Provincial Wildlife Park

2020-10-27.

Went on a day trip to Shubenacadie Wildlife Park to see the animals and walk around the marsh trail a bit. I was hoping to see the moose but it wasn’t out that day; that’s okay — the foxes and birds and raccoons more than made up for it. Glad I brought my NEX3N and telephoto lens along.

Amusingly, Ezra’s favourite part of the Park was just running through the Wildlife Station Building and following the arrows from entrance to exit. Here is with a bear.

More photos from the Wildlife Park, which is about a 45 minute drive from Halifax.

COVID-19 NS Update

2020-10-25.

Seven months now since we went into COVID-19 lockdown. Active cases in Nova Scotia peaked in April, and since June the province has been at no more than 0-3 new #covid19 cases per day, mostly stretches of zero cases for up to 2 weeks. Schools have been open for over a month now with no spread, so the virus is most likely not in the community. Travel from outside the Atlantic Bubble requires 2 weeks of isolation, but there are enough exceptions that there is still some risk. Public distancing and masking requirements remain in place, and they generally seem to be working.

We did have a mild scare when Ezra got a fever and a sore throat with sniffles: most likely a common cold picked up from his first week in school, but we kept him home till he got a COVID-19 test, out of an abundance of caution advised by schools and provincial health authorities. The test (long swab in nose) was painful and unpleasant, but he was a trooper and got a popsicle at the end of the experience — and a negative result a day later.

Right now we’re very glad that we moved to Nova Scotia in particular; there’s been a strong local sense of community and civic responsibility in the face of this pandemic that’s been key to keeping it down here — although I fear this will not last, as cases are starting to rise in other provinces and especially the rest of Canada and the world.

Still, right now, in contrast with other places where public health is mired in conspiracy theories and deadly unscientific bluster, I’m proud of Nova Scotia’s general resiliency and [mostly] prevailing good sense. We’re doing okay.

Random photos from our pandemic-era life.

Donairsilog

2020-10-02.

Filipino-Nova Scotian fusion breakfast experiment: “donairsilog” — really just leftover donair meat with brown rice and a fried egg. (Please excuse my sad egg.)

It tasted quite good, with the sweet donair meat, slightly burnt, reminiscent of beef tapa, rounded out well by the rice. Remnants of condensed milk-based sauce plus tomato and onion provided small dairy and vegetable components which even made this a [sort of] complete breakfast.

First Day of School

2020-09-30.

It was a foggy Tuesday morning (Monday was Labour Day). Ezra was both nervous and excited, with a backpack on his back and a lunch bag in his hand. When he entered school there was no hesitation, no anxiety. As he released my hand I wished him a fun day and he smiled back uncertainly, then he turned and walked into school without looking back.

I could say this photo is artfully blurred to reflect my feelings as I watch my son take his first steps into school, beginning his journey away from home and towards eventually finding his independent self in the world at large; but really my phone camera just kept focusing on the door window mesh. There’s a clearer image here but I like how the candid, hasty one above came out.

At the end of the day he came out looking almost shell-shocked, quiet and unresponsive after emerging from school. I thought at first he’d been traumatized by his first day, but after several minutes of coaxing he said in a small voice “I didn’t want to leave yet…”

Pre-K has continued to be fun for him every day since.

Martha meets a neighbour

2020-09-11.

Our cats are strictly indoor-only, but we’ve made exception for them to go out on the deck when it’s nice out, which Martha enjoys a lot. Here she is meeting one of the neighbour’s cats from afar, and possibly learning of the existence of other cats for the first time.

(Our neighbours have an ingenious system for allowing their cats outside without letting them stray out of the backyard, consisting of a rope line over the grass to which the cat’s leashes are tethered, allowing them free reign of the yard without getting any farther than the leashes allow.)

Lightning over Halifax

2020-08-29.

Thunderstorms are rarer up here in NS than they were in DC and VA, so lightning and thunder seem to occasion a lot more comment when they come. I left my GoPro Session out on the porch as a storm passed through this week, and the lightning did not disappoint.

Comet NEOWISE

2020-08-21.

On a warm July night in Cole Harbour NS, I ventured to a school atop a nearby hill, set up my camera atop a playground slide, pointed it northwest, and with a 15 second exposure, captured Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE.

It was small and fuzzy, not visible to the naked eye with the local light glare, and I wasn’t sure if I’d actually capture it, but once you knew what to look for in the long exposure, the comet was unmistakable. See it? Just above the closest house and the swings, left of the tree?

JPL orbit diagram for C/2020 F3 NEOWISE. By now the comet is farther out and fading, not to return for another 6,700 years, so I was glad to have been able to catch a clear night while it was still around. Add this to other comets I’ve managed to photograph: C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy and C/2011 L4 PANSTARSS.

Cool Zone

2020-08-01.

Cool Zone

Semi-Detached

2020-07-31.

One reason I like Nova Scotia is that it’s more distant from everything, but the perks of living in civilization remain all accessible: a semi-detached life, if you will. Fittingly, a year and a half after moving to Halifax, we have bought a semi-detached house and moved into it.

It’s one side of a 3BR/2BA duplex in Cole Harbour, with a nice view of the rolling wooded hills of Nova Scotia through the maple trees out back, and even a glimpse of the nearby ocean in winter. This house, and most of the houses in the area, were built in the 1990s, and so are newer and generally better equipped — and better insulated — than a lot of other homes in the HRM.

Local real estate market has been surprisingly competitive, despite the pandemic; we were outbid on multiple properties and had to put in a rather aggressive offer to win this one. Closing was in early May (via videoconference), and we spent the rest of the month moving things ourselves, piecemeal, day by day, with the help of a rented pickup truck.

Cats have been enjoying the changing landscape of boxes and new views out the window.

And Ezra has a new room, bigger than his old one.

The place has needed some work: sewer line replacement, new water heater, new closet doors in the basement, new stair handrails, patching up a cracked bathroom vent pipe and cleaning up the resultant attic mould, and eventually we want to re-floor the basement and replace the old oil furnace with a ducted heat pump.

After 18 months of renting, I guess we’re back to the joys of home ownership.

Meanwhile, the duplex we had previously rented sold within weeks, and local prices continue to rise while supply remains tight. I can’t help but feel like a new unsustainable real estate bubble is forming, and we might have bought near the peak. Still, I’m glad we were able to get this place when we did; it’s far cheaper than our old townhouse or the previous condo in VA, and this new semi-detached house is hopefully going to be our long-term home.

Ezra Turns 4

2020-06-30.

This guy is now four years old:

I know it’s not much of a birthday being isolated from a worldwide pandemic in a new and unfamiliar home still full of moving boxes, but Happy Birthday, kid.

The adventure’s still just beginning.

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