Thursday night. The end of our second week at the Deep River cottage. It’s fascinating how quickly we rebuild our routines in new environments. The first few days here took a bit to get used to, but now I’m back in the usual workweek cadence, and it’s almost weekend.

We took advantage of the nice sunny weather to venture outside for a walk through a forest. It’s still snowy here, and unless someone cleared a path with their truck, you can’t exactly carve your own path. I’ve never been a fan of winters, but it was moderately pretty, the company was great, and the air was much clearer than in Toronto. It must be gorgeous here when all this white crap melts.

Things aren’t going well in the outside world… Exponential growth is kicking in. A nurse died in New York. Boston has over 100 infected hospital workers. The US now has the most diagnosed infections in the world, and that’s with the test kits being almost impossible to find. A German company claims to have developed a 2-hour test that’s 95% accurate, but meanwhile, someone in China scammed Spain and sold them 340,000 fake test kits. Hundreds of thousands of masks are going missing in shipments around the world. The black market must be having a blast. A few days back, Costco refused to accept returns on the most hoarded items like toilet paper. There’ll be an awful lot of cheap TP and rice on craigslist, if there isn’t already. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Just like we thought, we’re seeing the first limits on movement within countries. Costa Rica set a 10pm curfew for driving. Russia cancelled all the international flights, be they in or out. A county in North Carolina is trying to keep outsiders away. Texas is trying to turn New Yorkers back – or force them into quarantine. Things will get worse soon…

On the personal front, I’ve received an email from an airline company confirming that my flight is cancelled. A few months ago, I’d booked a 3-week vacation – the first real vacation in over 3 years. I was supposed to fly to Tunisia, with layovers in Italy and France. Tunisia cut off international flights a week ago, and I can’t say I blame them. I still have my 3 weeks off, but now they’re a staycation, and will be spent with my gf in that tiny Quebec town. We’ll be there in just 4 days. Let’s hope they don’t shut down the travel between provinces before then.