Wednesday night. I have this dark suspicion that for the next 20+ years, job interviewers will always ask “how did you productively utilize your free time during the pandemic?”

I’m trying to make the most of my lockdown: taking DuoLingo French lessons in between my workout sets after cooking a homemade dinner, with a homemade protein smoothie once I’m done. Hopefully this will keep up. For the record: I’m not expecting anyone to do anything productive at all, mind you: merely staying safe and sane is good enough. Your mileage may vary: Susan Orlean (the author of author of “The Orchid Thief” and “The Library Book”) has fully embraced her love of wine. A couple of months ago, there was a hilarious series of tweets where she had a little bit too much, and ended up sending typo-ridden messages to her family as they tried to take the wine away. She’s Internet’s patron saint of lockdown drinking – and hey, in her defense, it’s a freaking pandemic. Pre-pandemic rules don’t apply, eh.

While looking up different nutrition facts about my usual food, I discovered something pretty horrifying: the beef&cheddar sausages I’ve been eating on Wiener Wednesdays are 80% fat. No more of those things, I suppose. I don’t want to retroactively analyze my earlier food consumption, but I’m guessing about 40% of the calories (if not more) must’ve come from fat. It has its place, mind you, but I think I was overdoing it. Ho hum. On the upside, the pleasant pain means my workouts are working and ye olde muscles are growing. What I wouldn’t give to have a picture of myself six months from now – hairier, with a bigger beard, and hopefully in much better shape.

In covid news: cases are on the rise in Canada in general and in Ontario in particular. It’s hard to say what specifically is driving them: could be crowded weddings, could be the asinine decision to send kids back to schools, could be all of the above. Compared to the US with its 30,000+ new cases per day, Canada’s count looks much better. Even so, we’ve gone from just 172 new daily cases in June to 1,479 a week ago. Ontario – or at the very least Toronto – will likely switch back to stage 2, or at least severely limit public gatherings.

India has just set the world record with 97,000 new cases. Per capita, they’re still not the worst in the world, but the sheer numbers…

There was something about Trump promising a safe and working vaccine next month, followed by the CDC issuing a statement supporting that, followed (within an hour) by the CDC issuing a statement to retract the first statement – but I didn’t bother looking into that too closely. At this point, US headlines might as well be from The Onion: strange and hilarious in a twisted, macabre way. When the only choices are to laugh or to cry, I know which one I pick. Sorry for the mess you’re in, my American compadres…