Monthly Archives: July 2021

Olympic winners

Today I watched some Olympics after our 7+ hour drive home from Nelson BC. It was as a good way to spend the evening, with low motivation to do much else.

I love watching athletes achieve personal best times in their events. While the cameras focus on the likely medal winners, there are always athletes that, while representing their country as their best in an event, have no chance of getting a medal. If your personal best is several seconds slower than the top 8 or more athletes, chances are you aren’t making the finals, much less the podium. So for these athletes, gold is only a dream, and unlikely a reality. Yet, they’ve made it to the Olympics!

Seeing these athletes achieve personal best times is inspiring. To make it to the Olympics and then do the absolute best you’ve ever done… that’s an outstanding achievement. Many athletes leave the Olympics without a medal, but there will be more winners than medals given out. Making it to the Olympics and doing your absolute best that you can… it’s hard to ask more of an athlete.

Still a hopeful timeline

I’ve been saying since before Christmas 2020 that, “Things will start to return to normal by January 2022.”

With the Delta variant being very contagious, and new variants like B.1.621.1 showing up on the US east coast, I don’t think school is going to start in September anywhere near as normal as we might have thought it would in June. Going into a busy coffee shop this morning, I was the only one wearing a mask, including the employees. The only covid precautions I saw were hand sanitizer at the entrance and the barista using tongs to put a straw into a cold drink.

I think new variants are going to give us a bit of a spanking, then we’ll smarten up and re-tighten up our precautions enough to slowly move in the right direction.

Although it may have seemed a bit pessimistic at the time, I am now hopefully optimistic that my prediction can be met. Despite the evidence of a 4th wave, it could be smaller, less alarming, less dangerous (thanks to the vaccine), and better managed. The ‘better managed’ is the key. We move forward with caution, or we move backwards.

Even if you are double vaccinated, wear a mask in public indoor spaces. Let’s keep these variants away.

Hikes at Kokanee Park

Yesterday the air in Nelson was much better. The day before, thanks to nearby forest fires, Nelson and neighbouring Castlegar had the worst air quality in Canada. With better conditions we decided to take a couple hikes in Kokanee Provincial Park.

Hike 1 was along the river, among some towering old growth trees.

Hike 2 was around a beautiful lake.

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After the previous day that took our breath away with smoke, these hikes were breathtaking in more ways than one.

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This morning we climbed Pulpit Rock. It’s smokier than yesterday, but we couldn’t even see this spot from the city across the way 2 days ago. Hopefully the worst of the smoke is over.

The big thumbs up

Yesterday I went for a very short run, not quite 3km. It was enough. I’m currently in Nelson BC, which had one of the worst air quality indexes in the world due to nearby forest fires. My pace was slow to begin with, and after stopping mid way to do some abdominal work and chin-ups, my heart rate was up pretty high, and the run back was very slow. My breathing felt like I was jogging inside a plastic bag, and I could taste the smoke. I was struggling.

Running back along the water, about 3 minutes from where I started, I approached a park bench with an elderly man sitting on it. He had a huge smile and he was enthusiastically giving me the thumbs up. As I approached I slowed down and took one of my earbuds out. As I did so, the man began to speak, “Run while you can, man, run while you can.”

“I am”, I replied.

And the old man continued, pointing to his knee as he flexed and straightened his leg, “They told me 8 years ago that I had to replace this knee but I’m still kicking. So you run while you can, enjoy it!”

“I will, have a great day!” I said as I passed him, turning to keep eye contact.

“You too! Keep running.” He said returning to the thumbs up.

It was a simple exchange but it completely changed my jog from a laboured effort to an enjoyable experience. An energetic thumbs up and a brief, passing conversation were enough to fully alter my disposition, and my short workout felt much more like an accomplishment rather than an effort.

Family updates

My wife and I are on holidays. This morning I opened my phone and there were two messages on Snapchat. My oldest finished her summer course yesterday and sent us one at 1:30am telling us about a late night visit with a friend, and commenting on our sunset Snapchat that we sent the previous day. My youngest sent one of our cat giving her early morning cuddles before her 5:30am shift.

It’s funny how social media gets a bad wrap, but people don’t spend a lot of time talking about how good it is for connecting family. My sisters and I have never been as connected as we have been since covid started. We began a ‘Sibs’ chat on WhatsApp that we use all the time, and we regularly connect on a group video chat. That never happened before lockdowns.

