Saturday night.

Another wholesome day spent doing absolutely nothing. Some leisurely lounging in bed after waking up. A quick walk to Tim Hortons. A spot of Spanish DuoLingo and exercise. Hours and hours spent impersonating a benevolent dictator in Tropico-1. A typical weekend day in a pandemic…

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about the CPR class tomorrow, and I seldom lie. At some point, masks will have to come off, and some hands-on CPR demonstrations with rubber dummies will take place. I don’t know how many people will be there or what the safety precautions will be like – all I know is that it’s a day-long course. The one positive factor here is that I assume the kind of people who sign up for a CPR/first aid course are more health-aware than your baseline person, and would be less likely to catch covid. (Yes, I’m aware how shaky that logic is.) Well, it’s either risking this one potential exposure or spending the rest of the year completely devoid of any social life, so YOLO, I suppose.

In the US, Trump’s impeachment trial is finally over. Sixty-seven senators would have had to vote to convict him. Only 57 did. The good news is that seven Republican senators voted based on their conscience. The bad news is that the other 86% of them decided to put the party before the country, and voted in Trump’s favour. This means he’ll get to enjoy all the privileges an ex-president gets, including his own presidential library, a nice chunk of taxpayer money each year, and – most importantly – ongoing access to top secret briefings. I was expecting something along these lines… On social media, people kept posting their reactions to different developments during the impeachment trial, but I ignored them all: in the end, it’s a binary choice. Convicted or not, yes or no. The details leading up to it are as irrelevant as the flowery prose of a dissenting Supreme Court opinion: it does nothing to change the outcome. Good luck, you crazy yanks.

(And a small correction: a few days ago, I wondered why the House hadn’t delivered the articles of impeachment sooner, before the inauguration. It turns out Mitch McConnell, the then-majority leader, had chosen not to call the senate back from its recess, so the whole procedural delay was caused by him. I guess this means I’m finally moving away from my earlier obsession with American politics. Good.)

In covid news, the US has passed a huge milestone – a positive one this time. Over 50 million doses of covid vaccines have been administered in the US, out of the 69.9 million doses that have been delivered. That’s almost one out of every six Americans – and even better if you exclude those under 18. At the same time, the official US covid death toll is currently at 484,000. That does not include the excess mortality, so the true total is much higher: 600 thousand? 700?.. It’s downright bizarre that a country that sabotaged its own pandemic response plan is also vaccinating faster than most countries out there. (Except for Israel: they’ll be the first in the world to get fully vaccinated.) The outlook for Canada’s timeline is still pessimistic, but I’m happy by proxy: roughly 99% of my friends and relatives live in the US, so at least they’re getting their vaccine shots. Incidentally, my Reno friends recovered from covid, though they still have lingering symptoms – the so-called long covid. I hope they fully recover before long…

Enjoy your three-day weekend, y’all.