Grigory Lukin.com

Wednesday evening. 60% of the way to the weekend, which is a particularly meaningless social construct in this here time of plague.

Today was mildly interesting because of a) a grocery trip, and b) giving a couple of presentations at work. I could’ve lasted for a few more days without a resupply run, but my bananas started going bad, and a protein smoothie without bananas… Look, I’m not the most refined guy out there but I’m not a savage, you know?

The presentations at work were a refreshing change of pace. It’s amazing how much better you can get at public speaking if you have to speak to groups of people (on and off) for about five years. Fun times. It is my firm belief that the corporate America (and the corporate Canada as well) would be much better off with company-sponsored public speaking courses for every employee. Dreams and aspirations, eh?

Earlier today, one of my landlords (the stay-at-home husband) tried to explain to me that masks don’t work, because he saw some study (???) that said 85% of Americans wore masks (not even close to the truth), and then the US got sick anyway. He is not a high-information news consumer… I think he read that on some social media. I tried showing him some sites that stated unequivocally that yes, masks do indeed work, but he didn’t seem persuaded.

I’ll be honest: my landlords worry me. They throw social gatherings (5-10 people) almost weekly, they have this strange recurring cough which kind of implies they already caught the common cold from someone else, so they weren’t perfectly careful, and they’re both big fans of Trump. Both are concerned about the pandemic, but then they invite half of their social circle to feast and chit-chat, and then gleefully share a piece of fake news about masks…

If I catch covid, it will be through them. Unfortunately, there aren’t that many other options at the moment. I can afford my own little apartment somewhere in a high-rise, but the virus can travel through plumbing and ventilation systems. Ideally, an isolated cabin would work best – just like the one in Deep River, at the very beginning of this journey. Unfortunately, Toronto has a rather limited supply of cozy isolated cabins. Ho hum. Theoretically, I might be able to self-isolate even further, locking myself inside my roof (it has its own bathroom, so water won’t be an issue), but that’d also require getting a tiny stove and saying goodbye to all the refrigerated food… Crazy, but not impossible.

In covid news, France and Germany are going into nationwide lockdown for four weeks (France on Friday; Germany on Monday) due to approaching the maximum capacity in their ICUs, as well as the ever-increasing new cases. In France, the lockdown means you can go to work (if WFH is not an option), you can shop for the most necessary supplies, and you can spend one hour outside for exercise. Schools will remain open, unlike their previous eight-week lockdown in the spring. Germany’s rules will be very similar. I hope they pull this off.

The stock market’s crash is accelerating. Last week was choppy, but this week… It’s been crashing for three days in a row now. Today Dow fell by more than 3%. I’m a very patient person, so I’m just holding on to my stocks (most of which I’d bought back in June) and waiting until all of this gets better at some point in 2021. Others, who are not as patient or strategic, must be losing their minds right now. I’ll almost certainly load up on more stocks within a month, once I get my twice-yearly bonus. And yes, I know, I’m privileged as hell. I know. I just want us all to get through this relatively intact, and thinking far ahead is my personal coping mechanism. Hang in there, y’all.

Tuesday evening.

More of the same old, same old, eh. Today’s big adventure was successfully not turning rice into soup twice in a row with my instapot. I’m cautious not to say I’m getting the hang of it, because that’s a surefire way to jinx myself for all eternity. Gotta say, I’m mighty curious about the instapot’s cake-making feature… Eggs and rice I can understand, but cake? That’s black magic at work.

(I know, I know, the lockdown life is absolutely riveting and filled with excitement.)

At work, the business hours got permanently extended by an hour, from 5pm till 6pm. That leaves me just five hours per day for myself. That’s one way to cut down on existential despair, I suppose: it typically goes away when I make all the pie charts in Excel. I’ll really have to start clawing back my 30-minute lunches, though.

My quest to get back to baseline continues: I figure I can extend the sober October for another month or two, and I’m cutting my caffeine down to just one cup of coffee at breakfast. (Sidenote: green tea is disgusting.) It’s curious to feel my body adjust: I actually get tired and sleepy by 11pm now. What a fascinating concept. Is that what life is like for non-workaholics? Heh, I must sound like the lamest recovering drug addict ever, now that I’ve cut down on ginkgo biloba, cider, and caffeine.

