Transit

During the first wave, Greyhound closed it's services in Canada. They pretty clearly couldn't take the financial hit from the reduction of passengers due to so many people staying at home. They claimed that this was a temporary measure, but recently they announced their permanent closure across the nation.

This sucks for me, because as you probably know, my mother and brother live in Guelph, and Greyhound was the only real transit option between Guelph and Kitchener. Despite the fact that it's not a great distance between the two cities, and there is a demand, it's far more difficult to make the trip possible than it should be.

Greyhound's competitor is Go Transit, which has buses and trains. The only option Go provides between Guelph and Kitchener is an incredibly minimal train service for people who commute for work. This means it runs only from Kitchener to Guelph in the morning on weekdays, and from Guelph to Kitchener in the evenings on weekdays. This sounds like it's for people in Kitchener who need to work or go to school in Guelph. I would've thought it would be the other way around.

There are Go bus stops in both Guelph and Kitchener, but they don't connect. If you want to take a bus between the cities, you need to go all the way to Brampton, which is an absurd detour.

I'm gonna miss those Greyhound ticket sellers. The one guy who was always talking about how much younger he looked than he was, the woman who always made a big deal about remembering how to spell my name, and the woman who kept trying to pitch payment plans specifically for Guelph-Kitchener. There was the guy with the forearm tattoos on the Guelph side but I think he got to keep his job, since the station he works at deals with Via Rails and Go as well. Never going to see him though, because I've got a Presto card that I can put money on anywhere. Even though I could buy Greyhound tickets online, I often seemed to wind up buying them over the counter.

I mean, I know it's a little premature to be making home visits anyway, but I don't like feeling trapped.

There's always the option of dropping like $50 on an Uber, but that's not fiscally responsible, and then you're stuck making awkward conversation for half an hour.

Since we're on the topic of transportation, let's talk about Uber vs. taxi. When I worked factories, I used to take a taxi into work on Sundays because the buses didn't run that late. I used to joke that on Sundays, I worked my first two hours for free, because what I made in that time was about what I paid in cab fare.

When I came to Kitchener, Uber didn't yet exist, and I occasionally used taxis. Somewhere down the line, Uber got big and I eventually transitioned to mostly using that service. Not going to lie, every once in a while I see a taxi and I'm surprised that they still exist. I'm still aware of the pros and cons of each system, so let's go over them.

One thing I like about taxis is that they're clearly marked. Uber vehicles often have the little sticker on the windshield but it's less distinct. You can hail a taxi if you're in a hurry (and this is the only reason I've taken taxis occasionally since Uber rolled in), but you have to order Uber through the app, so you can't really hail them. Taxis tended to congregate in certain areas, like Fairview Mall and Charles St Terminal, so if you were near one of those places, you could make a pretty reliable gamble that you could get a cab quick.

You can pay cash in a cab, unlike Uber. I know that it's an assumption nowadays that everyone has a smart phone and credit card, but that's not always true and in this way the taxi system is more inclusive.

Taxi companies have a certain number of wheelchair accessible vehicles on standby. Since Uber uses the personal vehicles of their employees, it's very unlikely that you will be able to get one of these through that system.

Taxi companies are more forgiving. In an Uber, the end of each trip, the passenger and the driver get to rate each other. If your overall rating dips beneath a certain level, the drivers can reject you, and if the driver's score dips low enough, they might lose their job. There is no such system for taxis.

Some cab companies are small enough that you can make deals with them. For example, our accessible public transit system hasn't always reached everyone that's needed it (although it's improved!) and Waterloo Region's local cab company stepped in to fill the void, giving discounted services to specific people and locations. That level of communication is difficult to have with a company as large as Uber.

So those are the benefits of taxis. You can hail them, you don't need a credit card or smart phone, you can get a wheelchair accessible vehicle, you're less likely to get banned from the service, and it's easier to communicate with the people who run the organization.

