First Floor Apartments

For apartment rentals, there is a trend where, the higher the floor, the higher the price. I've never really understood this. As someone that grew up in them, I've always envied the first floor people. They seem to set the tone for the rest of the building. They're more visible, they can talk to people easily from their "balconies", and if their cat jumps over the guard rail it isn't a tragedy. Often, they can sprawl out with company because they functionally have a front yard. They don't have to go as far to get outside. Sometimes they can bypass the need to go through the lobby to get to their unit entirely. The higher your apartment is, the more divorced from reality you are. Superintendants always seem to have one on the first floor, so they have to be good.

I guess it does sort of conceptually go against the idea of an apartment. It can be funny how despite being at ground level, they usually have the standard guard rail for their balconies. I've heard it might be a security thing, but houses are at ground level and don't require a locked lobby to get in. Maybe it's because the balconies have a sliding door, which might be considered less safe than standard. But houses have windows. Besides, it's relatively easy to kick in a door. I had to do it once, and I've known two others with less imposing statures who have needed to do this as well.

I've heard it might be about noise, but depending on location this could be more or less true. Apparently most people just want the view, but I'm scared of heights and don't ever want to be above the treeline.

So I'm pretty stoked that my mom and brother have been accepted for a first floor apartment!

It's in Kitchener. In fact, it's in the same neighbourhood as me and Lee-Anne. Since they've been staying with us, this means they're already accustomed with the area. Because it's on the ground level, we can just carry their stuff from our place and pass it through their balcony. Easy move. Well, they'll eventually need to move the stuff from the storage unit in Guelph, which will take more planning.

They're going to have a dishwasher, which is really nice. I've never had one long-term. I sublet for five months at a a place that had one. It was awesome while it lasted. I feel like there is a subtle class difference between those that have dishwashers and those that do not. Not that their place is super swanky. I didn't expect that perk.

They're going to have a bathtub too, which Mom is really happy about. Both they and we have been living in basement apartments that only have showers. I didn't even notice it on viewing. Honestly, I fail to see the appeal of those little standard apartment bathtubs. They seem to be only large enough for children. But I don't remember the one at this new place, so maybe it was a bit better.

They're going to have access to an outdoor pool, a gym, a social room... and maybe a few other things. Mostly I just remember the pool and gym because those are things I would like access to. There aren't any gyms in the immediate area so I've just been doing home workouts.

They're set to move December 1st, which is Sunday. We have a few things to complete in the next couple days to make that possible though. We need to connect them with hydro, with tenant insurance, and we need to make out a bank draft with first month's rent. But we've signed the lease, so the hard part is over.

My brother had been in the States for an extended visit, finding himself after the fire. He came back a week ago, so our place has been a bit crowded. But we'll all have our own space again soon.

The application process had a few hiccups which I might blog about. Still, it was the first place we tried, and it was our first choice, so everything worked out well.

False Exit

One time recently, me and Lee-Anne were leaving an ION light rail station, and we were flagged down by a security guard. She told us that the direction we were taking was "emergency only", and that we had to exit from the other side. This felt a little perplexing, but at least she wasn't singling us out. As we walked in the direction she requested, we saw her approaching person after person and giving them the same warning.

She was not out of her right to do so. It's easy to overlook, but in the direction we were walking was a little sign that says "emergency only".

Still, while she was technically playing by the book as she ushered people away from the false exit, she was really tackling her role with a ferver that made me question her motivation. People are constantly leaving and entering from there and we saw her camping pretty hard, taking lots of initiative to correct passengers. It seemed like she had taken it on as her personal mission to correct this societal trend.

It just feels like a weird hill to die on, because there is barely a difference between the two exit points. At both sides there is a payment podium. If people are only supposed to enter it during an emergency, would they even worry about train fare?

Even curiouser, I wonder what kind of emergency there might be that exiting that way would be helpful. It's in the open air. If the train were on fire or if there were an active shooter, I would run in any direction that would take me further from the crisis. I wouldn't file into a line labeled as the emergency exit, placed at an arbitrary point in the outdoors.

That might be unfair. It isn't totally arbitrary as there is a ramp... onto the tracks, but not off. This means that if you use a mobility device, you can be assisted off the platform, but not past the railway which has a curb facing the road.

My guess is that the payment podium was placed there due to the cookie-cutter design of the ION stations. Most of them have one on each side, so they did it here even though one of the exits is technically not viable.  Other than the half-deconstructed curb, I guess the one thing stopping it from being considered legitimate is that there isn't a crosswalk.

