Here's our
collection of 2022 photos,
and here is the 2021 album.
We spent these two years in Toronto except for summer trips to
Alberta or to very local events. Covid 19 and subsequent
variants prevented travel for both winters, and even by the end
of 2022 the airlines were still in a terrible mess of cancelled
flights, stranded passengers, lost vacations and lost
luggage. We had five vaccinations for covid by the end of
2022 and had experienced a fairly mild case of it ourselves in
July 2022. We got flu vaccine both years as well, and
although covid has been increasing in China subsequent to their
lifting of lockdowns and restrictions, we haven't seen a spread
of new and dangerous variants yet.
2022 December
31st. The seasonal concert at BBNC/BCC went very well.
Life remained fairly calm until Christmas week; we ordered new
glasses, and on Dec 19th Deb was able to submit her application
for a new 10 year passport, which we'll pick up on Jan 5th.
That same evening, we went to the SUJ Holiday Uke Jam at the Stone
Cottage, which kicked off the celebrations for us. We had to
deal with the set-up of Deborah's RRIF and LIF, which was more
than just an automatic roll-over, and required quite a bit of time
to navigate. Greg popped over for a visit on the 22nd and we
cut a sprig from the spotted begonia he'd given me, which has
grown very well in the SE corner window behind my chair; the sprig
is supposed to sprout roots so that I can pot it and give it to
Ursula. Jackie and Don invited us to their house for
Christmas Eve dinner, where we enjoyed lots of culinary treats
including a panettone, with Paul and Ellen and a new person we met
named Sheila. On Christmas Day Andrew Chung was here for
dinner (Fifi was in the U.S. at a wedding and Christoff stayed in
Ottawa), and on Boxing Day we were invited to Laurence and Joan's
where we played Neanderthal with an inflatable club after an early
supper.
On the 29th I played
music with Don through the afternoon and then we went to Ian and
Ursula's for dinner and a game of Skip-bo. On Friday the
30th we went to Wendy's "Dysfunctional Kitchen Jam" at her house
in Leaside. On the days between we continued to meet for
our vintage jazz evening, pop/rock/folk play along evening and
string band afternoon on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, so it
was a packed ten days or so. Today is our first completely
free day in ten. Tomorrow we attend the New Year's Levee
at Highland Yacht Club, after which we'll be back to the routine
of four music activities per week and the odd medical appt, and
we'll search for a winter escape destination.
December 8th. This evening we will play a seasonal concert
with our three groups at Birchmount Community Centre. These
are the tunes we've prepared:
We remain in good
health, while surrounded by rising cases of cold, RSV, covid and
especially flu. It is a bad season for flu; the most
affected group are five year olds, followed by seniors. The
concert is an attempt to fund raise and collect food and personal
items for needy members of the community. Deb and I also
attended the "holiday hamper" Rotary event put on by Jackie Davies
and her friend Paul. The concert tonight will be seventy
people in the multi-purpose room: musicians and audience of
family, friends and community members. If we are unscathed
two weeks from now, we'll pick a winter escape destination and buy
tickets.
We had to buy a new fridge. Ours was
pretty old, probably more than twenty years, and has had the
compressor replaced once. The door seal was shot, and they
won't provide replacements - they'd rather sell new fridges, it
seems. We got a brushed steel Whirlpool quite similar to the
Frigidaire that we had, but with a larger freezer
compartment. We took a five year extended warranty on
it. We'll see whether that was wise. We also had to
have the fan repaired for the second time in two years on our
downstairs freezer. We got it free from Valerie originally,
but have spent in the region of $1,000 for two fan repairs since
we've owned it. Time to reduce our reliance on freezers...we
still have the $50 chest freezer in the shed that is working fine,
but if we ever have an extended power outage we'll lose some
food. When the fan failed this time, Deb had to keep some of
her food in Hilde's freezer and in Ursula's church freezer.
On Nov 13th we pulled our final carrots, and
brought some peppers inside to continue ripening on the
plants. We're still eating them, along with banana peppers
and tomatoes we'd picked to window-ripen. We tarped our boat
and fogged the motor, and cleaned the eaves of our house. We
had one snow that required shoveling in November, but no
accumulation since then. We picked our truck up from Paul's
Auto Electric in Etobicoke and drove it home. We are still
chasing shorts in the grounds; City Buick returned two thirds of
the money we'd paid them for the bogus diagnostic, and we've taken
it back to them to check the codes. We'll go back there
again today; if they can correct the problem, the truck should
last us another few years.
Oct 23rd. Yesterday Deb and I worked the check-in desk at
HYC for haul-out for six hours, then cooled our heels until we
brought our own boat to the lift bridge at 5:30. We were
#66. We had trouble with the motor, which probably has some
gum in the carburetor from sitting too long without running in the
past season. It was a long day, and we were reminded of how
exhausted we can be by a total change in routine for a day.
Today is a rest day, with some gardening, some music and some
Spanish practice. Deb's routine includes morning fitness
classes online four days a week, so she's back to doing that
today.
The truck saga continues. We hope to
undertake a last ditch effort this week to have it towed to Paul's
Auto Electric in Etobicoke. If he can't fix it, we part it
out and have the shell towed away. If he can, we'll probably
sell it and put a trailer hitch on the RAV, and find or build a
small yard trailer to replace the functionality of the truck bed.
On the 6th we attended a free concert with
tickets from Sue Horton. It was Wynton Marsalis. We
didn't enjoy much of it. It was jazz that was more
accessible to musicians who've played the same tunes together a
lot, rather than to audience members, non-musicians, and people
like me who'd hoped to hear more vintage New Orleans jazz in the
program, that being where Wynton Marsalis is from.
We sold our bunk beds and brought a more useful
open wire rack up from the basement to put in Deb's
office/work-out room. We have not been able to have young
garden helpers as guests for two years, and it looks like Covid is
with us for many years to come, so as we age, it seems prudent not
to expose ourselves to further threats. Young people would
arrive by plane and would mingle with people while exploring the
city, so that seems like a vector for new strains of covid.
We are entering a final week of decent weather,
after a cold month. The eighteen degree days should ripen
our green tomatoes and turn our yellow peppers red before the
first frost, which usually happens at the beginning of November -
although the long range forecast is still for above average
temperatures day and night. We'll have days to pull our
garden apart for the winter, and to clean the eaves. Then
our minds will turn to the idea of finding somewhere warm to
travel in the winter. Brazil is my wish, if it turns out to
be practical. We've had our flu shots, and will have
our 5th covid vaccines two days from now, on Oct 25th.
We had a second session with Wilfred, Elisa and
Becky to run the contra tune sets, as a "proof of concept", making
sure we can play our reels up to speed for the dancers. Our
first meeting was pre-pandemic, two years ago. This time Sue
Horton and Elizabeth joined us with their fiddles. I will have an
easier time than they will, just chording for them on the
keyboard, although I will also practice the tunes at tempo on my
accordion in case there's an outdoor dance some day. I can
play them all on my fiddle, but there can be too many
fiddlers. I'm still finding that the 5 string is my
favourite instrument to practice at home, though. And I play
it a lot at my Wednesday evening pop play alongs as well as on
Friday afternoon string band.
