Brother's Birthday and Pandemicversary

Last Friday, March 12th, was my brother's birthday, as well as Lee-Anne's father's. The day before was the anniversary of the pandemic and I'm pretty sure Canada declared our initial shutdown on the 13th.

I went home for the weekend. By my count, this is the sixth time I've been to Guelph in the past year. This would mean that, if I visited an average of once per month before the pandemic, on average, my family visits have only been cut in half. I really thought it would have been by more.

My brother's unfortunately placed birthday also marks one year since he's been able to see some significant people in his life.

For the occasion, Mom made curry. This was made from a recipe that was until recently a secret (actually, it probably didn't exist until recently). It's based around a character in a video game we've all played, who owns a cafe that's known for its' curry and coffee (I guess the theme was supposed to be scent, that would be one fragrant cafe). Fittingly enough, one of the curry's ingredients is coffee, which leads me to believe that his signature coffee must contain curry.

I won't post the entire recipe, but I will say that it contains grated carrot and apple, chocolate, red wine, coffee and an eight spice mix among many other things. Pretty intricate for a video game recipe. I'll have to make it myself one day.

I brought some back for Lee-Anne, and she really liked it. She said it reminded her of a Sri Lankan restaurant that she used to go to.

Just a quick COVID update now, I know it's not everyone's favourite topic.

Last time I talked about COVID, I mentioned the new UK variant. Now we've got two new strains, one from Brazil and one from South Africa. It feels kind of odd that we shot down the term "Chinese virus" for being xenophobic, but we're okay to refer to the new strains as the "UK variant", "South African variant", and "Brazil variant". I guess it's okay to use nation labels now. It makes it a little weirder too when you take into account that while the UK variant was discovered in the UK, it likely wasn't developed there.

I've got a chance to get vaccinated a little bit in advance, since my job sometimes involves interaction with people who are immunocompromised. Right now Ontario's using a three-phase vaccine rollout plan. It's funny, we had a recovery plan that used "phases" before we swapped to the colour system.

Anyway, I belong in a stage 1.5 of sorts. I think we're in the same timeline as uber drivers. Waterloo Region's low on vaccines though, because we got put in the same size category as Guelph, which is significantly smaller. So the Guelphites who have jobs similar to mine will probably get vaxxed sooner.

We've got four vaccines going in Ontario now. There's the PfizerBiontech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson (Janson). I never know what to call that last one. Should I call it Johnson & Johnson, or should I call it Janson? Or should I call it J & J, or Triple J? Bah.

I think I mentioned the first two. The second two are newer, and I understand they only need one shot instead of two, which has been standard, and they can be stored at lower temperatures, which is better for more wide-scale distribution. However, they both have a lower reported efficacy rate, although we're supposed to keep in mind that when they did their trials, it was in the presence of the variants, unlike the first two vaccines. This would skew their results. Medical advice is to not "shop around" and just take whatever is offered. Even if you catch the virus after being vaccinated, it's supposed to make the symptoms lighter. I think everyone I know who's got the vaccine has gotten the Moderna.

What's a little odd is that the CDC still has AstraZeneca in phase three clinical trials and is not available in the States. Us Canadians are fine with it though.

Somebody that I've known professionally for a good eight years is in hospital for non-COVID related reasons. Third person I know to move through the medical system in these times.

No More Friends

Last December, I helped a friend of mine move. He was moving out of town for education reasons, and it wasn't optimal timing, as it was not too long before we went into lockdown. But it was more than a one man job, so I took the chance and me, him, and two other guys took on the task of moving heavy objects in close proximity, sweating and breathing heavily at each other. Even with masks it didn't feel very COVID safe.

He was a pretty close friend.  Whenever we were allowed to have social bubbles, he was the only one outside my household or immediate family that I kept a spot for. Before COVID, he was the only person that I really went out of my way to hang out with that wasn't a coworker.

If you've been reading awhile, he's the guy I met in Katimavik as he was leaving Thunder Bay and I was arriving there, who was the tallest in his group, had a pin hat, was the chairman of his group's Communication Councel, and kept a dream journal. All traits that we shared. Because my group arrived at two placements after his, the locals would always compare me to him, and then we even wound up living near each other after the program finished.

He's also the guy whose shorts I stole because Air Canada lost all my luggage and he had to leave some stuff behind because of a baggage limit or something. I wore those all the way until last year when they ripped. Another tragedy of 2020.

