they went trick-or-treating. They left me with their candy dish, so I got to give out candy for both our units. We ended up getting 19 kids, which I'm going to call a success. The last place I lived had a lot of children that lived in the neighbourhood, but they would typically go elsewhere to trick-or-treat. I'd have to catch them as they were leaving or coming back, and I would actually visit families I knew to try and dump candy on them. Pretty much reverse trick-or-treating.

Lee-Anne's not in love with Halloween, largely because her birthday is only a few days before it. We celebrated that by going out for sushi. We went to a place near where I sublet for five months after just having graduated, and my personal favourite spot for sushi in the KW area. I got to use my vaccine passport for the first time. You still have the option of showing your receipt and a piece of ID, but now you can pretty easily get a QR code version, which is what I did. They just looked at it, though. I don't know where they would have the equipment to scan it.

I was happy to feel well enough at that time to go out for sushi. A couple weeks ago, Lee-Anne got sick. Fever, chills, aches. She had to get a COVID test and take several days off work. We had to quarantine, and we realized that we've grown lax in terms of supply shopping. She tested negative, which was a relief. Then I got sick and was down for about three days. First time I've been sick since COVID started. But it had been several days without symptoms before going for sushi.

Finn has been getting along well here:

New Cat: Finnegan

 We got a new cat!

We named him Finnegan! Finn for short.

Lee-Anne has a sister in law who breeds cats. A few months ago, they had a litter and yesterday, on Canadian Thanksgiving, we took one. We chose this guy because he was the favourite of one of Lee-Anne's nephews, who named him Lucky Charm. For this reason, we were going to name him Lucky until I pointed out that it sounded Irish, which fit with Kieran's name. So we looked up Irish names, and found out that Kieran means black, and Finnegan means white.

So by naming him Finnegan, we now have the Irish black-and-white duo, retroactively validating Kieran's name. Neither of them are fully black or white, but I think Kieran is more dark overall, and Finn is more light, so it kind of works. 

The name "Kieran" is really human. The person at the cat sanctuary who named him originally told me that I could rename him, but because I'm so bad at naming cats I took my time to think about it, and in the meantime kept calling him Kieran until it stuck. I don't regret it, because it's his name now, but I admit I do feel the need to preface his name with "my cat" to make sure there's no confusion if I'm mentioning him to a stranger.

Since I got Kieran on my terms, I'm happy that we got Finn through Lee-Anne's direction. I got Kieran at a cat sanctuary and Lee-Anne, as I mentioned, got Finn through a family connection. I've had Kieran only a few weeks before me and Lee-Anne started dating. In truth, while I was planning on getting a cat for a long time, part of the reason that I got one when I did was to impress Lee-Anne before I asked her out. So she did have an influence in Kieran's adoption.

Since Lee-Anne's been working in-person five days a week, and me for three, Kieran's been really whiny. Most of the time I've had him has been in the pandemic and he's gotten used to having someone around. We thought that getting a new cat would be good to keep him company. Throughout my life, it's been the general policy to have two cats at a time for this reason. Usually we try to have them at different age categories, because we've found that it brings out the youth in the older cat. Some people say that this makes the older cat irritable, and I don't know what to tell you, except that this hasn't been our experience.

Anyway, I'd always intended to get a second cat, but I wanted to hold out until Kieran was older. Now he's about three, so still a young cat, and we've got a kitten only a few months old. Meant to hold out longer, but I wasn't able to.

Introducing them went well. In my life I've only seen a few cat introductions. I was too young to remember Penny and Booshy being introduced, who were my childhood cats. After Booshy passed and we got Blackavar, I remember Penny attacking Blackavar and needing to separate them. They sniffed at each other under the door for awhile and after a slow introduction they actually became quite close. When we got Luna and Thor and introduced them to Blackavar, all three seemed apprehensive but not fully aggressive, just kept space, gave each other the stink eye, and slowly got used to each other. Introducing Cassidy to Blackavar and Thor, and Cassidy just found a small place to hide in, slowly warmed up and eventually integrated with the others.