Sept 29th. Just got back from a flight to Edmonton to visit
family there and in Camrose and New Norway. On the way home
we sat with a lady who'd paid $87 each way for her ticket rather
than the $111 each way that we paid, just by watching and buying
two months early. Lesson learned, but not a huge difference
- with baggage charges and other surcharges and taxes, we had a
bill of $807, which beat Air Canada by at least $200. We
paid a little more while we waffled about whether to drive out
instead.
Emily was getting off shift as we landed.
She picked us up and dropped us at Dianne's, where we schmoozed
with Ila and napped until Dianne, Kris and Miranda got home.
We had a good visit and ate pizza. On Saturday Dianne drive
us to the south side to have a visit Arnd and Stefanie in the
house they'd sold to Silken and Julius. To our great
delight, our god-daughter Una was there as well, but Silken had
just given birth to a little girl and was not allowed to leave the
hospital with her so we didn't get to see her.
Kris made a nice roast chicken, and they had
great tomatoes. On Sunday we played some tunes together in
the living room, Dianne, Miranda, me and Deb. Kris recorded
them on his phone. We included Arkansas Traveler which
Dianne could include in her music class programming on Monday, so
that they could sing the baby bumble bee song.
We tried to rent a car to go to New Norway but
it was a horror-show of cookies and algorithms online, with Kayak
and PriceLine aggregators playing silly games with the price, and
the Budget car rental rep was terrible on the phone. He
probably had too many calls to field at once. Dianne's phone
didn't work and we got cut off, then he put us on hold when we
called back, and the third time it connected to dead air, which he
might have done as soon as he saw our number on the screen.
There was extra cost and uncertainty about renting a car at the
depot near Dianne and leaving it at the airport depot, and if we
returned it to either location we'd still have a long public
transit connection to the airport. That could have worked,
but after thinking about it overnight, I messaged Emily and Peter
and they agreed to let us ride out and back with them. It
made less sense to spend over $300 on a rental car that would be
parked for most of the two days we'd have it, if they had space in
their vehicles and we could offer gas money. There used to
be a 20 seater commuter bus between Edmonton and Camrose called
the Camrose Connector, but it got shut down along with many other
Red Arrow bus lines in March of '21, as I learned when hunting for
a place to book seats online.
On Monday afternoon Emily and Darek picked us
up at Dianne's and drove us to Heather and Ed's in New
Norway. Peter and Christina arrived shortly afterward.
Mom drove herself over, and Andrea came, as did Davin. We had a good
BBQ and campfire visit with everyone. Heather had
picked up Callum and Clara after school, and Davin took them
home. On Tuesday, after a little shopping, we visited the
horses at Davin's with Ed, where Deb and Christina each had a ride
on Kicks Buttowski. We saw Erin in her car returning from
Edmonton but could only wave as we passed like ships in the
night. We had a pizza supper and croquet with the kids, and
drove into Camrose to visit with Mom again, and to see
Andrew. It was a good visit over these two days, with a lot
of conversation around the dining room table in the morning and
the campfire in the evening.
On Wednesday Peter dropped us at the airport on
his way into Edmonton. Travel isn't fun, but it was our
first ride in an airplane since the pandemic hit two years ago,
and we seem to be unscathed in spite of Dianne's cold, which
increases our confidence to fly somewhere warm in the cold months
coming up. We still had to wear masks in the airport and on
the plane, but two days from now this mandate will be
dropped. The pandemic seems to be winding up, although we'll
be sure to get regular booster vaccinations as soon as they become
available every six months or so, especially for international
travel. This morning we're expecting a week of sunshine and
above seasonal temperatures, perfect for dropping our mast and
pulling apart the garden in slow stages ahead of the first frost,
which will be in the first week of November if we don't get an
early one.
Apart from that, Deb will be back to her usual
routine of fitness and shopping, and I'll focus on tennis and
music until we begin to research a winter trip. I might join
Variety Village again to combat the aging process with daily
weights and track work through the winter, and I'll try to coax
some seasonal blooms from my orchids.
July 1st. May was cool. Parts of June were pretty hot,
but no temperatures above thirty yet, except for a few days of
high humidex. Tennis is going well and I'm stronger on my
feet now - the first day back at tennis I was a little shaky, but
improved week by week. We got our fourth covid shots.
We attended a Pineridge bluegrass event, one of only two they held
before shutting down for the summer. Our own Birchmount
groups continue, and the Wednesday evening one is best - too pop
for my taste but no matter who is missing there are always enough
people to play and make it fun for everyone. The vintage
jazz group met once and seems a bit iffy. The Friday string
band continues but summer makes it a bit tenuous each week.
We enjoyed Josh's Beach jams, and went to Tottenham bluegrass
festival last weekend and stayed over two nights in the
Conservation area in our T@B. Tomorrow we'll go to the
Stouffville Strawberry Festival and see Brian Sullivan, Ann Delong
and her musical partner Mike, and many other musicians playing in
the bandshell from 9 until 5, one hour each.
Tottenham was only a mediocre first bluegrass
festival experience for us. It was hot, so we sat at the top
of the hill under the trees, far from the stage - but they had
huge speakers and we wouldn't have enjoyed being close enough to
see the performers anyway. We used binoculars. They
held a "band scramble" on Thursday evening but didn't tell us
about it until we arrived when we read it in our program.
Our camping was for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so I don't know
how we could have arrived on Thursday, but if we had, we'd have
met musicians and formed little groups to perform 3 or 4 songs on
stage, which would have been fun. They asked us in the exit
survey what we thought of the workshops, but there weren't any
workshops. There was little participation except that some
people went about the campsite after midnight and found groups to
sit in with. On Sunday there was nothing but whiney,
country-style gospel bluegrass in the morning, and then everyone
quickly left the park, so there was no opportunity to play - I'd
been hoping to play all Sunday afternoon and evening, and depart
on Monday, but it was pointless to stay so we went back home on
Sunday. We enjoyed JP Comier, and a few other of the small
groups.
June was a month for eating hascaps, kale and
lettuce. The raspberries are just beginning, we've had a few
last night and tonight, the vanguard of our July crop. Beans
are climbing but only flowers so far. There are some small
zucchinis that will soon be ready to eat, and a few small
cucumbers. Everything else is growing well, and there are
buds and flowers on small pepper plants. Heather's lilies,
the day lilies and the poppies are all in bloom.
We have our mast up but haven't sailed our boat
yet. We need to scrub it and photograph it so that we can
put it up for sale. June 18th was Sailpast, but I went out
on Slobo's boat. We ate sausages today at HYC but there was
hardly anyone there. We met Jody McKenna and Colin Marshall
and learned that she likes to sing and would happily convene a
singalong at HYC on Sunday afternoons. That sounds
promising. We played tunes for her for a couple of hours
today.
