Books read in September 2021

New:

 

1. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

2. Motorcycles and Sweetgrass by Drew Hayden Taylor

3. Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado-Perez

4. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Reread:

1. Creation in Death

My voting by mail experience

Elections Canada posted the final candidates list for each riding on September 1. Based on this information, I figured I don't expect anything to change before election day, so I decided to vote by mail.

To vote by mail, you need to include a picture of your ID. A scan of my Ontario Photo Card worked, even though the card had expired during the pandemic. (Ontario decreed that ID expiring during the pandemic is still valid.) I'm not able to independently assess any better than you are how safe sending a photo of your ID over the Elections Canada website may or may not be. 

(Weirdly, gender is also a required field on the application for a mail-in ballot)

.

I sent in my application late at night on September 1, and by noon September 2 my status on the Elections Canada was "Registration status: Accepted. Voting kit sent".

 

The voting kit was waiting for me in my mailbox on September 7, alongside my voter registration card.

The voting kit doesn't contain a ballot with the names of all the candidates in your riding. Instead, it contains a blank card for you to write the name of the candidate you're voting for, meaning you're responsible for looking up the candidates' names yourself.

(Journalism Wanted: how much leeway do the people counting the ballots have regarding misspellings, etc.?)

You put the card with the name in one of the envelopes provided, then put that in a second envelope bearing identification numbers, which you sign and date. Then you put that in a third envelope bearing the address of the local Elections Canada office and prepaid postage. 

I put my ballot in the mailbox at some point on the weekend of September 11-12, and the status on the Election Canada site changed to "Complete ballot received" on September 15.

 

Then, just minutes after I got that update, one of the candidates on my riding resigned. So much for "I don't expect anything to change before election day"!

Things They Should Invent: "Browsing-Friendly" sign for small businesses

When I have to do in-person shopping for clothes, I prefer to shop in a mall. That's because mall stores are more browsing-friendly - you can drift in and out, getting a sense of what's available, and it's all very low-commitment.

In contrast, I dislike shopping for clothes in small businesses with main street (Yonge St.) storefronts, because it feels like more of a commitment to walk in. I don't know what they stock, I don't know if it will meet my needs, I don't know what the prices will be like, but I still have to walk in (with the door often ringing a bell when I do so), usually walk right past the owner and either take up their time helping me or dissuade them from helping me before I can even see if the contents of the store meet my needs well enough to even try things on. And then, if nothing meets my needs, I have to look the owner dead-ass in the eye and tell them that I'm not going to be helping them with their livelihood today.

It would be so much easier - and I would be so much more likely to shop for clothes at small neighbourhood stores - if I could browse them like mall stores!

But it also occurs to me that there are likely a non-zero number of small business owners who wouldn't mind if I did just that.

If only there was a way to tell who they are!

Solution: a standardized "Browsing-Friendly" sign that small businesses can put in their window, indicating that they have no objection to people wandering in and idly browsing their wares without any commitment to buy.

This would encourage customers to browse small businesses they might otherwise be reluctant to enter, thereby increasing the likelihood of customers finding the products they need in small businesses and of small businesses capturing market share that would otherwise go to mall stores. 

 

Win-win situation!

The mysterious missing verses of The Tottenham Toad

Some snippets of a children's song popped into my head recently, starting with "The Tottingham Toad went hopping down the road..."

So I googled around, and the internet is unanimous about the lyrics:

The Tottenham Toad came trotting down the road 

With his feet all swimming in the sea 

Pretty little squirrel with your tail in curl 

They’ve all got a wife but me.

Here's the weird part: the internet says that this is the whole song, but I clearly remember it has having three verses! I distinctly remember other lines from the song, and there is no record of them on the internet.

I remember the following lines:

- "The Wimbledon Whale he stood upon his tail" 

- "The Canterbury Crow said 'Now I have to go'"

- "As he drank three cups of bread and tea"

- "It's so sad it fills me full of glee" 

- "Lazy little lynx she just sits and winks"

And zero of these lines appear on the googleable (or duckduckgoable or bingable) internet!

I'm particularly confident about the "lynx" line because Child!Me had never heard of a lynx, so I wouldn't have made up or misremembered in the direction of something I'd never heard of. Wimbledon might be wrong, because Child!Me had heard of Wimbledon and therefore might have interpolated it into the lyrics.

 

Has any other human being in the world heard these verses, or are they completely lost to history?

Could an eBay-style bidding system help painlessly cool the real estate market?

