Grigory Lukin.com

Wednesday night. And just like that, 60% done with the workweek.

The big exciting thing today was me filibustering about my two cool (and huge) projects to my 20 coworkers for a solid 30 minutes. That went quite well, if only because I’d prepared the presentation script in advance and spent the entire half-hour just reading it off my phone. (Can you tell that I’m a prepper? Heh.)

More of that white crap outside. I can conceivably hold out a few more days until I’m all out of vegetables for my instapot rice, but meh, that’d just be sad. Gonna brave the elements (and god-awful drivers) tomorrow evening. (Isn’t lockdown life exciting?)

My love affair with comics is proceeding well: I’m slowly but surely gobbling up more and more old issues of The Walking Dead comic. That issue #48… Wow. The room was really dusty when I read it. Reading these things on my laptop through Comixology isn’t anywhere as fun as having the actual comic in your hands but, you know, plague. All the local libraries are closed, and will stay that way for quite a while. (I’m trying not to hoard things at this point in my life, so buying physical trade paperbacks of different comic books is not an option: they start to take up a lot of space sooner rather than later.)

Another fine day for the stock market today, and for my covid-battered portfolio in particular. …I’ve stopped tracking at what precise point my growing stocks started making me more money than my day job. That momentum will not last, of course: 2020 was just filled with opportunities for a certain risk-tolerant, bargain-seeking, analysis-loving type of investor. 2021 will likely be a lot smoother. Until then, though, at least the financial aspect of my life is pretty good.

In covid news, the UK made history – they’re the first country to grant emergency use approval for a covid vaccine. In this case, it’s the Pfizer vaccine, which needs to be stored at -70C (-94F). On the upside, it’s 95% efficient, and that’s worth the logistical headache. The UK will get their first shipment of 800,000 doses within days, and will start vaccinating folks next week. The first vaccines will go to people over 80, nursing home residents, and healthcare workers. When that happens, it’ll be a truly historic moment: from start to finish, it’ll have taken less than a year. Nothing like that has ever been done before, and if that doesn’t feel you with genuine awe at humanity’s capabilities – well, just take my word for it. That was pretty damn amazing.

Good night, y’all.

Tuesday evening. Yay tacos.

The single most exciting thing to happen to me today was finding an old package of hard taco shells in the back of my little pantry. Seeing as I’m running low on produce, this resulted in some mighty sad tacos (beef and shells), but hey, that’s what imagination is for.

It snowed again today. A lot. I’m not risking a grocery run until this melts down a bit. One interesting thing about Toronto is that almost half of the city’s residents were born abroad. (Including moi.) That makes for a fun and multicultural city with great diners, cultural festivals, etc. That also means a lot of drivers have different driving styles (too slow, too fast, ignoring the stop signs, etc), and a lot have no experience with driving in the snow. Even the locals can take too long to install their winter tires, which leads to completely preventable car accidents. As the most risk-avoidant person out there, I keep my snow tires on all year round – I don’t really notice the difference in the summer. So, yeah, gonna give this snow stuff a couple more days to make it marginally safer to drive while everyone tries to adjust to slippery roads and what not.

In covid news, the governor of Oklahoma has declared this Thursday to be the day of fasting and prayer as cases in his state continued to climb. (There are over 200,000 total cases in Oklahoma by now.) That’s pretty blatantly unconstitutional – not merely stupid and anti-science, but also the equivalent of dancing around in a “screw the separation of church and state” T-shirt. Louisiana and Ohio did something similar earlier this year, as did Trump back in March. Do you want to end up in a theocracy? Because that’s how you end up in a theocracy. (Incidentally, Oklahoma was the state that held a giant maskless Trump rally five months ago, the one that started a new covid cluster and ended up killing Herman Cain, who hasn’t stopped tweeting from beyond the grave. Yay prayer. Boo science.)

At some point, several years from now, someone will make a movie set in 2020, during this pandemic, in the US. Even if they reenact everything just as it happened, without any dramatization or artistic license, they’ll still probably get called out for making their movie too unbelievable. Heh.