Earlier this week, I realized I’d written Garbage on the date of December 25 on our paper calendar (yes, we still have a paper calendar).
Now, that wasn’t a reflection of my feelings about Christmas—at least not consciously! It’s just that Monday is our usual garbage pick-up day, and since they only accept trash bi-weekly (recycling and compost weekly), I put on the calendar which Mondays are the actual garbage pick-up days.
Only December 25 won’t be one of them. I’ll have to look up when they’ve moved that to. [Edit: That would be Tuesday, December 26.]
But December 25 is just a date, and you can choose to celebrate on other ones. Pre-2020, we almost always went to Timmins for actual Christmas, but also had our own Christmas celebration for two the weekend before that, complete with gifts and roast beast.
Post-2020, Jean can’t take extra vacation days right before or between Christmas and New Year’s, which makes it a bit tight to go north then. Last year I went to Timmins in earlier December with my sister; this year I did the same with Jean.
It was just a small listing in the What’s Happening Waterloo newsletter:
Agit-Pop! Musical Meditations on the Pre-Post-Apocalypse
Intriguing.
Reading further:
Superstar drag comedienne Pearle Harbour performs her doomsday cabaret. Laughs & tears through the headlines, and hits from David Bowie, to Britney Spears. A hilarious and heartbreaking cabaret for the end times. Agit-Pop! reimagines the hits of Bowie, Britney, Judy Garland, Tom Waits and more as you’ve never heard them before.
Sounded right up my alley, really. Drag. Doom. Pop.
Jean, ever the trooper, agreed to come along.
As we approached the door, I noticed that all the theatre staff were masked, which was refreshing. Then the man a bit ahead of us in line turned around to go back out, stating “I’ll just go get the mask in my car!” Huh. Then I noticed the “Please wear a mask for this performance” sign. Double huh! Hadn’t seen one of those in many a moon!
Policy was not strictly enforced, so some people remained unmasked. But, I’d say a good 90% to 95% went along with it. Peer pressure, eh. Can also be a force for good!
But. On with the show.
Though it’s not the easiest to describe, as I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Admittedly, I don’t go to a ton of drag shows regardless, but have seen a few, and I don’t think this was a typical one of those.
Pearle Harbour, accompanied by a single musician who can play multiple instruments, discusses the various challenges and problems facing our world. The need for Indigenous reconciliation. The climate crisis. The ongoing Covid epidemic. Anti-immigration sentiments.
And interspersed it with pop music, not as a distraction, but as a commentary.
5 years. That’s all we’ve got.
My loneliness is killing me.
There’s a land I dream of… Somewhere, over the rainbow
I think I just wasn’t made for these times…
But it was still drag. So it was not all po-faced. There was bawdiness, there were jokes, there was a whole lot of audience engagement and participation. A tragicomedienne, she is called, and that sounds about right.
Given all the interaction, Jean enjoyed the evening as much as I did. We did the wave—the Covid wave! We discussed the etymology of agit prop. We shared guilty pleasures. We stood en masse to do the duck and cover. To a background of Cold War era cartoons (some of which are quite something).
Bit late to tell you this now, but she also play Waterford and Fergus. Then she’s moving on to other provinces (and bigger cities—Montreal, Calgary).
I decided to go see Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill: The musical because I am a big fan of Jagged Little Pill, the album, and indeed of much of her other oeuvre. But I didn’t know anything about the musical itself, or what kind of story they’d woven around the songs.
Jean agreed to go also because, well, because he’s a sport I guess, given that he hadn’t super enjoyed the last two musicals we’ve seen, the acclaimed Hamilton and the also acclaimed Rent. Couldn’t quite follow the former (lots of plot, admittedly), and couldn’t quite get the latter.
And what I wouldn’t give to find a soul mate? Someone else to catch this drift And what I wouldn’t give to meet a kindred?
All I Really Want, Alanis Morissette
Fortunately, Alanis, Diablo Cody (who wrote the book), and Glen Ballard (who co-wrote many of the songs), were kindred with Jean. He really enjoyed this musical. As did I. Because it was awesome!
The songs are used to tell the story of a year in the life of a family of four: the tightly wound Mary Jane, her workaholic husband Steve, their academically inclined son Nick, and their activist adopted daughter Frankie. Big, heavy topics are addressed: Sexual assault. Opioid addiction. Racism. Sexism. Some moments are super uncomfortable. But there’s a lot of humour in between. And all those great songs!
The playbill includes everything from Jagged Little Pill along with some selections from other albums, like “So Unsexy”, “Uninvited”, and “Thank U”. Lyrics are occasionally modified to suit the character and the situation. They really supported the story; none seemed to be just trotted out because they were big hits that needed including! “You Oughta Know” is not necessarily sung by whom you’d expect, to whom you’d expect, but it builds to an undeniable thrilling climax nonetheless. The audience responded ecstatically, as they should have.