So I was ready for anything between general apprehension and direct aggression. We brought Finn in the cat carrier. Kieran seemed surprised, and the two sniffed at each other and petted the bars of the carrier. We decided to try holding them outside of the carrier so they could smell each other and neither tried to tear their way out of our hands. We decided to put them down and see how they'd react and they were soon chasing each other around the house. Neither seemed scared, both were engaging the other. We felt Kieran might be playing a little too rough, so we're not letting them stay together without supervision quite yet. But still, I've never seen two cats be so amiable right off the bat.

They both have very similar personalities. Affectionate, goofy, high energy, and playful. I think it might be a good match.

Orange Shirt Day

September 30th was the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, or Orange Shirt Day. This is a new federal holiday that is still not provincially recognized in Ontario, which is dedicated to reflecting on and acknowledging our history with our Indigenous population. Everyone is encouraged to wear an orange shirt, in honour of a story about a young Indigenous girl who was given an orange shirt from her grandmother to wear on her first day at a residential school. The shirt was taken away and she was forced to wear the clothes the residential school gave her. The rest of the story follows her experiences within the system. It's not the most brutal story, but it's used to teach children as kind of a way of showing how it might feel to have something your family gave you taken away from you.

I just so happened to be running a group at the park where a ceremony was held in honour of the day, and my group decided to attend. One of the main speakers was the person who ran what was at the time known as the Aboriginal Services Office at Conestoga College. I used to go there every Wednesday when they'd have a community meal.

Awhile back, my work team did a conflict style training. I'd already done this training four times because it's part of the Summer Program training. Basically, there are five conflict styles: competing, collaborating, compromising, accomodating, and avoiding. Every time I've done it, I've gotten compromising, but Lee-Anne thinks I'm accomodating or avoiding. The problem with these tests are, once you know the definitions, it's hard to answer without knowing what you're going to get. But I tried to answer as best I could without thinking about the results, and I still got compromising!

Since we finished the big sack of rice that I bought while supply shopping during the first wave, we got to buy a new one.

Our last bag was called something like, Y&Y Mili, Ultra Premium Jasmine. All the other brands had been panic bought so it was my only option. This time we had the luxury of choice, and we decided to go with this, 12 Star Basmati Ponia Rice. It just so happens that basmati is both of our preference. We got a 10 pound bad. Looking at Google images of my old brand of rice, looks like I got 8 kg last time, which is like 17 and a half pounds. Well, we're not in lockdown anymore.

Last Christmas I got a cast iron wok, which helped with rice consumption. I had to season it and everything. If you don't know, that's a protective process for cast iron kitchenware where you rub it down with oil and bake at a very high temperature. Never heard of this before I got my wok. You're supposed to do it twice a year, so it's been seasoned twice now.

We live near a trail that bridges Waterloo and Kitchener. If you walk from Kitchener into Waterloo, there's a sign that says "Welcome to Waterloo". If you walk from Waterloo to Kitchener, there's a sign as well, and it would make sense for it to say "Welcome to Kitchener" right? But instead it says "Thank you for visiting Waterloo".

We live on the Kitchener side. The reputation of the two cities is that Waterloo is white collar and Kitchener is blue collar, so it makes sense that Waterloo would be the one to highlight. But even if we don't have signs welcoming people in and out of our city, it's funny because the entirety of the trail is lit with lamp posts right until you hit the "Welcome to Waterloo" sign, and then it's total darkness. Also, there's a much clearer dividing line painted on the Kitchener side. I guess funding is handled differently by the two cities.

Near where we live, there's an apartment building with a very prominent sign displaying its name as "Cripple Creek". Every time I've past it, I've found it startling. That seems like a word that you're not supposed to use. But when I've looked it up online, I can't find much information on it other than rent information. I would have thought that there would be some sign of controversy over the name, some evidence of some kind of motion to get the sign taken down or the building renamed, but nope. Lee-Anne also thought it was really weird, but nobody else that I've talked to has seemed particularly phased about it.

I wonder why apartment buildings and townhouse complexes so often put up signs with names that have nothing to do with their address or any legal relevancy. Brookside Park, Mayfield Meadows, Asgard Green, The Pinedales are examples that come to mind.