Monday evening. Got some vitamin D and much-needed exercise by marching back and forth in my landlords’ backyard. (I live in a small suburban development here in Mississauga – hard to walk outside with all the neighbours and the occasional car.) Did a bit of news-reading, a bit of money-related research, and learned a few new French words.

My relatives each got me an Amazon gift card – I went and bought a gently used zoom lens for my old DSLR. It should arrive from Japan within a couple of weeks. I know, my quarantine hobbies are getting a little bit too numerous and ridiculous, but hey – I absolutely nailed it with rockhounding. (Xgf’s friends loved their party favours – small ziploc bags filled with gems.) There’s not a whole lot of wild nature in Toronto’s suburbs (there’s Lowe’s across the street) but I’ll see what I can come up with. Something to look forward to, anyhow.

It’s important to remind myself that in just another six months or so, things will be much better. There’ll be some kind of vaccine that may or may not be available to mere mortals like myself. (The 1% will get the first dibs, of course.) There’ll be fast tests available just about anywhere. …hopefully, there’ll still be a closed border: until and unless the US gets its shit together, they’ll remain an existential threat. It’ll be mighty different, and hopefully for the better. It’s the waiting part that sucks.

In covid news, more and more colleges around the US are realizing that maybe, just maybe, having thousands of students on campus was horrible idea. There are quite a few headlines: some schools are setting up online learning as an option, while others are closing down their campus entirely. (Which is a remarkably evil thing to do to students who live in the dorms and have no easy alternative.) If only someone could have predicted such a happenstance occurring. Verily, we live in the age of mysteries.