Friday night. Today I made sure to thank my manager for helping me move from the US to Canada: I’m fairly certain I’d thanked him before, but I really can’t thank him enough. It’s a hot mess back in the US. I can’t imagine how much more stressful my life would’ve been had I stayed there.

The White House suppressed the CDC’s report on the coronavirus, and then released parts of it after a massive outcry. Two white men (father and son) in Georgia who chased a black jogger in their truck and shot him in the middle of the street in broad daylight finally got arrested – it took two months, a video, and a massive online outcry just to get them arrested… More White House staffers are getting diagnosed: the top one thus far is Katie Miller, VP Mike Pence’s press secretary. Given the utter lack of even the most basic precautions in the White House, I’m surprised it had taken that long for the first cases to show up. If either Trump or Pence get incapacitated – or worse – things will get even more chaotic.

Today was spent fighting the bureaucratic remnants of the 19th and 20th centuries. In order to wire money from my bank account, I had to try to borrow a relative’s US phone number because the bank’s system didn’t recognize my Canadian number. To finalize the FBI background check application, I had to print out an email at a UPS store (potential risk of exposure and all) for 35 cents, and then stand in line at a fairly crowded post office. They charged a bit more than 35 cents to send my precious letter to the FBI through the closed border and all the way to West Virginia. In theory, there’s no reason all of this couldn’t be done online and digitally. My best bad guess is that the process is deliberately cumbersome to discourage folks from spamming the FBI with their background check requests. Then again, maybe the system is still using the 19th century technology (magic signatures and all) simply because that’s how it’s always been done.

My first full day away from xgf in almost two months… She’s doing well by herself in her friend’s basement apartment (a trial run before she moves there for 3 months), so that’s good news. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’ll be as easygoing once she’s there by herself for an extended period of time… Here is hoping it’ll work out. On my end, my introvert battery is trying too hard to recharge itself, to the point where I do a lot of little things and don’t accomplish any of the big ones. I did set up an actual think-tank at work today, though, which isn’t something I’d ever thought I’d do. To quote Kurt Vonnegut, “so it goes.”

Cumulative death toll in the US as of right now: 78,318; in Canada, 4,569.