But perhaps one day there will be, because we just got a new one in our neighbourhood. There's a corner near where we live intersecting how I get to work and between our home and the nearest grocery. It has a very annoying level of traffic. During the pandemic, Lee-Anne put in a request to the city to install a crosswalk and got a response that they'd look into it, but that everything was backlogged due to COVID. Well, some three years later we got some paint on pavement. 

It doesn't do much. The cars don't really acknowledge it, and when they do you have to worry that traffic moving the other way won't be on the same wavelength. This can cause some awkwardness as you either have to reject the offer of the person that stopped due to the lack of hospitality shown by other drivers, or you have to feel a bit guilty for the car that feels pressured to stop because someone else did. 

Maybe the addition of a crosswalk to the false ION exit wouldn't help much.

Driving

When I was 19, I broke up with my first girlfriend. At the time I was just out of highschool and had no plans for my future. To avoid feeling completely stagnated, I took the initiative to get my G1 Driver's License. No one in my family or anyone in my local network drove, so I wasn't able to practice.

I did Katimavik and Canada World Youth. After this I applied, and was accepted into college. It would be some months until my program started, so I went up North for a time to practice driving with my grandfather. I believe I referenced that in a recent post. I tested for my G2 up there and "didn't make any disqualifying errors, but made an accumulation of minor ones", preventing me from getting the license.

After starting college, I found that I either never had enough time or enough money to take lessons. I did two sets with one agency, but I was working multiple jobs and never managed to do enough conistently to warrant another attempt at the G2.

At my current work, it's pretty common for employees to be able to drive. We try to empower our members to be as independent as possible, taking public transit or our accessibility service, Mobility Plus. Every job I've had in this field has required a driver's license, and I've really learned to pitch the benefits of not having one. The classic thing to say is that, because you aren't able to drive, you have a more thorough understanding of the services that the people you work with use.

However, it does prevent you from a lot of community engagement opportunities.

My wife can't drive due to being legally blind and epilleptic. Whenever we arrive somewhere and people realize that we took public transit, we have to explain why. Easy enough for her, but I'm usually left saying that I have no excuse.

After we started dating, she encouraged me to renew my G1, which was either expired or about to. Since they last five years, it must have been my second time.

And recently, I was approaching my third renewal. Surprisingly, I found that I had both the time and the money for lessons. I chose a different agency than the one I used twice before, since I would have been embarassed to get the same guy.

I did five lessons total. I even went up North and practiced with my grandfather. I drove with my father-in-law as well. I scheduled a drive test. Unfortunately, my license would expire before the date they proposed. Not to worry, it turns out that if you schedule the test before your license expires, you can get an extension. So I went to the DriveTest office and they gave me a piece of paper, saying that if I show my expired license as well as this yellow sheet, that I could do my test.

I used a vacation day from work for my chance at the license. I show up, and I'm told that my yellow sheet of paper is not a temporary license, it's an application for one. Apparently in their system, I received one on the day I got my extension, but because I can't present it to them, I'm not allowed to do the test.

So I do the G1 test again. Get the same license. Silver lining is that I can schedule another G2 test immediately, and I don't have to wait the usual requisite year. Still, feels ike I'm fated never to get this thing.

Snack Packs

I struggle to come up with ideas for work lunches that aren't carb heavy. Before my diabetes diagnosis, I used to go by the format I used for the kids at my old grouphome job. It was something like, a sandwich, a snack, fruit, vegetable, and a yogurt cup. Most of the kids hated the yogurt cup but for some reason our protocol really wanted them to have it.

After the diagnosis, I wanted to cut back on bread because of the starch. So that put out sandwiches, and most of the snack options, like granola bars, had almost as much added sugar as candy. So I opted to just make dinners that would often leave excess, and bring leftovers to work.

When Mom and my brother needed to stay with us, we were cooking for four, which would leave me without this option. I wound up getting pre-made lunches at the local grocery. There wasn't much in the way of diabetic-friendly options, but they did have these snack trays segmented into four. They would usually include a cheese, a meat, and two vegetables.

I thought this was a pretty good way of keeping track of your nutrition intake, but the grocery really inflated the price for what it was. Eventually, it occured to me that I could make my own. At first I was collecting the trays from the store and reuse them with home ingredients, but Lee-Anne pointed out that they were of poor quality, meant for single-use. She said that someone had probably made resuable food containers like this.

My new snack packs! The left one has dark chocolate covered cranberries, cheese, popcorn, and snowpeas and the right one has grapes, radishes, cashews, and dark chocolate covered crandberries.

I find it really convenient, because I can make multiple and then I don't have to worry about remembering to do lunch prep.