As far as Uber goes, it used to cost a third of the price of cab fare. That's mostly why I originally switched over, but it's not true anymore. Both services cost roughly the same now.

It's still more convenient. With taxis, you have to pay after finishing the trip. With Uber you just hop out and go on your way. You also don't have to call anyone, you just plug your info into the app. This is very appealing for an introvert like myself.

But... and I feel bad for saying this, the biggest difference for me concerning my average experience between the two is that Uber has a better customer service. When I was talking taxis, I said that their system is more forgiving and phrased it as a positive, but there's a clear benefit to having the rating system. When passenger and driver have the opportunity to wreck each other, they're incentivized to get along. I've met a number of creepy or erratic cab drivers in the past, but I've never had trouble with an Uber driver. 

They don't carry cash, which is less accessible, but this way there isn't the danger of passengers trying to rob them, or passengers running away without paying fare since it's already been automatically charged.

I've had taxi drivers try to scam me by intentionally taking longer routes. Uber has an electronic system that indicates how the driver should reach their destination. Apparently whenever cab drivers said their debit machine was broken and you needed to pay cash, sometimes offering to drive you to the nearest ATM, that was a scam too, because if they get cash they're paid immediately, while card had a delay.

So in the end, I kind of like taxi companies, especially smaller businesses, because they're overall more accessible, but Uber feels safer and has better customer service.

Throwing Things Out

 A little while ago, the bundle buggy I've been using for the past eight years finally broke. I was wheeling it back from Food Basics and one of the wheels popped off. At first I thought I could just screw it back on, but it had cracked in an awkward spot. The buggy managed to deliver its final load home, but I've since had to get rid of it.

Using something to its fullest potential, even something like a bundle buggy, almost gives me a sense of peace. Like it fulfilled its purpose, even to the point of carrying out its final voyage and delivering its final load. Thank you, bundle buggy, for carrying my burdens these past eight years.

Another time I've felt this way was when I used to sleep on a couch bed. One day, after taking a nap, I got up and it collapsed behind me. I couldn't be frustrated. After all, it hung on long enough to make sure I got one final nap in.

During a cultural competencies course I took in college, we were taught the Iroquoian concept of the Orenda. To my understanding, this is the idea that everything in this world has an energy and life, both the animate and the inanimate. Not only that, everything has a purpose and desires to fulfill its purpose. The example given in class was that a table was fulfilling its Orenda by holding up a cup and a binder. So, my bundle buggy carrying loads of groceries until it could do so no more, and my couch bed providing me rest until that last nap, were able to fulfil their Orenda.

I got that bundle buggy back when I lived in student housing from a hardware store near my college. It's seen me through four living spaces and was even used to transport many loads of possessions in the gap month when I had the leases for both my old place and this one, to lighten the load of the final move.

I also had to get rid of an old cup recently. It had suns, moons, and stars, all with faces. I brought it with me to college from a set my mom had. This is going to sound a little less sweet, but you could measure the appropriate amount of your adult beverage of choice by filling to different rays of light from the sun displayed on the cup. For liquor, fill to the first spoke of light, for wine, go to the second, for beer, the third. I don't think it was intentionally designed for that purpose, but I figured it out.

It was the last survivor of the set. This past week, I looked at how faded the decals were. You could barely make out the sun, and I made the hard decision to get rid of it. We have a white board over here with a wish list, and I put "fancy cup" on it, even though I don't think I can replace it. I'm just keeping it on there until I can come to terms with the fact I'm not getting another one.

We also got rid of my old deep freeze. I bought it from a woman in my old neighbourhood. It served me well until we moved it over here. It worked at first, but it's temperature dial was stuck and when we tried to adjust it, it died. We kept using it as additional counter space until we recently got a new one. Apparently deep freezers, (as well as printers and breadmakers) all trended during the pandemic, so I felt kind of vulnerable without one.

