Wednesday night.

I actually had to check what day this was. Definitely a blursday, eh?

With nothing else to do, I’m slowly excavating and using all the random crap I’ve been lugging with me from one rental to another. So far, just two big findings:

  1. Licorice tea is disgusting. It should be declared among the worst conceivable crimes against humanity. Licorice fields must burn. The very word must be forever stricken from every book and media recording ever made.
  2. Apparently, I still have that 3-in-1 Axe shampoo/conditioner/soap thing I won in a silent auction over a year ago. (It was for charity, okay?) I have no clue what strange forbidden alchemy this is, but it’s actually great for my ever-expanding hair. Huh.

And otherwise… just nothing. Meh, getting my first shot of Pfizer was still worth it.

In covid news, there’s a new sheriff in town: Dr. Homer Tien has replaced general Hillier (who was not, by the way, a doctor) as head of Ontario’s vaccine task force. His changes are already happening: Toronto has declared that it’ll start vaccinating everyone 18 and older in the biggest covid hot zones all around the city, based on their postal code. That is a huge, huge departure from the previous policy of trying to lure the oldest people in the city to vaccination centers in the middle of Toronto, followed by exasperated sighs and delaying vaccinations for everyone else (you know, like frontline workers) by yet another week.

They’ve published a list of postal codes that are eligible for universal vaccinations and, well, this is pretty ironic. Two of my last three rentals are in those hot-zone areas. Specifically, the house in Mississauga that I moved out of about three months ago after my landlords snapped and started hosting dinner parties. (So many dinner parties…) It’s more than a little ironic that literally the only thing I had to do this whole time to get my shot was stay in one place. If that’s not a perfect example of the Taoist concept of wu wei – action through inaction – then I don’t know what is. That neighbourhood is filled with immigrants, and many of them, from what I gathered, have either manual labour jobs or commute to work. My landlords liked bringing over other folks from their culture for dinner, perhaps to keep their loneliness at bay in this strange country. This is purely conjecture on my part, but if even half of our neighbours were the same way (socializing with multiple households in the time of plague, commuting to work, unable to work from home, etc), then yeah, I can see how those areas would have a lot more covid cases. I’m fairly certain that if I’d stayed, I would’ve gone mad from the overall anxiety caused by their parties. Oh well.

I did, however, text them and let them know that they can (and should) sign up for their vaccine appointments ASAP. They don’t follow the news closely (and few people follow the covid news as closely as I), so that was a nice surprise for them. My good deed for the month, eh. Speaking of which, the little Vaccine Hunters group is filled with other news junkies like myself: it gets overwhelming to see dozens of people digesting all the local covid news, hunting for vaccine appointments, etc. Some of them are real heroes, helping their friends, families, and even random cashiers find vaccination slots. One guy in particular is so successful that strangers refer their friends to him, just so he could assist them in their vaccine quest. That’s how dysfunctional the whole rollout has been: they had over a year to prepare for this, and it’s come down to this – random online heroes helping strangers navigate the byzantine labyrinth of bureaucracy. To paraphrase a brilliant movie about the uprising of oppressed proletariat, “Geeks together strong.”

Things are changing fast, and hopefully they’ll keep changing for the better now that an actual doctor is in charge, eh. I know I post an awful lot about the covid situation in Ontario and not so much elsewhere, but a) this is relevant to me personally, and b) later on, there will be lots of records about the major events in the US, UK, etc. I’m not sure how much information or contemporary perspectives will be preserved about Canada in general and Ontario in particular. Someday, some way, somehow, someone might find this useful.

Good night, y’all.