EBay uses an automatic bidding system. Every bidder enters their maximum bid, and the system automatically places incremental bids on each bidder's behalf.

 

For example, bidding starts at $1. Alice is the first bidder, and she places a maximum bid of $5. The system displays a current bid of $1.

 

Then Bob comes along and places a maximum bid of $4. The system automatically places incremental bids on Alice's and Bob's behalf (as though they're sitting in an auction house shouting "$1.25!" "$1.50!" at each other) until it hits Bob's maximum of $4. Now it shows Alice in the lead with a bid of $4.25.

 

If there are no other bidders, Alice will pay $4.25 for the item.

This means that the winning bid is one increment higher than the second-highest bid, regardless of the winning bidder's highest bid. In other words, if Alice had set a maximum bid of $1,000 and Bob had set a maximum bid of $4, Alice would still pay $4.25 for the item.

 

I wonder if this kind of system could help cool the housing market?

During the pandemic, housing prices across the country skyrocketed. Conventional wisdom is that this is because city residents with city real estate money were buying exurban real estate and driving up the prices.

Why, I wondered, were they paying city prices for exurban properties? Even if you have city real estate money, why wouldn't you pay the exurban price for the exurban property?

The answer, I was told, is bidding wars.

So I wonder if the problem could be fixed by building a better bidding war?

My idea: inspired by eBay's system, every potential buyer enters their maximum bid, and an automatic system bids them against each other. The end result is that the highest bid is a dollar higher than the second-highest bid.

That way, if the prices are being driven up by outlier buyers, they won't be driven up to higher than the going rate.

The seller wouldn't suffer particularly from this. Any sensible seller would budget and plan for their home going at roughly the current going rate, and a dollar higher than the second-highest bid would fall within the going rate. Like on eBay, they could still have the option to set a reserve price, so if no one bids a high enough amount, they don't sell at all.

Perhaps this kind of system could also be adapted to let buyers bid on multiple homes and then retract their bid once they've bought a home, so you wouldn't have to wait for one bidding war to end before expressing interest in another possibility. One person withdraws, the next highest bid automatically wins, no big deal.

But would this actually help cool the housing market? I'm not sure! If there are multiple above-market bidders, it wouldn't change a thing. But if there's just one above-market bidder, this system would prevent them from driving up the price.

I guess the flip side to that question is: would this kind of bidding system cause any harm? Or would the worst case scenario result in the same housing prices as the current system, but perhaps with less stress, and perhaps sometimes letting buyers get a home without fully leveraging?

I don't know the answer to that question. It would be interesting if someone could study this.

Books read in August 2021

New:

1. Dico des mots qui n'existent pas et qu'on utilise quand même by Olivier Talon and Gilles Vervisch 

Reread:

1. Born in Death

Things They Should Invent: people who left this job went on to work at...

I recently had a new idea, inspired by an Ask A Manager column and my own job-hunting experience:

New rule: if you reject someone because you think they're going to leave for a better job, you have to tell them where to find this better job.

— "Impudent Strumpet!" (@ImpStrump) August 4, 2021

Today, my shower gave me an improvement on this idea: a "people who left this job went to work at..." website, or perhaps a LinkedIn functionality.

Scraping LinkedIn data (and other data if other useful sources are available), track which employers people went to after leaving a previous job, and look for patterns.

For example, if many people left Acme Inc. to work for Roarke Industries, and a comparable number left Roarke Industries to work for Acme Inc., that tells one story. If many people left Acme Inc. to work for Roarke Industries but there was no pattern of traffic in the other direction, that tells another story.

People can use this information to find better jobs and find employers who are likely to hire them based on their previous experience. Conversely, they might also be able to use it to plan their career path - for example, if Roarke Industries requires 5 years of experience and a lot of people go from university to Acme Inc. to Roarke Industries, then Acme Inc. might be the place to get the experience you need to be hired by Roarke Industries.

Things They Should Invent: cupboard to dishwasher to resident to dishes algorithm

The cupboard where I keep my cups is precariously full.

And I often run out of cups (or appropriate cups, e.g. I have wineglasses but don't have any coffee mugs) before my dishwasher is full. 

I didn't have this problem in my old apartment!

I feel like someone could make an algorithm to fix this.

You enter your cubic centimetres of dishwasher rack space and cupboard shelf space, the number of people in your household, and perhaps the rate at which you use dishes in a given day (e.g. 2 mugs, 1 wine glass, 1 water glass) and it calculates the optimal number of each item for you to own. Perhaps it could even tell you how to arrange your dishes in the cupboard.

Maybe it could also do the opposite when you're buying a dishwasher: you tell it what you own and the rate at which you use it, and it finds the optimal dishwasher to fit your lifestyle.

Books read in July 2021

New:

 

1. Pretty Iconic: A Personal Look at the Beauty Products that Changed the World by Sali Hughes

2. Very Rich by Polly Horvath

Reread:

1. Memory in Death

2. Haunted in Death

My second COVID vaccine experience

My first vaccine was AstraZeneca, administered at a local Rexall. At the time, I was told to wait patiently and Rexall would contact me for my second vaccine.

However, the rules changed in the interim, so, when I was 8 weeks after my first dose, the current protocol was to find your own second dose.

I put myself on all the pharmacy waiting lists in my area, and tried the Ontario vaccine booking system (which is how you book Toronto Public Health clinics) several times a day. Unfortunately, the vaccine booking tool initially wasn't able to meet demand - I kept getting the walking man or error messages or no appointments available, and on the rare occasions when there was an appointment somewhere I could plausibly get to, the appointment would disappear by the time I clicked through.

Finally, after a week of vaccine-hunting (i.e. 9 weeks after my first shot), I was able to secure an appointment at the Toronto Public Health clinic in my neighbourhood (North Toronto Memorial Community Centre) for 11 weeks after my first shot.

There was a pop-up clinic for which I was eligible 2 days before my scheduled appointment (I didn't go because I'd rather attend a scheduled appointment just a couple of blocks from home than go all the way out to Dufferin to wait in line in the rain), but none of the pharmacies came through with an appointment before then.

***

I arrived at NTMCC at the appointment time, and was greeted by firefighters (I don't know why either) who offered me hand sanitizer, asked if I had an appointment (although didn't verify it), and instructed me to get out my health card. 

Then I walked into the building, and passed through a series of people who scanned my card and/or asked me screening questions. There was a long line (indoors, masked, social distancing stickers on the floor), but it was moving steadily.

 

They were offering Moderna to age 18+ and Pfizer to age 12-17. They made very clear at every point that I'd be getting Moderna that day. 

 

I passed through about six different checkpoints each doing different screening before I arrived at the table where I was injected with the actual vaccine. The needle went into my arm about 15 minute after my scheduled appointment time.

The nurse who issued a vaccination gave me a card indicating the time I was allowed to leave, then I was then sent to a recovery area to wait out my 15 minutes. It was a separate room with physically-distanced chairs for patients to sit in. There was an optional questionnaire about social determinants of health to fill out while we waited.

 

There was a large clock on the front wall of the room, and when the time indicated on the card the vaccinating nurse gives you has been reached, you can go to the desk at the front and check out. The vaccine receipt is issued when you check out (meaning if you sneak out early, you won't get proof of vaccination). I think they might also validate parking or something - they asked me if I'd parked in the underground garage, but since I'd walked I don't actually know where that line of inquiry was going.

 

I left the clinic 32 minutes after my appointment time, and 17 minutes after the needle went into my arm.

***

Various logistics:

- I had a specific scheduled appointment time, but I don't believe they ever confirmed my identity against the scheduled appointments. I was asked if I had an appointment, but I didn't perceive anything to be checking me against a list of names and appointment times. They did swipe my health card several times so it might have happened stealthily there.

 

- All the screening questions, and the injection itself, took place in open areas where you were visible to others and it was possible to be overheard by others. There was a sign saying that modesty areas are available upon request, but I didn't request one so I have no insight into how they worked.

- The proof of vaccination I received was printed on receipt paper, and doesn't seem very durable.

- Every single person I interacted with or witnessed was actively warm and welcoming and helpful, even though they were literally repeating the exact same interaction with hundreds of people over and over throughout the day. The nurse who gave me my injection was very patient with my enthusiastic chattering about the Euro cup final. (It was my neighbourhood's first collective sports experience since the Raptors won in 2019 and I got caught up in the emotion!) The staff in the recovery room were also very patient with the white lady ranting about how the (optional) questionnaire (where you could check as many boxes as you want and fill out an "other" blank at the end of every question) thought she was white when she Wasn't Really because There Are Different Parts of Europe. (Spoiler alert: she was even whiter than me and her ancestors have not spoken anything but English in living memory.)

***

After-effects and recovery:

About 3 hours after the vaccine, the injection site started hurting, way more than I expected.