In covid news, Russia has ordered national mask mandate: they must be worn in all crowded public spaces. There’s also a strong recommendation for local authorities to establish 11pm-6am curfew. If you believe the official numbers, Russia is currently in the fourth place in terms of covid cases. (The top three belong to the US, India, and Brazil.) Then again, that’s the same country that would literally throw dissenting doctors out of their windows if they dare to disagree with Putin. (No, that wasn’t in the Soviet Union. Yes, that happened here and now, in 2020.) I hope this new measure works out for them, and helps stem the tide.

In other covid news, a store security guard in Chicago got stabbed 27 times by two sisters (age 18 and 21) when he asked them to put on their masks. The news says he’s survived the attack. Not everyone, but some people, out on the frayed edges of our society, are starting to regress – rapidly and ruthlessly. There will almost certainly be more of these headlines, and more frequently, as the pandemic goes on…

And to wrap up the news cycle – I didn’t write about this two days ago because it was a little bit too depressing. Nonetheless, I guess I’d better present this without comment, if only to keep it as a dark bookmark in this here historical record. This is what the White House chief of staff Mark Meadows recently said during an interview with Jake Tapper:

Meadows: “We’re not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics.”
Tapper: Why aren’t we going to control it?
Meadows: “Because it is a contagious virus just like the flu.”

At least they’re honest, eh?.. Stay safe out there, friends.

Monday night.

If not for all the doomscrolling of different news feeds, I wouldn’t have been able to tell this day apart from any other. There are some superficial differences such as weather or various cooking experiments, but really, today was just another drop in ye olde routine bucket. Not better, not worse, just exactly the same. (I can really relate to Nine Inch Nails’s “Every Day is Exactly the Same” song.)

Speaking of kitchen experiments: I’ve made two more attempts to cook with the instapot earlier today. Upside: the boneless chicken breast is amazing, and definitely faster than boiling. Downside: I keep making rice soup instead of, you know, rice. There’s some magic ratio of water and time – just gotta find it first. Once I do, though, I’ll end up with delicious and healthy lunches done in just five minutes. Huzzay!

In local news, there’s a disturbing shortage of flu shots… There’s a drug store just a block away from me: I call them up every few days, and yet there’s nothing. Those who need it the most should get it first, but I’d be a lot more comfortable if I knew when my turn is going to be. (Even if it’s sometime in mid-November.)

In covid news, hospitals around the world are getting into grim overflow situations. A hospital in Poland had to start staging its covid patients in a covered outdoor structure used for parking ambulances. The city of El Paso, Texas, has declared two-week curfew from 10pm-5am. Since October 1, they’ve seen a 160% increase in positivity rate, as well as a 300% increase in hospitalizations. There are emergency isolation tents being set up in parking lots… Elsewhere in the US, there’s talk of resorting to triage to ration medical care when hospitals get completely overwhelmed. That will be ugly, and the halfhearted measures some of the states may enact won’t benefit them until weeks later. Systems have momentum, and if you’re trying to hit the brakes only when your local ICU gets 100% full… You might reduce the impact somewhat, but you’ll still end up in a horrific crash.

Winter won’t officially start until December 21, but for all intents and purposes, dark winter is already here.

Sunday night. Who knew the end of the world as we know it could get so monotone?

Today was filled with mildly productive procrastination. A bit more gaming, followed by finally sorting out the big pile of shiny rocks I gathered during my roadtrip vacation in July. I now have a small box of gorgeous gems (about 5% of the total), a bag of plain-looking rocks that glow in the UV light, a bag of okay-looking amethysts, and about 50 lbs of uggos. (They should still be fun for your average non-rockhound person, though.)

Along the way, I played around with my DLSR, only to find that somewhere, somehow, I misplaced the memory card reader and a bunch of other accessories. Gotta love that two-day Amazon delivery, eh.

Speaking of which: at some point in the past 18 months, Amazon must have enabled the Pandora skill on Canadian Echoes. (This sentence would make zero sense to someone from the year 2000.) The best thing about Pandora is being able to listen to stand-up comedians and set up your own comedy stations: as far as their algorithm is concerned, Maria Bamford and John Mulaney are just unusual-sounding musicians. It’s a little sad how refreshing it is to hear human voices all around me again…

In covid news, several of VP Mike Pence’s staff have tested positive for covid. That includes his chief of staff. Allegedly, both Pence and his wife (the Second Lady? the first Lady-in-Waiting?) have tested negative, so Pence can continue campaigning and traveling, seeing as he is somehow defined as “essential personnel.” Then again, at this point there’s so little trust in the White House communications that even if Pence did have covid, there’s a fair chance they’d just say the same thing. (It’d make his reelection odds even worse if he had to stay in isolation for the next two weeks.)

Tomorrow, the Republicans in the US senate will hold the final vote on Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment to the Supreme Court. That says all you need to know about their priorities: no stimulus bill for regular Americans, but filling an empty Supreme Court is urgent business. If you were to write this in a political novel (before the pandemic, of course), any sane editor would’ve told you that the satire and jaded humour were a bit too on the nose. To make things more interesting, there’ll probably be another maskless White House celebration tomorrow night. There’s every reason to believe it’ll turn into another super-spreader event…

Hang in there, my yankee compadres.

Saturday night, whoop-whoop.

I was deprived of my usual weekend sleep-a-thon after being rudely awakened just nine hours later by my family’s ongoing texting thread. I’m really glad one of them just bought a house, but maybe more than 10 texts to celebrate on a Saturday morning is a bit excessive, no? Heh.

The plan to fight my cabin fever with pop culture immersion is partly effective, though not completely so. Tried and gave up on a couple of video games. Gobbled up the entirety of Way Station by Simak: a fine and imaginative sci-fi novel that aged quite well (considering it was written back in 1963) and had some beautiful writing. On the other hand, you could tell it was written a lifetime ago, because the sole female character was partly infantilized, partly treated like a prize horse by the very important men who decided all the very important things. I doubt I’ll be re-reading it…

In culinary adventures, I’ve finally unboxed and tried out the instant pot thingamajig that arrived about a week ago. I regret to say that my attempt to cook chili has resulted in soup-like concoction. Again. (A sign from the universe that I should become a soup chef?) On the upside, it was pretty funny to watch the landlords’ daughter’s Corgi go absolutely berserk when I let out the instapot’s steam. (The pupper wasn’t in any danger of scalding: we kept him away.) Whelp, the thing I created was still mostly edible, and there’s a lot of potential there. If it can really cook rice in just four minutes and quinoa in just one… Instapot, I think this is the beginning of a delicious friendship.

In covid news, the US has set a new record for new covid cases: over 84,000 new cases were recorded on Friday. Keep in mind that it’s still not easy to get tested there unless you lie about your exposure or symptoms. The real number is much higher, as always, but assuming the test access is the same as before, this flawed number is still an all-time high, still alarming, still dangerous. Dr Fauci just said in an interview that perhaps it’s time for a mask mandate…

And in more local news, someone started fires in toilet paper aisles of three local Walmarts over the course of one night. No one was hurt, the fires got put out, but that still caused $12MM CAD worth of damage. That might have been a bizarre attack by some anti-maskers making a statement against the lockdown. Then again, this is 2020, so anything is possible, eh?

Friday evening. If my landlord hadn’t said “happy weekend!” when I went downstairs after logging off from work, I might have forgotten what day this was.

I’ve fought it off long enough and as well as I possibly could, but there’s no denying it: boredom is setting in. I find myself digesting old memories, reliving old experiences and dates and meetups, trying to recapture in the most vivid possible way the memories of old vacations – Nevada, Costa Rica, the six-day cruise six years ago… Was it the Tuesday road trip that got my brain so ravenous for stimuli again? That might have been the case. After months of self-lockdown – a trip, an adventure, dozens of new people I talked to during my random and improbable day-long quest.

I’ve watched a movie, and brainstormed an exciting new vector for the next six years of life, and learned some French, and finally requested to cancel that gym membership that I’ve been holding to out of politeness before I saw all the unauthorized charges they’ve made. (That was a step too far, eh.) And it’s still only 9:24pm. Heh. Maybe it’ll help to just start devouring escapist science fiction: I’ve found some fun new (to me) titles by one of my favourites, Robert Charles Wilson. But first, the classic novel Way Station by Clifford D. Simak.

Or maybe this is all just some secondhand existential anxiety about the US election, which is just 11 days away now. The social media is refusing to talk about anything else, which rather interferes with my usual doomscrolling. (How inconsiderate of them, I know.) There’s a lot riding on what happens there.

In covid news, my company has extended its WFH policy: now we’re allowed to work from home until June 30th. If our own specialized analysts have looked at it and said, “nope, nope nope nope nope nope,” then the outlook is dire indeed. I’ve said this many times before – Canada is dealing with covid far better than the US, and we’ll likely do a better job with distributing vaccines when they become available, too. (It’s funny how I started to refer to Canada as “we” at some point I’m unable to recall.)

Realistically, I think I’ll get my shot in February or March. (Will we make it to Plague Diaries – Day 365? Heh.) But if WFH continues through end of June… That opens up so very many choices. Maybe I can move out of the suburbs and into the actual city of Toronto. Maybe I’ll be able to sell my car. (Car insurance is ridiculously expensive here.) Maybe, for once in my life, I’ll become a cosmopolitan city slicker, enjoying the life of the largest city in my country (I’m so sorry things didn’t work out, New York) while leisurely exploring the million things it has to offer, as opposed to having had to plan an entire day-long excursion like I had been before the age of covid. (Congratulations to everyone who made it to the end of that run-on sentence.)

In any case, it was awfully nice of them to give such a long-term reassurance. This gives so much more food for thought…

Enjoy your weekend, folks – I hope it’s mildly more manic than mine.

Thursday night. I blinked, and it was Friday once again…

I’m still riding that emotional high from having helped out that customer with my long road trip yesterday. The clarity of driving… Having an entire day with nothing to do but think (with food for thought rolling in from all the interesting podcasts) really helped put some things into perspective. My mind is now abuzz with thoughts of several potential futures, of what might be, of what I might always regret if I don’t do. 2020 is a very big year for me in very many ways. I’m setting a few plans in motion – only time will tell how well they will play out.

Skipping the exercise today since my back is a bit sore from all the heavy-lifting yesterday. There’s a distinct possibility it’s just my mind being lazy, but I don’t want to risk an accidental and avoidable injury. I’ll pick it back up tomorrow.

The final presidential debate just ended. It was a hot mess, which wasn’t a big surprise. It was curious to see Trump actually talking for two hours without coughing or wheezing: either they temporarily stabilized him just for tonight, or they’ve pumped him full of more experimental treatments. (Or perhaps both.) It’s interesting, though, that when he appears in public, there are obvious traces of IV needles on his right hand. Oh well. The US election is in 12 days. Hopefully, it won’t be contested or fought over – I and many others like me would really like that particular dumpster-fire to end.

In covid news, Trump defended his covid approach during the debate and said he’d rather open up more businesses instead of changing anything or calling for a mask mandate. And in Florida, there are plans to stop daily reporting of new covid cases – and it’s unclear whether the reporting would switch to weekly cadence or stop altogether. I suppose that’s one way to make the virus disappear magically – if you just stop reporting on it at all.

Ye gods, what a shitshow… I love you, Canada. 🙂

Tuesday night. When you exercise at home, the hardest part is getting off the couch.

I’ve slept on my decision to shave the Apocalypse Beard, and decided there’s no sense in prolonging the inevitable. Before shaving it to a far more respectable-looking Van Dyke, I took a few high-resolution pictures and recorded a video for my future self. When some older and wiser version of me entertains the idea of growing a beard at some point in the distant future (probably a year from now, give or take), hopefully the video will dissuade him. Oh well, that was a fun quarantine project: at least now I know what 149 days of facial shrubberry look like.