But I had to laugh that after the line:
Why are you so petrified of silence? Here, can you handle this?
The audience totally could not handle the following silence, and had to fill it in with random clapping.
Anyway. This thing was really well cast, with the actors playing Mary Jane, Frankie, and Jo (a friend of Frankie’s) particularly standing out. Amazing singing voices, and just outstanding performances.
5 stars. No notes.
Getting there and back
This was in Toronto, so we had to make our way there. For Jean, this trip turned out to be the day after he got back from a later-scheduled work trip, so that wasn’t ideal, but he coped! We took Flixbus again. They’re finally using proper branded Flixbuses on the Kitchener-Toronto route (previously it was a generic bus), which even had wifi, albeit somewhat flaky.
For some reason we couldn’t seem to leave from our usual Waterloo stop, and had to get on at the Kitchener stop. Not a big deal—just meant staying on the Ion (our local light rail) for four stops instead of one. Still seemed odd, though, because on the way back, we did get off at the Waterloo stop.
Waterloo Park, which is near our usual Flixbus stop
The bus was weirdly overheated for the first portion of the trip back. I was starting to wonder if I could actually handle the entire 1 hour, 45 minute trip (not that it was clear what the alternative was) when the heat finally stopped pouring out.
We managed the Toronto subway pretty well also (we have Presto cards now!), though Google kept confusing us with mentions of line outages. Took us a while to realize that said outages were occurring much further up the line than we intended to go.
Other stuff we did
It was a quick trip: we left Saturday morning and returned Sunday morning. Of course, that was long enough that we needed a hotel room. We went with the Courtyard Marriott, which was a “mere” $300 or so for the night. Was nice that the room was available despite our arriving pretty early, around 11:00 AM, and even nicer that they gave us a little bag of snacks and bottles of water. Totally worth the $300! (I joke. But it actually was nice.)
We grabbed lunch from a Freshii, which, oddly, we’ve never eaten at before. It was good. We each had a smoothie and a wrap. Quite fascinating how much stuff they can fit into those wraps.
Since we have memberships, we spent a bit of time at the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario). Their special exhibit was featured the artist Kaws, who does stuff like this:
Which was kind of interesting. For one part, you had to download an app on your phone, then point it (the phone) at a particular spot in the gallery to see the art, as a 3D image. We took a picture after doing that, but are not clear on where that pic ended up…
And overall, we probably enjoyed the Cornelius Krieghoff room (part of the permanent collection) the most during this visit.
Our post-musical dinner was at Avelo, where we’ve been twice before. Since our last visit, though, they’ve changed things up. The beautiful room upstairs, where we sat both times previously, has been converted into a bar. Meals are now served downstairs, in a smaller, darker, noisier room. Since we had both envisioned the previous visits, we were a bit miffed.
To be fair, I think they had emailed me about these changes—it just hadn’t really registered. (I thought their new Bar Avelo was at some other location than our Avelo.) With generous table spacing and visible HEPA filters, the previous seating area felt as safe as a maskless, indoor dining experience could possibly be. And while the new downstairs room did still have a couple HEPA filters, and not all the tables in the small room were filled, it still didn’t feel as comfortable.
On the plus side, the food was still amazing from start to finish, the service was very good (though we still missed our upstairs guy), and the wine pairings were spot-on. It has lost what made special, though—other Toronto places also have good food, service, and wine.
(Not that Avelo needs me. From where I was sitting, I could overhear that the new bar was super-popular: so full that they had to turn people away.)
Swallow it down (what a jagged little pill) It feels so good (swimming in your stomach) Wait until the dust settles
And it’s being felt in hospitals already. For example, in Waterloo Region:
Hospitalizations for COVID-19 have climbed to almost the most seen this year. The regional public health unit reported 52 patients in three local hospitals Wednesday. The last time local hospitals had this many patients was New Year’s Day, with 53.
But, the new vaccine is becoming increasingly available. It should be attainable for high-risk people pretty much everywhere in Ontario, and in many cases, “regular-risk” people can access it, too (try pharmacies). It’s approved for ages 6 months and up.
(Of course, wearing an N95 or KN95 in crowded indoor spaces also helps reduce viral spread, not only against COVID but also flu, cold, RSV, and every other airborne disease.)
This was the second of a two-part series on cognitive dissonance: how you try to convince yourself that a decision you made was the right one, even in light of evidence to the contrary. Pretty much all humans do this, so even if you’re well aware of that tendency, you might still do it. But the awareness can at least help you harness it for good.