It takes a few seconds to share a photo and write a quick blurb, or to make a video and share a little slice of life. My daughters are better than my wife and I for also saving the pics and videos before sending them and so we also get ‘1 year ago’ (or longer) memories sent to us as well.

Sharing a little slice of life… that’s exactly what it is. Moments that aren’t focused on projecting an image for social media… not about sharing just the highlights you mostly see on Facebook and Instagram. Instead, just sharing honest moments with the people you love. Messy hair, tiny frustrations, funny or embarrassing incidents, meals, and just average moments when you think of your kids or they think of you.

Without these apps, we would probably not connect as much. They act as easy-to-share tools that invite updates and make us feel closer… Connected, when we can’t physically be together.

A Province on Fire

Yesterday we drove the almost 8 hours from the Vancouver Lower Mainland to Nelson BC. On the way we went through Princeton. Heading into the city, the smell of smoke and haziness was the worst part of the trip.

Heading into Osoyoos, we could see the smoking fires in the ridge above the city.

And after arriving in Nelson, I took this photo at 7:15pm on a short walk.

My wife’s parents were supposed to join us in this quaint city that they spent most of their lives, but they changed their mind due to air quality concerns. Instead, they are vacationing at our house while we are here. Smelling the air this morning, I think they made a good choice.

The reality is that we are a province on fire.

Our record heat wave in late June, followed by freaky rainless lightning storms, then an unusually dry July have made our province a forest full of kindling, ready to go up in smoke. According to the B.C. Wildfire Dashboard right now there are 259 wildfires in BC, and 11 are new in the last 2 days.

We are not doing our planned hike this morning, instead we’ll walk along the lake. We’ll visit old stomping grounds of my wife’s youth, and we’ll probably spend a bit more time indoors than planned.

Still, we are lucky. We are safe, and so is our house. We don’t have an evacuation warning, and we aren’t worried about what to pack and what to leave behind should we have to flee our home. This is the case for many across our province.

It’s usual to be hoping for rain in the summer, but our entire province could use a good soaking, complements of Mother Nature. Rain and low winds are on the minds of many in our province, as forest fires sit on the minds of many of us. It’s hard not to think of them as you peer across hazy horizons and smell the fires burning.

By the numbers

It’s staggering to look at the hospitalization numbers coming in, now that millions of people have been vaccinated. It’s simple: get vaccinated and you are extremely unlikely to end up in the hospital even if you still catch the Delta variant. But what are the motivations of the unvaccinated to change their minds? Travel. Not safety, not protecting others in the community, but the fear of travel restrictions without proof of vaccination.

I don’t watch TV but I’ve been going on TikTok for a 1/2 hour or less, (I keep a time limit in this addictive app), and I follow a lot of doctors and epidemiologists on the site. What I find is that about 1/2 of their posts are about research results and the other half tend to be responsive to comments they get on previous posts. Some of these questions are good, even if they question the results. Some are responses to asinine ignorance.

Many people don’t know how to do, or understand, the necessary math. Here is a fictitious example of a deceiving headline: “50% of new cases are vaccinated“. That sounds like the vaccine isn’t working. But later in the article it says that 80% of the population is vaccinated. Making the math simple, if there were 100 people and 4 got covid, that would mean two non-vaccinated and two vaccinated people contracted the virus (50% each). But the population was 20 unvaccinated and 80 vaccinated, so while the cases were 50-50, the chances of getting covid work out like this:

Unvaccinated: 2/20 = 10%

Vaccinated: 2/80 = 2.5%

While the headline makes it seem like the vaccine isn’t working, the unvaccinated are four times more likely to contract the virus in this example. This doesn’t even factor in the significant increase of risk of hospitalization/death for the non-vaccinated.

Right now two things are causing headlines like this to proliferate:

1. A balance of ignorance and desire to get clicks and views: Reporters not understanding the math themselves and rushing to get the attention-gaining headline out.

2. Deliberate malice: People who know exactly what they are doing and want to promote an anti-vax narrative.

As we move forward and the numbers will start to be more available as well as more obvious. Will that make a difference? Probably not for those that are entrenched. It’s not the numbers that will change people’s minds, it will be the (proclaimed) limitations on their liberties, like travel… and buckle up because this isn’t going to happen without a lot of whining and complaints.

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Related: I’d rather be a sheep than a lemming

What are the motives?

One of my pet peeves in education is people who talk about the fact that there are bad teachers, as if to say it is somehow unique to the teaching profession and not to any other profession. I’ve met proportionately very few teachers that I would consider bad compared to bad actors in many other professions. Another profession that seems to be low in bad actors, in my opinion, is medical doctors. Most people go into these professions wanting to serve and help others.