When people see them, they often get called "adult lunchables". I think this is funny because I've chosen this way as a healthier alternative, while lunchables are discouraged by doctors due to having low nutritional value.

Quick-pickled green beans go well in these. I sometimes like to have a brined vegetable to go with a fresh one. This is how I found out that chocolate and pickles go well together. I tend to absent-mindedly pluc from each section. One day I had dark chocolate covered almonds and pickle slices and I noticed myself going between the two.

Making Sense of the US Election

I don't really like writing about politics on this blog, and I'm not going to enjoy making this one either. However, recently there has been a development that is difficult to ignore. This past Tuesday, there was an election for the Presidency of the United States. It was Kamala Harris vs. Trump, and Trump won.

As someone in the helping professions that supports people of all backgrounds and opinions, who is cognisant of his influential position and believes in democracy, I seldom make political commentary publicly. I believe that it is professional to maintain an image of neutrality to allow space for people with contrasting beliefs to express themselves.

I suppose this blog technically counts as public. I've made exceptions for Trump in the past though. Back when he had a bunch of peaceful Black Lives Matters protestors assaulted with rubber rounds, flash bombs and tear gas so that he could pose in front of a church with an upside down Bible, I made a post on that. 

So if you've been following me long enough, you'll know that I am not a fan of Donald Trump, and I view his recent victory negatively.

It probably goes without saying, but one might question why I care about the US Presidency when I am Canadian. It's because they are the world's largest economic superpower and functionally our only neighbour, separated from the rest of the world by a wide expanse of ocean. Technically we have Iceland too, but come on.

Much of Canadian identity centres on how we are "not American". For example, globally we have a pretty mediocre medical system, but because it's better than America's we think it's top class. Canada is a world economic superpower in its own right, but we feel small and impoverished because we're next to the leader in that category. 

They are our largest trading partner and vice versa. Trump has stated that he wants to impose a 10% tariff on international trades, which would cause inflation for us. What happens to them impacts us. 

So I care about who is in their highest seat of power. I am ashamed to say that I was shocked by the outcome of their election. I was so confident in Kamala's win that I was reassuring other people as the ballots were coming in. The map was looking redder and redder, and I was saying that Republicans tend to vote in-person while Democrats are more likely to vote by mail, and that an early Conservative lead was expected, which would follow a blue wave.

I wasn't just saying this because it's what happened last time. There's this guy named Allan Lichtman. He has a system that he calls the "Thirteen Keys to the Whitehouse". He's been making predictions over the past ten elections, and has called nine of them correctly. 

The one he got wrong was Gore vs. Bush, which was historically close. He's argued that he got that right too. He says that election was stolen by people intentionally misinterpreting ballots from Black people as "over-voting". Apparently there were two places that looked possible to indicate a selection, and a sizeable number marked their preference in both as an abundance of caution. This was to combat this very same form corruption that they had historically experienced.

I would argue that even if this is true, Lichtman's tool is the "13 Keys to the Whitehouse", not to a "Victory Under Fair Circumstances". If corruption is enough of a variable to make the difference, then there should be 14 keys.

He also sometimes gets challenged on his 2016 prediction. He said Trump would win, but he said he'd also get the popular vote, which he didn't. I don't care about that either though, because as I said, I only care about who gets the Presidency, and Lichtman was right about that.

He's said that the 13 keys hold up for centuries, but obviously he wasn't around for those so he's going in with confirmation bias and I don't take that seriously.

Still though, I'll give him a 90% accuracy with his only wrong prediction being extremely narrow. I was converted in my way of thinking, and started to believe that election results had less to do with campaigning and more to do with environment. I saw Lichtman go through each key and he called a win for Kamala, with the only variance being by what margin.

There's also a pollster named J. Ann Selzer who is considered the gold standard. She said that Kamala would flip Iowa.

That didn't happen, and the election wasn't even close. Well, it was in the way that almost everyone in the US is already locked in based on party loyalty and the only variance is some small percentage of swing voters. But Harris lost the popular vote, the first time that's happened to a Democrat since 2004, and Trump flipped four states.

Sometimes I get criticized for being pessimistic and gloomy. I really think it's the opposite. I have so much hope and optimism for humanity, which gets routinely crushed. This causes a sometimes dour demeanor.

Since the election, the strangest thing is that no one is talking about it. It feels like everyone was fixated on it, and then the next day no one I spoke to in person even mentioned it. Even I didn't. 

Some family members have been talking about it on WhatsApp. Online, some left wing pundits have discussed it, but their videos have been mostly brief and dispassionate. People that came out of the woodwork to discuss politics even though it's not their usual thing have been totally quiet. I feel like even Conservatives have been pretty subdued in their boasting.

