Monday night. The 18-month US election circus is finally going to end.

Another grey day, hastened along by the succession of routine tasks, so familiar as to become automatic. Two differences, though: first, the weather has officially gone to shit, but the gusts of whistling wind beyond my window make life a bit more interesting. Second, the landlords’ teenager was coughing up a storm this morning… This is one of those fun games we’ll all be playing this year: cold, flu, or covid?

I miiiiiight have overreacted, but I spent some time shortly afterwards on AirBnB, looking up month-long self-contained rentals (no roommates, please and thank you) in the general Toronto area. (You get a discount if you rent for 28 days.) There was a pretty funny one, a 145-sq-ft microapartment which would make for a hilarious life experience if it hadn’t been priced as much as normal, human-sized habitats. A surprisingly cheap rental from a newbie host went to my “nope” list after he said there’s only street parking, and I might get a ticket after 11pm. There was a cozy and beautiful place all the way in Niagara Falls: reasonably priced, self-contained, with fast wi-fi and parking… The sole downside is that my trip to submit the biometrics data for my PR application would turn from a 30-minute roundtrip into a three-hour one. No bueno, eh?

I ended up not renting anything: I’m rolling the dice that the kid just choked on his soup or has a bad cold… After a certain point, running stops being a viable strategy. Sure, I could bounce out of here until early December, but none of the existing risk factors would go away. The kid would still keep going to school, one of the landlords would keep going to the office, and they’d still be holding small social gatherings every week. But then again, if vaccines get distributed, say, three months from now, then maybe, just maybe, I could go into hiding for that long. Paying rent for two places at once would suck, but not nearly as much as lifelong neurological damage. I’ll give it two more days: if the kid keeps coughing, then it’s not a fluke, and then it’ll be time to go into covid self-exile once again.

In mildly better news, I’ve gotten to the point of being able to do 30 chinups more or less in a row. Considering I started in low single digits just a month or so ago, that’s a huge win, eh. Just finished reading “A bridge of years” by Robert Charles Wilson: it’s an interesting sci-fi yarn with a unique twist on time travel, though oddly enough, not as engaging as the previous book, which I read in 24 hours but liked a lot less. Heh. Next up, re-reading the excellent “City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis” by John C. Wright. It’s funny: Kindle just told me I bought this ebook almost exactly five years ago. I’m curious to see my younger self’s highlights and notes from a different temporal perspective.

In covid news, the WHO’s director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he’s been exposed to something who tested positive for covid. He’s gone into self-isolation. If he gets it, it’ll be a strange omen. Incidentally, and for the record, the WHO’s current stance is against herd immunity. Just thought I’d point that out, given that they’ve been flip-flopping on this quite a lot. I believe the last time I mentioned the WHO, it was because one of their bureaucrats spoke well of the Barrington Declaration.

In other VIP covid news, it’s only now been revealed that Prince William has covid all the way in April, spent time in the ICU, and had difficulty breathing at one point. That news didn’t get shared with the rest of the UK, presumably to avoid panic. One can’t help wondering, though, how many deaths would’ve been avoided if folks knew that even a healthy VIP guy with excellent healthcare came so close to dying… Lies, good intentions, and obfuscation.

Despite my best self-assurances to the contrary, I just can’t turn away from a flaming runaway train that is the US politics. I’ll most likely spend most of tomorrow refreshing Trump’s twitter feed, if only to see his meltdown (or petty triumphalism, either/or) unfold in real time. Hey, what can I say, my threshold for entertainment is mighty low these days.