It’s Thursday evening, and I need to catch up on sleep. My favourite podcast, “Welcome to Night Vale,” had a live streaming show tonight. (Well, technically, that’s the only podcast I listen to.) They had some connection issues halfway through, so I turned down the volume, went on Twitter on my phone, and woke up when the livestream ended. Oh well. The script is out there, so I can always catch up later.

Between the work (still very busy) and the gaming (still very addictive and helpful), there’s just not a lot of hours left in the day, but I suppose I could make a concerted effort and force myself to get seven hours of sleep per night, eh.

Either there’s something seriously wrong with Toronto or I didn’t take out trash often enough, but there’s a lot of fruitflies circling all around my room and getting in the way. I’ve closed the window, removed all organic waste, and swatted a bunch of them out of the way, so maaaaybe that will help?

…I haven’t been exercising enough. My nutrition is fine, but I’m definitely not burning enough calories. I saw someone mention the Wii Fit Trainer the other day, but when I went looking, I discovered that a) Nintendo Wii got discontinued years ago, b) its replacement, Nintendo Wii U, also got discontinued years ago, and c) the replacement’s replacement, Nintendo Switch with the Fit Ring Adventure, is pretty neat but completely sold out. Poor Nintendo: just when they figure out their manufacturing bottlenecks (2006 was brutal), there’s a once-in-a-century pandemic. Heh. Here’s hoping all the hiking I’ll do on my vacation will make up for months of no gym.

In covid news, more and more hospitals in the south are running out of space. Fifty-six in Florida, quite a few in Mississippi. Trump keeps insisting (in the least literate way imaginable) that if the US stopped testing for covid, all the cases would go away. …I wonder if he thinks that over 100,000 Americans are just playing dead to spite him. Then again, he probably doesn’t think of them at all.

Forgot to mention this a few days ago, but the US is officially leaving the World Health Organization. WHO has its flaws (so many, many, many flaws) but it’s still a net positive in the world. Maybe. Sometimes. It’s maybe sometimes a net positive somewhere in the world. With the US stepping away, that almost certainly won’t make either the US or the world safer. On the domestic front, the CDC and the White House are in a strange tug-of-war. The CDC’s new guidance claims schools must take safety measures. The White House (namely Trump) criticized said measures, followed by mixed messaging (which ended in defiance) from the CDC. Everyone is as confused as you are, dear reader. We’ll see.

Typing this up, looking at the giant Canadian flag hanging on my wall, I’m once again so very happy that I’d taken the leap and moved to Canada. It’s not perfect, but it’s without a doubt better than the US during a global pandemic. Stay safe out there, my US compadres.