Wednesday night.

I’m continuing to grow roots, eh. This big house is divided into 10-15 studios, and it’s rather remarkable how quiet all the neighbours are. Every now and then, I can hear a closing door or someone coming up the stairs, and then it passes. The fact that there are no pets allowed means that for almost the first time in two years, I can have some peace and quiet without barking dogs making the sort of ruckus that requires noise-cancelling headphones.

Going to try something new tomorrow: eating my lunch while working, and using the lunch break to just wander around the neighbourhood. Toronto in January isn’t the kind of environment where you can soak up a lot of vitamin D, but hey, better than nothing. (Besides, fresh air – and other humans! Woot.)

Finally finished reading Disaster Diaries by Sam Sheridan. It’s a mixed bag, at least in my opinion. On the one hand, he’s a skilled writer, and some of the information he presents is both educational and entertaining. (I still can’t believe I hadn’t known the difference between EMTs and paramedics.) On the other hand, despite all of his fancy adventures and learning from the best experts in North America, he still does remarkably stupid things. Here is a short list of things he admitted doing just in this book alone: negligently discharging his weapon; cutting himself with a fancy knife while playing with it and watching TV; dropping $200 on a pair of mittens at the REI (heh) and not researching what kind of parka he’d need in northern Canada. For what it’s worth, I’m glad he got to have so many adventures, presumably on his publisher’s dime. I just wish the book hadn’t been so overhyped.

Next book: The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson. It’s yet another sci-fi yarn about the multiverse – hooray for escapism, eh?

In political news, Trump is the first president in American history to get impeached twice. This time, 10 Republican congress-critters crossed the party line to vote against him. The rest of them were apparently fine with an attempted coup. The senate won’t convene to vote on this until next week, at which point it’ll really be too late to do much of anything. (The inauguration is next Wednesday.) I really wish they hadn’t dragged their feet so much with this… The initial hope was for Pence to exercise the 25th amendment option but that obviously hasn’t happened.

The attempted coup is growing stranger every day. One congress-critter reported that someone ripped out all the panic buttons from her congressional office, and her staffers couldn’t signal for help during the attack. Some online sleuths noticed that several terrorists had earpieces, which is definitely not something you see among random people who just happen to storm the seat of their government on a lazy Wednesday afternoon. And evidently, Republican congress-critters had given some domestic terrorists a detailed tour of the Capitol in the days before the attack, likely showing them where everything was located. This is getting uglier with every passing day…

In covid news, there’s some positive news coming out about the Johnson&Johnson vaccine. The phase three trial results will be released later this month. For now, people are cautiously optimistic based on what’s available. The J&J vaccine is a traditional one, unlike Moderna’s and Pfizer’s mRNA vaccines. (Though I doubt that would convince the anti-vaxxers who fear mRNA vaccines to change their minds.) The best part is that the J&J vaccine requires only one shot, which will really simplify things in terms of logistics. The big question is whether they’d be able to produce enough for everyone. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see – which is basically the only valid strategy in this pandemic.

Good night, y’all.