Saturday night. This is the four-month anniversary of our decision to escape Toronto, the start of the 72-day odyssey, and the strangest part of my life thus far.

Made up with xgf (though we’re still exes) and dropped by Walmart to buy some of her beloved cheese. I was shocked to see that everyone – absolutely everyone – wore masks, but then I remembered about the bylaw that made masks mandatory indoors and went into effect four days ago, on July 11th. The bylaw claims violators will get fines, and that folks with health conditions can get around the rule without having to explain what their condition is – that seems like a giant loophole, but it looks like everyone was conscientious and didn’t choose to break the rules just for the hell of it.

A week from now, I’ll be far away, sleeping in my rental car, halfway to Thunder Bay and all its amethyst troves…

Earlier today, one of my sisters admitted that she’s a Trump supporter (for the silliest reason, too) and that the 137,000 Americans would have died of covid anyway, regardless of who was in charge. …I think I’ll stop sending her books on epidemiology for Christmas – I’m not sure they worked. So it goes…

In covid news, Trump finally deigned to put on a mask during his visit to a military hospital in Maryland. His supporters are split between “yay masks!” and “that means masks are only required in hospitals.” We’ll see how that develops. The fact that he’s getting kudos for doing the absolute bare minimum… Well, that’s the state of the United States these days.

There’s an interesting trend online: thanks to the pervasive social media, it’s easy to pull status updates of covid deniers who ended up dying of covid. The way Twitter formats screenshots, that forms a four-act play consisting of denial, a public event, a final status update, and an obituary screenshot. That’s morbid as hell and would’ve served as a fine old-timey-styled warning to the masses, but at this point everyone is so entrenched that the compilation would only reinforce existing biases. (“Fake news!” or “he wasn’t a real person!” or “but I’m special and lucky and Jesus loves me!”)

Now that I’m in Canada, I hope they keep the border closed forever…