We put it out to the curb to be taken as bulk pickup on garbage day, but someone took it almost immediately. Those people are going to be real disappointed having gone through the effort to take something so bulky and find it doesn't work, but what do you expect when it's been put out with the garbage?

I recently updated most of my other blogs:

Gryphood (broccoli cheddar soup): Broccoli Cheddar Soup (Panera Copycat) (gryphood.blogspot.com)

Gryphon's Reviews (Kim's Convenience, Korean-Canadian sitcom): Gryphon's Reviews: Kim's Convenience (Sitcom) (gryphonsreviews.blogspot.com)

Gryphon's Gallery (three new paintings): Gryphon's Gallery: Elephant Sunset, Fruit Bowl, Peppers (gryphonsgallery.blogspot.com)

Vaccines and Things

Mom recently got her COVID-19 vaccine and had a fever for a week. I'm still pro-science and pro-vaccine, but seeing how much media is being pushed to emphasize the safety of getting vaccinated, I feel like they weren't completely forthright about the severity of the potential side effects. I can even see why some people are saying that the vaccine gives you the virus. I'm sure it wasn't COVID, but the side effects were similar to the symptoms of the virus and could be misinterpreted as such. I'm already nervous about her getting the second dose, because I hear the second one is harsher than the first and the side effects this time around were already so intense. Oh well, if her sensitivity to the vaccine is this bad, maybe she would be even more sensitive to COVID, so this is still the less dangerous option.

My brother also got his first dose. He'd been wanting one for awhile since he works a front-line job, and he hasn't had any side effects. I think he's the last person in my circle to get the vaccine, but apparently only about 45% of Canadians have received their first dose.  Crazy that over half of Canadians still don't have it, but everyone I know does. I even know some people with both doses. Must just be the circles I run in.

Most of the people I know have gotten the Moderna vaccine, but apparently Pfizer is most common, and we'll be leaning mostly on that going forward. China's developed the Coronavac, I think better known as Sinovac, and Russia's developed Sputnik V. Everybody's disparaging each other's vaccines nowadays, saying that they don't work. I don't know why. I hope that everyone's vaccines work.

Sputnik V has the funniest name though, because "sput" sounds like "spud", which means potato, and it's from Russia, and vodka is made from potatoes. I had a Russian studies class when I was in university too, and learned some classical Russian medical practices, including the use of vodka presses.

Canada is developing its own home-grown vaccine, Medicago, but it's only in phase 2 clinical trials. At the earliest it won't be ready until later this summer, after most people have received their first dose. We're not mixing vaccines at this time, so what's the point?  Apparently we might put it toward countries that are still in need of vaccines, which isn't so bad.

I was disappointed to learn that looking at efficacy rates for vaccines is fairly unreliable. The reason for this is that the way trials are done is by having some number of people take a vaccine, an equal number take a placebo, and then have them integrate into a community that is known to contain the virus. From then on, they keep track of who gets sick and how sick they get. This is how they rate the level of efficacy.

The unknown factor is how much of the virus is present in the community. For example, Pfizer and Moderna have some of the highest efficacy rates, whereas AstraZeneca has been held under scrutiny with a much lower rate. However, Pfizer and Moderna held their clinical trials in a time and place where the rate of COVID was much smaller than when AstraZeneca conducted there's. I'm not saying AstraZeneca is as good as Pfizer or Moderna, but it's not accurate to compare them based on their efficacy rates at face value. Somehow, I thought these clinical trials were being held in a controlled environment, consistent across all vaccine trials. I guess that would ignore a lot of human rights.

India's COVID rates are spiking fiercely nowadays. During the first wave, I speculated how they could be doing as well as they were, considering their high population and population density. Well, it looks like it did get to them eventually. Despite having a comparable number of total cases, their deaths per million rate is still only a fraction of the US or Brazil's, due to the sheer number of people living there.