April 26th. I've been able to play tennis once a week and I
mowed the lawn for the first time two days ago. The
Wednesday Birchmount group kept meeting but Deb and I avoided it
for a few weeks leading up to our fourth covid vaccine this coming
Thursday the 28th. They played at Scarborough Food Security
Initiative on Saturday morning while Deb and I were launching our
boat. We did keep playing with our string band each Friday
afternoon, where we are well separated and nobody is singing,
generally.
Yesterday our first tulip opened, and I have
about 150 small pepper plants growing in the windows, waiting for
outside planting. At the end of April, after our final two
nights of zero overnight temperature, I'll plant lettuces,
carrots, radishes, kale, etc. Later in May I'll begin the
beans, then the squash, cucumbers and zucchinis. We have
regular reciprocal hosting of meals with Lawrence and Joan, and
with Ian and Ursula.
This past weekend we launched our boat. I worked
on the dock crew and Deb worked inside the clubhouse registering
people for lunch and noting their arrival. I went
for a very cold swim. Mark Nash's boat blew back onto the
finger dock and I ran to push it off. Someone came up behind
me to help. I somehow overextended and tried to step back
onto the finger dock but he was there and I had nowhere to
go. I had a choice: fall into the water, or grab the rails
of Mark's boat and hope that he might get blown back to the dock
once again. I wondered if I could hold on long enough for
the tow boat to come around and rescue me, but they were on the
other side of Mark's boat and couldn't have seen me or gotten to
me. Eventually my grip gave up. I dropped into the
water and paddled over to the finger dock where the guys grabbed
me and moved me to the ladder, and helped me up it. It was a
major cold shock. My muscles were crippled by the cold and I
could barely find the steps on the ladder with my feet. Deb
drove me home for a hot shower and dry clothes, and some food for
energy. It took a long time for the shivers to disappear,
and I was a bit spacey all day from the residual effect of the
adrenalin, which also put me in a state of hyper nervous energy
for a while during my recovery, a bit like a meth rush. But
I jumped back into my crew to finish my job for the day, and my
own boat came out within an hour of my return.
2022 March
17th. For eleven weeks since my last entry, we've endured
winter. It has felt like traveling slowly along a long
gloomy tunnel. In late February we were witness to Putin's
invasion of Ukraine, and it has been a focus of my attention daily
and almost hourly for three weeks now, as it gradually becomes
more horrific.
The temperature has gradually improved as the
days grew longer. This past weekend we entered daylight
savings time and today our daily high will hit an anomalous 17
degrees. I will resume my morning routine tour of the
garden, looking for green shoots.
Our music groups were able to begin meeting
again in late January and I now have four on the go, including a
quartet with Laurie on clarinet and Ronald Farr on guitar, the
barely alive string band with David Henderson on mandolin and
guitar and Dan Taylor as an erstwhile participant with his bass,
mandolin or guitar. Our Wednesday evening group is back to
its pre-covid strength in numbers; there were seventeen of us
there for a photo yesterday. I've been asked to play trumpet
with Sound Ideas on Thursday evenings, and jazz piano for the
Scarboro Music Lovers big band on Tuesday evenings beginning on
April 5th.
We had one event at HYC, a beer tasting event
where I tasted no beer but had chili and put in some hours while
Deb also worked in the kitchen.
My Spanish continues with the help of a new
tool, Google Reactor, which provides simultaneous Spanish and
English subtitles. I'm making glacial but observable
progress, and spend at least a half hour every day immersed in
Spanish conversation training.
I build strength with a daily attempt at doing
a real chin-up (singular, still), and increase my ability to do a
dozen push-ups, while my weight loss holds steady under 200 lbs
and my endocrinology tests continue to pass with flying
colours.
In January we continued Zoom calls with family,
played online games of Nimmt and Saboteur, and attended online HYC
COM and Budget meetings.
On January 22nd we went to Ian and Ursula's for
supper, and we had them to our house for dinner and a game of
"Chicken Foot" on Feb 12th.
On March 6th we attended Jackie Davies' 75th
birthday party. Don, who is two years older, has recovered
from his unhappy health event and is building strength again,
hoping to play tennis with us at the beginning of April. I
will meet him at the club today to collect photographic details of
how his boat sits on its cradle, in order to sub in for him at
haul-out next October, in case he has a conflict with an important
family event.
I've spent a little time each day viewing the
dvd's that Dad had compiled from his VHS tapes. I'm going to
be able to copy them to a USB stick to mail to Peter and other
family members.
I'm looking forward to being able to open the
back door, set up garage sale(s), and work in the garden. I
hope we'll be able to travel locally this summer with our T@B and
play campfire music. I've consolidated my chops on the
stringed instruments although I'm still not incredibly fast at
flat picking guitar or tenor banjo. For chords and vocal
accompaniment the tenor guitar and 6 string are now
interchangeable. The fiddle takes daily attention for
intonation but I'm an okay amateur fiddler now, capable of playing
with other string players.
2022 January 1st. One more New Year's Eve spent in lock
down. Unofficial this time, but everyone has learned the
routine. The city put on high altitude fireworks and a live
show on youtube leading up to midnight. It was cold and
foggy at midnight and we wouldn't have seen them if we'd gone
outside, so we watched from home. As we watched the large tv
screen, the concussive pounding from their source on barges near
shore on the lake battered our house, seeming much closer than
they actually were.
We had haggis for Christmas dinner, and we'll
have turkey today. I've repotted a few of the orchids that
Deb brought home from the discount shelf; they were grown in some
sort of peat plug inside bark chips, and two of them had very
rotten roots. I'll wait now to see if they recover.
The leaves are still healthy. She got three of these
orchids, and I helped choose six more. Seven still have
excellent blossoms and will cheer us through the coldest weeks of
winter; I've learned how to care for them in the off season, so I
expect to see fresh blossoms again next fall. The "sun
stick" neon lamp also provides excellent SAD therapy for anyone
sitting in front of the terrariums and enjoying the blossoms.
Other than orchids, our days are dominated by
Facebook, Youtube and other internet distractions. I play
several different instruments and study Spanish daily. I've
been through many months of studying verb conjugations and I keep
that up for fifteen or twenty minutes each day to entrench my
gains, but my main current focus is on speaking Spanish dialogue
from videos out loud into Google Translate. The computer
allows me to slow or pause the video, read the captions while the
sound is muted, and watch my speech appear translated into
English, at which point I know that my pronunciation was clear and
correct, and often what the actual meaning is of the words I've
just spoken aloud. I'm hoping this exercise will lead into
thinking and expressing my thoughts in Spanish. I stopped
doing Meet Up Spanish-English groups just before our drive west in
the summer, and got back into it just before Christmas. I
felt much more fluent, and able to express myself less haltingly.
