Sunday night. Back to work tomorrow, thought it’s complicated as always: on the one hand, Civic Day is supposed to be a holiday for every Canadian. On the other hand, the US Finance org doesn’t care about Canadian holidays, so certain things still must get done on the first business day of the month. Oh well, it’ll be a nice and slow transition back into the thick of things.

I hung out with xgf for the first time in three weeks today. Her leg muscle injury is worse than she’d thought, and she’d spent the entire three weeks in her little basement apartment… We went for a ride around Toronto and had a picnic at the High Park. It was wild to see so many people all at once, for both of us. There’s a strange, almost surreal discrepancy in seeing people wear their summer clothes with sunglasses and masks obscuring their faces. (I remain the only one with a faceshield. Heh.)

In covid news, a mega-church in Alabama is planning to organize 21 days of prayer, wherein thousands of people would gather together for 21 days to spread their thoughts, prayers, and virus-carrying droplets. This whole pandemic is like a bizarro world mirror showing how all the things that make the US so distinct can backfire just as spectacularly. The freedom of religion is good, but then you have churches everywhere insisting on meeting in person and, worse yet, singing. (I’m sure everyone’s heard about the choir cluster from the early pandemic by now.) Rugged individualism is good, inspirational, and great for business, but then you end up with millions of yahoos who think they know better than doctors and think the pandemic is a liberal hoax. No bueno.

In mildly better news: a few days ago, Russia announced that its vaccine is ready and pending final approval. They aim to do mass vaccinations in October. I’m trying not to be too optimistic because there hasn’t been outside verification. Russia had a very peculiar mini-epidemic of doctors falling out of windows (sometimes in the middle of conference calls), so anything they say (hell, anything anyone says) should be taken with a big grain of salt. It’ll be a real game-changer if this works, though – and if the rest of the world gets the vaccine too. Here is hoping Russia won’t use this leverage for political purposes…