If anyone's COVID numbers are suspect, it's Tajikistan's. They have the highest number of total cases to have fully recovered. Their trajectory during the first wave was pretty standard, but at one time, their numbers tapered away and just... stopped, and they declared themselves to have eradicated COVID. This is despite the fact that they haven't reported any special measures taken against the virus, and their neighbors all report cases. This goes to show you that, just like vaccine efficacy, COVID tracking by nation can't be taken at face value.

Alberta's COVID rates have become worse than Ontario or Quebec's, who previously had the highest numbers. I've got to be honest, when I imagine Alberta, I picture wide open plains, not necessarily conducive to viral spread. They do have Edmonton though, which is a large urban city.

I recently got some masks from Old Navy and they really are superior to the five-pack Hannes brand I got from Walmart that I've been using. The ear straps are adjustable and generally just gentler than what I've been using. Plus, my Walmart masks were all a solid black, and set against my nearly black beard, so they just made it look like my facial hair was covering my mouth. I have a number of new patterns that show up well against my beard. I bought a pack of warm colours and a pack of cool ones, so I can match to what I'm wearing. I have solids of both warm and cool, as well as plaids. Probably my most fun mask is one with anchors on it, and my tackiest is blue camo.

Masks are now not just utility, but also fashion. I remember taking an uber, and the driver was dressed exceptionally well, but he was wearing a red plaid mask which clashed with the rest of his attire. I noticed.

We finally got through the last bag of oats and capellini pasta (the only pasta left after all the others were panic-bought) that I got while supply shopping during the first wave. We finally got through the rice I had pre-COVID and got into that giant sack of rice I was so proud to get. Obviously I've been eating things other than first wave rations, but still, other than rice, I've run down my initial stock.

Friends of the Forest

Since we talked about memories in my previous post, I thought we could talk a little bit about a childhood memory of mine.

When I was a kid, my favourite show was Friends of the Forest. It aired on YTV and was about the adventures of various woodland creatures. The main characters' name was Rocky, and I could never figure out what animal he was.

It had a little jingle that went, Friends of the forest, there's room for everyone.

As a teenager, with the Internet still somewhat young, I tried to find my old favourite show. While I didn't get exactly what I wanted, I did find this:

A Japanese version of Friends of the Forest!

Turns out, it had been originally created in Japan under the name Rocky Chuck the Mountain Rat (so now I know what animal he was supposed to be, although I don't know what a "mountain rat" is). It was later translated and released in Canada. So technically, I was into anime before it was cool.

I even found an episode of the Japanese version on Youtube. I went as far as to get it transcribed into English by someone I knew who spoke Japanese.

Several years forward, and I've been keeping my eyes on the situation to see if there are any developments. Eventually, I strike gold! A whole library of episodes of the English version is released! Except this is what the title looks like

 Whaaaaat?

And the chorus to the theme song goes

In the greeeen forest, the greeeeen forest

Instead of

Friends of the forest, there's room for everyone

Here's a link to the theme song of Fables of the Green Forest, if you really want to hear it: (455) Fables of the Green Forest Intro (70's) - YouTube

So I have really mixed feelings. On one hand, I have an English translation of my beloved childhood show. On the other hand, it's weird and different. Everything is a little different than I remember, and there's no evidence that the show I remembered ever existed.

Except that, when I asked my brother if he remembered Friends of the Forest, he was able to sing part of the chorus for the theme song.

Anyway, this year I found an article on Lost Media Wiki about the translation I remember.

Apparently Fables of the Green Forest was aired in the late 70s and into the 80s. Friends of the Forest was the second translation to be aired, with an entirely new voice cast, music, and altered storylines.

For example, in Fables, they made Peter Cottontail the main character and renamed Rocky as Johnny. So much disrespect to the Japanese source material, Rocky Chuck the Mountain Rat.

No home videos of Friends of the Forest are known to exist, and nothing has surfaced online.