I tossed and turned all night, maybe scraping together a total of 6 hours of sleep in 12 hours spent in bed. When I finally got out of bed (16 hours after the vaccine), my arm hurt so much I couldn't lift my arm enough to wash my hair. My temperature was 1 degree above my normal (37.2 on a thermometer that normally gives me a reading of 36.2).

I took a standard Tylenol (my doctor advised me to take Tylenol rather than my usual ibuprofen for vaccine symptoms, but also emphasized that this advice is not appropriate for all patients) and about half an hour later was able to lift my arm enough to shower. My lymph nodes became inflamed shortly afterwards, and I spent the whole day after my vaccine feeling a general malaise. It reminded me of when you have a nasty cold but take Dayquil or something - no specific symptoms, but a general feeling of under the weather.

I slept 12 straight hours the second night after the vaccine, and woke up on Day 3 with my armpit lymph nodes so inflamed that I could see them when I looked in the mirror. There was still some mild but appreciable pain in the injection site, but I had a full range of motion and full use of my arm.

I continued to be moodier than made sense under the circumstances for the next week or so, and my lymph nodes gradually shrank back to their normal size during that time. 

My period started right on schedule, 2 days after the vaccine, and was well within the range of normal.

 

The Rexall that administered my first vaccine contacted me 3 days after I received my second vaccine to book an appointment. I cancelled all the other waitlists as soon as I received the shot, so I don't know how well they did or did not work.

 

***

 

Overall, I preferred the experience of getting vaccinated in a pharmacy. I felt like I had more time and space to ask questions, and more thoughtful and personalized attention. (I likely could have asked questions at the mass vaccination clinic and I would have done so if my questions had been actionable, but I felt like I'd be delaying the whole process if I took the time to ask whether the vaccine would attack the spike proteins of other coronaviruses.) However, I do recognize that pharmacies would not be an efficient enough way to get the kind of vaccine rollout we need, so mass vaccination clinics are a key component of the vaccine strategy.

I found the side-effects of the Moderna less bothersome than the AstraZeneca. Even though the pain of the Moderna injection site temporarily limited my mobility, I found the alternating fever and chills that came with AstraZeneca more disruptive, and the heavy bloating that came in my subsequent PMS week more uncomfortable.

Things They Should Invent: concordance tool with a Boolean NOT function

Many words, terms and phrases have a common go-to translation, but also have scope of meaning that doesn't fall under the common go-to translation.

 

If the common go-to translation is extremely common, it can saturate concordance tool results, completely burying alternative translations. This can lead inexperienced translators to conclude there is no other possible translation (even if the go-to is inappropriate), and can even stymie experienced translators ("I know there's another translation, but I'm completely blanking on it!")

To remedy this, I want to be able to apply a Boolean NOT function to the target-language results, to eliminate the common go-to translations and see what's left.

Examples:

 

- Show me translations of porte-parole that are not "spokesperson".

- Show me translations of intervenant that are not "intervener" or "responder".

- Show me translations of animateur that are not "animator" or "facilitator".

 

With the common translations that I know are not suitable out of the way, the tool can better do its job of giving me options to pinpoint le mot juste for my particular translation needs.

I have no idea how feasible this would be from a programming perspective. I know a Boolean NOT can be used in user input, I know that you can filter output by selecting and unselecting attribute tags from a given list (like you often find in online shopping), but I have no idea about the feasibility of filtering output with user-provided Boolean operators.

If it would in fact be unfeasible, I have an idea for an alternative: sort results in alphabetical order by how the word/term/phrase in question is translated in the target text.

This would group all the translations I know I don't want to use together, making it easier to find other options.

For example, if all the instances of "spokesperson" are together (with variants like "spokesman" nearby), I can start at the beginning of the alphabetically-sorted results and scroll through until I hit "spokesperson", seeing all the available options. Then, when I hit "spokesperson", I can jump to the last result and scroll through in reverse order until I hit "spokesperson" again, thereby quickly getting an overview of all the non-"spokesperson" results.

Concordance tools do tend to provide a sentence or a snippet as output, but they "know" what the matched term is, so it seems like it should be feasible to sort alphabetically by matched term but still show snippets.

Books read in June 2021

 Reread:

1. Origin in Death

Magic Words: "or . . . ?"

A thing that exists in the world: well-intentioned people who have innocent questions that they want to ask for a good reason.

 

Another thing that exists in the world: assholes who are cruel and malicious under the guise of asking innocent questions for a good reason.

If you're a well-intentioned person who has a good reason for asking an innocent question of the sort that cruel, malicious assholes might weaponize, you can often disarm your question with one simple conjunction: "or".

Scenario:

Cousin Dorothy has just announced her engagement! Congratulations, Dorothy!

Traditionally, you've been invited to your cousins' weddings, but you know that event planning isn't exactly Dorothy's thing, so she might have a smaller wedding that doesn't go as far as inviting the cousins. (After all, if you invite one cousin you have to invite them all, and there are just so many cousins!)

 

You happen to own a wedding-appropriate dress, but it has long sleeves. You'd get overheated if you wore it in the summer. 

 

So you want to find out when Dorothy's wedding is going to be, without being seen to presume that you'll be invited.

 

Normally, this could be achieved with a simple small-talk question: "So have you set a date yet?"

 

The problem is your family also includes Auntie Em. Auntie Em is very vocally judgmental about many things, and one of the things she's vocally judgmental about is "you're only engaged if you have a wedding date set."

So if you were to ask "Have you set a date yet?" you could come across as being judgmental like Auntie Em, as though you're setting up to gotcha Dorothy for not having a date set yet.

You can avoid giving this impression with one simple word: "or . . . ?"

Instead of simply asking the question that might come across as judgmental, add at least one alternative, and deliver them verbally with a rising and trailing "or".

"So have you set a date yet? Or are you just enjoying being engaged? Or . . . ?"

 

Presenting a perfectly reasonable alternative that is no less positive creates the impression that you think it's perfectly valid not to have set a date. You're making it clearer that you're not being judgmental like Auntie Em.

The function of the final "Or . . . ?" is, explicitly, to avoid setting up a false binary (assholes like Auntie Em often set up false binaries as gotchas) and, implicitly, to make it clearer that you understand there are a wide range of situations in life and you're open to whatever they might say here in response.

The final "Or . . . ?" also help with tone. Sometimes, the tone and delivery of "A or B?" can come out as judgey. (Imagine the tone that would be used for "Want a cup of tea? Or do you think you're too good for tea?") Ending with a rising and trailing "Or . . . ?" reduces the risk of producing this tone.

Some other examples:

Compare asking your host "Do you want me to make the bed?" vs. "Do you want me to make the bed? Or strip the bed? Or . . . ?" With the second option, you're acknowledging that different options are convenient for different people and you're absolutely open to doing whatever is most convenient.

Compare asking your boss "What do you want me to do if Important Client comes in while you're in the meeting?" vs. "If Important Client comes in while you're in the meeting, do you want me to come get you? Or take care of them myself? Or . . . ?" You recognize that there are nuances, you've taken the initiative of thinking of a couple of ideas yourself rather than making your boss come up with solutions, you're showing that you're open and amenable to doing whatever your boss thinks best.

At this point, some people might be thinking "Instead of all this strategic conjunction use, why not just be direct and ask Dorothy whether you'll need a summer dress for her wedding?"

And sometimes you can do that! In which case, you don't need me! Go forth and say whatever you want!

But sometimes that causes interpersonal problems. And, in these cases, you can often smooth things over with the judicious application of one simple word: "or . . . ?"

Health and labour: a mini-braindump

A weird thing about the way we talk about health in our society is that the notion of "being healthy" has an intrinsic element of labour to it, in that you aren't seen as "healthy" if you don't work at it.

 

Example: imagine someone who eats whatever they want without regard for nutrition, doesn't engage in any intentional physical activity beyond what occurs naturally in the course of their life, and doesn't see a doctor for preventive medical care.

They'd be seen as unhealthy.

 

Even if their body does whatever they need it to. Even if their numbers are good. People who like to opine on such things would look at their (lack of) regime and go on about how they're unhealthy and need to add weight training and kale smoothies to their routine.

 

We just don't have a paradigm for being considered healthy without working at it.

  

***

I just realized as I was writing this that this is what really bugs me about alternative medicine (or, at least, the subset of alternative medicine that reaches me) is that it always calls for more work. You're never done, it's never good enough. 

Even in contexts where I'm not seeking advice. If I mention in passing that, for example, every few years I get strep throat and have to take a course of antibiotics, the alternative medicine aficionados in my vicinity come swooping in recommending additional task (a food to eat, a supplement to take) that they want me to do every single day for the rest of my life to supposedly prevent this horrific fate of having to take a couple of pills a day for a week every few years.

While I don't have any theoretical objection to alternative medicine and do in fact incorporate aspects of it into my life, I simply have less and less room for a paradigm that demands such ceaseless work.

