Head Tale

I did a list like this about a month ago and so I thought I’d do another one as I’m now a few days into my *fourth* month of quarantine to see what’s front of mind these days…

1. Public libraries *finally* have a date for permitted opening which will be Phase Four Stage Two and which comes into effect next Monday (though RPL quickly put out communication on their web site and to internal staff that we would *not* be opening right away but hopefully soon.)

2. As restrictions continue to be lifted, the weather gets nicer, and number of cases in Saskatchewan fall (except for a few isolated outbreaks), my biggest worry is that people will quickly flip to “everything’s normal/covid’s gone” and we’ll lose the progress and sacrifices of the past few months.

3. I can’t remember if I mentioned this before on my blog but one unique aspect of having three uninterrupted months at home was that it was like a weird “retirement preview”.  I was one of the lucky ones who could still work from home so it wasn’t like full retirement (like everyone in the photo above except Pace is currently enjoying!)  And I’m still a few years away from retirement.  But it still gave me a sense of everything from how my spending shifts when I’m not working (not buying gas, not doing as much frivolous shopping, doing more cooking at home instead of eating out) to what it’s like to be able to putz around the house more to even whether I might want to start thinking about retiring earlier than I originally planned.

4. I spend a lot of time thinking how fortunate we’ve been through this overall – everything from Shea and I both being fully employed to having moved to a new, larger house that backs onto a park-like green space just before this came down to having kids who are able to be (mostly) self-contained as I attempted to work from home (and increasingly have to work outside the home again) to us having completed a tropical holiday *just* before things got crazy (and who knows when we might go again?)  Honestly, I don’t think there’s much that could’ve been different that could’ve helped us ride this out any better!

5. One of the strange impacts of the pandemic many people might not think of is on the lottery.  Normally, the billboards around town promote jackpots of forty, fifty or even sixty million dollars.  Since soon after the pandemic began, I don’t know if I’ve seen a jackpot over ten million.  That’s logical since people aren’t out in malls and gas stations and other places where they’d normally buy tickets so sales are likely way down.  But I think of unintended consequences – at least in Saskatchewan, lottery money helps fund numerous arts, culture and recreation organizations and I worry that there could be big shortfalls for these important organizations in the future.