This is all bittersweet. On the one hand, I now have evidence that my childhood memory was real, but on the other, I've confirmed there is no evidence that it exists in any current form. The sound of the theme song is in my head, but that's the only way that it's still alive.

What really burns me up is that we had stacks of home-recorded VHS tapes because it was my favourite show. But we lost all of them over a couple of moves. If I still had those, I would be the only one in the world to have copies of Friends of the Forest. I would have uploaded them to the Internet, and that would be my contribution to society. Oh well.

The Mandela Effect

Have you ever heard of the Mandela Effect?

This phenomenon is named for the legacy of the former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. 

However, while everyone remembers this as his contribution to history, a sizeable number of people remember him dying in prison before claiming his title as President. This presents the obvious question: How could someone who died in prison, later become the President of South Africa?

Well, people have theories, and they're not what you might assume.

The Mandela Effect is the idea that multiple dimensions exist, and sometimes merge. So, when you remember something that doesn't quite match what history claims, it's not because of your faulty memory: it's because you existed in a dimension where your memory was true, and then you were integrated into a dimension that doesn't quite match what you remember.

Despite the Mandela Effect being named after the former South African President's legacy, it's best known for the namesake of the Berenstain Bears book series.

Look closely at the name of that book series. Is it spelled correctly, or do you remember it as "The Berenstein Bears"?

If you remember an "e" instead of an "a", you might just be from a different dimension, according to The Mandela Effect.

Not going to lie, when I first ran across this, it felt a little unsettling. I, like many others, knew them as the Berensteins. However, I don't place much faith in human memory or perception, and after puzzling over it for a bit, I was able to rationalize the phenomenon and come up with an argument for my belonging in this dimension, even if I remember an "e".

Most people in North America are familiar with the sound "stein" attached to surnames. "Stain" is less common. When people read, they often use mental shortcuts, such as noting the first and last letter, looking at the length of the word and assuming what it is based on past familiarity. It's a way to speed up our reading, and it's why typos so often go overlooked. With this in mind, it's easy to mistake the abnormal "a" with the familiar "e", especially since it doesn't change the length of the word. It's also often written in cursive which makes it a little less easy to read if you're not used to it. Also, there have been instances of packaging that used the "e" by mistake. So all this contributes to the common misunderstanding of this beloved children's book series.

Another example of The Mandela Effect is Darth Vader of Star Wars' iconic phrase, "Luke, I am your father."

He never said this.

What he actually said is, "No, I am your father."

This one didn't phase me much. The former sounds better in isolation, and the latter makes more sense in context. If repeated in isolation, the phrase that sounds better that way is how it will be remembered.

There are lots of these. Remember when Hannibal Lecter said "Hello Clarice" in Silence of the Lambs? Yeah, never happened. Remember the Monopoly Man's signature monocle? He's never had one.

So in general, I feel above this idea that if you misremember something it's because you're from a different dimension. Have some humility, human memory is fickle.

Until recently. I discovered an example of The Mandela Effect that shakes me to my core.

The Fruit of the Loom logo

*Shudder*

I hate to be the one to inform you, but this classic underwear logo does not, nor has it ever, existed in the fashion depicted above.

This is the current logo.

No cornucopia.

It's not a recent, simplified design either. While the logo has been modified a number of times, there is no evidence to suggest that a cornucopia has ever been featured in the design.

However, many people have distinct memories of learning what a cornucopia is from asking their parents when they saw the logo. Unlike other examples, where a memory was replaced by something more familiar, people learned about something unfamiliar with this memory.

There is a design that was used for a time, where brown leaves backed the fruit, and some people say this design is what people remember, and replace the leaves with a cornucopia. But this doesn't make sense to me, because leaves are far more familiar to most people than cornucopias.

Also, this chart has been used to see if people are consistent in selecting the same logo from their memories:

People consistently choose the first one, which implies a shared memory. The counterpoint to this is that it's the most appealing, which causes people to choose it.