I’ve found out that I’ll end up making the big work-related roadtrip after all: to Ottawa and back! It’s roughly a 10-hour roundtrip, all for the sake of customer experience, since that’s the fastest and cheapest way to get something from point A to point B. I’ve already mapped the route and loaded up on podcasts. (Sean Carroll’s Mindscape podcast is amazing.) I’ll get up earlier than usual tomorrow, but it’ll definitely be worth it. Before the pandemic, this sort of customer-obsessed adventure would’ve made for a merely great story. These days, it’s a great story and probably the most exciting thing that will happen to me since my July vacation. (Which, as you recall, I spent roadtripping and gem-hunting around Ontario.) This October is remarkably warm, but it’ll snow soon enough, and then long roadtrips won’t be as safe… Gonna have to make the most out of tomorrow’s trip.

In covid news, Ireland is going into a strict six-week lockdown starting tomorrow night. Most retail stores will be closed, folks won’t be allowed to visit each other’s homes, and there’ll be movement restrictions – no more than 5km (or 3 miles) away from your home. Police checkpoints on the roads will help enforce the rules. Public transit will be capped at 25% capacity. The one small upside is that those who lose their jobs will get weekly unemployment payouts. The lockdown is supposed to last until December 1, but some lockdowns in other countries have been known to get extended… If all goes well, they’ll be able to enjoy their December holidays with far, far lower virus levels.

It’s interesting that the sort of strict lockdown Ireland is about to kick off is far above and beyond anything we’ve had in the US and, to a lesser extent, Canada. (Some Canadian provinces had road checkpoints too.) Most US/Canadian initiatives were well-intentioned but not nearly as strict as this: even now, if you don’t like the rules in your local municipality, you can just drive a few miles out and enjoy your freedom (from common sense, presumably). A guy on local social media claimed that his brother-in-law drove an hour outside Toronto just to enjoy a lunch out on the patio. I hope that two-hour covid safari was worth it. I’m not sure how people would handle it if an actual Irish-style lockdown were implemented nationwide: Canadians would probably politely protest; Americans would likely start trying to kidnap and kill more public officials, as they do. What a fascinating time to be a fan of both politics and epidemiology, eh.

And now, off to bed, to get all the zzz’s for tomorrow’s big drive. Stay healthy out there, folks.

Tuesday night. If the 1920s were filled with parties and ended with a disaster, and the 2020s began with a disaster instead… Does that mean we’ll get to party it up for nine years?

Another utterly unremarkable day here in suburbia, except that both of my landlords were coughing up a storm this morning. They both say it’s just a bad cough and there are no other symptoms, and I have no reason to disbelieve them. Even so, it’s always possible that’s something worse. If that’s covid, then I’ve probably already been exposed… We’ll see. The tickle in the back of my throat is still there, even though it’s been about a week, but it and I have a non-aggression pact. It’s possible that’s all there really is – just some cold with mild symptoms.

At work, I very nearly got to volunteer to drive and deliver a thingy five hours away, which would have resulted in a fun 10-hour roadtrip. Alas, that didn’t come to be. Too bad, but there’ll be other roadtrips later. Not anytime soon, most likely: the first snow is just a few weeks away, and driving between cities when all that white crap is sticking everywhere doesn’t strike me as safe. These days, I mostly escape into the thoughts about the past and the future – anything but the present. Depending how well things go next year, I miiiight be able to finally vacation someplace warm, exotic, and sunny. (Still a little salty that Tunisia didn’t work out for me back in March.) But if not, and if things stabilize in Quebec, then maybe Montreal… Yay hypothetical imaginary future roadtrips.

In covid news, same old, same old. The other night, Dr.Fauci appeared on 60 Minutes where he frankly discussed how frustrated he is with America’s covid response. (Or lack thereof, really.) He said he and his family got harassed and received death threats… Now the poor guy has to have security with him when he goes on his power walks. He’s almost 80. After the recent spike in attempted political violence, it’s possible that some other idiot will try to go after Fauci himself, security or not. And, of course, Trump didn’t help things, calling Fauci an idiot later on, mocking all the safety measures, etc.

I can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like to live in the US right now. Stay strong and safe and sane, y’all.