The community band is suspended until we see
how covid case counts go in January. Right now we are
enduring a fourth wave, this time with the Omicron variant first
discovered in S. Africa, having licked the Delta wave from India
just before it all went south again. It continues to play
out exactly as the scientists and health professionals told us
that it would: our vaccination program, now entering our second
booster - fourth jab; Deb and I have had three - has protected
most of us from serious illness but the spread of the virus has
been like a forest fire ripping through the population. On New
Year's Eve we had 16,700 new cases in Ontario, almost as many in
Quebec, and large numbers across all of the less populous
provinces. We were told that unless the whole world got
vaccinated, new variants would continue to emerge, and sure
enough, they have. And may continue to emerge.
Speaking of forest fire, a thousand homes were
destroyed by fire in Colorado leading up to Christmas. It's
the wrong time of year for it, but there has been a drought in
Colorado all fall. Parts of British Columbia were devastated
by fire and flooding this past summer and fall, and are now
experiencing large snowfalls in Vancouver and along the
coast. These events were predicted by scientists for decades
now, and are being experienced around the world. We have
been very lucky in Toronto, but I wouldn't discount the
possibility that we'd suffer from tornadoes eventually since some
have damaged nearby communities in previous years and decades, and
we've had some wild downdrafts in recent years in
Scarborough. A major ice shelf is expected to break off in
the arctic sometime during the next five years, leading to a
significant rise in sea level as it melts; much of Florida will be
under water, and many other coastal areas around the world.
I'm a bit shocked that people don't move in large numbers; when it
happens, it won't be financially feasible for many to move because
their real estate will be worthless so they won't be able to buy
in a safer location.
So, that's the state of the globe on this New
Year's Day in 2022. It's not quite feasible for us to take
our T@B and drive south, although that was the plan until Omicron
emerged. We'll stay here in pandemic prison one more year,
very lucky that we have good food - Deb enjoys getting out to shop
- and great internet, a warm cottage to live in and a few hobbies
to fill our days. I spend a little time each day reading my
diary from 1983, looking at old photo albums and watching old vhs
movies - my own, and my father's.
2021 November 26th. In the past month we've completed
getting the garden set for winter, and I set up Don's gazebo frame
with a transparent tarp and some vinyl panels with see-through
windows to try to make a low-rent greenhouse, or at least a space
that's sheltered on three sides with a thin tarp on the
fourth. I have little confidence that it'll withstand a
severe windstorm, but it's an experiment in extending the season
until all my peppers ripen, and providing a sheltered environment
for leafy greens that are only somewhat cold-resistant. In
the spring I'll probably take it apart and set up the sailboat
winter cover frame that I've had stashed for a few years. It
will make a nice tunnel over the patio entrance way to the back
door. Plant pots can line the walls inside the tarp, and be
high enough to harvest, and any heat that escapes through the back
door will benefit the inside of the tunnel.
I played my last tennis game for a while,
unless we go indoors to a facility in Pickering once or twice
through the winter. So the only activities left are music
twice a week, practicing through the week, and studying
Spanish. My progress at Spanish is glacial. I began
learning it a decade ago but except for a few stabs before winter
trips, I never accomplished much more than absorbing some basic
vocabulary until I began a more serious daily drill of verbs and
youtube instruction during the pandemic. Last summer I
participated in zoom calls with Spanish and English speakers but I
needed to have google translate set up on my screen to create
things that I could say. I still can't simply think of the
words and conjugations I need to carry on a conversation at normal
speed. I should practice by translating this diary.
I discovered that Deborah's orchid probably
died from watering without drainage. It got its three ice
cubes per week (which probably didn't make the roots happy,
because that would have chilled them) but she wasn't aware that
one is supposed to drain the container once the ice cubes have
melted. All the leaves yellowed and fell off. I began
going to youtube orchid school every morning, to learn what to do
to try to save it. I learned a lot about growing medium for
epiphytes. I got the necessary materials, repotted it, and
set it up finally in a small aquarium where it can get a little
more heat and light, and I can monitor the humidity. I'll
water and drain it once a week, and let it dry out properly
between waterings. I put the green rack in the dining room
window, with a grow light plus two more from aquariums, and all my
small kalanchoes, which I also needed to repot with a heavy mix of
vermiculite and perlite to counter the water retention of the
crappy soil and clay that they were in. I'd hardly been
watering them at all, but they still had "soggy feet".
Evaporation really slows down in the winter. I don't know if
the orchid will recover, but my fingers are crossed because the
roots do look healthy and I've replaced the medium, which had been
breaking down over two years. I hope to see the emergence of
a leaf or some other structure by Christmas.
We've just had our last bi-weekly bento box
supper at Don's and Jackie's. Momiji is doing one more but
Don's surgery is on Dec 6th so it is unlikely that he'll be able
to enjoy a bento box. Our third covid shot will happen on
Dec 1st. I'm still waiting for my T@B to be finished - it
has been a month. When we get it back, we'll consider our
winter escape. We'll probably drive south - why have a small
trailer if you can never use it? But we might choose to fly
somewhere instead. One new concern is that news is suddenly
building about a new covid strain, the B.1.1.529 variant detected
in South Africa (Gauteng), Botswana and Malawi. A visitor to
Hong Kong from S. Africa was carrying the infection. Markets
will be unsettled with this news, and more borders may
close. It's arrival on our shores seems inevitable but mRNA
vaccines are adjustable for new variants and since one part of it
is similar to the Alpha variant, time will tell whether a new
vaccine may be required. I hope it won't clog our hospitals
before Don's surgery. The biggest lesson from this is that
unless and until we have a global vaccine response, variants will
create themselves in corners of the world where victims can't
clear their systems of the virus, so there will need to be
constant vigilance and ongoing response to variants.
We could sell the truck and trailer next
spring, but it might be a pleasure to visit fiddle camps and have
summer adventures in Canada next summer, especially if we sell the
Mirage. The truck would remain useful for a smaller,
trailer-able boat if we were to move from HYC back to SBSC.
The little island yacht club complex will become even more
important as a get-away for us if we can't leave Canada.
Sunday morning, Oct 24th. I spent
thirteen hours yesterday at HYC. After many years working on
the tow boat for haul-out and launch, this year they mysteriously
reassigned me to the check-in table, so I was warm and
comfy. It was four degrees when we woke up yesterday, and
three degrees this morning. I had to wait after my six hour
shift yesterday to see whether my own boat would get lifted, but
the crane was still four boats short when the light failed.
We had to drive down in the dark this morning. I ran the
motor until it would idle, and we got lifted shortly after first
light.
Our insurance company sent us to a body repair
shop at Heritage Ford but they wanted so much to fix the truck
that the insurance company wrote it off. They offered me a
pay-out, which I took, and I got the dents repaired for about a
third of their estimate at a smaller shop. The pay-out more
than covered the repair bill and I reduced my insurance to basic
liability so I'll save premium going forward. They'd be more
honest if they based their premium each year on how much they'd
actually be willing to pay out for the vehicle if it got written
off. They claimed they'd only get $2500 for the truck
selling it for parts at auction, but the auto body repair manager
at Heritage said, "You wouldn't buy a truck in this shape and year
for less than $10,000". It is very useful, and we've spent
money on new hybrid batteries, new brake lines and a trailer
towing/braking package, so we're further ahead to keep it, no
question about it. And at the moment, it's the only vehicle
we have that can tow the T@B.
We sold Laurence's Porta-bote for a
good price, enough to cover the cost of having our T@B furnace
and circuit board repaired. We took the T@B out to a guy
in Bowmanville, and left it there for him to look at.
We're waiting for a quote now. Booster shots for covid are
beginning for people over 65, the third shot, and the U.S.
border will be open for land travel on Nov 8th, so we should be
able to take our trailer somewhere south to a warm place during
the bitter months of winter. Flying to a warm country may
also be an option, but it is still too soon to know.
Over the past two months the garden has
been very successful and we've eaten well. I've played a lot
of tennis and our Wednesday evening play along group at Birchmount
CC has been meeting since before we left for Alberta. We had
fourteen participants last week. I started a string band
that met in my back yard for six weeks and is now moving indoors
at BCC on Friday afternoons. We had five musicians playing
fiddles, guitars, mandolin, ukuleles and banjos. Me and Deb,
Elizabeth Gratton, David Henderson and Val Cassels, but Val still
won't play indoors. I'm not sure who else will come out to
join us, but Patrick will put it in his flyer and we'll see what
happens
Pat and Clare dropped by and we gave them a
sage plant and some other plants. Lissy was here for a
breakfast visit, and she and Chris stopped here after they had a
weekend together at a cottage in Hastings, where she visited the
cottage that Rob built there. There's no point listing
everything else that happened. I can find the more trivial
events by searching my google calendar for those dates if I need a
memory refresher.
We managed one "token sail" on No Egrets before
we dropped the mast and put it away for the winter. Next
summer we'll either sail it more often, or sell it. Or both.
Thursday, Aug
26th. We spent two weeks on the road in our truck, pulling
our T@B trailer to Camrose and Edmonton. We took Lego to
Callum, and gifts to other relatives. It cost about four
times what Swoop Air and a week of car rental would have cost (I
did a cost analysis upon our return), and it was a grueling drive:
three long days out there and five shorter ones to get home,
including a visit with Clare and Pat in Uffington, and Brian and
Theresa in Orillia. It was safer than flying, I'm
sure. But not something I'd want to repeat. I hope
we'll soon get our third covid booster and learn about data
that'll make us confident about sharing aerosols with other plane
passengers. The risk then will be, as Deb argued, that if
anyone on your plane tests positive, they will make you quarantine
on arrival as well, because there are "break-through infections"
which allow transmission even from double-vaxxed people who don't
feel anything themselves. Not so dangerous to you, but you
can still pass it on to others who are at risk.
Out west, we saw Mom, Andrew, Heather and Ed.
Andrea and Corey, Davin, Erin, Callum and Clara, Dianne, Kris and
Miranda, Dylan, Georgiana and Mackenzie, Emily, and Peter who
drove up from Comox for a canoe trip in the Wild Hay and to meet
his granddaughter for the first time.
On the way we saw six moose and a number of
deer. A doe and two fawns waited politely until we came to a
stop on the highway, then crossed in front of us. We
surprised a cow moose halfway across. We learned that
sleeping overnight at Walmarts is still a thing, and some towns
have free overnight parking. Russell, Manitoba maintains its
Peace Park for overnight visitors, including electricity.
White River, Ontario, has free overnight parking at its Visitor
centre, which also has free wifi. That's the town where
Winnie the Pooh was bought by an army lieutenant to be taken to
England as a regimental mascot, there to spend his life in the
London zoo, where he enchanted Christopher Robin and A.A.
Milne. That was preferable to taking him to the front, I'm
sure.
There were many things I'd have enjoyed seeing
along the way - lots of museums, for example, and scenic spots -
but we didn't feel we had time to stop. Smoked fish is
largely no longer sold anywhere, and where it is, it is very
expensive. We ate mostly at Macdonald's restaurants.
The T@B was good for us, with its comfortably cushioned King Size
bed and insulated walls, but we discovered that the floor is a bit
spongy so I'll have to pull up the flooring and reinforce that;
and some electricals don't work: the blower for the furnace, and
the radio. I'm not sure about the frig, we didn't try
that. The temperatures seemed unseasonably cold on the
prairies. We woke up to 3 degrees in Russell, Manitoba,
which was a fine time to learn that our furnace can't run because
the blower won't go. Other mornings were 9, 12, or 14.
Here in Toronto it has topped 30 degrees for the past three days
since we got home. We might get relief tomorrow -
mid-twenties are forecast.
We had one slow leak in the left tire which I
pumped with a bicycle pump until we got home, and will now get
repaired. I pulled the plastic bumper off an old 2005 Accura
in the Tera Losa parking lot, and although the damage to my truck
looks slight, it might be a total write-off. We'll be told
next week. We have a $500 deductible, and I don't know if I
have "one accident forgiveness" yet. We experienced some
hard shifting after the Northern Ontario hills, by the time we
reached Sudbury, because I tried to avoid using the trailer tow
button, to save gas (risking transmission damage, of
course). The transmission got hot and the fluid got too thin
to do its job. In one old car I had, you could actually see
it foam when it got to that state. There's some valve lifter
noise which I can treat with an oil additive for now. I'm
ambivalent about our choice of trailer. I was excited when
we first saw them on Vancouver Island twenty years ago. The
bed is great but at 1700 lbs compared to a 900 lb Boler, Scamp or
Casita, I've decided that I'll unload this if I can find an older,
smaller trailer that I can rebuild inside to create a decent sized
bed. A large bed is all we really need in a trailer, along
with a place to sit on rainy days, and room to stand up to change
clothes. Stoves, fridges and furnaces are redundant for
summer camping. The RAV is only rated for 1500 lbs; so it
won't pull the T@B, but it would do for a Boler or one of its
cousins.
It was good to reconnect in person with the
tribe out west. Zoom doesn't really cut it, compared with an
in person visit. Last night we went back to the community
centre for our instrumental play alongs, which was fun - first
time I've played the keys in a year and a half.
Sunday, July 18th. Yesterday was our
Sailpast at HYC. We were rained out again, but I played
Heart of Oak for the flag raising, and accompanied Alex on the
violin with my tenor guitar, very inexpertly, by ear. Next time,
I'll use a my six string for a fuller sound and more bottom end
support for his violin, and proper accompaniment chord charts. The
food, from a food truck called in for the purpose, was good but a
terrible rip-off in terms of quantity for price, as most previous
club special dinners have been.
Last Wednesday our community centre guitar
group got together for the first time in eighteen months (because
of the pandemic lock down) and we played together on Peg Everall's
back patio. There were a dozen of us, I think. Peg had
a large screen tv mounted on a stand with wheels, and everyone
could see and play from the same charts. We chose old
favourites from Ozbcoz and the San Jose uke site. It's the
most musical fun I regularly have. The yacht club remains a
bust, musically, with Alex yesterday being the rare exception.
We were going to sail on Affinity with Don
during Sailpast. It rained anyway, but we couldn't have gone
out because Don is ill with prostate/bladder issues that required
a trip to Emergency, although he is home now. We worry and
wait to see what the urologist tells him tomorrow Perhaps
there is a surgery in his near future. We took his prepaid
supper choices from HYC to their house for him and Jackie.
Jackie is trapped in the house now taking care of Mary and now
Don. We'd been going to their house every second Wednesday
with bento boxes from Momiji. We'll probably continue doing
that, to help Jackie maintain a social life beyond talking to her
neighbours on the front lawn.
Don can't play music in his condition. We
lost Wayne Farrant to Alzheimers this past winter. I'm not
keen to play with Carlos, whose judgment worries me because of his
covid decisions. He's been an anti-vaxxer throughout.
I'll try to move in another direction at the club, if I play there
at all. Possibilities include Alex, Mike and Hope Thomas,
and another guitarist, Rory somebody. But I might need to
brush up my keyboard chops, since that's always going to be the
instrument that I play the best. Since keyboard players are
less common than guitar players, that instrument is most in demand
with fiddlers and violinists, rock or pop combos, or jazz
combos. I might hunt for a more lightweight portable
keyboard with an integrated amp and speakers.
I sold one of my tenor banjos to a fellow in
Ottawa, and sent it to him by UPS on Friday. I'm gradually
cutting back on my collection of musical toys, and might focus on
keyboard, except for campfire situations, and perhaps the odd
swing band or street band situation for jazz standards. I
got fairly proficient during the pandemic lock down with a number
of new instruments, but getting better at them may be more
difficult because my brain is getting older, and also because as
long as I am young and medically insurable I'd rather spend my
winters and part of my summers traveling. I've sold two of
my keyboards, a number of accordions, all but one of my guitars,
five of my eight fiddles, one of my two tenor banjos, and my
trumpet. I have one remaining keyboard, one trumpet, one
guitar, one tenor banjo, one tenor guitar, one five string banjo,
one baritone horn, two clarinets, one alto sax, one accordion and
three fiddles, only one of which I actually use. So,
fourteen instruments that I still need to whittle back to a useful
number of perhaps nine or less.
The garden is coming along well. We've
had a very rainy July, without too much heat, so by the midpoint
of summer my photos of the garden will look great. We've
been eating bush beans for over a week and the pole beans are
beginning to produce. It has been a good year for
cucumbers. We've eaten
two and there are several more large ones on the vines. We've
eaten three zucchinis, and a bumper crop of raspberries - Deb
picked 3 litres today. We have many green tomatoes, but none
have turned red yet.
We had supper at the Sortwells last Saturday
for the first time in a year and a half. It used to be
almost a once a month event. I participated in about five
Spanish-English zoom calls and began responding in Spanish to
questions they posed. I continue studying my conjugations
every morning for a half hour or more, and I'm gradually
increasing my accuracy on a daily twenty question drill of
randomly selected verbs, including irregular ones. This
morning I achieved eighty-five percent, although I can only do
that by checking my answers before I hit enter, and even then my
brain sometimes misses a tense or an irregular spelling.
We had an HYC Canada Day celebration which was
an opening of sorts at the club, although the interior of the
clubhouse was still out of bounds until July 16th when Ontario
went into stage three of the re-opening. It was nothing
special, but we ate poutine and smoked meat sandwiches.
We put on our mast this year, and I've been
focusing on little things I can do to tweak the boat back to
perfect sail-able condition, which will also make it saleable, and
we have decided that we will pursue a sale once it is ready.
I'm reinstalling the aluminum gas tank, repairing the wiring and
dual battery system, and generally sprucing it up. I'll make
a web page with photos and features listed. We're ready to
embrace our age, and move back to a smaller boat at SBSC, or none
at all until we've moved out west, if that's what we're eventually
able to do. Life is complicated. We're not certain
what we'll end up doing, or how or when we'll end up there.
We may die in place in this house, but that won't be my first
choice - neither the dying, nor the house. I'm ready for a
change.
Monday, June 21st. Two days ago I saw a
photo from 2014 of our train in Vietnam going around the mountain
spurs of the Hai Van Pass on the way to Da Nang. We could
see the two locomotives and the first six carriages from our
carriage window near the rear of the train. I've spend a few
months during the pandemic lock down reading old letters from my
teenage years at private school, home to my parents. My
father saved them all, so now they are like a diary. I once
burned a section of my own diary in a fireplace in a fit of
despair about my life, so these are a joy to still have.
Reading them is a deeply reflective experience, humbling and
revealing at the same time. My thoughts at that time explain
a lot about the origins of my value system, and the impetus for
subsequent choices, both good and bad. The train photo
became a metaphor for this process, looking back at the formative
years of my life from my vantage point fifty years later.
There were bumps along the way, but it all worked out, and the old
letters are a source of current wisdom.
We are in the process of repairing wiring for
mast head and steaming lights on our sailboat mast, and attaching
a new whip antenna at the mast head. The old whip worked
loose and whipped off in the wind, into Lake Ontario, about three
years ago. A replacement whip - a simple thin length of wire
of indeterminate metal - cost almost a hundred dollars at the
Rigging Shoppe. We didn't even step our mast last year
because of the pandemic, but this year, although launch was
delayed a month, we are going ahead with stepping the mast,
slowly. By July 1st we'll have our boat "commissioned" and
rigged out, ready to sail. We still don't have access to our
clubhouse, except for the washrooms, but we'll have a celebration
on the patio, with extended seating, on Canada Day.
We've planted just about everything we have
room for in our garden. I was resolved to have a smaller
garden this year in order to leave ourselves free to travel, but
travel is still not permitted or recommended - although it is
coming soon, we believe, except for the looming risk of spread of
the Delta covid variant that emerged in India. So I kept
filling the time by filling planter pots. Many plants are
too closely packed with cherry tomato seedlings, and I'm now
spending a few daily hours pulling callaloo, clover and other
weeds from planter pots and garden. But we've been eating
radishes - my month long crop has come and gone - and perrenial
green onions, then hascap berries and leaf lettuce. We ate
radish green soup and a few meals of callaloo, which we also gave
away to neighbours. Swiss chard failed because of leaf
miners for the second year, and arugula bolted much too soon, but
I turned those planters over with an enormous crop of buttercup
squash seedlings. Bush beans are flowering, peas have
formed, and raspberries are preparing for the July fruiting.
We are still eating frozen beans from our freezer, from last year.
