Rainbow Dragon's Dares

Yup. I pointed this out to the MOD management. I believe my exact words were, "You're going to have to forgive my outrage that you're concerned about your staff's right to keep secret a piece of information the revealing of which will cause absolutely no harm to them whatsoever, when I'm trying to protect my father's right to keep breathing." They had to stop and think about that for a minute.

I think we will get there. Most sensible people know it has to happen. In Ontario, the NDP and Liberals have been pushing for mandatory vaccination for all healthcare and education workers in the province for months. But convincing the governing Conservatives to do what is necessary to protect the people of Ontario is rather like pulling teeth. Last week, when pressed on the issue, our provincial Minister of Health said:

So our government knows that unvaccinated healthcare workers are a danger to their patients. Yet they're waiting for my father and other people like him to die before taking action to protect them.

Thank you!

I'm a big fan of the saying "your rights end where mine begin". How anyone can think a person's right to medical privacy over vaccination trumps a vulnerable person's right to not be infected with a serious illness in the middle of a pandemic is beyond me. I hope that the vaccine mandate will be extended to home care workers soon (and the same here too, I don't know why it isn't included with care homes).

Good luck with your adjusted goals

I can't say much for life here at the moment. Despite being from here originally and having spent more time then anywhere else living here, I still feel a little out of the loop. In Thunder Bay I only ever saw a couple of anti-vax/"no more lockdowns" marches but here I saw a full on altercation between an anti-masker and hospital security when I was in Emergency. I guess that everyone else found the incident troubling, but I couldn't help but think it was funny. The quality of arguments put forward for not wearing a mask ("not enough oxygen" - I would like anyone who says this to tell me any one scientific fact related to breathing) and his reasoning for being at the hospital were simply ludicrous.

The Nazi reading list only surprises me insofar as I'm surprised the individuals you encountered could read. The low rate of literacy--and education in general--here compared to the rest of the province is statistically significant. Failing to comprehend why social justice movements such as BLM are necessary, and feeling threatened by them, is sadly not uncommon here.

Happy warmer winters and longer hours of winter sunlight to you!

Most of Ontario, thankfully, is doing okay these days--outside of Chatham-Kent, where our active infection rate is now ~ 4 times the provincial average.

I am so far managing to keep my family safe by keeping unvaccinated individuals away from us. We were shocked a few weeks back when the March of Dimes sent an unvaccinated PSW to provide service to my father. My mother called the regional manager to let her know that was unacceptable. This set off a flurry of freaking out within the organization, and three different levels of management called us back to explain they could not guarantee they would send only vaccinated individuals because they are not allowed to disclose to us the vaccination status of their staff. Promising to send only vaccinated employees would effectively be telling us the vaccination status of those employees, so they could not do it. I explained to them that they were sending their employees to work in our private home, that we had every right in the world to know the vaccination status of individuals entering our home, and that I would be greeting their staff at the door in the future and demanding this information from them. Anyone who cannot or will not disclose to me that they are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 will not be allowed to enter the premises. Thus far this has worked, but I am concerned the MOD may try to force the issue again in the future. They are always short-staffed, and with local hospitals imposing a vaccine mandate on all of their employees and the government now stepping up to impose one on staff in congregate care settings for seniors, organizations which provide home care services will soon be the only places left employing anti-vax healthcare workers. Meanwhile, my 80-year-old, medically fragile father is not yet eligible for a booster shot because he lives in his own home.

Too many people in my area are still failing to get it. My old roller derby league hosted a reunion this weekend. They decided to hold the event outside in a park, so as "not to exclude anyone" who would have been unable to attend if they had chosen a venue with a vaccine mandate in place. I told them that by not imposing a vaccine mandate on attendees they would be excluding me. The event organizers failed to comprehend this and went ahead with their "everyone is welcome" policy. So I did not attend. Judging by the photographs they posted to social media afterward of their smiling, unmasked faces pressed against one another cheek-to-cheek, I made the right call. Now I can only hope all the Thanksgiving gatherings this weekend don't make things very much worse for everyone.

Too funny.