***

 

On a personal level, I'm finding more and more that the labour isn't worth the benefit. Putting in the work that it takes to get optimal health outcomes is like studying 6 hours a day to get an A when, if you didn't study at all, you'd get a B. 

 

It inches my numbers down to just inside the range of what's officially considered healthy, as opposed to their natural state of just outside the range of what's officially considered healthy, but doesn't change a thing about how I feel or function. 

 

Exercise makes me better at exercise, and doesn't change a thing about the activities of daily life. When I started doing yoga 20 years ago, a side plank was torture. Now, it's boring. And it hasn't changed a thing about how I feel or about my ability to do anything other than side planks. It hasn't even improved my physical appearance.

***

 

I've also noticed an awful lot of health labour is kind of . . . consumerist? Buy this, eat this, just a dollar a day to solve a problem you can't even perceive!

And there's also this sense that keeping yourself healthy is some kind of . . . responsibility to society, maybe? I'm not really sure how to articulate this part. But I get this vibe from the way some people talk, that if you aren't seen to be doing the labour, and if you aren't seen to be engaging in the "correct" consumption patterns, it's like you aren't doing your duty as a citizen.

I don't think that's, well, healthy.

 

***

 

It would also be interesting to study how the labour of health has evolved over time (and, probably, varied by society). I can't immediately point to any data, but I feel like the expected labour has increased as my life has gone on. 

In the time before nutrition labels, people couldn't possibly have been expected to monitor their nutrition in such minute detail. In the time before gyms, people couldn't possibly have been expected to engage in weight training.

There was a time when it was socially unacceptable for women to be seen engaging in athletic activities. There was a time when it would have been socially unacceptable for anyone, of any gender, to jog down the street.

(There have also been many other times when many other combinations of activities were socially acceptable or unacceptable in historical cultures I'm unfamiliar with.)

People for whom food is scarce eat what's available. If you've always lived in this kind of context, the idea of deliberately limiting your caloric intake would be laughable.

People for whom life requires constant physical labour would find the idea of doing additional exercise to meet a standard of fitness that never comes up in real life laughable. 

I wonder if there has ever been a time and place in history were people were expected to do more health-related labour (on top of the labour of simply staying alive) than they are now?

Magic Words: "human being"

I've discovered a neat trick: you can intensify any sentence by replacing "person" (and similar synonyms) with "human being".

 

Compare: "I haven't hugged another person since before the pandemic" vs. "I haven't hugged another human being since before the pandemic."

The second one sounds a lot more dire, doesn't it?

Compare: "You used straight apostrophes in last month's newsletter and smart apostrophes in this month's newsletter. But no one else is going to notice." vs. "You used straight apostrophes in last month's newsletter and smart apostrophes in this month's newsletter. But no other human being is going to notice."

 

The likelihood of being noticed sounds a lot lower in the second one, doesn't it? (Even though, if you're really pedantic about it, "no other human being" is narrower in scope - "no one" could plausibly include dogs and aliens and AI.)

 

I love things like this, where minor changes in wording have clearly discernable changes in connotation, even though no one can explain why no human being can explain why!

Food storage containers with clip lids are extremely difficult to open and close

Latest pandemic malfunction: the container I use to store my cooked pasta broke!

When shopping online for an appropriate-sized replacement, the option I found was a "Clip It" container - a glass container with a plastic lid that has clips along the side, as shown in the image.

Clip It food storage containers

Unfortunately, it turns out they're extremely difficult to use.

It takes a lot of force to push the clips down in a way that will allow them to clip over the lip of the glass containers, and therefore to seal the lid. If I handle it like a normal container with a normal amount of force and strength, I can get a maximum of one (1) clip to clip. If I use my body weight and gravity, I can get a maximum of two (2) clips to clip. I have never, not once, been able to get all four to clip. 

I know I'm not especially strong, but it really shouldn't be at all difficult to operate a food storage container!

If you are considering buying this style of food storage container, I strongly recommend trying it out before you buy it - or, at least, keeping it in returnable condition until you're certain you can make it work - so you don't end up paying for a container that's difficult to operate.  (I made the mistake of removing the labels, throwing out the receipt, running it through the dishwasher, and filling it with food before I discovered that the lid was difficult to close, because, like, it never occurred to me that a food container could be difficult to operate!)

And if, like me, you are stuck with this style of container, I found it's less difficult to put the lid on if I do so on a table rather than on the counter. The table is lower than the counter, so I can press downwards and use my body weight, which gives me enough leverage to get two of the clips to clip and therefore for the lid to be reasonably closed.