Music still consists of solitary playing in my
living room. Patrick said we could meet at the community
centre in a group of up to ten, outdoors, but I only got Peg and
Neil interested last week. I might try again this
week. At home, I enjoy playing my tenor guitar the most and
I'm gradually finding all my chords with more and more
fluency. Regular guitar is fun for flat picking bluegrass
and "celtic" tunes. I still play my fiddle and my 5 string
banjo although not as much as the tenor guitar. I play my
trumpet to keep my lip in shape, and occasionally my clarinet and
my alto sax. I rarely touch my keyboard but that instrument
is like riding a bicycle for me so I'll get to use it when I have
an opportunity to play with other musicians.
I'm planning to spiffy up the sailboat, take
photos, and begin the process of selling it - taking people aboard
and out on the water. And we'll spend time digging out all
our camping gear and equipping our trailer, having the truck
serviced, and preparing for a trip west - in July?
August? We don't know yet. I'm keeping my fingers
crossed. Deborah will have to visit her mother and sister in
Montreal as soon as they all feel safe to visit. Since we
have all had our second vaccinations now, it shouldn't be long.
That's how the days are going as we bring in
the summer. Yesterday, the 20th, was the 2021 Summer
Solstice.
Monday, May 31st. I've been able to edit one or two of
my travel diary entries each morning over the past several months,
fixing clumsy text and expired links, and adjusting the awful
colour in the photos from my little shirt pocket camera on those
travels - the neon lime greens, the overly dramatic reds, and the
skin tones that looked like angry sunburns.
Overnight, Deb and I got email invitations to
receive our second dose of Pfizer vaccine, which had previously
been scheduled for July 15th. That's a significant time
contraction: from sixteen weeks down to ten weeks. That
means that two weeks from now, the middle of June, we should feel
fully protected and able to travel - just when the campgrounds and
provincial borders are expected to reopen. There was some
confusion in the instructions about whether we are actually
eligible; the info says that people 80+ are eligible, but they did
send the invitation to us and we were able to complete the form in
spite of entering our birthdates. Our appointment was
honoured without a hitch.
Wednesday, April 21st. Some day I'll read this diary and
wonder how I filled my days during the Great Pandemic Isolation.
Covid19 cases are climbing again and its a race between the
vaccination program and the increasing infection rate caused by
illogical lock down rules and "covidiots". Doug Ford's gov't
hasn't vaccinated essential workers or shut down non-essential
factories, and hasn't instituted sick days so that workers can
afford to stay home, so the spread continues.
Here's a description of my days. These
are incredibly routine cookie cutter days that I follow with
regimented discipline using my digital diary. I'm told that
this kind of routine reduces stress during such a time.
I rise at six, check stocks reports, study
Spanish for a half hour, and spend a half hour "armchair
traveling" through my own travel diaries - editing, repairing
broken links, viewing my photo albums). I'm up to March in
New Zealand right now. I spend a half hour reading actual
books as opposed to reading online.
Deb is usually asleep during these hours; on
some days she gets up around 8 am to do fitness classes online,
but on other days she sleeps until 9 am. Throughout the day
she shops or plans her shopping, and spends a lot of screen time
on the internet. She spends many long hours helping her
mother (who remains isolated in her apartment in Montreal) on a
campaign of advocacy for her youngest sister in her group home in
Montreal - using remote control to her mother's computer to help
her navigate the technology, scan documents and participate in
zoom calls and Teams meetings. Sometimes she helps me in the
garden.
After breakfast I play music throughout the day
but my motivation is currently a bit low and I don't get to every
instrument in sequence as I did in the initial months of lock
down. I've been able to begin prepping the garden for
planting, but our sailboat launch was cancelled and remains
TBA. I played tennis twice but now we are into the third
(fourth?) wave and we have also been locked out of our tennis
courts. In any case, today we woke up to a thick late spring
snow fall.
Later each day I review some family history
(old letters), spend a few minutes learning basic Portuguese, and
take mid-afternoon and after-supper naps. I find youtubes
that are interesting to watch or to play along to with my
instruments, and I advertise and sell things from my basement to
reduce the household clutter: guitar cases, instruments, lawn
mowers, bicycles, etc.
Then I sleep for six hours and get up to begin
the same day all over again - just like the movie Groundhog Day.
Thursday,
March 25th. Today Deborah was able to make an appointment
for her vaccine. She completed pre-screening forms for both
of us and I drove her to the immunization site. She asked
everyone at each step of her way in whether I could get mine as
well, but I was not in the allowed age cohort and they all said
no. Then she reached the doctor who would administer the
jab, and it turned out to be someone from our own local
clinic. The doctor told her that they weren't in the
business of turning people away, and that anyone over fifty with a
co-morbidity would certainly be allowed to come in for a
shot. As soon as Deb got home, she discovered that the
registration page had also been updated in our absence and now
co-morbidity had been included; and also faith leaders who come
into close contact with grieving family members and others.
The days have been somewhat uniform over the
past six weeks. Weekly family zoom calls on Saturdays, and
zoom calls with Camila and Gabriel in Sao Paulo on Mondays.
Trumpet training and chats with Andrew Chung every couple of
weeks. Spanish every morning, a bit of Portuguese daily,
some daily reading (Obama's book Dreams From My Father right now),
and readings of my own family history from Dad's letter
archive.
We won a St. Patrick's Day quiz at a zoom
social, online with our HYC club.
I got back into advertising my extra
instruments and selling them off, played my instruments in
rotation every day, and recorded a few tunes including La
Cumparsita and Vida Mia for Valentines Day. I learned to
make things easier for myself when playing fiddle tunes on guitar
by using my capo on the second fret for most tunes in D and A, but
that presented me with a new challenge: learning new
fingerings. That has checked my speed back considerably.
Two weeks ago we drove across the city and came
home with my first tenor guitar, only three years old and in
lovely shape, for half of retail (they seem quite overpriced by
Gold Tone, but not many people make them - or play them). It
took me several days of research and two packs of strings, one for
tenor guitar purchased in error which turned out to be for the
higher CGDA tuning, to get it strung in the GDAE tuning that I
wanted, to match my "Irish" tenor banjo. I had to mix and
match to get the gauges I needed; they make GDAE string sets for
tenor banjo but not the bronze wound string set for tenor guitar,
I've discovered. But although initially disappointed with
how it sounded, with the correct strings and gauges it has now
become my go-to instrument, very resonant and rich. At
first I only used it melodically, but now I'm trying to learn all
my new chord shapes because they sound fine. Guitar chords
are often muddy because there are six notes relatively close
together; this has only four, and the intervals are larger than on
the guitar. It means that I've had to learn four current
sets of chord shapes for the different instruments; I also learned
uke shapes some time ago but have largely forgotten them now..
We had to shovel snow once or
twice, but it is all gone now and temperatures remain mostly
above zero even overnight, so we've been taking daily walks when
it feels sunny and cheerful enough. I
tried to start pepper seeds that Deb saved from last
year, but they haven't emerged from seed after almost
three weeks. I'll be patient...and I'll start
tomatoes soon. I have been able to begin working
in the garden, moving pots around, visualizing and
planning - but I expect to be prepping the trailer and
truck for a summer on the road, more than spending time
in my garden.