I don't like to typecast any one region of the country (or the world) but the only people that I have ever met who actively read material written from the Third Reich or who emphatically told me "All Lives Matter" without me having said anything to instigate, both came from that part of Ontario.

We recently moved to Ottawa, so my region is still doing OK, though not as good as my old one.

Maybe take each inane criminal anti-vaxing activity and transform it into a new exercise. A doorknob licker is a lunge with kettlebell? A glass smasher is a burpee with a toe tap in addition to the remainder? Turn a negative into a positive ... that kind of thing.

In the same week another guy got picked up for break and enter, but before the police could arrest him they had to take him to the hospital to get him patched up from the injuries he sustained on glass from the window he smashed to break in. The level of stupid in these parts is something else.

Okay: summary post. Because I need to get back on track here, and trying to tease out all of the details of everything I have done (and not done) since my last workout post would take so long I'd end up falling even further behind.

I have continued to workout with my mother every day. Yesterday (October 9) was Norma 's 569th consecutive day of working out and my 535th. It was also my 334th consecutive day of French study. I had a good streak going for daily ornithological study and daily artwork for a while too, but I lost them both. Also, I was tracking a daily yoga asana practice streak for a while, but most days I was doing less than 15 minutes a day. I've decided that doesn't count. I am, however, still tracking a "Dolphin-a-Day" streak, which I started a while back on the advice of my teachers at Aligned Yoga (where I am doing the online YTT). This only requires a minimum commitment of 1 minute per day. (Most days I do more, but 1 minute is the minimum.) Yesterday was day 44. No major breakthroughs from the work yet--except that I don't dislike the pose anymore. This isn't nothing.

Norma is back to doing exercises at our local seniors' centre three times a week. But she is still working out with my every day as well.
I have not been doing much on the workout front besides my dolphin-a-day, hiking, and working out with her. This needs to change. I will be 3/4 of the way through my 51st year by the middle of this week, and I am so far behind on some of my goals for the year, they are already out of reach. Others I believe I still have a chance to catch up on. And others still I have decided to drop because my interests and focus have changed since January. Let's see where we're at now:

1. run 1000 km

My year-to-date running mileage is 470 km. I would need to complete almost 6K a day each day for the remainder of the year to make it to my goal. This is not out of the question in terms of my physical ability. But there could well be a fair number of unpleasant weather days between now and January which would make reaching my goal difficult. Nevertheless, I want to keep striving towards this one. We're heading into a period of ideal running weather now, which should persist for at least a couple of weeks. So maybe I'll be able to squeeze in a few extra K this month to make things easier on myself once winter hits.

2. travel 3000 km without external motorized assistance

My year-to-date total mileage is 1797.9 km. I'd need to cover over 12.5 km a day, every day, to make it to 3000 km by my birthday. Which again is physically possible, but a big time commitment if I run into bad weather. Still, I try to walk my dogs 3K a day each. If I'm running 6K a day on top of that, I'm almost to the mileage I need. So I'm going to keep working towards this one and hope for the best weather-wise.

3. complete 100 hours of power/vinyasa yoga practice and/or dancing

This was originally intended to be a two hour a week commitment. But I did not practise yoga for two hours a week. So now I am behind. My year-to-date practice time is currently 26 hours and 45 minutes. I'm looking at almost 6 hours a week going forward to catch up. This is a big time commitment considering how little I have been focussing on yoga thus far this year. On the other hand: I am working on my YTT now. I have access to some great yoga training resources for one year. I want to make good use of these resources. So six hours a week of vinyasa/power yoga practice it is!

4. run 5K in under 22 minutes

This one is probably out of reach now. I abandoned my running over the summer. So now I need to work on building up my mileage base again before pushing for too much speed. And running fast just isn't in the cards for me in December and January due to the amount of clothing I need to wear to be outside during those months. Still, I'll be putting in the distance. So I'll do a time trial now and then to see how far I can get on this one this year.