Before all this, of course I myself moved. Not as far as my friend, but it did cause my former roommate to move out of town. He'd been stressing me out for awhile, so I thought I'd feel relieved more than anything. However, other than the person I mentioned above, he was probably my only other "guy" friend, so that's a dynamic I'm lacking in my current lifestyle.

Also, for better or worse, the place I moved from had a very active community. This made me nervous, because that neighbourhood also had Waterloo Region's highest rate of community spread for COVID, and the active community was probably the reason. But in a way, it was sort of a relief that I could never sink into a fully solitary lifestyle. You couldn't help but know all your neighbours and be invested in their lives.

So, between my two friends moving, and myself moving to a quieter neighbourhood, I'm experiencing a truer sense of isolation than I have throughout the pandemic.

Obviously I have Lee-Anne. I'm kind of leaning into the solitude bit for the theme of this post, but I don't want anyone saying I didn't count her.

Did I mention that our upstairs neighbours were gone for awhile?  We moved in slowly and settled in here halfway through December. Then after a couple days they disappeared. They were gone for about two and a half months, so we've been here longer without them than with them. Regardless, even with them back, it's not like we've been able to develop any kind of connection. At first we thought they were staying in quarantine for 14 days as recommended for travellers, but it's been over two weeks and not much has changed. I know full well there's at least one person who lives up there that I've never met.

One funny thing to note is that when I was helping my friend move, I learned that one of the guys in our four man crew owned a bakery just across the street from where I live. Then later on, in a staff meeting, somebody mentioned ordering donuts from there and several people started talking about how they have a really good reputation. Later on, Lee-Anne got some stuff there and mentioned me. It was the owner, and he remembered who I was.

Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day, Family Day 2021

We had a little cluster of holidays a few weeks ago.

The first one was Chinese New Year, changing from the Year of the Rat to the Year of the Ox. It's not an event with a lot of personal significance for either of us, but we did order takeout from a local Chinese restaurant that we hadn't been to before. It's right at the end of our usual walk, along a nearby trail, so we'd seen the place quite a bit. It's kind of convenient because it takes them about 20 minutes to prepare the food, and it's about a 20 minute walk from our place. It had to be takeout, because at the time we were still in lockdown, although I think we would still likely just get takeout, even though we've since gone back to the red zone.

For Valentine's Day we didn't do too much. I made lasagna, and Lee-Anne made Caesar salad and garlic bread.

Some foods taste good but they aren't photogenic. My usual go-to example for that is lasagna, but this doesn't look too shabby, if I do say so myself.  The candle lighting, and being surrounded by better-looking foods probably helps.

During the first wave of the pandemic, I was trying to reduce my diet to staple foods, but I also wanted to use everything in my cupboards. I had a package of lasagna noodles, which is good for two three-layer lasagnas. My first one was a three-cheese blend of ricotta, mozzarella, and parmesan. It was good, but the amount of cheese that went into it astonished me. When you're not used to cooking something, it opens you to rude awakenings like this.

So I used almost all my cheese, but I needed to use the rest of the noodles. I remembered hearing somewhere that some people don't use cheese at all, substituting it with a bechamel sauce. So I learned how to do that, and it was okay... but it would have been better with cheese.

But the bechamel reminded me of the cheese sauce on a croque madame that I'd had when me and Lee-Anne were visiting one of my Toronto aunts. With this data, I was sure that if I combined what went right with each of the lasagnas I'd made, I could make a superior version. At the time, me and Lee-Anne were distanced because of the pandemic, but I told her that when we reunited, I would make this superior lasagna. I never got around to it though, until this Valentine's Day.

So I combined the three-cheese blend with the bechamel to create a cheese sauce, and this was the result. I think it was pretty good, but I'm not going to post the recipe to Gryphood, because I don't know if I would go through the effort of recreating it. I have a simpler lasagna recipe now.

Probably more interesting than learning how to make lasagna, is that me and Lee-Anne were in a panel for a Valentine's-themed session for people with albinism. We, along with three other couples, answered questions about our relationship. While someone else on the panel was in a relationship with someone with pigment, I was the only pigmented person in the Zoom session. It's a funny feeling, being a minority in a room full of people who are one 17,000th of the population. They call people like me "pigmentos".

The people running the session were friends of Lee-Anne's from NOAH (National Organization of Albinism and Hypopigmentation).

And then for Family Day I didn't do much. Called home, and me, my mother and my brother just caught up a little. No real established traditions yet for a holiday so young.

I'm reviving my reviews blog. Since one of my goals was to read at least six pieces of fiction this year, I figured I could do a review of each of them. This review is for The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents.

