Saturday evening. All good things… If you’ve paid any attention to what I wrote before, you already know the relationship had its ups and downs. As of today, we’ve officially broken up… Because of the lockdown, we had far more time to discuss our life goals and plans for the far future. There were a few major incompatibilities: she wanted kids, and I didn’t; I wanted to retire early (lean FIRE), and she didn’t. I suppose the main consolation is that by discussing all of this over the course of 43 days, we prevented the loss of months or years if we discovered these major roadblocks later on.

So it goes.

It’ll be odd to be not-really-together as we leave for Niagara Falls tomorrow, for another four-week AirBnB. It’ll be even odder to drive through at least two checkpoints as we leave this little town of Mont-Tremblant, the quarantined locality of the Laurentians, and drive across Ontario on our seven-hour journey. There is, of course, the option of dropping off xgf at her Toronto house and its floating population of 6-10 roommates, but I’m not a monster: the whole point of this odyssey was to keep her safe, and that place is statistically highly likely to be infected. (Her roommates don’t adhere to any distancing/lockdown/quarantine rules.)

Mont-Tremblant was an odd little town. Cute views, confusing mountain-hill things (too short for the former, too high for the latter), and a blatantly fake tourist village with an actual village and an actual town hidden just a few kilometers away. We saw a family of five deer cross the main road a few weeks ago. A few days ago, a fairly small deer walked through the condo complex. (We named him Travis.) This has also been the nicest place I’ve personally ever stayed in, even if I did get a heatstroke from staying in the giant bathtub a bit too long. (In my defense, I thought hot water was good for you.)

…it’s been pretty emotional. Xgf is incredibly empathetic, so this is hitting her hard. I’m more of a robot-human hybrid, so I’ve been compartmentalizing this in tiny little drawers of my mind, since I deal with stress my own way. The next four weeks will be strange.

The world news is just about what you’d expect it to be: weird and getting weirder yet. One thing I hadn’t seen coming is the increase in Beyond Meat’s stock price. (BYND) Granted, at $108.78 it’s still more than 50% down from the 52-week high of $239.71 in July, but it’s also almost doubled from the recent low of $57.99 on March 16th. Fascinating. Ontario has admitted that it’s not tallying the deaths from retirement homes accurately – or on time. (Sure, guys, blame the database.) Trump tried to walk back the Lysol injection comments by saying he was just being sarcastic. (Suuuure.) Meanwhile, dozens of people (at least dozens) in the US ended up seeking medical help after drinking household cleaners. Brazil’s hospitals are getting overwhelmed. Over 20,000 dead in the UK. (Scary, considering their population is only 1/5 of the US.) The virus is spreading in Florida…

Cumulative death toll in the US: 54,030; in Canada, 2,569. New words in the novel: none.