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Monday, February 14, 2022

#MicroblogMondays: Valentine's Day/Mid-February odds & ends (& rants!)

(Including a couple of rants/vents on various topics that have been bugging me lately...!) 
  • It's Valentine's Day -- and dh & I are marking our 40th (!!) Valentine's Day together.  :)  (We met 40 years ago last October, and had our first date 40 years ago last month.) 
    • It's never been a big-deal day for us... mostly we just exchange cards. We used to go out for dinner, sometimes, earlier in our marriage, but it was always so crowded and noisy and expensive, we gave that up. I've always told dh not to get me any flowers, because the prices are always SO ridiculous -- but he did pick me up a small box of chocolates when he was at the supermarket on Valentine's Day last year, which was a completely unexpected treat and a mid-February/covid winter pick-me-up.  :)  (I will NEVER turn down chocolate!  lol)  
    • I still have the first Valentine's Day card he gave me (and all the other ones since then too). 
    • Past Valentine's Day-related posts have been tagged, here
  • Recap: The Elton John concert that SIL & I bought tickets for, way back in November 2019 -- originally scheduled for March 29th, 2020, then rescheduled for Feb. 15th, 2022 -- was postponed again to March 13th. There was an option to ask for a refund within 7 days of the change in date -- and we decided to take it.  But then, on Feb. 1st, I got an email saying "Your event has been postponed," saying organizers were trying to reschedule. 
    • Update: Finally, on Feb. 11th, I got another email saying the event had been cancelled :(  and a refund would be forthcoming. I went on Ticketmaster and checked all the Elton John dates for Toronto, just to be certain, and sure enough, the March 12th & 13th dates (as well as the February dates) were all cancelled. It's a relief to finally have things settled, one way or another. 
    • There's a September date at the Rogers Centre/SkyDome stadium that's still on, but I'm sure most of the seats for that are long gone -- and even if there are tickets available, who knows what the covid situation will be by then?? -- I don't want to buy tickets for anything too far in advance right now...! 
  • BIL called dh early last week and invited us to come to dinner last Saturday night. Both nephews, their wives and (of course) Little Great-Nephew were all coming. (He didn't mention it, but it's his & SIL's wedding anniversary this week, and I suspect that may have been the reason for the family get-together.)
    • Then he called again a day or so later -- to UNinvite us. (!) He said to dh, "Don't get mad!" Dh said he knew he felt very guilty. You have to know BIL... he's got a huge heart, and he's very impulsive. Doesn't always think things through, and doesn't have a lot of filters. ;)  He told dh they wanted LGN to spend some time "bonding" with his aunt & uncle (Younger Nephew & his wife, who are LGN's godparents). They are even more paranoid about covid than dh & I are, and none of us have seen much of them over the past two years (even though we all live in the same area) -- so they haven't spent much time with the little guy, certainly not as much as dh & I have over the past year. They're also very, very covid-cautious, and would probably have been less inclined to come if too many people were around (even though we're almost as cautious as they are!). 
    • We weren't mad. (Dh actually thought it was hilarious -- so typically BIL.) BIL & SIL have always been so very kind about including us in things -- and they certainly have the right to be together as a family without us hanging around all the time. Especially right now, when family together time has been so limited.
    • But -- I have to admit -- it still stings a little. :(  
  • I had to mute yet another person on social media (and am debating whether to unfollow outright), over some comments they made about what's been happening here in Canada, in Ottawa and at several border crossings (including one right outside the border town where I was born). Not the first, and probably not the last...  :(  
    • I can't write too much about that whole situation (although I did, a little bit, in this post) --  I can't even watch the news right now -- because I am just so, SO angry about the whole thing -- about the "protests" and the people behind them, the politicians who are enabling them and hoping to cash in on it all, and the way things have been (mis)handled by the police and by all levels of government (municipal, provincial and federal)(and I know I am far from alone in feeling this way). :(  You can be damned sure that if these protesters were indigenous peoples or other people of colour, they would have been cleared out of there long, long ago (in fact, they never would have been allowed anywhere near Parliament Hill in the first place with that many trucks, etc.). My heart goes out to anyone living (or trying to live) in downtown Ottawa right now.    
  • In other decidedly not-good news this morning, our premier has announced our province will be dropping vaccine passports, as well as all remaining capacity limits, as of March 1st -- about two weeks away, and sooner than expected. (Mask mandates will remain for now -- and thank goodness for that!)  Numbers *have* been on the decline -- but they still remain high overall, if you look at the past two years to date. I think it's premature. (Could the fact that there's an election coming up on June 2nd have anything to do with this eagerness to embrace "normalcy" so quickly? -- hmmm....) 
    • I've never actually used my vaccine passport, other than to get through airport security at Christmastime. (Even then, they just looked at it, didn't scan it.) We haven't been in any restaurants or other venues where they are currently required -- but knowing that the mandate existed made me feel better about the prospect of going back, eventually. Needless to say, we are highly unlikely to do so for the foreseeable future, once those passport requirements are dropped (and most certainly once masks are abandoned).  The numbers will have to come down a whole lot more, and remain low for quite a while, before we'll consider doing that. 
  • This is an incredible story of siblings and half-siblings reunited through the miracle of modern DNA testing. It's also a heartbreaking tale of poverty, abuse and black-market adoptions in Quebec in the 1950s.  Worth a read! 
You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here

