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A bit outdated—guess they took this week off for Thanksgiving.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.
At the start of summer, I made a list of restaurants I hoped to get out to, this time of year when it’s less fraught to do so, because patios. We knocked off a few in the earlier weeks of summer, notably:
Loloan Lobby Bar (more on it later)
Babylon Wine Sisters Wine Bar, that we went to not long after Jean’s accident, enjoying their charcuterie board and always interesting wine flights in the alleyway patio.
The Olive Board, which we fairly spontaneously biked to one day when the “bad air warning” from the forest fires cleared out earlier than expected, leaving behind a lovely day. We quite enjoyed the Bon Appétit charcuterie board and the wine flights on their sidewalk patio.
But we recently had quite a sequence of dining out, thanks to some cooperative weather and a few days off.
First up was S&V Uptown. We were originally supposed to go there with friends, but they got unexpected visitors. (Well, the visitors were expected, just not on this earlier arrival date.) I changed our reservation to be for two people only, and moved it to a Wednesday night. That date initially had a pretty rainy forecast, but that improved, so we were able to ride our bikes there, and eat on the patio.
Said patio is located in an alleyway, but it’s still kind of a nice setup (considering this is uptown Waterloo). The only issue at S&V’s exact spot—because a number of restaurants use this alley for their patios—is the constant drone of one window air conditioner in particular, that maybe needs maintenance or something.
Jean and I went to see Amanda Marshall’s most excellent concert at Centre in the Square on Wednesday, June 21. I wrote about it on my companion site (not too long a post!): Amanda Marshall: Heavy Lifting tour.
Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now
“That Would Be Enough” from Hamilton
A few days after my last post, about how bike helmets get the respect that masks deserve, Jean had a fairly serious bike accident—one that would have been far worse had he not been wearing his new, high-quality, full-face coverage, bike helmet. He was out mountain biking with friends when he lifted his front wheel to go over a small cliff, causing his back wheel to flip him up and over and onto his back—or something like that; I wasn’t there and he doesn’t quite remember.
I found out when I got a call from him that there had been an “incident” on the trail and that his friends were taking him to Emergency.
“Oh, my God,” I said. “You need a good mask!”
On the drive over to the hospital with his best N95, it occurred to me that I should have asked which body part he had hurt.
On a bike ride the other day, I decided to make a point of noticing how many other riders were also wearing helmets. It was a clear majority—probably 80%? Although we were not on difficult trails or busy streets. Most roller bladers, e-scooter riders, and skateboarders were also helmeted.
Interesting.
Then I got home and looked up whether it was actually mandatory to wear a helmet when riding a bike in Ontario. And for adults, it is not.
Interesting.
Particularly given that Covid is contagious, incurable, airborne, rampant, the third leading cause of death in Canada, and a huge burden on the healthcare system… Yet hardly anyone wears a mask.
Public health messaging
You might think I’m about to say this is public health messaging failure, but I think it’s actually a huge success… In terms of their intention anyway, which was to discourage masking.
Because ongoing masking would make it seem that Covid was still a problem, and then there might be some pressure to do something about it. And their political masters, the politicians, didn’t want particularly want to do anything more about it. Two years, man. Enough!
But no, you might say, public health still tells people to mask. People just don’t because it’s not mandatory anymore, and because masks are uncomfortable.
So how do you explain bike helmets? Condom use? Sunscreen (sticky!)? None of these products are mandatory, and none are more comfortable to wear than to go without, yet somehow the mature majority manages to routinely use all of these for protection anyway.
No, I think the messaging achieved just what it intended to. They said:
You can wear a mask to protect yourself.
Masking is recommended for people at risk of severe outcomes from Covid, such as those over 65 and the immunocompromised.
Everyone’s choices on masking need to be respected.
I’ve gathered up some bits of wisdom of late that I’d like to share.
First up, how to…
…Figure out what streaming service a particular show is on
Netflix, Apple TV, Disney+, Prime, Crave, Tubi, CBC Gem… It’s nuts. So many services! I don’t subscribe to them all, but enough to make it hard to remember what’s where.
It’s even more confusing for Canadians, since US media will tell us a show is on a service we don’t have in this country (Hulu, Peacock, HBO+)—but that doesn’t always mean we can’t get it on a service we do have. Even more confusing, just because it’s on an American version of a service we have (like Netflix or Prime) doesn’t mean it’s also on the Canadian one. Could be on some other service entirely here.
This is why I love the JustWatch app. You select the streaming services you have access to and it serves up what’s on each. You can set up a Watchlist of every TV show or movie you’re currently watching, or plan to watch, and have one-page look of everything you’re currently caring about. You can mark off episodes or movies as you watch them. It will notify you when new episodes or a new season become available. And it has a pretty good recommendation engine if you need more to watch.
Of course, you can also use it to look up some show you’ve heard about, to find out if it is available to you at all, and if so, where.
…Watch Poker Face
Solid as I generally find the JustWatch app to be, one thing it doesn’t quite get is conventional cable. Particularly when it behaves unconventionally.