However, it shouldn't be this hard! I shouldn't need leverage and body weight and strategy to operate a food container. And, for that reason, I strongly recommend avoiding them.

Book read in May 2021

1. Golden in Death by J.D. Robb

2. Go Show the World: A Celebration of Indigenous Heroes by Wab Kinew

3. If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric Gansworth

In which I do literally nothing for 4 weeks and then start doing stuff again

In April and May, I took 4 straight weeks off work, the longest vacation I've taken in my life.

I didn't accomplish a thing.

It was glorious!

I knew I could very easily fall into the trap of "Ooh, time off work! Time to get productive and catch up on stuff!" and then get stressed out because I didn't achieve enough. So I made a rule that there is no productivity obligation whatsoever for this time off. And I certainly lived up to that expectation!

I learned that, if left to my own devices, I sleep 9-10 hours every night and become extremely nocturnal.

I learned that, if left to my own devices, the amount of stuff I get done in a day is about equal to the amount of non-work stuff I get done on a work day.

I learned that it is literally impossible for me to keep up with all the Good Omens fanfiction being written, even if I do nothing else all day.

I learned that my system is in fact unsustainable - even if I weren't working, I would fall behind. I don't yet know what to do with that or how to change it.

 

I also learned that, in the absence of obligations or when I otherwise don't know what to do with myself, I default into following my system, so it would probably serve me better to come up with a replacement system than to just go systemless.

I learned that, emotionally and intellectually, I don't need to work. I didn't find myself missing employment or productivity or translation. I didn't end up translating random internet texts just to scratch that itch. I'm perfectly fine being completely unproductive and contributing nothing to society. (It would certainly have been interesting to do this experiment before my head injury and see if the results were the same! But I didn't know my head injury was coming - if I had known, I would have just stayed in bed to avoid fainting in the first place).

But, unfortunately, money is irritatingly finite and the most reliable way for me to make the money I need is with the job I currently have, so back to work I went.

I found that working is not particularly difficult, but it is irritatingly time-consuming. Every day there's some soupçon of frustration that it takes a non-zero amount of time to do my day's work. 

However, my experience with doing so little in a day when I was on vacation makes me less frustrated with how little non-work stuff I get done on a work day. Why on earth should I get more done on top of a full day's work than I do in the middle of a month off work in the middle of a pandemic when I have literally nothing else to do? I guess now I'm just . . . a person who doesn't get much done.

And maybe eventually I'll figure out how to work that into a new system.

My COVID vaccine experience

I signed up for the Rexall and Shopper's Drug Mart vaccine waiting lists in early April, then signed up for the waiting lists every other local pharmacy offering the vaccine on April 20, when the province extended availability to age 40 and up.

On April 24, I received an email from Rexall offering me an appointment for AstraZeneca at the Yonge Eglinton Centre location, which is right across the street from me. There were appointments available during the next two days, so I booked an appointment for April 25.

The store was not crowded at all and there were no other customers in the pharmacy area when I arrived. The pharmacist was right there at the counter when I arrived. He checked my health card, then took me into a small consultation room beside the pharmacy counter. The room was small enough that I'm not sure whether or not we were six feet apart. The room had a door that closed, but the pharmacist didn't close it and I didn't ask him to. We were both wearing masks. I didn't ask the pharmacist if he was vaccinated himself, but pharmacists I know socially who are administering vaccinations are vaccinated themselves.

I had a lot of questions (about the vaccine, about what happens next, about the statistically-low but highly-mediatized risk of blood clots) and the pharmacist very patiently answered them on my intellectual level, using his own professional knowledge and insight rather than simply parroting talking points. 

One of the screening questions was whether I was allergic to polyethylene glycol and I'd never knowingly encountered it, so we had some discussion about where I might have encountered it before. The pharmacist's research aligned with mine, concluding that I've almost certainly encountered it somewhere but it's difficult to pinpoint where exactly. I asked the pharmacist about what would happen if I did have an allergic reaction (it would happen during the 15 minutes that I was supposed to sit and wait in the pharmacy and he was equipped to take care of me if it happened), so I made the informed decision to get the vaccine despite not knowing for certain that I wasn't allergic. The pharmacist did not pressure me either way.

The needle itself was unremarkable. There was a bit more blood than usual on the bandaid when I removed it the next morning, but it wasn't disproportionate. 