Some really interesting examples here of how to harness cognitive dissonance for good, including in the realm of public health. Hmm…
The federal government is killing local news by trying to help local news
Thanks to Michael Geist, I’ve been aware of Bill C-18, the law that (essentially) says that Facebook and Google must pay news organizations for linking to their content, for years. And that it has resulted in Facebook (Meta now, I guess) doing exactly what they clearly said they would do if this bill passed, which is to stop linking to news. With Google now likely to do similarly.
What I learned from this Paul Wells podcast is how this has specifically hurt an organization that I had never heard of before. Village Media has been very successful at going into markets that have lost their traditional local news outlets. Village Media has filled that void, supplying communities with local news, all online. They have staff journalists, with benefits—not just a bunch of freelancers! They are profitable, and growing, and had been planning to expand into several new markets this year.
I’ll try to keep this short. It is Thanksgiving weekend in Ontario, meaning a lot of people getting together with friends and family, which is great.
Weather, however, is not fabulous, making outdoor gatherings not all that appealing. The updated vaccine rollout has been kind of slow in these parts, and it won’t be available to everyone for another three weeks or so. And the Covid wastewater signal for the province is as follows:
A bit outdated—guess they took this week off for Thanksgiving. But the trend is clear.
So I feel that this a good time to point out that if you’re not feeling well in the coming days, or hear that some of those you gathered with aren’t:
There’s an excellent chance that you qualify for PCR testing, to find out for sure (because if you’re an adult who hasn’t had a vaccine in the last six months, which is about 96% of us, you’re in the running!).
If the test results aren’t what you’d hoped, there’s an excellent chance you qualify for Paxlovid, as the criteria is similar. This drug could make you feel better faster, and reduce your risk of Long Covid. Also: cinnamon candies can help with the “metallic taste in your mouth” side effect.
Above links are to my other site, which I give more information about this. You can also go right to the source (even though it says nothing about cinnamon candies!):
Other semi-interesting things we did on our fall 2023 vacation.
Like wine tastings on patios! 😁
Well, we did start in Prince Edward County. We headed to Black Prince Winery first. We’d visited in 2020 and quite enjoyed it; I was wondering how much the vibe would have changed since then.
They have expanded in subsequent years, with a wood-oven pizzeria on site now. But the vibe was pretty much the same: casual, funny, personalized, willing to throw in an extra taste or two. And the wine was better than last time, if anything. Jean and I didn’t agree on everything: he thought the Chardonnay was amazing and I thought it was just OK; I thought the Pinot Noir was amazing, and he thought… But no mind. We agreed on enough to get six bottles or so, along with some of their excellent vinegars: pinot noir, peach, raspberry, apple cidar…
We then headed for another repeat visit, to Lighthall Vineyards. They had changed even less, a small winery offering tasting with cheese made on-site (indoors, but uncrowded and with excellent cross-ventilation from doors open at each end). We once again enjoyed the wares, and did some purchasing here, too.
We’d had a heck of a time booking accommodations for this trip, because hotels are just stupid expensive now. For this leg, we had choice of Kingston, Gananoque, Picton, Wellington… But ended up in Belleville (about a half hour from Picton), because that’s the only place that seemed reasonable. It was at a Hampton Inn, which is unexciting, but quite nicely furnished.
On Monday, we found that the included breakfast was nothing amazing, but did the trick. Unlike the Hampton in Sudbury, they had no problem with us taking the food and eating it in our room.
Then as a break from tasting and dining, we started the day with a walk in the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory. It was a shortish walk, particularly given the longish drive to get there, but we did get some nice views of flora and fauna.
Most people don’t really get our restaurant thing. They enjoy eating, but to actually see dinner at a restaurant as an experience in itself (not just as a good place to meet friends), or as something you might build a vacationaround (versus something you might have to do while on vacation)… It’s not that common.
And I get it. I don’t think most people are weird because they wouldn’t rather spend time and money on that than other experiences. Clearly Jean and I are the weird ones. (On a lower budget scale, we are the type of people satirized in the movie The Menu.)
But I just don’t love restaurants enough to throw all caution to the wind and risk crowded indoor meals night after night. This has made travel planning stressful, because on the other hand, I also don’t think I’d be very happy with my trip if it mainly consisted of street hot dogs and takeout meals eaten in my hotel room.
So for Fall vacation this year, I pushed for September instead of October, with the thought that maybe the patios will still be open.
I used to think it was sad to use vacation days to do home renovations. But, to be fair, back then I had fewer vacation days to take, and a stronger desire to travel.
Anyway, it’s not like we didn’t have any fun on our big two days off. Wednesday night I had book club, aka “hanging out with friends”. Thursday Jean had canoe trip with his friends. And that night we reunited and went to Stratford to see Rent.