Of course it's the most appealing. Because a panel of experts designed it to be appealing. Because it existed.

While people remember the visual the same, different people have different vocabularies for it. Some people remember it as a cornucopia, but others know it as the horn of plenty, or more simply, the horn. So the subjective parts of memory that would vary between families does change person by person, but everyone remembers the same visual.

I distinctly remember the cornucopia, and everything about how people remember it makes it seem legit, unlike the cases of the Berenstain Bears and Darth Vader.

And yet, there is no concrete evidence to suggest the cornucopia ever existed. In fact, there is only evidence that it didn't.

I definitely come from the cornucopia dimension.

Floods Aren't Fun

One evening this past winter, me and Lee-Anne were home and I smelled what seemed to me like wood burning. I asked Lee-Anne if she could smell it too and she said she could. We quickly surveyed the unit and couldn't find the source. We opened the door to the shared section of the house and found ourselves ankle-deep in water.

It didn't take long to find out that water was spouting from the back of the washing machine. We'd put a load of laundry in, and after shutting the machine off, the water flow quickly stopped. At this point in time, our neighbours were still gone.

We called our landlord even though it was kind of late. He answered, and it was the first time either of us had ever heard his voice. Our tour of the unit had been hosted by the previous tenant, and all the legal stuff after that had been done remotely.

Our landlord said he'd contact the maintenance person and that he'd be by the next day. Until then, he asked us to clean up the water. He didn't really need to ask us, we were kind of incentivized to not have our own home destroyed.

It was an uncomfortable task, though. Lot of stuff in the laundry room and I'm not quite sure how they all work. We spent awhile sopping up water with mops and towels, wringing it into buckets and bailing it all out. All the while, I was vaguely nervous that one of the devices was going to explode in my face from prolonged exposure to the water.

This isn't the first time I've dealt with a house flood. Long time readers might remember that one Christmas in Guelph, we had a mysterious flood that ran through our kitchen. We spent the holiday season sweeping the water into the drain in the laundry room over there and running wet vacs, taking shifts through the night to stop it from building up. We had various professionals come through, with no one finding the answer until it was discovered that a vacated house uphill from us had a pipe burst and the water was running underground into our place. The very same day that the flooding issue was fixed and I was heading back to Kitchener, my roommate called and said my unit in Kitchener was flooded.

Anyway, this time around, we managed to clean things up. Nothing exploded in my face, and while the night was tense (we never found out what was causing the burning smell, which is just uncomfortable), everyone survived and the maintenance man showed up the next day.

He said it was likely a blockage in the pipes and he'd have to snake it out. Apparently he'd run into this issue before, when they were working on the upstairs unit and later found the basement to be flooded. He said it was because the pipes were in the form of a "T" which he personally thought was poorly planned. He'd like to check upstairs but I tell him the neighbours have been gone for over two months.

So he spent awhile on the pipe with his snake. Later on, he called me over and said that whatever it was, it was in deep, and his 25 foot snake had failed to clear the blockage. He told me he's get in touch with a plumber.

The next day, we have a plumber over. He's got a 60 foot snake. He works for awhile and finds success. No more water coming out the back of the washing machine.

About a week later, late in the evening, me and Lee-Anne heard some commotion upstairs. It's our neighbours. They'd left half a month after we gained access to our unit, and only a few days after we made our big move. It had been about two and a half months since then. I was worried we'd been spoiled by not having to deal with noise from upstairs.

The next day, we left our unit and found ourselves ankle-deep in water.

So the way we got to reintroduce ourselves to our neighbours was by telling them the basement was flooded, asking them if they'd used the washing machine since coming back, and explaining the situation last week.

They said they hadn't used the washing machine. We start to clean things up, and while we clean, it starts flooding again. We remember what the maintenance guy said about the basement flooding when they worked on stuff upstairs. We ask the neighbours if they're using their kitchen sink. They are, and we have to ask them not to. Flooding issue stops.