I had to be the one to break the silence with my mother and brother on the topic and their initial response was something like "Yep, it's bad", although they've both expanded on their feelings since. One of my coworkers asked me a day later how an American I know was taking the election results, which was my first entrypoint into having an actual, in-person discussion on it. She agreed that the silence has been deafening.

I really feel like we might be witnessing the beginning of the end of democracy as the global standard. Trump will likely be more unhinged than last time as he won't have to appeal to prospective voters. This is because he'll either have reached his term limit, or he'll have managed to eliminate that as a barrier to his continued rule.

Another reason is that the political environment right now is much more vulnerable to abuse. Before I get into this, I want to say that I'm not all that savvy when it comes to talking politics, and I'm venting more than anything, so I might get some of this wrong.

During his first term, Trump installed three right wing Supreme Court Justices. During Biden's run they've managed to enact two pretty damaging bills to the checks and balances that keep democracy functional. The first one allows the President to fire as many people as he likes from his office. The implication here is that you could remove people with expertise and replace them with propagandists. The second one allows the President to bypass the Supreme Court's rulings when making official acts. There have been almost no parameters given to the definition of an "official act", although it does offer any and all use of the military, which Trump has already stated an interest in using on US citizens. It would be easy to imagine this being used to dispatch future political rivals as well.

These are the kinds of moves that make democracy fall apart. Putin needed to win his first few elections fairly, but was able to destabilize the system to the point that it's an open secret that he is pre-ordained to win every term by a wide margin. President Xi in China has managed to eliminate term limits in the not-so-distant past as well.

So why are the US citizens handing power over to Trump again, when even he says that he'll be a tirant on the first day but then stop? I don't feel confident in speaking on this, as my prediction for the election results turned out to be incorrect. But I have looked at some speculation.

First of all, despite a complete victory, Trump didn't get as many votes this time around. Harris just got a lot less than Biden did. This implies that Trump didn't convert more people to his side, just fewer people, mostly Democrats, chose not to show up.

In 2020, record numbers of people went to the polls and Biden got more votes total than any President in the history of the US. I think that was due to desperation to get Trump out of office. Now that we've had four years of relative normalcy from the States, I guess voter apathy has kicked in again.

The elephant in the room is that Kamala's demographics may have come into play. She would have been the first woman of colour, and the first woman at all to take the position. The sample size for how this impacts voting decisions is too small right now to come to a conclusion. But at any rate, I think there is enough data to suggest that having "woman-like" traits has been viewed as undesirable to the American people.

In recent history, the vast majority of Presidents have been over six feet tall. Even though that doesn't influence a person's ability to govern, I actually worried that Kamala wasn't "Presidential height". I've heard complaints that she isn't good at public speaking because she has a "nasally voice", but really, it isn't outside the spectrum of normal for a woman.

Other prominent nations such as the UK, Germany, and New Zealand, have had women at the highest level of power. But in the USA, they seem to want a manly figure to tower above the rest of the world.

There's also the fact that most undecided voters choose their candidate based on the economy. I've heard a lot of annoying bickering on whether or not Biden was good or bad for this. My understanding is that, post-COVID, globally we have fallen into a recession. While the US has done a comparably good job of staving this off, they have not been untouched. Their citizens don't see themselves as one piece of a larger picture, and instead compare what they have now to what has been.

This logic can be faulty as well, in that there is often a lag between when a policy decision is made and when its impact hits. This means that Presidents are often credited for their past rivals actions.

There has been a lot of people speculating that Biden shouldn't have dropped out of the race, or that he should have done so earlier. It's hard to say how that would impact things.

One hot take I have is that I don't believe Biden has dementia. I remember lots of people making fun of him for being old, which  made sense as he was the "return to status quo" candidate with the long political resume, while Trump was the pro-change guy who was new to the scene. Even though they weren't too different in age, I could see Biden embracing the traditionalist image, which would get mocked for coming across as "old".

When he debated Trump, it was the first time where I thought "Uh-oh, we might have a problem". I'd come in about an hour late so I figured he'd just run out of steam. But watching from the beginning, I saw that he never fully had it together.

Still, he was the oldest sitting President in history, and he was sick and had a speach impediment. I can't guarantee he didn't have age-related illness, but I felt his performance was explainable by those things without the needed addition of dementia.

Some people have said that Kamala's decision to continue to support Israel in their ongoing conflict with Palestine alienated their voting base. I kind of sympathize with this perspective. It's been a hot topic, and for some reason, it's been the only one that both parties have united on. So if you're pro-Palestine, you were left without a voice. 