My background in blogging is rooted in book reviews. I actually had a blog on another site before this one, way back when I was a teenager, and most of it was me talking about books. It's never been my most popular content, though.

So I'm trying something new. I thought maybe the fact that my reviews are full of spoilers might turn some people off, who might want to hear my recommendation without having the plot ruined. So now I'm including a no-spoiler review before my full review. The no-spoiler review is also a little more brief, because I know I can ramble on. So check it out if you like:

https://gryphonsreviews.blogspot.com/2021/02/book-review-amazing-maurice-and-his.html

My reviews are so unpopular, in fact, that of my five blogs, it's the only one with fewer views than posts. That is, until recently when my cannabis strain review recently got an influx of hits. Turns out one of Lee-Anne's brothers tattled on me to his mom for smoking cannabis over two years ago after it had been legalized.

https://gryphonsreviews.blogspot.com/2019/01/cannabis-strains.html

That review also has a link to my two other posts with my reaction to Canada's legalization of cannabis.

I won't say the brother's name, but it fittingly rhymes with "nark"

Year Ahead Tarot Reading 2021

Last month, I did a tarot reading aimed at covering the span of 2020-2021.

If you are familiar with tarot, you might recognize this as the Celtic Cross spread. I was going to do a "Year Ahead" spread, which has 12 cards in a circle, like an analogue clock, with a thirteenth card in the centre, representing the whole year. The idea behind that one was that each of the cards that form the circle represents a month out of the year.  However, I looked up the instructions in my book and they didn't sit well with me. They wanted me to start with January at the 9:00 position, spread clockwise and read counterclockwise. Then they wanted each card to be interpreted from the upright position. I would have done it starting with January at the 12:00 position, both spread and read clockwise, including the reversed cards.

So I tried looking online to see how other people did the reading. I didn't see much for the format I described, but I did see a number of people offering alternative spreads to it. It looked like it may have been a popular spread at one time, but fell out of fashion as tarot readers have started distancing themselves from fortune tellers.

Most spreads concern themselves as much with the past and present as with the future. The Celtic Cross offers two alternate futures: an uninterrupted one, and one in which an intervention has been made. So I can see that a spread that offers thirteen static future cards wouldn't fill the regular requirements of a tarot reading.

So I backed off of the Year Ahead spread and me and Lee-Anne both did a Celtic Cross for one another.

I'll go through each card and give a first impression, then I'll try and give a full interpretation afterward. I won't be putting in pictures of each card like I did last time, just because it takes a while and I'd like to get moving with these posts a bit faster.

I'm sure you all want to know how 2021 is going to turn out. Unfortunately, this 10 card spread only offers two predictive cards, and it has to be filtered through my perspective. I can't offer a grander prediction.

This Covers You: The Hierophant

The cover card represents who you are in your present situation. The Hierophant is a male spiritual leader, paralleled by his more earthly equivalent, The Emperor, and female version, The High Priestess. While The Emperor is seen as an authority figure in charge of things that are more physical and practical, The Hierophant is an authority figure that concerns himself with things that are more theoretical, philosophical, and abstract. However, he is seen as an overt authority figure, unlike The High Priestess, whose influence is more guiding and indirect.

So presently I am acting as an authority figure in terms of thoughts, emotions, philosophy etc. The only area of my life that I might consider myself to be seen as holding any level of authority is my job. Obviously, we all do our best to make our group non-hierarchical, but my position does have me offering a service. With our focus on mental health during the pandemic, I could see myself be perceived as offering more abstract supports.

This Crosses You: The Fool

The crossing card represents the presenting situation. Tarot is all about journeys through life. Each suit of the pip cards and court cards, as well as the Major Arcana, represents a journey through life. The lower the number, the earlier on the journey it is. The Magician is card number one of the Major Arcana, The Fool is card number zero. If The Magician is birth, The Fool is pre-birth.

The image depicts a young man, optimistic and naive, walking off a cliff. You're always supposed to mention though, that The Fool is the type of person who could walk off a cliff and keep walking on air, because he doesn't know that he's supposed to fall.

So my presenting issue is something brewing underneath the surface, which has yet to happen.

This is Beneath You: Page of Swords in Reverse

This card represents the recent past. The Page is the youngest of the court cards. He is dynamic in his journey, and he has yet to develop a reputation. Swords represent burdens and the strength to lift those burdens.  It's in reverse, so the interpretation might be a bit more negative. Usually, court cards represent people, rather than situations. It could be me or someone else.

So my recent past includes a person who is striking out on a new journey or project. The road ahead looks like it will be difficult, and the person may not be feeling optimistic about it.