(I really liked it. Jean quite enjoyed the dancing, but found it difficult to follow the plot with so much of it sung.)
Saturday night we drove to Guelph and met some friends for dinner. We ate at Buon Gusto. They have a lovely streetside patio, and it was just a perfect day for al fresco dining: Warm but not too hot or humid; just a light breeze; blue skies all around.
Jean with burrata toscana
The food was also excellent. Service was a bit slow at first, but we weren’t in any particular rush. It gave us more time to talk with these friends that we hadn’t seen for about a year! Great catching up with them.
Crispy pork belly
But the big project between those events was taking down our previous cat enclosure (built around one of those carport things) and replacing with a custom-built one.
We’d started working on this project earlier in the summer and had a lot of the framing completed. But at some point it had to be “out with the old, in with the new”, and we wanted to minimize how much time the cats were stuck indoors as a result. So this time off seemed suited to getting that part done.
This new “catio” was sort of my idea, and I bought a plan to get us started, but then Jean adapted it and fully took the lead on it, as I am quite hopeless at this stuff. But I was out there with him the whole time and helped with whatever I could.
The doors were fiddly, but that was kind of expected. That we hadn’t bought enough fencing to fully make it around all parts the enclosure was not expected. That seemed an issue, especially given that it takes two weeks to get more.
But, here we were saved by the principle of reuse: As the bottom layer, in most places, we used the fencing we had deployed on the old catio. That gave us enough of the new stuff to cover the rest of it.
When nearly done, we took Mac out to test it.
After walking it around for a bit, he quickly demonstrated that he could climb right up the fencing to the top of the structure. (We will be adding a roof, but that was always planned for a slightly later weekend.)
Fortunately, we still had some pieces of new fencing left, and so were able to create an “overhang” all around it that, so far, seems to be keeping Mac in.
A not-so-great picture that hopefully still gives an idea of what this “catio” looks like—you can’t really see the overhang, but it’s there.Another not-so-great photo that focuses on the fiddly door and see the tree on the far side? We’ve incorporated that inside the catio as well.
Addendum: After a week, this morning I looked out to find Mac up on the top ledge of the “catio” once again. He walked along the top, seeming unsure what to do (it is pretty high), and finally jumped back down inside. I think he climbed up at a spot where the “overhang” is not as wide.
I have a bit of an idea for how to create a better barrier there, quite temporarily. I’ll discuss with Jean whether it’s at all feasible.
And we’ll at least start on the roof this weekend. Hoping to not have to take another working vacation!
As I’m sure it’s been worrying all y’all, I’m pleased to report that we’ve crossed a couple other restaurants off the summer dining list.
The food at Sole was quite good, if not outstanding, and the service was quite professional as always. They retain their prize as prettiest patio in Waterloo Region, in my option. And we biked there and back, which is always nice.
However, we deemed The Charcuterie Bar in St. Jacobs a little too far to bike to after work, though it is a good weekend bike trip. Their patio is on the street, but since that’s a street in St. Jacobs, it’s not without charm. This time of year, however, it’s also not without house flies. Not the restaurant’s fault, and we could have moved indoors, but we decided to stay out and swish away the insects.
Their selection of cheese is fantastic; their pates are very good; they have quite interesting wines by the glass and wine flights; and we also enjoyed the non-charcuterie board options like the smoked trout. Only two desserts, but both really great. Quite limited on the hot drinks; like, only peach green tea (which seemed an odd single option)? Nevertheless, recommended overall.
The best part was meeting up with friends
Then I had a bit of SARS-Cov2 information that I wanted to share… More on the good new side of things (relatively speaking).
Finally, there was a significant inverse relationship between the number of COVID19 vaccine doses received and the risk of having Long COVID; individuals receiving 2 or fewer and 3 doses of COVID-19 vaccine were 60% (RR=1.6, 95%CI: 1.3-1.9) and 40% (RR=1.4, 95%CI: 1.3-1.6) more likely to have Long COVID compared to those receiving ≥4 doses (Table 2).
Long COVID in a highly vaccinated population infected during a SARS-CoV-2 Omicron wave – Australia, 2022, medRxiv Preprint
So sign up for that new vaccine out this fall.
In the meantime, masks work best at protecting you, but if / when you… can’t mask (or don’t wanna)? Try nasal spray like BETADINE Cold Defence. Doesn’t work as well as a mask, but definitely better than nothing. Other options are nasal filters, and even CCC-based mouthwash might be of some assistance.
And on the treatment side, studies continue to show that taking Metformin can reduce your risk of ending up with Long Covid. Metformin is a cheap and safe drug, but only available by prescription. It’s usually prescribed for diabetes, but some doctors know to offer it for other conditions as well.
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