Wednesday, February 10th. The cases of covid19 are
dropping and jurisdictions across the country are tentatively
reopening, although there are dangerous mutations and variants on
the loose and vaccine roll-out has been glacial. We will
have to remain isolated and extremely cautious for a few more
months, perhaps even another year; but I'm still optimistic that
we'll get to take our T@B trailer across the country this
summer. Deborah has continued to amass enormous quantities
of donated wool from Facebook connections with neighbours, for
Sylvia to turn into toques and headbands for homeless people in
Montreal. I continue studying Spanish and a little
Portuguese each day, and practice my nine instruments - when we
are free to leave our house I'll hunt down opportunities to play
the new ones with other people. I advertised and sold a few
guitars and my guitalele, and a few other things like my
collapsible fishing rod kit.
Over Christmas and the New Year, we recorded a
series of short amateurish music videos dedicated to friends and
family, and posted them to a youtube channel,
from which everyone can enjoy them. I can use these videos later
to demonstrate my musical gifts to people who might consider
playing with me.
February has been brutally cold all across the
country. It has been around minus ten here and has reached
the minus thirties and below in Alberta; I plan to record Frost is
All Over on Irish tenor banjo today. The cold has put pause
to our daily walks. Deborah chose haggis for her birthday
meal, and it lasted for four meals, so we'll be doing it again for
Valentine's Day. We like haggis very much. Deborah has
experimented with other culinary revelations: Chakalaka (a S.
African spicy vegetable relish) and Bombay Rolls, for
example. She found a design for better aerosol masks and
made five of them, more shaped to our faces, so that air doesn't
enter or leave around the edges, and with a fold that reduces
fogging on our glasses on cold days, I've forced myself to
spend time each day reading books instead of just my internet
screen, to try to make inroads on the huge collection of books
I've accumulated over the years, including those I dragged home
from Dad's bookshelves. We continue our weekly zoom calls
with family and with Camila and Gabriel in Sao Paulo. I
usually nap twice a day now, which might be a sign of age but
could also be a symptom of the emotional toll of isolation.
Friday, January 1st. Pandemic lock down continued to notch
up after Canadian Thanksgiving, with rise in Covid cases to the
point where by Christmas, hospital staff were quite worried that
they'd suffer a collapse in the system after the Christmas surge
which they know is coming. Too many people ignore the
restrictions, including several prominent provincial politicians
who think that they're better than all the people that they insist
should stay home, and take vacations to Caribbean islands and
elsewhere...and then get fired upon their return. People
interviewed at airports (and the aforementioned politicians)
insist that they are going to a safe vacation where they'll be
physically distanced from people, but willfully ignore the reality
of their plane ride with recycled aerosols and no real physical
distancing. They are gas lighting themselves, and are a
danger to our society. Our friends Lloyd and Esther fooled
themselves into believing that they'd be safe to return to the
U.S. to visit family, with masks and lots of hand washing, but
they both got sick, and Lloyd died.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have
finally arrived, but the roll-out was slower than we'd hoped, in
our country and several others. Latest speculation is that
Deb and I might get ours by July, which would allow us to take our
trailer to western Canada to visit family that we've only been
able to meet on weekly Zoom calls. Mind you, we've had more
regular contact over Zoom than we had before the pandemic arrived.
Deborah has almost recovered from a slip on the
stairs leading to our basement.. She was carrying two chairs
and moving too quickly, and her feet went out from under
her. She bumped on her bum down four stairs, and had a
massive contusion that lasted for weeks. It is only now
disappearing. My own health is ok except that a six month
routine blood test suddenly alarmed us with high glucose
levels. They'd crept up over two years and had begun to
spike over the past six months in spite of careful diet, sixteen
hour daily fasts (for three years now), only two meals a day, no
wine or juices - only black coffee and water. I'm trying to
tame the glucose now with more resolute daily walking and maximum
allowable metformin, but I suspect that next week the doctor will
shift me to a medication that isn't considered as safe as
metformin but that stimulates cells in the pancreas to pump out
insulin. I can't say if it was lifestyle or just age, but it
seems that my pancreas may be weakening, which has me slightly
concerned about my travel plans for coming winters. Still,
I've seen a great deal of the world already and it does seem
inevitable that at some point I will have to age gracefully into
tamer destinations such as Florida and the southern U.S.
We've had a couple of snowfalls but nothing too
exciting, and temperatures remain above normal heading into
January. The nightly lows are forecast at the 30 year
average highs for the next fortnight.
Deborah stopped her weekly volunteer role at
the food bank a few weeks ago. There's a new covid variant
that is much more transmissible, and we both decided it isn't
worth the risk, at our ages. Except when she shops, we stay
home all the time. Deborah built several mousetraps but
didn't catch a mouse with them; only the old fashioned Victory
traps eliminated our fall mouse problem. Now we have a
problem with rats tunneling through the front garden, attracted by
the food that birds throw down from the bird feeder. We've
enjoyed the bird feeder, but now we're trying to figure out how to
eliminate the rats. Deborah got a larger size Victory trap,
but rats are too smart for that; she killed a squirrel
instead. We've enclosed two traps in a box that only a rat
should be able to get into, but so far haven't caught one.
We're going to try rolling moth balls or dry ice down their
burrows; and Deborah made some balls of food that is supposedly
indigestible by rats and causes death, but I haven't seen any
evidence that it works. The bird feeder has come down; we
have suet cakes up for the chickadees (and the athletic
problem-solving squirrels), but nothing for sparrows or other
birds until we solve the rat problem. At least they stay
outside.
For the second time, we did a couple of videos
of songs for Hector Catre's online fundraiser for the Scarborough
Food Security Initiative, along with other local artists -
essentially, online virtual busking for charity. He raised
about $2500 this time. He didn't plan it out very well,
though - had a number of technical glitches and a late start, and
had only asked for two songs from us, but contributed a half dozen
himself, so it turned into "the Hector Show", with his out-of-tune
singing solo performances.
At Christmas, Deb and I recorded a series of
"musical gifts" for family members, about one per day through
Christmas week. We'll do another six or so before we're
done, and then I don't know what we'll do. I'll keep
practicing my instruments, of course, and my Spanish and
Portuguese. I used my fiddle and Irish tenor banjo for most
of the half dozen tunes we did - Saddle the Pony for Heather and
Ed, Out on the Ocean for Peter and Christina, Ook Pik Waltz for
Miranda and family, Country Waltz for Mom, Maid Behind the Bar for
Emily, Billy in the Lowground for Dylan (we renamed it Dylan in
the Lowground). We did Auld Lang Syne on trumpet and uke
with vocals yesterday.
We finished our last tomatoes about two weeks
ago (the indoor window-ripening ones) but we are still eating
Bishop's Crown peppers as they turn red, from two plants that we
brought indoors just before the first frost. We have five
that are still growing in the dining room window. And our
green onions continue to grow - I get them with my breakfast every
other day.