We contact the landlord again. He contacts both the maintenance man and the plumber. Both of them come together next time. This time, they can access the upstairs. Somehow, they resolve the issue. They tell me that they've written up an estimate to get some of the pipes reworked out of that "T" formation both of them are so unfond of. My landlord approves it. One more visit from the plumber later, and it hasn't been an issue since.

Floods aren't fun.

I know I haven't updated much this month, but I've made three entries on my Gryphood blog this month, so technically, I'm ahead of schedule. My last entry over there was that curry recipe that my mom got from a video game, which I mentioned on this blog a little while back. 25 ingredients! Probably the most intricate thing I've ever cooked. Here's a link: LeBlanc Curry (gryphood.blogspot.com)

Third Wave

Yup, I don't like to say it but it looks like we're in our third wave. Apparently, it was confirmed in early March, but a new province-wide lockdown was only called in April. Felt like an April Fools joke. We've only been out of lockdown for about a month, and I guess we were released from it right as we were confirming the third wave. Places like Toronto and Peel Region never even got to leave lockdown. 

It's kind of confusing. Awhile back, I made the prediction that Christmas 2020 would be the peak of the pandemic, as people gathered together in large numbers and close quarters to celebrate our largest celebration of the year, during our second wave which had been larger than our first. Then, as the weather warmed, I figured the virus would ease up like it did last year. We also had our vaccines distributing, and between these two figures I thought the rates would taper away, and while we might have had a third wave in the fall of 2021, I thought by then enough of us would have had the vaccine that it would be a smaller wave than our second.

And this is why I'm not a medical professional. Instead, we left our second wave and entered a third a month later. Our Intensive Care Units are apparently hitting record demand.

A big point of pride for us Canadians is that we avoided a third wave while the US didn't. Looks like we got there, though. Also, while we've done a relatively decent job at adapting to the pandemic, we didn't do the best at acquiring and distributing vaccines. Some of my US relatives have taken a few jabs at the Canadian branch of the family for how difficult it has been for us to get our shots. Oh well, after everything they've been through, they deserve a win.

The reason being given for the third wave is that the variants turned out to be really all that. They're calling them VOC's now, for "Variants of Concern". Remember when I said that it was odd that we condemned the term "China Virus" for being xenophobic, but then we had no trouble naming the new variants after the UK, Brazil, and South Africa? Well, looks like we're being consistent, because we turned away from country names again.

The outbreak zones are no longer long term care residences, likely because most of the workers and residents have been vaccinated. The University of Waterloo's residence was declared an outbreak zone.

There are more exceptions to restrictions than in the previous lockdown. For example, my work's in-person service is allowed to keep running, unlike last time.

Schools are being allowed to stay open. One way that COVID has changed our education systems forever is that, during mandatory school closures and optional home-schooling services, there was enough pressure to develop an accessible virtual option. This means that almost all children can access school from home. This means no more snow days! It was made official a few months ago, when the weather was hazardous enough that students couldn't travel to school. Instead of declaring a snow day, they called for a "weather impacted day" and students had to attend virtually. No longer will children know the immense joy of having their classes canceled.

While we're on the topic of this past winter. One big difference for me was that I had to shovel snow. Growing up in apartments, this was never something I needed to do. Even in my old townhouse, despite it being a pretty low-cost area, we had a maintenance guy come in to take care of it all. My only prior experience comes from helping a friend in high school do it, and helping a friend of the family in my early twenties. But I never did it for me or my household. I have, however, supported a number of people who use wheelchairs, and they've mentioned that there's a special place in heck for the people who don't shovel their driveways. I use this as a reminder to make sure that at least the sidewalk is cleared enough that a wheelchair could easily move over it.

I sent a Christmas present to a friend of mine through Canada Post, and he finally got it this past Saturday. Four months late! I'm still waiting on his present.

My friend who I mentioned was in the hospital a few posts back passed away.