5. execute 50 push-ups in one unbroken set

Meh. I still don't like push-ups. And I don't enjoy training for volume. I do chaturangas as part of my yoga practice. But the endless sets of push-up after push-up I would need to torture myself with to ever make it to 50 in one set are just not something I have the drive to do right now. So I'm going to drop this one. In its place I am adding in a new goal, which is to develop the ability to do "crow push-ups" (the transition between knees-outside-elbows "low crow" to knees-on-triceps "high crow"). To meet this goal I need to be able to complete one full rep (up and down, or down and up) without touching my toes down.

6. achieve a press-to-handstand without assistance

I'm still working on this one. The increased focus on my yoga practice will definitely help. (As will training with a teacher who is a self-professed "inversion junkie".)

7. complete "Ornithology: Comprehensive Bird Biology"

I'm currently working through Chapter 10 of thirteen chapters, so am still on track to finish this on time.

8. complete 100 nature journal entries with sketches

Year-to-date journal entries = 46. So I'm behind. But not impossibly so. Four per week will get me to where I need to be. Not every day provides the opportunity for good content, however. But this is okay. I can do two sketches on some days. Also, I allow myself to complete entries based on photographs and memories from previous days' observations. Field sketching is just not always possible for a variety of reasons--weather, bugs, observation locations which are less-than-ideal for sitting or even standing in for extended periods of time, aging eyes that cannot discern the same level of detail as my camera can, subjects that don't pose for portraits, etc.--so I'm working mostly from photographs for most of my sketches in any case. I have decided to be okay with this.

9. submit 100 complete bird counts to eBird

As I posted a while back, I'm not so much into listing anymore. It gets in the way of my enjoyment on a nature hike, and I just wasn't getting any value out of the work involved in submitting high quality travelling lists. I am still maintaining a yard list, however. This is much less onerous and of more interest to me. My year-to-date complete bird counts total currently sits at 69. This will be easy enough to get up to 100 before my birthday, even if I only submit yard lists going forward. So I'm going to keep this goal on the books.

10. learn the songs and/or calls of 100 bird species that breed in Chatham-Kent

As noted previously, I have resigned from the Breeding Bird Atlas. I'm still birding. And learning bird songs is still a valuable skill for my purposes. But it's no longer helpful to me to specifically focus on birds which breed in my area. (Indeed, a focus on local breeders has actually become counterproductive, since I have enough exposure to birds which are here all summer I have a better chance of being able to identify them from other cues such as general size and shape, habitat and behaviour, etc., whereas I definitely need more help to identify migrants which I only get to experience for a few of weeks a year.) So far I have 22 species on my list of local breeding birds I can ID by their song and/or call. If I include migrants, my number here gets a bit of a boost. Enough of a boost to enable me to get to 100 species by mid-January? I don't know. If I had enough time to focus on the work, sure. But as we've seen from all of the other goals I'm behind on: I don't have all that much time left. I'm going to continue to work towards a modified version of this goal--one that replaces "breed" with "occur"--but this is the lowest priority of my Baker's Dozen Goals now. So if I run out of time to get everything done on time, this is going to be the one I finish late.

11. complete the Fluenz French program through Level 5

I'm behind (currently working on session 76 of 150) but this goal is still achievable and I'm still working towards it.

12. pass French fluency tests for reading, writing, speaking, and listening

I still need to sort out the conversation part. (The only francophone I know who is local to me is unvaccinated. So there's no way I'm hanging out with her. I should be able to set up a French conversation with a remote friend, however.) I can use the Fluenz software to test reading, writing, and listening--though I still think I want to do something more here. In any case, I am still working on my French, and there will be some kind of test.

13. achieve an unassisted pull-up

I've been slacking on this goal too, but I want to continue to work towards it. I still don't have any benchmarks for progress. But giving myself a pass on the push-ups slog will free up enough head space for me to be able to get back to this, I think.

Doorknob licking? Gross.

Same here. There was a long line, and the polling station workers were not all well-trained. But I did not want to take a chance on things being worse on election day. Also: the weather was nice, and I had to walk my father there, since we don't have a wheelchair van anymore.

Smart move. I cannot really get away from it here. My parents have the television on pretty much all day every day. (I hide in a different room when I can. But I have to go into the room with the television to help them with stuff. Plus I ca hear their television in the kitchen. At least they watched a little more CBC and a little less CNN during the run up to our election. So it was a nice break from American politics.

