Friday evening, and life is good. After sleeping in (again) today, I went out and found an abandoned mine, with a classic 1950s car hanging out upside down in a small stream nearby. Looks like decades ago, someone lost control on the country road a few meters above… I hope they made it.

At a second place I visited, I found quartz. Lots and lots of quartz. Huge amounts of quartz, to be precise. Several hours later, I am now a proud owner of more than a bucket of quartz, big and small. I shall henceforth be known as an eccentric guy who gives a small amethyst or quartz crystal to everyone he meets. Heh. This is so unbelievably different from just wasting away indoors, sitting behind a computer… I’ll go back to that life soon enough (just seven full days remaining till I return to Toronto), but damn, what an amazing experience…

In covid news, things are still getting worse. One poor rural county in south Texas is instituting a triage system, where a committee would send home those who appear to be too sick to be helped. This isn’t very different from what they’d done in Italy a few months ago, but it’ll be a huge shock to the system for Americans.

Meanwhile, schools across the US are set to reopen next week-ish. I’m never sure about their exact start and end dates, since there are no kids either at work or in my adjacent personal life. (My landlords’ 16-year-old son is the youngest person I know.) Anyhow, there’s a great big push to send kids back to school. That will not end well… Some say that was political calculus gone horribly wrong: an attempt by the White House to appeal to suburban voters, followed by doubling down and refusing to change their position when it clearly backfired. Quite a few states are adamant that they’ll go with online learning only: it’s far from perfect, but it’ll keep their communities from developing new clusters. It’s a hot mess… I suppose in a way the timing was mildly fortuitous: had covid appeared in June instead of December, the US would’ve been dealing with the worst of it during the school year. Silver linings, eh?

Tomorrow is my last full day in Thunder Bay. Gonna have to make it count. Good night, friends.