This being a beginning card makes sense with The Fool, as they both represent the start of a journey.

This is Behind You: Ten of Wands in Reverse

This card represents my distant past. The Ten of Wands shows a man carrying a heavy load, walking to a nearby village. Wands represent the element of fire, spirituality, and everyday tasks. This doesn't necessarily depict a religious sense of spirituality, but maybe something closer to the concept of "wellness" that has become popular lately.

Ten is the final number in a suit of pip cards. It's interesting that in my past I've finished a journey, and in the present, I've picked up a new one.

This is Above You: Emperor in Reverse

We already talked about The Emperor. He is paralleled by The Hierophant, who is his more philosophical counterpart. The Emperor focuses more on the physical world, such as finances, tangible resources, and external influences. It's also in the reversed position, which implies a less obvious intepretation, often a bit more negative.

Since the two cards parallel each other, and I had the Hierophant as my Cover card, I see these two relating to one another. I interpreted The Hierophant as reflecting how I am perceived by those I support at work. In this potential future, it seems I change my leadership style from a focus on peoples inner thoughts, emotions, and their spirit, and more to a focus on their external circumstances and their situation and resources in the real world. Since it's in reverse, I see myself as becoming more controlling and authoritarian in this change in approach, which is unhealthy and unproductive.

This is Before You: Page of Wands in Reverse

This card represents what will happen to me in the near future. We have another Page in Reverse. I already explained what Pages in Reverse, and what the suit of Wands mean, so it's not too difficult to puzzle out that this is a person beginning a journey and not feeling optimistic, except this time we swap out burdens for spirituality. So I will soon endeavor on some kind of spiritual journey, but I'm feeling doubtful.

These are Your Fears: Nine of Wands in Reverse

Pretty self-explanatory. This card represents what I am currently afraid of. The image depicts a wounded man, wielding a staff, backed by a wall of wands. It represents preparation for one last battle in a long, drawn out fight. This is the card that precedes my Distant Past, so it pretty clearly means that I'm afraid that whatever it was I left in the past will come back to attack me once more.

These are the People in Your Life: Lovers in Reverse

Again, pretty self-explanatory. This card represents someone or some people who are relevant to my current life. It's The Lovers, which is clearly a romantic card. The person I am romantically involved with is Lee-Anne, and since we're quarantined together, it comes to reason that this card represents her. Since it's in reverse, it represents the negative side of being romantically involved. I wouldn't worry too much about it though. It probably just represents the growing pains involved with learning to live with someone, exacerbated somewhat from the fact that we're learning during quarantine.

This is Your Advice: Queen of Pentacles

This card can serve as either advice or a warning depending on whether or not you want the Outcome card to become true. It's more of an optional intervention card than advice.

Queens are authority figures, similar to Kings, but a Queen's influence is more subtle and behind-the-scenes. They are the power behind the power. While the King and Queen cards are gendered, either of them can represent a person of the opposite sex.

Pentacles represent Earth, material wealth and the tangible world. Court cards more represent people than situations. Lee-Anne has sometimes been represented as a Queen of Pentacles, as well as a Queen of Swords, and Strength. Whether or not this card represents her or me, the advice of the Queen of Pentacles is likely to focus on the more subtle aspects of the physical world to build social harmony.

This is Your Outcome: Death

Ok, so this one comes across pretty ominous. It's a classic scenario that someone who isn't familiar with the Death card will panic if this shows up, and the reader has to assure them that it isn't as sinister as it appears. Like I said, each path in the tarot represents a journey, and Death is thirteenth in the twenty two Major Arcana. So it is mid-life, or mid-journey. A better representation of physical death would be The World, Judgement, or the tenth card of any suit.

Death represents an end and also a new beginning. It should be noted that we are all experiencing a state of constant spiritual death. Everytime you change your mind, that is the death of an old opinion and the birth of a new one.

Obviously during a pandemic, seeing Death as a potential future card looks disturbing on a surface level, but I'm going to stick to what I've said and say that this is a more desirable future than The Emperor in reverse, which was my alternative.

Instead of becoming jaded and authoritarian over time, which is the route that I'm headed, I'm offered the opportunity to follow the guidance of the Queen of Pentacles. This will allow me to avoid burning out and engage some form of spiritual rebirth.

