1. What did you do this year that you’d never done before?
Got my Covid vaccine (along with my good buddy, Premier Scott Moe, who happened to be in the drive-thru line behind me!) Picked my son up after a noon-hour bomb threat at his school (which was a false alarm luckily!)
2. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Probably? I mean, I’m at a weird spot in my life where I’m old enough that most friends either have families already or at a point where they know that’s not going to happen. At the same time, most of my friends’ kids are still too young to be having their own kids yet…mostly! I mean, it’s pretty weird to see the younger sister of one of my best friends growing up announce on FB that’s she a grandma at 46!) 😮
3. Did anyone close to you die?
Seems like we had a lot of deaths this year compared to other years with a shocking number being middle-aged, not just older relatives or whatever.
* Shea’s uncle Lloyd died of cancer.
* The first person from my high school graduating class to die succumbed to cancer.
* A former coworker and good friend who was about my age also died of cancer this summer (though she did end up living twice as long – nearly ten years – than her initial prognosis.)
* I’d lost touch with a guy who I knew from University dorms so was shocked when another friend from dorms let me know our friend had died of ALS in his 40s.
* The eldest of my dad’s nine siblings and second from his family of ten to die, my Aunt Adele.
* A next-door neighbour from our old house who was the dad of one of Sasha’s best friends died of Covid.
* After not losing anyone at all in thirty years, a second person from my high school graduation class also died this year and like our former next door neighbour, also from Covid.
* A neighbour who camped near us at Nickle Lake died of complications, possibly related to cancer treatments (but we wonder if she was reluctant to go to get the issue addressed out of fear of Covid – another possible non-Covid but “Covid-adjacent” death of which I suspect there were many.)
* Another neighbour from Nickle Lake who had been in ill-health for a few summers.
* The father of a family who farmed near us and whose wife was a nurse with my mom in Indian Head for years.
* My high school English teacher (who seemed old when she taught us probably being in her early to mid-60’s at the time but ended up living to 92!)
* in early December, find out a fellow librarian who had been a friend and mentor in numerous ways, died suddenly of a heart attack at age 56 and only a year and a half from retirement.
3. What places did you visit?
Well, after not much travel at all last year, we…didn’t have much this year either. Maybe a day trip to Moose Jaw instead of a week in Mexico, time spent on the beach at Nickle Lake instead of Cancun? Oh well, now that Sasha has been vaccinated, perhaps more travel will be in our future?
4. What would you like to have in the next year that you lacked this year?
Building off that last answer, a tropical vacation would be nice (and if we can’t do it in 2022, 2023 would be ideal as that’s our twenty year wedding anniversary of getting married on a beach in Mexico!).
5. What date from this year will remain etched upon your memory?
Jan 6 – Trump supporters storm the US Capitol in what is almost unbelievingly an attempted coup of the US government.
Jan 20 – inauguration of Joe Biden (and weird to even think that this may not have happened in an alternate timeline – whew!)
Mar 18 – one year anniversary of RPL closing due to Covid
Mar 28 – libraries shut down again, almost exactly a year after our first Covid shutdown, for what ends up being six weeks this time though we are better prepared to offer curbside, a Hotline for phone/chat/email queries and other distanced-services compared to the first time we closed.
Apr 15 – First Vaccination
May 11 – A long-serving, high level manager at RPL who did much of my orientation when I was hired and also even had weekly monthly breakfast meetings with me for a period of time is released unexpectedly
Jun 18 – Second Vaccination
Jul 17 – Virtually attend funeral of former work colleague who dies of cancer in her late 40’s
Sep 15 – Find out the Branch Head job I’ve done for eight years is being moved to our Central Branch as part of a larger restructuring of supervisors/managers at RPL.
Dec 21 – Accept a Community Librarian position at a different branch at RPL
6. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Not sure if this was my biggest achievement but it was a nice piece of external validation that the two anecdotes mentioned in a news story about the good work RPL does were both things I have a direct connection to!
7. What was your biggest failure of the year?
Maybe trying to do homeschooling with the kids? One funny moment was getting Sasha logged in to her class, going into a Zoom meeting of my own then, when I went to check on her, finding the screen off and her sleeping in front of the iPad! 😮
8. What was your biggest surprise?
As mentioned in the memorable dates list above, a long-standing senior manager who was the person who oriented me to RPL when I started and that I used to have monthly breakfasts with being let go unexpectedly was pretty shocking, not just to me but many others in libraryland across the province and beyond given that she was very well-known and had a very high profile (involved with CFLA, IFLA, etc.). I thought that would be my biggest RPL surprise by far but hearing about the death of the colleague mentioned above in early December shocked me incredibly.
9. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Another year where every scratchy throat or upset stomach makes you wonder if you’ve finally contracted Covid. One big advantage of being married to a healthcare worker was having access to rapid tests which helps alleviate some of the worry as we test the whole family regularly.
10. What was the best thing you bought?
After nearly a decade using an old MacBook Pro, I finally broke down and bought a new MacBook Air. Luckily our work has a computer purchase plan where you can have the cost of a computer taken off your pay cheque in instalments. I also bought some Nanoleaf light panels which I quite like but find can be a bit touchy about maintaining their network connection/responding intuitively through the app for some reason.
11. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Pretty huge milestone for my parents to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. And it makes me reflect on how fortunate I am to have such loving, supportive, generous parents when so many others don’t.
12. Whose behaviour left you underwhelmed or disappointed?
The handling of the pandemic by the governments in Saskatchewan and Alberta was particularly bad, causing all sorts of unnecessary illness and death. A mall jeweller that Shea took her wedding ring to get resized ended up doing some other work *without* consulting us which caused all sorts of stress and headaches. Some NDP MLAs sending out a tweet while at a Rider game unmasked and double-fisting beers was pretty disappointing. I know they don’t want to be the “No Fun Party” but it opened them up to some easy charges of hypocrisy. My unsent tweet at the time (partly b/c it was too long, partly b/c I didn’t want to pile on) was this:
Don’t go to the game.
If you go the game, wear a mask.
If you don’t wear a mask, don’t take a pic.
If you take a pic, don’t tweet it out.
If you tweet it out, don’t do it on the company account.
If you tweet it out on the company account, don’t be double-fisting beers.
Because that will make people doubt your judgement.
Which we already knew because of your decision at step one!
13. Where did most of your money go?
Nowhere? Without being able to travel, not eating out as much, and not even doing some of the mindless shopping you might do out of boredom or whatever, our bank accounts really went up over the past two years.
14. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
The vaccine rolling out to more and more people. Being able to host some vaccination clinics at my library!
15. What song/album will always remind you of this year?
“Pressure Machine” – The Killers
16. Compared to this time last year, are you:
A) Happier or sadder? Most of the year was good but definitely sadder as the year came to a close, knowing that my job would be changing, a new variant was rearing its ugly head making the pandemic feel like it would never end, and then the sudden death of a longtime friend and colleague in early December.
B) Thinner or fatter? Fatter then thinner? I’d say my weight hit its highest point in ten years due to a lot of stress-eating/drinking early in the year. I did sign up for Hockey FIT – a program out of Western University targeted at helping middle-aged men lose weight but got picked for the “control” group so won’t experience the actual program until next year. But on my own, I’ve managed to drop quite a few pounds in the last few months of the year after the end of summer where I think I hit my all-time high since I started regularly tracking my weight in 2015!
C) Richer or poorer? Richer. As I said, we’re not spending very much these days.
17. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Working from home during Covid was stressful in many ways but I wish I’d taken time to also enjoy it more – getting to see the kids more, not having to commute, working in PJs!
18. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Unhealthy eating/drinking?
19. How did you spend Christmas?
Felt like a race against the rapidly spreading Omicron variant but getting to host both sets of grandparents after not having them in 2020 was awesome!
20. Who did you spend the most time communicating with?
Remote co-workers?
21. What was your favourite TV program?
We’ve definitely worked through a *lot* of buzz shows over the past year or two. Here’s a partial list of some we’ve watched in whole or in part over the past year (some we may have watched completely, some only the latest season, some we started but gave up on)…
“Yellowstone”
“Ted Lasso”
“WandaVision”
“Peaky Blinders”
“Better Call Saul”
“The Stand” (but was a dud so we didn’t finish it)
“Handmaid’s Tale”
“Heels”
“Monsters: Inside the Minds of Billy Milligan”
“McCartney 3-2-1”
“Squid Game”
“Acapulco”
“Maid”
“Narcos Mexico”
“The Beatles: Get Back”
22. Do you hate anything that you didn’t hate at this time last year?
I always clarify that “hate” is probably too strong of word for this question but I definitely lost pretty much any patience or empathy I had for anti-maskers/anti-vaxxers. If you’re “vaccine-hesitant” or “still have questions” at this point in the pandemic after literally *billions* of people have been safely vaccinated, I don’t know what else to say – you shouldn’t be part of civil society.