I've also heard that globally, there is an anti-incumbant trend. So this means that regardless of which party is in power, people will be switching to the other side. So while this means the US and Canada will be shifting right, many traditionalist places are turning left.

I hesitate to say that Trump is the worst politician in history. However, he has set a few records in that he's:

• First to be impeached twice
• First convicted felon to achieve the Presidency
• The oldest person to hold the position

I hope my more pessimistic viws don't come to fruition. In these circumstances I very much hope to be wrong.

Late October Stuff

Last year I made a post about a local event called the Central Art Walk. For a weekend, local artists display their work from their homes, and the public is invited in to browse and make purchases. Art can be on the more traditional side in the form of paintings, but can be anything including sculptures, woodworking, jewellery, homemade soap, etc. Last year we got some wooden spoons, a canvas with colourful buttons attached to it, and Lee-Anne got some mittens.

It was inspired by another event called the Frederick Art Walk, which has been going on for longer and is larger in scale. I went to that one once, but I was alone and too shy to look at things closely.

This year we made it to both. On the Central Art Walk we didn't see our spoon guy, which is too bad because we have a few more wooden bowls and would have made a purchase to accompany them. We did see the person we got our button canvas from. 

There was an Artists's Co-Op, which I think is pretty established but was new to the walk. A piece that caught our eye was a painting of a sliding scale of citrus fruits, with a lime at one end and a grapefruit at the other. The artist wasn't present that day, but Lee-Anne took her contact information and contacted her later to make a purchase. It's paid for now and we just have to pick it up.

One of the addresses was located on Waterloo Street. We went there but it didn't have a display. Before we could decide whether or not we should knock, the home owner took the initiative to poke her head out and say that if we were looking for art, the address number was the same, but it was in the city of Waterloo. We were at Waterloo St, Kitchener, but we needed Waterloo St, Waterloo. I got the impression that she'd needed to give this explanation a lot over the weekend.

Our neighbourhood borders the two cities. The place we were looking for was on the same physical street, just in the opposite direction. I've always thought having Waterloo Street so close to Waterloo was a problem. Having a Waterloo Street in Waterloo shouldn't be allowed.

Lee-Anne's mom expressed disappointment that she wasn't able to come to the Central Art Walk. Lucky for her we still had Frederick. She came with us to that one and got a couple of new Christmas stockings, as a new child had recently been born in the family, and another one is on the way. She also got some soap. Lee-Anne got a handbag and some wool balls that are supposed to replace dryer sheets while doing laundry. I've tried them since and I guess they work. To be fair, I haven't used dryer sheets since college.

I was bolder at this walk and got a 2025 calendar, a sketchbook, and some bookmarks. We also got a cat toy. Part of me felt bad for making more purchases at the Frederick Art Walk than the one in our own neighbourhood, although Lee-Anne did later get that citrus painting.

I ran into the guy that made my wooden bowls. Because I'd bought some for my family as gifts and we rescued them, we currently have two households worth and weren't in need of any more. Since I hadn't seen him at the Central Art Walk, I was worried I'd bought too much of his supply and he couldn't justify doing a stand, but I was glad to see he still had a good quantity.

I ran into some old colleagues from when I was an Independent Facilitator. The Frederick neighbourhood is basically social work central.

It was Lee-Anne's 31st birthday recently. We got Detroit style pizza from a nearby place, and on her request I made a fattoush salad to go with it and brownies for dessert. Normally I'd make a chocolate coconut cream pie, but that wasn't the birthday wish this year. Maybe I'll make one this Tuesday for the US election, since Kamala has that coconut symbolism.

We gave out candy on Halloween. Mom is still staying with us, and she hasn't lived on a street with active trick-or-treaters for at least as long as I've been alive. Last year I tried to keep track of how many kids came, but a bunch showed up in a huge wave near the end and I lost count. I estimated that we had about 40.

I was told standard trick-or-treating hours were 6-9. Things were slow at first, picked up around 7, and died around 8. Because we live in the basement apartment, we have to set up a stand in the front yard or nobody will approach us. At 8:30 it started to rain in a serious way so we went in. At this time we had 40 trick-or-treaters. Even one of the kids from upstairs said she was sorry I "didn't break the record".

But later, after 9, Mom was sitting outside and two trick-or-treaters came by, raising us to a final count of 42.

Best costume of the night goes to the kid that dressed up as a recycling bin. Apparently his dad was wearing a matching costume. I didn't see the father, but I like to imagine that one was paper and the other containers. I'm pretty sure I remember the kid was paper.