Conclusion:

I see my Distant Past and Fear card being connected. I have been on a journey of spiritual burden for a long time. I fear my past resurfacing and needing to deal with it. For these two cards, we came to the conclusion that they represent my housing situation. I had a roommate who had severe health conditions that I took on a lot of responsibility for, with finances, interventions, and continued support. Before that, I had two other sets of roommates who suffered from mental health conditions that required support from me. I often wound up in the middle of conflict in a community that was pretty tightly interwoven. I had a criminal landlord that was constantly antagonizing me and everyone else. The fear is that, changing environments and living with someone new, that similar burdens may surface as they did in the past.

The Hierophant embodying who I am in the present and transitioning to The Emperor in Reverse represents how I handle myself in my career setting. Right now I am attentive, empathetic, capable, present, and attending to mental health needs. If I keep going as I am, I will start to focus on external influences and resources and become more authoritarian, unproductive and unhealthy. This probably means that while I'm doing well in my current role, unless I change things, I'm headed on a path to burnout.

My Cover, Recent Past, and Near Future cards are the ones most concerning the present, and they all indicate the beginning of a journey filled with apprehension and things that I cannot yet see. As I leave behind my past struggles, I look toward my new ones with pessimism.

Then I'm dealing with growing pains in my romantic life as I adjust to living with someone new. I need to look toward building my home life in a way that builds harmony so as to avoid career burnout. If I can do this, I will be rewarded with spiritual rebirth.

The one thing that I'm fixated on is the three cards in my present that suggest a negative development. It looks like I'm being presented with a new journey after completing my past one. It hasn't made itself known yet, but there are signs that it's coming. It leads to a negative future, so I need to be ready to not engage it. Most concerning is that, if I'm not aware of it, I will follow this thread and this will lead to burnout. To avoid it, I need to follow the guidance of the Queen of Pentacles.

2021 New Year's Resolutions

This post is coming disappointingly late. It's almost a month since the change of the new year, and I'm only now stating my goals.

Last year, I resolved to publish at least 40 blog updates. I achieved 45, and with the five updates I put to Gryphood, and the three I put on Gryphon's Gallery, I arguably achieved 53. This year, I'll resolve to update at least 50 times. It might look like I'm off to a bad start with only three updates in January, but if you include the two updates on Gryphood, I'm actually doing alright.

I also resolved to become more health-conscious, which certainly doesn't align with the SMART goal system (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound). Worked decently for the last three letters, not so much for the first two.

Obviously the pandemic was a huge change in lifestyle, and that will reflect health. At first, while I was using my 'burst energy' (my computer won't let me do double quote marks right now for some reason) and in crisis-mode, I was pretty good. I was only eating staple foods, I was specifically trying to boost my immune system and physical resilience so that f I caught the virus I'd have a better chance of fighting it off. I got back into my body weight workout routine, I was running laps and skipping rope in the backyard regularly.

But then of course, the addrenaline wore off and I fell back into a more sedantary lifestyle, in large part because I no longer needed to travel for work and because of the lack of vitamin D. Wound up gaining back the weight I'd lost and then some.

Since then however, I moved out of my old place and in with Lee-Anne, and I've lost some weight again just by regulating my eating habits, keeping more to a schedule, and planning meals ahead of time. So it's been a roller coaster of a year and I don't know if I should count it all as a success or failure. We'll just call it a failure to be safe.

This year I resolve to walk an average of at least 25 km per week. That sounds like a low number. This might sound lame, but Pokemon Go has a movement calculator to show how much you've walked in a week. Back while I was working, I would always walk over 50 km per week, didn't even have to try. It's just because I don't drive, and and getting around required a lot of foot travel. Now, I really have to go out of my way to get to 25 km. So my new resolution is a step back from 2019, but a step ahead of 2020. My idea was to use the Pokemon Go movement tracker to determine how much I'd walked in a week, record each week and at the end of the year figure out what my weekly average was. This way, I would concretely know whether or not I'd accomplished my goal. Unfortunately, I've been really bad about recording my progress, so I don't know what to do with that.

Of course, this resolution is sort of dependant the condition of the pandemic. If everyone's vaccinated by September, maybe I'll get a ton of steps in during the last quarter of the year. Maybe there will be even harsher lockdown restrictions and I won't be able to leave house at all. Who knows?

I kind of want to include at least two body weight workouts per week, but I kind of think it's a bit much to start now when I'm getting used to my other resolutions. I kind of want to resolve to start doing this by like, mid-way into 2021. So like, June.

Me and Lee-Anne have been talking a lot about having a meat-free day per week. I don't want to resolve to do that right away, and I feel bad resolving it at all when it feels like we're still in the brain-storming process, but I'll resolve to refrain from eating meat one day per week, implemented before the end of the year. I know that sounds like a low ball, and I know that's still too much meat, but c'mon. Let me learn some vegetarian recipes before I expand my goals.