It's an odd narrative. The pundits need to say something to justify the air time they take up, I suppose.


I see your region is still doing well on the Covid front. And mine continues to be the worst region in Ontario. Last week a guy here was arrested for doorknob licking.

I did early voting and purposefully did not pay attention to any election news until yesterday, other than the occasional headline. That mostly helped with my sanity for the past few weeks.

I am surprised that someone that wins three times in a row is seen as washed up as some are saying. Winning in politics is pretty much all that matters to parties. Oh well.

Very true. Thank you for reminding me to have perspective.

Thank you.

Hang in there, it's still Canada.
I mean, it could be worse... so much worse

Anyway, here

After 5 weeks of figurative mud slinging and literal rock slinging, we're right back where we started. A few incumbents lost their seats. A few fresh faces are going to Ottawa. But the party standings are almost exactly the same as they were before the election. SSDD except that now everyone hates everyone else just a little bit more.



And this is the best result Canada could have hoped for out of last month's dog and pony show. The polls had predicted a non-zero possibility the Liberals might pull off a majority--which would have at least guaranteed us a stable government for the next four years--but the most likely outcome predicted by polling data was the one we got. IMO, Liberals and NDP working together to get stuff done should be the best government for Canada--the two parties have similar platforms but work together to keep one another's worst tendencies in check--but Canadian politicians are notoriously bad at making minority governments work. And now the NDP are in the position of needing to prop up a government they just spent the past 5 weeks trying to convince Canadians is unfit to lead. (Technically, the Liberals could get legislation passed solely with the support of the Bloc. But I'd prefer not to have my federal government pandering to separatists.) In any case: what's done is done. We'll just have to see how this goes.

Mostly I am relieved by yesterday's results--at least on the national level. Polling data had also predicted a non-zero possibility the Conservatives might win more seats than the Liberals. (Which--contrary to many people's belief--does not necessarily result in a Conservative government. But things would have gotten pretty ugly here if the Liberals had attempted to hold onto power under such a circumstance.) The Conservative platform sought to take us backward on public health measures, climate action initiatives, and gun control legislation. I am very relieved none of those things will be happening in the near future now. Unfortunately the Conservatives' loss likely means they will boot their current leader. O'Toole's concession speech last night was clearly a bid to keep his job. But he steered his party to the exact same result Scheer got turfed for two years ago. We'll see how that plays out over the next few days, I suspect. (I don't vote Tory and don't have a say in the matter. But I would much prefer O'Toole's more centrist vision for the Conservative Party of Canada than the socially regressive horror the party's previous two leaders promoted.) Also--thanks to Trudeau reneging on a 2015 election promise and deciding not to force electoral reform the majority of Canadians don't want onto our country--the Purple People Eaters were shut out of Parliament again. If we had proportional representation in Canada, our new government would contain 17 MPs who support a far-right, racist, anti-science, pro-conspiracy theory agenda. That is not a voice I want in my country's parliament!

Unfortunately, the scene on the ground in my own tiny corner of Canada is much, much worse than the national picture. My riding re-elected it's Conservative incumbent. No surprise there. I just hate being reminded that so many of my neighbours want to be represented in Ottawa by an incompetent MP who is nothing more than a meat puppet for the Harper/Scheer brand of regressive conservatism. Even worse though: the Purple People Eater on my ballot drew 15% of the vote--three times the national vote share for the PPC and the highest percentage of any PPC candidate in Ontario. Not coincidentally, my local Public Health Unit also boasts the lowest vaccination rate and the highest active Covid-19 infection rate of any PHU in the province. I know many of you are envious of the easy access to nature and low human population density I enjoy living where I do. And those aspects of living here are indeed pretty sweet. But there are significant things to hate about the community in which I live too.




Anyhow... that is what it is too. I don't have a good way to get out of this town. So I just have to make the best of it. I am grateful for my connections to all of you here in the Hive, as well as other friends online, who share a better vision for humanity than that of my physical neighbours.

Election night in Canada is like watching grass grow but with more stress. Way more stress.