Coronavirus in Hintonburg: Week One

One full week after heavy coronavirus restrictions started getting implemented in Ottawa, the world is a different place.

The week started pretty grim.  The last time I visited a grocery store and there was a palatable sense of dread in the air. All toilet paper was gone off the shelves, as was rice and most pasta.  Seriously, this is the first time in my life I felt scared...at a grocery store.
 
This past Saturday though things were a different story. I returned to the store to find that it had implemented reasonable limits on how much customers could buy of particular products (generally two or less).

No more stockpiling crackers

There were still some products that were mostly drained, but as 99% of food items were available. There was even a few packages of toilet paper, the holy grail of hoarded items.

On the right, pasta. On the left, a few lonely packages of toilet paper were left.

Despite being lectured by our Prime Minister today, I think boring ol' Canadians are for the most part rule followers. We generally don't see the crazy scenes you see in Australia or the UK over here. Maybe things will change, but for the most part I think Canadians are ahead of the game when it comes to implementing reasonably tough rules that allow for life to somewhat go on. We'll see where things stand next week though!

p.s. I do want to give a shout out to grocery store employees everywhere. They are true heroes in all of this. I don't think the pampered classes (I include myself in that category) realizes just how lucky we are to have hard working employees like this to basically keep the food network from collapsing.

Coronavirus in Hintonburg: Week Zero

With a pandemic currently ripping around the world it was inevitable that my little world in Hintonburg would be afftected. Although the coronavirus has been in the news for months it was only last week that it really hit home just how much this is going to change my life.

In future posts I'll blog about how we're coping with the school closures, event cancellations and travel restrictions but for this first post I'd like to focus on the few nice moments that made up my last semi-normal weekend before my family went into self-imposed isolation.

The reason we were able to think about something other than coronavirus is because my brother and his lovely family were visiting Ottawa for the weekend.

On Saturday we were able to enjoy a few fun moments at a local sugar shack, Fulton Sugar Bush. This was a good activity for us because for the most part we were quite far from other people and were simply wandering the trails or goofing around with some of the home made props.

So true

On Sunday I tried something new. Way back in 2011 I started a new hobby: birding. I'm still doing it. I love how the hobby forces me to pay attention to details and gives me an excuse to go outside. I'm sortof an advanced amateur. I don't have any serious camera equipment but I do like to look for birds when I can. Well, the new thing I tried on Sunday was using a website, ebird, to track down a specific species of bird that had been seen in the area. And guess what? It worked! On Sunday I saw my first ever Snowy Owl in the wild!

"Who" are you?

This blew me away for a few reasons. First, we tracked down a white owl in the middle of a white field.

20 minutes from my house but a world away

Second because I was able to convince Glossette Girl and Margot to go along with this crazy scheme to go look for an owl in minus seven degree temperature with the wind howling around us. Amazingly, not only did they go along - they liked it!

The troops muster for the journey

If you ever see people cheering in a field in the middle of nowhere...they're birders

Anyways, it was a moment of joy that distracted us from our present woes. We're going to be responsible and stay isolated from other people (including my extended family) now. But it was a nice while it lasted.

Guest Post: Self Improvement

Continuing the them of personal growth from my last post, I thought I would invite Glosette Girl to  do a guest post on some of the self improvement activities she's done recently. The results were, let's say...interesting!

First question: "what self improvement activities have you done?"

Did you spot the cat cameo?
Second question: "why is self improvement important for you?"

And the bonus behind-the-scenes question: "what is your name?"

I guess now you know Glosette Girl's name!

p.s we had fun filming these if you can't tell.

Learning at 40

I've written blog posts in the past about the challenges that come with teaching my little girl. Sometimes she succeeds, other times she stumbles. But no matter what I hope she learns something and continues to grow. Because you know what, even at 40 years old I'm still learning!

If there is one quality I'm not particularly proud of about myself it's that I'm stubborn. I love going out and doing activities, and usually they turn out to be great adventures. But sometimes they don't turn out so well and I have a hard time admitting defeat.

Last year, in the early spring, Margot Jen and I rented an off-grid cabin in the Quebec woods northwest of Ottawa. Next door to the cabin was a trail that I had planned on going for a walk on. What I hadn't planned on, however, was the 3-foot deep snow that we sunk into every step we took. Unfortunately, I pushed my gang a little hard to keep going and they weren't too pleased with me (to put it mildly).

Unhappy cookies

This past weekend we booked a one-night house rental in the opposite direction - northeast of Ottawa near Eganville, Ontario. On the way to our rental I planned a trip to Dacre Heights, which supposedly was a place where we could do free cross-country skiing. However, when we got there and tried skiing the trails, we realized that you had to be an expert to do them as you were essentially skiing up a massive hill on ungroomed trails.

Not exactly gliding on the slopes...

Did I want to keep going? Yes!

But this time, instead of pushing Margot and Glosette Girl to complete an impossible and un-fun challenge, I reined back my stubborn instincts and called it quits.

Guess this ol' dog can still learn. Fortunately, later that afternoon, we found another trail elsewhere and ended up having a great time on properly groomed and do-able trails. They were still steep...but in a fun way (i.e. the trails sometimes went downhill)!