I want to start using my dream journal again. I've been recording my dreams irregularly for awhile, but I want to make more of a habit of it. Hard to make a specific goal when it's really difficult to predict when you'll be able to remember them.

I want to read more. I used to read obsessively, but in recent years I guess I've decided to become the lowest common denominator and just wath Youtube videos in my spare time constantly. It's not a big number, but I resolve to read a minimum of 6 books in 2021. So, one non-work related book (important distinction) every two months. I'm off to a good start, because I just finished Terry Pratchet's The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents.

So to reiterate, in 2021, I resolve to:

• Make 50 blog updates
• Walk an average of 25 km or more per week
• Start a body weight workout routine, minimum twice a week, starting June or earlier
• Have a weekly vegetarian day, implemented before the end of the year
• Read at least 6 books
• Update my dream journal more regularly

So there you have it. I wonder if making resolutions that you don't start right away will be an effective way of going about it. I guess we'll find out.

By the way, I've been absolutely crushing it the past three years in terms of life development. In 2018 I got my job at WALES, in 2019 I started dating Lee-Anne and adopted Kieran, and in 2020 I moved in with Lee-Anne. I wonder if I'll have any major accomplishments in 2021. Can't imagine what they might be. Maybe I'll lose momentum. Still, despite the turbulent times, I feel I've really made strides these past three years.

2020 Year in Review

 Well, last year was pretty weird.

Started off with the passing of my Great Uncle Steve. He had developed a tumor as a result of pancreatic cancer, and by the time that he developed symptoms, his liver and kidneys had already taken enough damage that recovery was not possible. I wonder what he would have thought if he knew how weird things were about to get.

Early on, there were some wildfires in Australia, resulting in over 46 million acres being burned, costing $103 billion to manage and restore the situation, resulting in 479 human deaths, almost 3 billion animal deaths, causing the destruction of 9,352 buildings, 3,500 of them being homes. Australia always has a wildfire season, but this one was obviously much more extreme than usual. Estimated causes for the tragedy include an exceptionally hot and dry season caused by climate change.

The US also had some issues with uncontrollable fires in California, Oregon, and Washington later this year. There fires caused over 10 million acres to be burned, $19.884 billion in damages, 46 deaths, and 13,887 buildings destroyed. 

Obviously, we had the COVID-19 Pandemic, which was building since 2019, but caused shutdowns here in Canada in March. The spread of the virus eased during the summer but picked up again in winter worse than ever, and has continued to spread violently by the year's end.

Countermeasures to the pandemic included moving work remotely where possible, shutting down non-essential services, setting capacity limits for buildings, limiting your social circle, physically distancing yourself from people by two metres, sanitizing or washing your hands when possible, not touching your face and wearing a mask while outdoors.

I managed to keep my job. We shifted most of our work to facilitating groups online. Since many of the places where our members are engaged were deemed "non-essential" such as community centres, libraries, museums, and art galleries, and because additional precautions were sometimes necessary for people considered immunocompromised, many of the people we work with found themselves in strict lockdown.

The popularity of the term "Social Distancing" is disturbing for us social workers. It literally means distancing yourselves from what we do. In addition, the COVID measures were announced right before our fiscal new year, so we were waiting to see what our funding would look like. Considering how events were unfolding, it didn't seem out of the realm of possibility that someone in charge of our funding might consider us less essential.

But we received our usual amount, and we got dubbed a "social action" organization, specializing in mental health. We've done pretty good.

 Obviously the closure of non-essential businesses and the changes in spending habits of so many people have caused economic implications. We're still kind of waiting on the long-term effects of the pandemic will have on our economy.

The pandemic exposed the reality of systemic abuses in long-term care facilities where the virus thrived. Interventions were made by medical staff and even, oddly, the military in some parts of Canada as many of these facilities were overwhelmed.

To end all this on a brighter note, we were able to develop a vaccine for the virus before the end of the year. I even know some people who have received their first dose of the vaccines (takes two, over the course of a few weeks), including my Toronto grandparents and one of my aunts. Unfortunately, production and distribution is going to take awhile, with an estimate of having it available to everyone by September.