24. What was the best book(s) you read?
“Call Me Indian” by Fred Sasakamoose was a very engaging blend of insights into the horrors of residential schools, the world of hockey in mid-20th century, and small town Saskatchewan/Western Canada in that time period too. When Covid hit, I read a *lot* about pandemics, viruses but now that a lot of time has passed, there are more books specifically about Covid – “World War C”, “Post Corona”. “The Premonition”. One of my favourite non-fiction writers is Marcello di Cintio in Calgary and his book, “Driven”, about the secret lives of taxi cab drivers was excellent.
25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I’m not sure if I had a single musical discovery but did listen to a lot of new music by finding playlists of songs from shows we were watching – whether that was “Yellowstone”, “Peaky Blinders”, “Heels” or whatever.
26. What did you want and get?
Vaccinations for everyone in our family including Sasha who finally got her first shot in late November and her booster by the end of December!
27. What did you want and not get?
I still think the vaccination roll-out should have been a bit more balanced than just starting with people who were the oldest and dropping down to younger ages incrementally. (I know some but not all healthcare workers also got priority as did people who were immunocompromised but again, I think there should have been other factors taken into account too.)
28. What were your favourite films of this year?
As is probably obvious from the “Fave TV Shows” answer above, we really switched to multi-part TV shows for our evening viewing instead of movies which is more of what we did in the past. We did watch a few that we enjoyed – “Nomadland” (I’d read the book and never thought they’d make a dramatic movie out of it), “The Martian” right after Pace read the book, “Come From Away” with the family on 9/11.
29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 48 and has been the case pretty much every year for the last few, we were camping. I wanted to go to the Weyburn Fair to see a demolition derby which happened to be the same day as my birthday and even though it was mostly outside, still nervous given that Weyburn is not really known to be a place with a strong belief in vaccines and given that a wall of people greeted us in the grandstand. But luckily, no one got sick (though the Zipper almost made me puke!) 🙂
30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Knock on wood, we avoided Covid all year luckily (though Sasha did end up getting tested for the second time after spiking a fever for a few days) but I wish kids under 11 could’ve started getting vaccinated earlier. And booster third shots should’ve been opened to 18+ earlier too instead of doing that weird incremental dropping by age thing.
31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept this year?
I started wearing shorts to work in the summer which is something I’d never really done before. (My librarian colleague who passed away in December would approve as he was the only other librarian I know who wore shorts to work.)
32. What kept you sane?
Whatever stresses there were throughout the year – and there were many – living in a pandemic is a good way to remember that it could always be worse. Knock on wood but Shea and I are both still working, no one in our families has had Covid (as far as we know), our parents are all healthy and staying safe too.
33. What political issue stirred you the most?
Everything to do with Covid – from the plans for the vaccine rollout to travel restrictions to frustrations with anti-vaxxers who deny science…right until they get Covid and end up taking up a bed/unnecessarily wasting healthcare resources to the prospect of CERB being made into some form of a permanent Universal Basic Income program to the “controversy” around vaccine passports.
34. Who did you miss?
Both sets of grandparents were probably less around this year than they’d normally be as we still tried to be fairly cautious, even after being vaccinated.
35. Who was the best new person you met?
I had a new manager (something like the 12th person I reported to in eight years at Regent branch!) who was very good. I also ended up meeting a refugee who’s lived in Canada since the 1970s at a neighbour’s backyard fire pit party and hearing the man’s story of how he came to Canada, raised a family and just his amazing positivity and humour was very refreshing.
36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned this year?
“Don’t pull the ladder up after yourself.” Not sure if this is something I “learned” this year but I just seemed to come across a lot of examples – a refugee who thinks Trudeau lets in too many refugees, a single mom who got a great career after a government program who thinks government programs are too generous, a union member who is willing to sacrifice newly hired employees’ pension benefits as long as they get to keep their own – the list just goes on and on.
37. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year?
When empires are humbled
Before the eyes of the people
And the truth will be like a parade
When industry’s fallen
We’ll make our own clothes now
And gifts of our hands rise again
“You and the Candles” – Hawksley Workman
38. Link to a photo that sums up your year
39. Best App of the Year
Really enjoying Twitter a lot the past couple years – mostly for news and political commentary but also interesting facts, videos and more.
40. What single moment defined your year?
Not a single moment but the cascade of family members getting vaccinated – Shea was first as a HCW then my parents then her parents then me then Pace and wrapping up with Sasha’s first dose in late November and her booster in late December.
41. Best Meal
This is a new category I only added a year or two ago. We participated in a Cajun Fish fundraiser for the family of a local chef who died of Covid. Also had a great meal at the new Dojo Ramen in downtown Regina.
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