9 comments:

  1. Annnndddd... I had to mute another person (second in less than 24 hours) over one of their social media posts related to vaccines. I'm generally a very tolerant/live-and-let live sort of person, but I'm finding right now (after two dragged-out years of covid that didn't have to be this bad, and a very loonngggg, cold winter, among other things), I have absolutely no bandwidth for this kind of crap and zero you-know-whats to give. :p

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  2. I have been avoiding FB for a whole host of reasons of late (mostly due to the company's unscrupulous and IMHO unethical way of deriving revenue.) I understand FB is one of a set of social media networks used by the rogue Canadian truckers and their equally obnoxious supporters. I have been perplexed beyond belief that this whole saga has played out in Canada of all places. Another sign of the apocalypse? ... can't help but make one wonder!

    Meanwhile, like you, I am saddened that the vaccine controls and masking requirements are dropping so quickly. With winter temps and indoor gatherings, it's only a matter of time before another surge develops. Oh, yeah, and then there's the standard flu and other circulating viruses now free to find more hosts... sigh.

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    1. Great to hear from you, Pamela! -- Unfortunately, we have our share of covidiots and MAGA wannabes here... they're relatively small in number, but loud & obnoxious and magnified by social media, as you noted (and egged on by their counterparts in the U.S.) -- and sadly capable of inflicting a lot of damage. Being from Detroit, I know you would appreciate the importance of the Ambassador Bridge to cross-border trade!

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  3. I had to attend my uncle's funeral yesterday - I had to unfriend him in August due to his political and antivaccine posts. He died from Covid after 32 days in the hospital. So I am half sad and half angry at something that could have been avoided. Sigh.

    I've seen so many people telling others that they should be supportive of a worker's movement to protest what they consider unfair working conditions. OK, but...public safety is not actually an unfair working condition, so readjust your thinking. SOOOO FRUSTRATING TO SEE THAT STUFF.

    However, I was more than a little heartened by this story:
    https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/battle-of-billings-bridge-attracts-hundreds-of-volunteers-traps-convoy-for-hours?fbclid=IwAR3VmUw7aEGF4C5zwu_ClkO5TvQbU5nM8DYIse-WsublTgUeS5zN1UOSGnA

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    1. I am sorry about your uncle. :(

      I heard about "The Battle of Billings Bridge." You can't blame the locals for taking matters into their own hands. The police so far have been totally ineffective. :( (The chief actually resigned yesterday.) I also heard, via Twitter, about a bunch of people who have been trolling the convoy participants on their Zello communications network and blasting a certain song at them. Warning: even just the description of it is pretty raunchy -- but the whole thing is also hilarious.

      https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/paulmcleod/ottawa-trucker-protests-ram-ranch

      https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/ram-ranch-resistance-how-a-gay-cowboy-song-became-an-anti-convoy-anthem

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  4. Happy 40th Valentine's Day (even if I am a bit late, sorry!). That's definitely something to celebrate. It's not something we celebrate either - our wedding anniversary is only 10 days earlier, so that's what we choose to mark.

    Yes, the Canadian truckers' protests (egged on by their US counterparts) have proliferated around the world, including here in Wellington. I saw a funny cartoon the other day from Canada apologising to the rest of the world - but I think you guys are victims of the craziness south of your border just as we all are. And as you say, they're just a tiny portion of the population, but very loud, and apparently newsworthy. Sigh.

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  5. 40 Valentine's Days -- happy day, you lovebirds!

    I saw that story of the Bryntwick siblings. Secrecy is so damaging and takes so much from people.

    That situation near Ottawa sounds so....so...what's the word I'm looking for...?

    American. Yeah, that's it. Ugh on having to mute people because fracture, flaming emotions, and disregard for other people's plights. Happens so often these days.

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  6. Happy belated Valentine's! We usually do handmade valentines for each other, but this year Bryce did grocery shopping and I did dishes and we called it good. 🤣

    I'm sorry you were disinvited, and that COVID messed with your Elton John tickets. Who knew this would go on so long? And the Ottawa situation, ugh. So true that angry white people get so much more leeway to disrupt than other groups. No freezing water hoses for the MAGA people, hmmmm.

    The COVID restrictions lifting make me nervous too.

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