In Nova Scotia, we had our worst mass shooting in Canada's history. Gabriel Wortman killed 22 people over the span of 13 hours in a series of shootings and acts of arson (what's up with all the fire this year? The wildfires, spree killing fires, three Walmarts in Waterloo region were set on fire, I saw a basement fire, and rates of incidental fire increased this year). Wortman dressed as a member of the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) to fool citizens into trusting him before he murdered them. He eluded police for as long as he did by changing his clothes and vehicle several times. Among his victims was a police officer. Although he doesn't have a stated motive, it's speculated that his initial target was his ex spouse. When he was finally cornered, he was shot to death by police.

The Asian Giant Hornet migrated from Japan to the US and Canada, between BC and Washington. These guys are far larger than the hornets we're used to, with a body length of about 45 mm, a wingspan of 75 mm, and a stinger of 6 mm. They are also brightly coloured and generally scary-looking. Western media has dramatically coined the term "murder hornets" to refer to them. However, although they may be intimidating to look at, they are really only a threat to your life if you get swarmed, which is the same for regular hornets.

It's not humans being murdered that we need to worry about, its our local bees. Asian giant hornets target bee hives, infiltrate them and murder the residents. Bees polinate many of our crops, and without them, we could eventually face food shortages. We were already facing a bee crisis, so this added challenge to our precious polinaters is most unwelcome. 

There are bees in Japan that are able to exist alongside the giant hornets, but this is because they are aware of a defense mechanism where they swarm the hornet and wiggle their bodies until the hornet is cooked. While smaller, the bee can handle a higher temperature than the hornet. However, our North American bees don't know this strategy. They'd better learn quickly though, because last I checked on the situation, despite a valiant effort to track and destroy them, it looks like the attempt at stopping their spread was a failure and they are here to stay.

Here's a bizarre one. After releasing a video in 2019 of some Unidentified Arial Phenomenon taken by the US Navy and verifying its "veracity" but otherwise remaining silent, the US Pentagon chose to readdress the issue in 2020, stating that the technology seen in the videos did not exist within the US and they believed it didn't exist anywhere else on Earth either. They said that our concerns align with theirs, and that it's very likely that we're not alone.

A former head of Israel's military space program, Haim Eshed, later in 2020 said that there is an alien bunker on mars, that there is a "Galactic Federation", and that at least Israel and the US have a long history of contact with them. He said that the aliens haven't presented themselves to us because "humanity isn't ready". He said that the reason he's coming forward with this information now is because academia has become more open to such ideas.

It's not the first time we've heard claims like this, but it's the first time hearing it from someone so high-profile. Honestly, these claims are a bit much for even me.

On a personal note, my old roommate developed kidney failure this year. He had a bunch of symptoms that he chose to ignore for a long time. Eventually he found himself in crisis, had to go to the hospital. He was told he had a 50/50 chance of recovering and if he'd come a day later, he'd be dead. He was in the hospital for a series of weeks, came back, got a surgery scheduled for an inflamed prostate. Then the pandemic shut down all "non-essential" surgeries and he got stuck with a catheter. He got lucky though and started to heal.

Some months later, he approaches me and tells me his catheter stopped working. He doesn't want me to do anything about it though. I call 911 against his consent, turns out it hadn't been working for a series of days instead of hours like he told me. He's in hospital for a few more weeks and this time his kidneys can't recover, so he's stuck on dialysis unless he can get a transplant.

My Great Uncle Steve passed from kidney failure. My family also lost a cat to kidney failure in late 2019. Like fire, kidney failure is also a theme of the times

One of my grandfathers suffered from some kind of neurological attack that put him into a delirium. He had to be hospitalized, and because of visiting restrictions due to the pandemic, we weren't able to support him in the ways that we would have preferred. Eventually, he improved enough to leave the hospital, and me and Lee-Anne were even able to visit during the summer when the pandemic was at its lowest. Cause of the attack is still a little mysterious, he didn't show any signs of having had a stroke.

Big upheaval regarding racial justice in the US. A man named George Floyd was killed by an officer named Derik Chauvin. After being apprehended for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill, Chauvin put his knee to the back of Floyd's neck for over eight minutes while Floyd stated sixteen times that he couldn't breathe.

This served as the catylist for the resurgance of the Black Lives Matter movement, which was established after the murder of Trayvon Martin some years back. There were massive protests for racial justice, including one outside of the White House at Lafayette Square, at which (now former) President Donald Trump had his forces fire rubber bullets, tear gas and flash bombs into. He had them beaten and forced back so that he could have a Satanic-looking photo taken where he held an inverted Bible in front of a church that he had forced the present religious authorities out of.

Lot more to talk about regarding racial tensions this year, but I'll leave it at that.