I sat in the waiting chair for 15 minutes, during which the couple after me in line had their vaccinations. I could hear their conversations with the pharmacist from my seat, the content of which was a subset of the content of my own conversation with the pharmacist. No one involved made any effort to close the door or otherwise give them privacy from me. We then had a bit of a socially distanced "YAY, we're vaccinated!" squee at each other, and I left when my 15 minutes were up with a hard-copy vaccine receipt in hand.

Rexall didn't automatically schedule me for a second dose appointment (they said they'd only be guessing at scheduling and availability given the 16-week dose interval and would likely have to reschedule anyway), but they said they'd email me with information about my second appointment closer to the time in question.

I went to bed 7 hours after receiving my vaccination, but didn't fall asleep right away. One hour later (i.e. 8 hours after my vaccination) I started shivering violently, to the extent that my hands were shaking as I tried to retrieve an extra blanket and drink a glass of water.

My body then started alternating between fever and chills, as though I was in a whirlpool tub where every individual jet randomly switched between producing water that's too hot and water that's too cold. 

I tossed and turned all night, sleeping no more than 6 hours over a total of 11 hours spent in bed. Then I got out of bed and had a slow, unproductive day, treating myself as though I had a flu while alternating between fever and chills. My temperature ranged from 35.1 to 38.1, on an oral thermometer that normally gives me a reading of 36.2.

About 20 hours after the vaccine, I tentatively felt like I might be improving. I went to bed and slept 12 hours that night, then woke up feeling very close to normal. My neck lymph nodes were very active in the second day post-vaccine, and my armpit lymph nodes were very active in the third day post-vaccine.

As I'm writing this, I'm 26 days post-vaccine, and have no signs of blood clots.

 

***

Because so many people have reported menstrual effects after their vaccine, I'm going to describe my first menstrual cycle after the vaccine in some degree of detail. If you're not here for that, skip to the next row of three asterisks.

I'm 40 years old and take birth control pills. My periods are like clockwork on the pill, so any change, however minor, is normally medically significant. When I'm not on the pill, my periods are heavy, debilitating and unpredictable.

I didn't menstruate in the immediate aftermath of my vaccine, but I'd just finished my regularly scheduled period so my uterus would have been empty. I did feel moodier than usual in the approximately 2 weeks that followed the vaccine in a way that's comparable PMS, and it's possible that my bowel movements were like those I'd experience during my period. 

In the days that led up to my next period, I was more bloated than I've ever been in my life. Even when I was hungry and my stomach was grumbling, my belly was visibly protruding and I had a feeling of fullness unlike anything I'd ever experienced before.

In the few days that led up to my period, my discharge had a reddish tinge. This wasn't the same as spotting; with spotting there are random bits of red or brown, whereas this was more like if a small amount of red had been evenly distributed in the white/clear discharge.

Also in the days leading up to my period, I experienced what might have been menstrual cramps in various places in my abdomen. It was difficult to tell whether the feeling was menstrual or digestive, but it's always been difficult for me to tell during unregulated periods whether what I'm feeling is menstrual or digestive. (This is exacerbated by the fact that I often do in fact have a bowel urgency during my period.)

On the Sunday of my period week (I'm on a Sunday start cycle) I started spotting. I started menstruating full-out on Monday. It was heavier, redder and chunkier than usual, although not so heavy I needed more pads. By the end of Monday, the bloating had mostly deflated. By Thursday, there was only a the tiniest bit of red on my pad and I could have even done without a pad. 

(Normally I start menstruating on Tuesday without any spotting in the days leading up, have steady flow on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, light flow in Friday, and only a few drops on Saturday).

This period was nowhere near as heavy and debilitating as my unregulated periods, but it was also the heaviest and most uncomfortable period I've ever had while being on the pill. 

I have no indication that I ovulated during this cycle, but I didn't learn about fertility awareness until well after I started on the pill, so I have no way of knowing if I can actually reliably detect ovulation.

***

After I got vaxxed, I removed myself from all the other vaccine waitlists except Shopper's, which didn't have the option. Shopper's sent me an email offering me an appointment on May 1, and then another on May 11. I didn't click through on either email so I can't tell you about their process, but the May 11 email contained a link to remove myself from the list, so I did.

On May 12, after the Ontario Minister of Health paused AstraZeneca, Rexall sent me an email telling me that I'm still on their list for a second dose, they're still looking at a 16-week dose interval, and they'd contact me with information about scheduling and about which vaccine I'll receive for my second dose once that information is available.