This is why I don’t understand the blatant disregard for well-being that seems to be present in anti-vaccine doctors. I went down a rabbit hole this morning, watching a well known podcaster, professor, and researcher speak to 2 doctors that clearly have compromised stances on covid 19. It was painful. Intelligent people making moronic claims [[update]]. One of them professing that he developed the MNRA vaccine process. One of them talking about about his carpet cleaner’s ailments after taking the vaccine, and how this person could not get anyone to share the horror of his story. I couldn’t get myself to watch the whole thing.

What I don’t understand is the motivation behind these otherwise intelligent people choosing to talk about science fiction and call it science? What’s the benefit? Who gains from this? Conspiracy theories depend on so many people acting in bad faith, people across the globe in different countries colluding and keeping secrets, all for the purpose of maintaining a narrative that makes no sense.

In BC, the spread of covid-19 in senior’s homes was an embarrassment. It benefited no one: not the homes that make money by recruiting more seniors; not the health municipalities that had to count the deaths; not the families that had to watch from a distance, unable to visit their loved ones. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that senior’s homes affected by covid had significantly more deaths than those not affected. Again, this was a provincial and even national embarrassment. Yet, conspiracy theorists talk about co-morbidity and try to pass these ‘extra’ deaths off as if they would have happened anyway. It’s so ignorant to do this, and yet it becomes a blanket statement that disregards examples like this that prove how dangerous this virus is.

And again for whose benefit? That’s the big question that baffles me? Who gains from promoting these dangerous ideas? I truly don’t know.

Routine-less holiday

It’s almost 11pm and I haven’t written my blog post or meditated yet. How strange that before I started my sticker chart tracking my habits two and a half years ago, my pattern was: Get busy and don’t do anything for myself, then go on holidays and work like mad to get fit and meet my other goals.

Now, my pattern is: When busy, start my day with writing, meditation, and exercise, and then on holidays I flounder. I used to struggle to take care of myself when I was in work mode, and thrive on holidays, and now it’s completely reversed. It’s so weird to me to see this switch. My two weeks away with my parents were my worst weeks all year for exercise, and I did my daily meditation several times after midnight.

I need to routine-ize my holidays and be more dedicated and consistent. My strategy will be to put tomorrow’s well-being schedule into my calendar for the next day. Tomorrow morning I will take my car in for servicing. Before leaving home I’ll do my exercises, and while waiting for my car I will write my post and meditate. Then I’ll schedule my next day’s activities so that this too becomes part of the routine. It has become obvious to me that I no longer thrive on holiday time, if I don’t have self-care planned into my day.

Hard to not think about it

I visited my parents for almost 2 weeks and during that time I responded to a few emails. Most of these started with some sort of, “Sorry to bother you, but…”

I responded to those because they were timely things that needed a response to move forward. But there are 70+ emails that I looked at and needed more time for me to respond and/or didn’t require immediate response. I plan on getting through these later today or tomorrow (edited, I wrote this part before I started cleaning out my garage).

It’s hard to balance truly having a holiday that feels like a holiday and also doing the work that doesn’t stop because you are on holiday. Yes, I have my ‘I’m away from the office’ auto reply on. Yes, it gives a phone number to contact for assistance. Still, I feel obligated to catch up and clear out my inbox ever since I’ve kind of let it go a bit while visiting my parents.

What’s a little unusual is how long I’ve left this over the past couple weeks. Part of it is the need to have a real holiday after the year that was. But I juggle this with wanting to deal with it before it becomes a huge task. And I’m also wanting to enjoy the holiday time ahead. That said, despite letting my email correspondence slip while away, I know the email is there. I’ve read the subject headings, and I’ve felt the pressure to get to it. It’s hard not to think about it and so it’s better to just get it done rather than let it fester in my head as something needing my attention.

Times like this, while on holiday, I sometimes wish for a 9-5 job that doesn’t require any work coming home. I’d probably have less holiday time, but that holiday time would be completely work and work email free. Then I remember the satisfaction I get at work helping students and teachers, and I know that I’d probably hate leaving this job for a 9-5’er.

By tomorrow afternoon I’ll have my un-dealt-with email count down, and I will think less about it for a while. But I don’t know how to turn it completely off, and I don’t know how to see it there and not let it bug me in some small but significant way. I think that I need to take at least a week this summer where I don’t look at email at all… but somehow although I did a couple weeks with no social media that went well, I don’t think it will be as stress free to do with email.