We end on a positive note though, because by the end of the year, Trump was voted out and on January 20th he was officially replaced by Joe Biden. Hopefully I can stop making political posts on this blog, before 2020 I very rarely ever did.

We'll finish on a positive note. This year, I finally moved out of my old place, after having lived there just shy of five years (just off by one month). Me and Lee-Anne found a place in a nice neighbourhood, which is a relief to me, because my old neighbourhood had Waterloo Region's highest rate of community spread of COVID. It was at a reasonable price too, maybe because for various reasons, (student housing took a hit because things moved online, landlords couldn't evict because of new tenant protections) COVID has caused a temporary relaxation in rent prices.

I'll leave my resolutions to a different post. This one is long enough.

Welcome 2021

I had a couple of posts I wanted to do to usher in the new year. I wanted to do a Year in Review and a New Year's Resolutions post, and I was going to do a 2020-2021 New Year's Tarot reading. However, strange news keeps rolling in and I'd better address it now because things keep getting weirder by the day.

On January 6th, Trump held a rally before the ceremonial counting of the electoral votes at the Capitol building. He said that his followers needed to march up Pennsylvania Avenue, they needed to show pride and strength to help the weak republicans, because the strong ones didn't need help. He reinforced the conspiracy theory that the election was stolen from him. He said that without him, there wouldn't be a country, and that the people in the crowd needed to take back the election for him.

Rudy Giulianni also made a speech, accomponied by the song Macho Man by The Village People. I assume that this song choice was inspired by Trump's decision to dance to the song YMCA at one of his rallies after recovering from COVID-19. He did this to prove his vitality while he was still pumped full of steroids. Rudy wanted to mimic his boss, and while Trump had the nuance to encourage a violent energy while not explicitly demanding it, Giuliani missed this subtlety and outright told the crowd, "Let's have trial by combat!"

Now, for some, that sounds like an oddly placed Game of Thrones reference, and for others, it is literally a cry from the medieval era. Regardless to how nerdy this satement was, it is hard to interpret it as anything less than a call to violence from the crowd.

A crowd arrived at the capitol building and were able to push through the security there, disrupting and delaying the US democratic process. Members of congress had to be evacuated.

Pipe bombs, molotov cocktails, and zip tie handcuffs were found among the crowd that arrived at the capitol. A noose and gallows were erected.  Five deaths occured that day, including a woman who was shot to death, and a police officer who was beaten to death. So much for the law and order president and the blue lives matter movement. In fact, it was very strange that there were as few people guarding the building as there were.

During the attack, Joe Biden challenged the sitting president to condemn the attacks on the capitol.  Trump eventually did respond, saying that the crowd should "go in peace", but also saying that he understood the aggressors, that he loved them and thought they were very special. 

Trump was banned from Twitter and Facebook, as well as less related social media outlets like Pinterest and Discord. 

Three more days.

There has recently been a new strain of COVID-19 introduced to the public. It was first discovered in the UK but it has since been found all over the globe. While it doesn't appear to be more lethal, it seems to be more contagious.

It's being called the UK Variant. I'm not sure this is entirely fair.  My understanding is that the UK were doing a world class job of tracking mutations of the virus, and so if anyone found a new variant first, it would be them. After the discovered the new variant, it has been found all over the world, including here in Ontario. Scientists don't believe this new version of the virus will be resistant to the new vaccines coming out.

Speaking of the vaccines, my grandparents in Toronto have received their first dose. So has their assistant, and even my aunt. My aunt got it because she's considered emergency relief due to her being their only relative in the city. I've seen two other people on my Facebook feed say they got their first dose, too. You need two doses over the course of several weeks to be fully vaccinated. Health professionals and the medically vulnerable are being prioritised.

In Quebec, as a COVID measure they've initiated a curfew and decided to shut all businesses at 8:00. After that, you're only allowed outside for "exercise purposes" from 1 km from your household. You're also only allowed to have a social group of up to five while ourdoors, even if you're all from the same household.

In Ontario, we've dropped the colour guide. We've gone from Code Grey, to Emergency Order. The new measures don't impact my life style much. We're still allowed to leave the house for exercise and essential services. I don't really have a social circle right now, and the definition of essential service is still pretty generous.

Even though 2021 is starting out pretty scary, I still have a lot of hope. 2020 started out fairly benign and got uglier as things went one. Even though we're still dealing with the ugliness of last year, it didn't make sense for the new year to magically be rid of all the things that went wrong in the year before.

However, despite the issues that we're dealing with from last year, we now have the solutions for them.  Trump's leaving and the vaccines are being distributed. Hopefully things get better.