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At six years old (six!) Ezra is now able to read books, play soccer, finish Super Mario Odyssey on the Nintendo Switch (assist mode), and has asked if he will have a girlfriend when he is older.
For his birthday we got him a scooter, which he has been zipping around on quite well. I have also acquired a scooter for myself, to scoot with him, which, at my age, may turn out to be a mistake.
Spotted at Halifax Seaport from across the Harbour: Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas, formerly the largest cruise ship in the world, now fourth after the launch of her sister ships of the same class.
Aerial drone views of the ship’s arrival, and the view of Halifax from the docked ship. In the foreground is the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker CCGS Kopit Hopson 1752.
After a couple years, it’s become pretty clear that COVID isn’t just a droplet-spread respiratory virus, but a fast-evolving, airborne, neuroinvasive disease that can have long-term multi-organ inflammatory, autoimmune, and neurological effects, even for mild and asymptomatic cases.
Contrary to received knowledge spuriously derived from previous pandemics caused by other pathogens, the SARS-CoV2 virus can evade non-neutralizing mRNA vaccines, does infect children and spreads from them to other family, does not necessarily evolve towards milder forms, can infect people through the air over distances farther than three or six feet and intervals under fifteen minutes, doesn’t care how much you work out or take vitamins, does not strengthen the immune system or necessarily impart lasting immunity to itself — and looks ready to exhaust the Greek alphabet that the WHO was using to label variants. (Which is probably why seem reticent to go past Omicron.)
Local governments have given up, made masks optional, eliminated contact tracing, cut down case reports, and will probably eventually make people go to work and school sick, all the while pretending the pandemic is mild or over and delaying updated vaccine boosters. Meanwhile, reinfections, hospitalizations, and deaths rise, healthcare workers die or burn out and quit, and survivors face increasing risks of long-term sickness with repeated infections.
Right alongside antivaxxers and covid denialists, we’ve also seen the rise of covid “minimizers” who, driven by desperation for normalcy (or possibly sheer eugenics), think an outdated vaccine is enough reason to end all other mitigations, and will actively mock anyone taking other measures to avoid infection as deranged germophobic shut-ins. Sadly many minimizers are now in positions of power and influence, leaving the reasonably cautious feeling gaslit and isolated. So I end up surrounded by people coughing at me to “live your life, it’s endemic now, take off that mask, covid is here to stay” without regard for how the virus outsizedly affects minorities, the poor, the immunocompromised, and other marginalized populations.
Given all this, plus more communicable variants, our masking posture has gone from “we’re all in this together” community protection to individual-defensive: N95 masks with tight side seals, rather than leaky surgical masks and porous cloth. No more triple-folded keffiyeh; I managed to get a nice big box of 3M Aura 9210+ masks and am considering going semi-Vader with a half-face P100 respirator.
Gonna keep trying not to get it, but it’s getting tougher.
I’m suddenly very tired of words. Here are some sunrises.
Happy Easter.
I ordered a small Bean Burrito from Barburrito and it came with this written on the brown bag:
(It was a good and spicy burrito.)
Been curious about cooking with cast iron for a while, so I got a Lagostina preseasoned cast iron pan on sale at Canadian Tire for $20, and I guess I’m a cast iron man now.
I did have to re-season after the first couple inexperienced uses (made the mistake of cooking eggs the first time), and it took a while to get used to the concept of not washing the pan, just letting it gather polymerized oil layers with every use. At some point the seasoning became truly nonstick, and at last I understood The Way of Cast Iron.
So far I’ve cooked cornbread, bacon, eggs, vegetable stir fry, garlic fried rice, breaded italian chicken cutlets, giant oat pancakes, sausages, and Newfoundland Steak.
For instruction and inspiration I’ve purchased MeFite cinnachick’s Everything Cast Iron Cookbook (affiliate link). New paperbacks are in stock now but at the time I had to buy it secondhand from some online thrift bookstore — which gave us a bit of a funny/awkward story that I will not relay here.
Things I still want to try cooking in this pan: Breakfast Skillet Cake, Skillet Pizza, Paella, and Hamburger Rice.
New Year’s Day was cool and foggy, good for a little hike around the Jerry Lonecloud and Jersey Jack trails at Cole Harbour Heritage Park.
Temps had peaked at above freezing for the day, but patches of ice persisted on the paths, and the shallow waters of the harbour were still frozen beneath a thick, swirling mist. Ezra and I threw a few rocks onto the ice: some bounced and skidded, some fell through.
We found a bear.
Our Christmas tree, accompanied by a parol Amy made with these papercut patterns:
On Christmas Day Ezra got Bowser’s Castle, while Amy got me False Knees and a BasicFun handheld Carmen Sandiego game (to go with last year’s Oregon Trail). I’d already gifted Amy her Christmas gift early (iPhone 12 mini) but also got us some nice NS-themed sweaters from Local Love.
Can’t forget the cats; Martha and Amelia got little handmade plush catnip kickers from Hen and Goose.
Later in the afternoon we went for a walk around the beach, taking in the golden landscape of cold, tree-lined dunes by the Atlantic, lit by the low winter sun.
Merry Christmas — our second pandemic holiday, but we try to find what light we can. More photos here as the winter goes on.
A dusting, a thaw, a coating, a thaw, a snowstorm, a thaw.
Here’s Ezra trying his slide under about 20cm of snow:
