Death to squirrels

THE @^x# SQUIRRELS HAVE PULLED UP EVERY SINGLE ONE ON THE CORN SHOOTS!!!!

Wretched rodents.  They didn't eat them, of course, just destroyed them.  (Well, what do you expect from a bunch of American invaders?)

I may head to Walmart to get peanuts and cyanide.  (Or maybe I should start researching a form of myxomatosis for grey squirrels.  See how cute people think you are with tumours hanging off your face and legs.)

Then again, the cyanide may be for me.

I suppose it wouldn't be so bad, except that it's so representative of everything that is happening right now.  Took Gloria to the doctor to get her better.  Fail.  Garden.  Fail.  Find new volunteer work.  Fail.  Get a new church.  Fail.  Find new remunerated work.  Fail.   Get cheap pants.  Fail.  Find new teaching opportunities.  Fail.  Start the Grief Guys project.  Fail.  Build a new social network.  Fail.

So, is this an indication that I should give up gardening?  Or an indication that I should just give up?

Jeans

Speaking of giving things new life, the girls have been commenting on my jeans.  OK, I'll admit that they may look odd.  The last jeans I got, some years back, now, were a 52 inch waist.  I've lost about sixty pounds, almost all of it in the last six months.  I'm cinching my belt in, *and* taking in little folds at the sides of the jeans.  So, yeah, they look a bit odd.  But then, as Gloria noted, my fashion statement (everyone *does* have a fashion statement) is "Hey, I got dressed, didn't I?"

So, I was out walking today, and found myself in the area of the thrift store.  So I stopped in to see if they had anything in my size.  (Last time I looked, I don't think they had anything over a 42.)  This time they had a bit more stock in the larger end, even up to a 48.  I tried a 44, but it was a bit snug, but I got a 46 that seemed OK.  It's black, and flannel lined.  I'm not sure how hot it'll be in the summer, but maybe I will have dropped some more by the time the weather finally turns hot.  Or I can still just use the jeans I've got, if it gets too hot, too soon.

(I am also *definitely* going to wash those jeans, using the "organic" cycle that uses very hot water, and with borax in it, before I wear them.)

I was going to walk down to Scottsdale, where there is a place that does alterations and hemming.  But the forecast was pretty iffy, and the sky was looking weird in that direction, so I just walked home, and then drove to the mall.  (In the end, I would have been able to make it to Scottsdale, but then would have gotten completely soaked on the way home.)

What with the lining, the hemming was more expensive.  I ended up paying more for the hemming than I actually paid for the jeans!  However, even with that being the case, I paid less for the jeans, in total, than I would have paid at retail prices ...

CoVID possibility(?)

Very late yesterday, I got an email from my little brother, informing me that he, and his wife, tested positive for CoVID.  I last saw my little brother fourteen days ago.  I don't have any of the common signs or symptoms of CoVID.  No cough, no fever, and I still smell and taste things just fine.  I have not been tested: these days I have no idea if I even qualify to *get* tested.  I assume I am on the extreme outside edge of the possibility of infection or contagion, and I'm not even sure if "14 days" is still the recommended quarantine time.

As blind, random chance, and my generally non-existent social life, would have it, *yesterday* I had grief group, a monthly lunch group, and an informal, bi-weekly coffee time with the tenants here.  *Today* I have Old Guys Coffee Morning and a Bible study at my emergency backup church.  (I have already sent a warning, and a query as to whether they [both groups] want me to stay away.)  I have warned the groups I was with yesterday.  I have sent a query to the pharmacy as to whether I yet qualify for "rapid" CoVID tests.  (I haven't yet started to research whether there is any possibility of getting tested any other way.)  I have sent a warning to a friend I had lunch with just after I saw my little brother, and Number Two Step-Daughter and Number One Grandson, with whom I had dinner a few days ago.  And a warning to my main church, where I served coffee at Easter service just after I last saw my little brother, and subsequently taught a Sunday School class for the whole Sunday School ...

(Yesterday I also had a practice session with BSidesVancouver, but that was over Hopin, so I doubt there was any risk, there.  If I *do*, by some extreme chance, get CoVID, and have to miss CanSecWest, after I get better I will drive to Ontario and kill my little brother ...)

Squirrels

Gloria used to say that squirrels were just rats with fuzzy tails.  I agree with her.  (Crows, she liked.  She said that they were the bikers of the bird world: they were big, and loud, and ugly, and they didn't care.)

Squirrels have been messing with my garden.  They've dug up some pots that had corn, broad beans, and sunflowers planted in them.  Squirrels are not noted for their long-range planning, or tolerance of delayed gratification.  (Let the sunflowers grow.  Then there'll be lots of seeds you can steal.)  No, they've even been pulling up sunflower *shoots*.  They don't eat them, of course.  But sunflowers don't have any motive power to get from one spot in the garden to another, so my money's on the squirrels.

(Lest you think that I am merely personally petulant about the squirrels because they are interfering with my gardening [or because I am short tempered from only having two hours sleep last night], I have a professional beef with them, as a security maven, as well.  What is the single greatest cause of data loss?  Squirrels.  You think I'm joking?  The single greatest source of data loss, is loss of power.  The single greatest cause of power failures is, you guessed it, squirrels.  Generally when they leap from one power line to another, immolating themselves, but causing a power surge, and a breaker to trip somewhere, and knocking out power to thousands of homes and/or businesses.)

Besides, the squirrels we have around here are an invasive species.  We do have native squirrels in these parts: the red squirrel.  But I've only ever seen one, once.  The other squirrels that multiply and infest our trees, gardens, and trash cans, in these parts, are the grey squirrels.  They are much larger than the red squirrels, and have displaced them, to a large extent.  They were imported, from New York city, by a New Yorker, who missed seeing them in Central Park.  So, like so many American immigrants, they are loud, obnoxious, and destructive.  The Ugly American squirrel.

(Actually, if you read the book, "The Ugly American," you will note that the actual "ugly American" is the good guy, who doesn't deserve all the bad things that happen to him, and certainly doesn't deserve to have his reference used to describe his loud, obnoxious, and destructive compatriots.)

I figure that, once the plants are a reasonable size, the squirrels won't be interested.  So I've brought a few pots into the apartment.  I figure that the seeds won't care if it's dark until they actually sprout, and then I can find some sunny places inside for a bit until they get big enough to transplant.  Of course, the pots leak, so I've had to find some trays for them.

Which brings me to the recycling bins.

It's amazing what you can find a use for, that people simply throw away.  I wrap my composting material in old newspaper, rather than buying the special paper bags for it.  The miniature greenhouse that I gave the youngest Sunday School students (for germinating tomatoes in) is the bottom of an old egg carton, and a clear "clamshell" box that used to contain salad.  (It's what I use for germinating tomatoes, brussels sprouts, and pine trees, myself.)  And I got them from the garbage room in the apartment.  (I don't eat a lot of eggs, these days.)

Giving old things new life?

Not a great week ...

I've had three "weepy" days in the past week, one of them starting just before I was to do a big presentation to the Sunday School at church.  (I managed to keep it together for the presentation, but it wasn't great.)

I have had grief bursts, of course, but not so many so close together for quite a while.

"Weepy" mornings, I find, are often followed by "hungry" afternoons, where it's everything I can do to keep from eating everything in the house, and then going out for more.

Overall, it hasn't been a great week ...

Review: Coca Cola "Starlight"

I tried the new Coca Cola "Starlight" flavour.

It tastes like cotton candy.

Not like cotton candy and Coke.  It just tastes like cotton candy.  Somewhat weird ...

Four and counting ...

First off, there was the space in the patio planter (they are *huge* planters, separating our "private" patios from each other, and the common patio).  The landscapers hadn't done anything with it, and apparently didn't plan to, so I filled it with corn and sunflowers.  Obviously *way* too early, because nothing came up.  I added radishes, which sprouted, and carrots, which didn't.  So I replanted the corn and the carrots, and now I've got at least eleven shoots in the corn area (and the carrot rows are under newspaper, on my baby brother's advice, to keep them moist for a couple of weeks to see if that works).  Today I put in a fair amount of broad beans and more sunflowers.

Then there's the pot garden.  So called because it's all in pots.  But also because the bulk of the pots are left over from the time a family member rented a house, unwittingly, to someone who turned it into a grow-op.  After all the renos, a whole bunch of heavy duty plastic pots were surplus to requirements, so I've got a bunch of them.  They are also in my patio area, but they're portable, so anything I might want to move later tends to go in them.  Most (but not all) of the strawberry runners are in there, and some of the germinating pine trees.  I've got some experiments with "dense packing" of radishes and carrots in some.  I put some broad beans in some, one seed to a pot.  Don't know if those pots are *quite* big enough, but we'll see.

Then there's community garden L.  L rented it, but she's too busy to seed and weed, so it's mine to care for.  (Or neglect.)  There are corn shoots, and at least one of the bean plants *seems* to be trying to come up.  The line of radishes looks great, and the line of carrots is obviously ready to go as soon as we get some sun.  I put a bunch of broad beans in there, amongst the corn.  (Broad beans are good for fixing nitrogen in the soil, so the beans help the corn grow, and the corn helps the beans stand.)  Of the eight sunflower seeds I planted originally, four of them sprouted.  So, today I put some more sunflowers in there, and hopefully we'll get a decent crop.

Then there are the raised beds at my main church.  Still nothing.  Not even the radishes.  Until Easter Sunday, when the tiniest of radish shoots were up.  Which may count as a miracle, since even the day before there was nothing.  It might have been hard to get the kids excited about them if nothing is even sprouting by the time we do the main Sunday School planting lesson tomorrow.

Then there's the community garden for Deltassist.  That'd be five.  If I get it.  I have to go through a criminal record check.  Not, they are not looking for carrot-nappers.  Mostly Deltassist deals with people, not plant plots.  So all volunteers have to have a basic criminal record check to see if it's OK for them to deal with youth and vulnerable populations.  (I've been through them before for ESS, so I don't foresee any problems.  Interesting changes in the way you apply for a criminal record check these days.)

Then I was talking to W, at my emergency backup church, about the raised beds at my main church, and he's interested in doing that, if he can get it going.  And I'd probably lead that, so that'd be six.

So, what with having no background in gardening or farming, and not liking to get my hands dirty, what the heck am I doing with at least four gardens, and possibly six?  Well, for a security maven, that answer is obvious.  I've taught business continuity and disaster recovery for twenty years.  Obviously, I seriously believe in redundant backup ...

Twitter takeover

Elon Musk has said that he wants to buy Twitter.  The Twitter Board is having cat fits, and has implemented a "poison pill" stock manipulation that would make it more difficult or expensive.

Right now, I don't care.

I should care.  Prior to Gloria's death, I would have cared quite a bit.  I used Twitter a lot, as a source of news.  Even checking immediate and local news.  It was a bit amazing, how quickly you could check on the results of hockey games (when Shaw's TV cable went down just before a close game ended), or traffic, or details of some earth-shaking event that was changing minute by minute.  (You had to know how to use it, of course.  Twitter is also full of the most appalling garbage ...)

Partly I don't care about news right now.  I still record the news (both the local and the national news) every night.  I just don't watch it very much.  Sometimes I watch the weather, and pretty much always I try to watch "Satellite Debris."  But I've lost patience with the repetitive round of stories, and the lack of analysis and detail.  I am reading Twitter a bit, to see if anything actually new does happen, but mostly it doesn't.

But I doubt I will care later, either.  At some point my life will edge back to "normal."  But "normal" is going to be different.  And the world is going to be different.  So, whether Twitter is still around, and still worth following, is just one of the things I'll have to adjust to.  It's not a big deal ...

Review: “Creating an Information Security Program from Scratch,” by Walter Williams

There are plenty of tools we could talk about for those who already have a security program in place.  What have we got if you don’t?

(There are, of course, those long in the field, who seriously wish that they could start over from scratch.  This book might act as a reminder that might get them out of the weeds long enough to see an approach or tool they might have overlooked.)

Walter Williams has taken on that task.  What happens when you, as possibly the crack firewall expert on the tech team, are suddenly noticed by the boss, who, out of the blue, decides that the company needs a CISO, and you’re it.  You’ve got the whole corporate infosec world in your hands, and you’d better not drop it.

Chapter one correctly states that you can start with either risk assessment or compliance, and lists, in detail, that tools available to you for both.  Williams includes the top level security frameworks that can act as your guides into the labyrinth that is information security, and notes the strengths, and areas of emphasis, of each.  This provides you with not only a starting point, but resources that will aid your throughout your security career.

From there, Williams moves into policy, and the supporting documentation around it.  Without policy you can have no security, because you don’t know what it is you are protecting, and why.  Included in this chapter is an initial foray into the importance of planning, which will come back in myriad forms as you move deeper into security processes.

Asset management jumps from the high level viewpoint down into the weeds and details.  However, that is a jump that you frequently have to make in security.  You have no security without an overall vision, but you have no protection without having the correct controls in place and working.  Assets, and the controls meant to protect them, have vulnerabilities, and so managing those is vital as well.

Overall planning is important, but very soon you are going to be putting out fires, known in the trade as incidents.  Note that Williams does not, at this point, give you a full guide to business continuity or disaster recovery planning, which would require an entire book of its own.  He does, however, point you to yet more frameworks in the fields, which will get you started in that direction.

Then it’s back to assets, in this case the “endpoint,” or what the user tends to interact with.  The author provides an overview of both the various problems which you will likely encounter in this realm, and a variety of protections you may wish to choose, depending upon your specific security posture.  From there Williams moves to email security, an issue common to pretty much any end user these days.

From the user, it is back to the technical team, and the issues with your networking and telecommunications.  Note that I say “issues”: the full range of every possible detail that you need to know would need a very fat book indeed, and several of those are available when you want to go there.  Somewhat more detail, or at least the structures and processes that you will need, are addressed in the chapter on software development.

After the introduction to incidents, earlier in the work, Williams now turns to disasters, and disaster recovery.  This is addressed from the disaster recovery, rather than the business continuity, angle, which is probably wise, as a company in the first round of a security program probably has neither the maturity, nor the resources, to prepare a full business continuity plan.

In the chapter on access control, Williams spends a good deal of time outlining some of the formal theories and models behind the controls.  This is far from a waste of time.  Tuning an access control system in terms of details can waste a good deal of effort and resources if those controls do not protect in the way you think or assume that they will.  Looking at the formal models should get you used to understanding what a system will, and won’t, do for you.

Spend a lot of time with chapter twelve, “Human Issues.”  As the author notes up front, too many security specialists take it for granted that people are the problem.  People are your greatest weakness, in security, but they are, paradoxically and at the same time, your greatest security asset.  Make your people aware, and get them onside.

Williams finishes with the concept of organizational maturity.  This is an important concept, but readers may be distracted by the accompanying material on metrics and data presentation.

This is a solid, and comprehensive, guide for those who have to start securing an enterprise from square one.  It may appear to jump around from topic to topic, and from the overall view to the details.  Get used to it.  That’s what security is like.

Weepy

Today is a very weepy day. Which hasn't happened in a while. I've had grief bursts, of course, on a fairly regular basis, but today they are a lot more common and frequent.

I can't think of anything, in particular, to account for it. My cousin has pushed me to go on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, and I'm reading a book on it. However, other than having seen "The Way" a few times, which Gloria and I both enjoyed, I can't think why that would be a big issue. (Reading some bits out of "Walking to the End of the World" does seem to trigger bursts, but nothing so far is terribly profound, and I just seem to be easily triggered today.)

Grief Guys on hold?

 Maybe God is having me garden, to teach me patience, while waiting for all the people who say that they are really eager to try out the Grief Guys idea, sit around and (presumably) talk about how they feel about it, and don't actually think or do or plan anything.

Maybe God is giving me the garden as a distraction, to keep from losing it while waiting ...

Replika

From RISKS 33:15:

[...]

Grieving Mazurenko, Kuyda read their messages over and over again. At some point, she realized that these messages had the potential to be more than just a memory. She took all the data she had and, with her team and using Google-based neural networks, built a chatbot version of Mazurenko. The result was surprisingly human-like. She could text with the chatbot on past and future events, and digital Mazurenko came to life and felt real.  Digital Mazurenko was sad when she told him how much she missed him and joyful when she shared with him her recent achievements at her company.

[...]

Some people wanted to build a replica of themselves, and some wanted to build a bot for a person that they loved but was gone. These positive reactions encouraged Kuyda and her team to go further—to create fictitious characters that accompany people around the world. Replika is now a companion chatbot app available on almost any operating system with the slogan: ``Always here to listen and talk. Always on your side.'' Millions have downloaded the app, and it boasts hundreds of thousands of reviews, most highly positive.

[...]

https://news.yahoo.com/uncanny-future-romance-robots-already-013111368.html

As a grieving widower, I am more than a little freaked out by the implications of this. Being able to build a "perfect" friend is one level of self delusion. But the bereaved are already in danger from inappropriate relationships. The bereaved suffer extreme and desperate loneliness, not just from the loss of a loved one, but from social isolation, because most of their friends and family do not understand the depth of real grief. Couple that with the existing tendency to "converse" with the dead loved one (which can be healthy at some point in the grieving process, but can become an obsession), and the temptation to recreate a "Markov chain" replica (Replika?) can create a really (psychologically) dangerous situation.

(I've got a whole bunch of Gloria's email messages, going back possibly thirty years. Should I try it out? Would the "uncanny valley" freak me out? Would I become obsessed if it was too good?)

Growing patience?

Maybe I need to learn patience with this gardening thing.  I seem to have spoken (blogged?) too soon.  Some things are sprouting.

Mind you, it still seems weird.  I obviously planted the corn, originally, too early.  Nothing came up.  So I replanted it all, and now, only a week after I did, some things are sprouting!

So I replanted all the carrots along the line that didn't sprout.  Mind you, I coddled that first line, and the stuff I put in the pots I never paid any attention to.  And the pots sprouted, and the line didn't.  And the line that I put in the community garden, and didn't coddle, sprouted too.  Carrots like neglect?  Unlike what I was told?

The stuff I had the kids put in the church beds hasn't done a thing.  Not even the radishes.  This could get dicey.

On the other hand, the tomatoes and brussel sprouts that I "started" in a little greenhouse has sprouted so fast that I've had to put them out before I intended to.

I still don't have this stuff down pat ...

Good Friday handout

Went to the Good Friday service at my main church.  They provided a handout at the service.  They also provided pens, so I guess you could fill it out and leave it there.

The handout started with scripture, Matthew chapter 26, verses 38 and 40.

Then a bit of commentary.

Then some questions.

Q1 - What word or phrase from these verses feels important for you?

Easy.  "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death."

Q2 - How is your life affected by that word or phrase?

That *is* my life right now.

Q3,4 - What is God inviting you to do with this word or phrase?  What action does He want you to take in the weeks ahead?

Absolutely no idea ...

Pedometer(s) review(s)

A couple of people have been asking about how many "steps" I take when I do the walks, and suggested getting a pedometer.  Baby brother suggested that there was always an app for these types of things.  So I got a couple, and did a bit of a trial by fire with them, on a walk over to Queensborough Landing and back.

"Step Counter - Pedometer," by Leap Fitness, reported 28881 steps today (mostly to Queensborough and back, but I did do some gardening before I got around to checking it).

"Pedometer - Step Counter App," from ITO Technologies,  Inc., reported 19917.

I have no idea which, or whether either, is accurate. I like the way Leap reports better than ITO. Leap asks for your height and weight, and so probably is doing a better job in terms of measuring distance and calories burned. But then, who knows how accurate either is, with a disparity like that just in terms of reporting the number of steps. Leap is definitely *WAY* worse as a battery drain. The Leap app has drained almost half the charge from the battery in less than a single day. Further testing has revealed that the ITO app underreports distance by a fair amount. This makes its reports on steps and calories questionable. Leap overreports distance, but by a lesser amount.

I also added Google Fit to the test.  Google Fit gives me slightly *more* steps and distance than the Leap Step Counter.  I'm a little suspicious given the distance that I walked this morning.  (I suspect Leap is the most accurate of the three, but, given the variations, I'm not willing to trust anybody just yet.)  (And you will note that I'm *completely* ignoring the calorie estimates so far.)  I do like the fact that Google Fit allows me to record my weight and blood pressure, which will allow me to keep track of both on an ongoing basis.  Unfortunately, Google Fit seems to be just as much of a battery hog as Leap.

Leap does allow you to "pause" the step counting function, and that pause button, if you notice it, is on the main page.  Google Fit, on the other hand, requires that you go to your profile, go to your settings, find that "Track activity" setting, and turn it off.  Mind you, on Google Fit, once you turn it off, it stays off, and you save battery until you turn it back on again.  Leap resets to unpaused and active counting every time you turn the phone off and back on again.  Which means it starts draining the battery again ...

Broad beans

I have found broad beans!

Well, actually, I have found broad beans, and I have also found seeds to *grow* broad beans!  The Big Bazaar got in some broad beans recently, which prompted me to start searching for the seeds.  Which I finally found.

Broad beans, also known as fava beans, are a seasonal rarity in the produce sections of grocery stores.  (Yes, yes, I know, "Fava beans and a nice Chianti."  I had a vague idea that "fava" beans might have been broad beans harvested when slightly younger or less mature, but fava just seems to be another name.  Younger beans can be eaten pods and all.)  In fact, in the major chains, you probably never see them at all.  (The seed packets that I found are labelled "heirloom" seeds.)  You generally only find broad beans once a year, if at all.  They are harder to find, in the stores, than raspberries.  Probably due to the rarity, they are expensive, and then, when you do get them, you seem to waste a lot of them, since you have to throw away what seems like three pounds of pods, just to get a half a cup of the beans, themselves.

Gloria loved broad beans.  Actually, I don't know if she liked eating them all that much.  (I have no idea whether or not I cooked them right.  In fact, I know I didn't cook them the best way.)  In an excess of caution, I tended to boil them for at least half an hour, based on a vague knowledge that *some* bean varieties, if you don't cook them enough, contain an astonishing quantity of toxins.  I suspect, but haven't confirmed, that more often people fry them in butter, but, due to the aforementioned concerns about toxins, I never experimented with that.  (I never knew about "double podding" until I did some research while writing this.)

What Gloria really loved about broad beans, I suspect, was that her grandfather grew them.  He always had a garden, wherever they lived, and broad beans were one of the things he grew.

So, I've found some seed packets for broad beans.  (I got them at Walmart.  I'm gaining a little [very little] respect for Walmart's range of seed varieties, in comparison to other non-specialty places where you can get seeds.)  I got a couple of packets.  Given the fact that Walmart is the *only* place I've found them, so far, I'm awfully tempted to get more and save them for future years, but that's not really how seeds work.  (I probably will give in and get a couple more packets to save for the future ...)  I'm definitely going to put some broad beans into at least two of the gardens this year, probably in with the corn.  The articles I've read say that they are easy to grow.  When the pods first form the bumps of seeds inside, they can be eaten, whole, raw.  When they get to be two or three inches, or six centimetres, long, they can be cooked and eaten like green beans.  When full grown, you can double pod the beans, and, since double-podding usually involves blanching, you can just eat the seeds after that.  And apparently the seeds are nice mashed, as a paste or spread.

OK, another grief burst.  I've never been any good as a gardener, and we couldn't do much in the townhouse anyway, but, apparently, broad beans can be grown in pots.  (As long as they are big pots.) So, the whole time we were married, I could have grown broad beans.  And we could have experimented with the various stages of them.  And I let Gloria down.  Yet again ...

Talking to the dead

I tell people that I don't talk to Gloria, as some bereaved talk to their loved ones.

That isn't completely true.  I do talk to Gloria.  Like when I am trying to peel the skin off a desiccated mandarin orange, while doing a stir-fry of Indian eggplant, zucchini, vegetable marrow, and carrots, when I would much rather be going and getting a burger with poutine on the side, I often tell her, "See?  I'm eating fruits and vegetables.  Are you happy?"

All hail!

Weird weather yesterday.  I went through at least five pretty major hailstorms (well, "corn snow," anyway) on my walk up to Deltassist to volunteer to help with the community garden for the food bank.  In places the hail accumulation might have been up to an inch deep.

My existing gardens seem to have come through OK, and might even benefit from the deposits of hail that might release moisture a little more slowly than usual.  One of the tomato plants was decapitated (don't know if it'll try to grow new leaves), but three others seem to be fine.

Not walking

I've decided that I'm not actually walking.

I'm turning the world, with my feet, until the place that I want comes close.

(I'd apologize for disrupting things for the rest of you, except that, so far, nobody has seemed to notice.)

It is a good day to ...

Midway through a walk to Queensborough. Acid test of 2 different pedometers on the 2 phones. (Pedometers are battery hogs.)

Lovely sunny day, and, from the top of the bridge, you can see from horizon to horizon. My back was sweating under my vest, and my bare arms were FREEZING! Strong (and cold) outflow winds down the valley.

About 10AM the whole four northbound lanes of the Alex Fraser slowed to not much faster than I was walking. Nice not to have trucks blowing past, but probably frustrating for the drivers. (From the patterns at the division, looked like some problem on the connector.)

I have noticed a homeless camp beside the Annacis Channel. Somebody has a small farm down there: at least one sheep and one chicken  :-)

Sundays are the worst

I'm starting, barely starting, to get some schedule back in my schedule.  My *days* are pretty free-form, but I'm starting to get some appointments, and even have a couple of weekly events on my calendar these days.

But Sundays are the worst, for sitting around staring at the blank walls.

Partly I suppose it may be because I'm still doing "digital detox" on Sundays, and I don't do email in the morning.  (I guess the email is a bit of schedule, although now I tend to do it at 5 AM rather than the 10 AM that I used to.  And there's generally less of it.)  But I also go to church on Sunday morning, so that's a bit of weekly schedule.  But, in a sense, that merely sets up the fact that, for the rest of the day, I have nothing to do.

I do fill the nothing, of course.  I did the final work on the taxes on a Sunday, and various gardening tasks.  But mostly there is nothing to do, and nobody to see, and Sunday is a pretty glum prospect.  I often watch a couple of movies (at high speed).  As the weather improves, I may go for longer walks on Sunday, but, right now with the cold and rain, it's not a great prospect.

Maybe I'm gardening wrong?

So, the line of radish seeds that I planted outside my office window seem to have sprouted.  So have the line of radish seeds that we planted in the community garden.  On the other hand, the radishes that I put into a pot *don't* seem to have sprouted.  (But, if they didn't, then where did the radish sprouts comes from on the *surface* of that pot, which seemed to have been pulled up by the birds, and which I lovingly *re*-planted in another pot?)

The two pots that I sprinkled carrot seeds onto seem to have some remarkably similar sets of tendrils coming up out of the soil.  But the line of carrot seeds that I planted outside of the office, and the other one in the community garden, have so far produced nothing at all.

The "volunteer" Swiss Chard (although I don't know this stuff, and they may be Austrian, for all I know) that was left over in the community garden, and which I replanted in a line, seems, if anything, to be shrinking.

None of the corn has sprouted yet.  And my attempt at germinating pines appears, so far, to be a complete and unremediated failure.

I'm not very good at this.

Arthritis?

I've been having a dull ache in my hands.  I've noticed that it gets worse when they are cold, and that it eases when I stick my hands under a hot tap.

I think I've got arthritis.  After all, I'm old, and old people tend to get arthritis.

So, I'm thinking I need to keep my hands warm.  Fortunately, thinking that Gloria was going to be here, one of the things I *didn't* throw out in the move was a bunch of gloves that we had, and, because they were separate, I also didn't throw them out with Gloria's clothes.  So I tried a pair today, and it seems to have worked.  My hands didn't get as cold, and didn't get as sore.  (Wearing gloves is a bit of a nuisance when shopping, but I'll have to work that out.)

As Gloria's Grama Campbell often said, old age is not for wimps.

Alert!

It's handy having two different phones with two different plans from two different providers.  For example, I have now been able to confirm that, regardless of the type of phone, or the provider, or any alerting service that you may be signed up with, you *don't* get any of the supposedly universal alerts from the government or emergency services unless you have a data plan.  (And unless you are actually using that plan, at the time of the alert.)

Which, given mobile/cell service pricing in Canada, means you don't get any warning of disasters unless you're rich.

It also means that, even if you are rich, if you have set your phone to pick up on your wifi at home, you won't get alerts at home, either.

Immediate

"We must get together some time!"

How about now?  Does now work for you?

When you suffer a loss, plans and schedules go out the window.  To some extent this is only natural: a lot of your plans involved whoever you have lost.  But a lot of this seems to be a part of grief.  I imagine the grief industry would hypothesize that your loss makes you unwilling to plan because the loss makes you insecure about what is going to happen in the future.  Possibly that is the case.  All I know is that it's been *really* hard to make *any* kind of schedule, and I have to make concerted and conscious efforts (and it is an effort) to enter *everything* into the calendar (including supposedly normal and common things like paying the rent), and then check the calendar regularly.  Having failed to remember several things, I've now become a bit paranoid, and tend to check the calendar multiple times per day.

If I remember to.

Everything becomes very immediate.  If it isn't immediate, it's hard to remember.  If you want to make an appointment with me for two weeks later, you'd better follow-up and make sure that I've entered it in the calendar.  And then you'd better check, closer to the date, to make sure that I remember that I have an appointment.

Sleeping more

I think I may finally be getting the hang of this "sleep" thing.  (Maybe.)

Oddly, I find that I am somewhat nostalgic for the extra five hours of working time that I don't have anymore ...

Grief is definitely weird ...

Societal misbehaviour and pandemic grief - conspiracies

 It is now three and a half months since Gloria died, and, in my male-oriented, cognitive, instrumental style I am trying to figure out how I am supposed to get through this.  So I am studying grief.  (I am interested to note that current thinking in the professional grief industry seems to have abandoned the Kubler-Ross-ian "stages" of grief in favour of "everybody grieves in their own way.)

At the same time, I am trying not to be too inward focussed, and attempting to keep up with current events, as depressing as they are.  And I am finding some intriguing correspondences between the two sets.

While everyone may grieve in their own way, there are at least three very common factors that almost all bereaved persons seem to encounter.  Apparently the most common is problems with sleeping and sleep deprivation.  But pretty much equally common is unreasoning anger and loneliness.

I have already noted the relationship between misbehaviour and anger.  But I've noticed another strange factor: the entrenchment of weird positions and conspiracy theories that appear to have only grown stronger since they first started coming to the fore in the "post-truth" world a few years back.  QAnon, the Canadian (and copy-cat American) "convoys," and totally bizarre ideas about vaccines and 5G chips abound.  Once again, a symptom of grief may offer an explanation.

The bereaved feel intense loneliness.  This would appear to be understandable, given the loss of a spouse or close family member or friend.  But the loneliness goes beyond what might be explained by the loss of that single relationship.  We are a social species.  Relationships are vitally important to us.  (In evolutionary terms, that "vital" is literal.  "The pack" is one of the major factors in our survival.  So we have had millions of years to embed the importance of relationships in our psyche.)  So the loneliness is not just a result of the loss of that one relationship, but of relationship in general.

And, what has happened during the pandemic?  We have been isolated.  Our relationships have been, in some cases severed, and in almost all cases damaged.  We are lonely.  And we are grieving the loss of relationship.

We have found ways to try and repair or rebuild relationships.  Our conferences have become Zoom meetings, as unsatisfying as they may be.  We spend more time on the phone to make up for the lack of face-to-face meetings.  We spend more (allowable) time shopping at the grocery store, "interacting" with the clerks.  And, we have tried to form new and stronger relationships where we can.

Sometimes these new ways of dealing with loneliness work, or partly work.  And sometimes they go weirdly awry.  The bereaved are, partly because of desperate loneliness and partly due to sleep deprivation and lack of judgment, in real danger of forming inappropriate relationships.  And many members of society seem to have fallen into weirdly inappropriate relationships with cult-like conspiracy groups.  I was very struck by the statement, by one member of the Canadian "convoy" who found himself in legal trouble, that he didn't know how he found himself in this position, since he really didn't believe what the representatives of the "convoy" were saying.  He just found himself going along with his new "crowd."  This type of "groupthink" may also go a long ways to explain why Poutine has been able to peddle absolute nonsense to his populace and have a majority believe it.

There are indications that we may be in the end stages of the pandemic.  (It's dangerous to make predictions, especially about the future.)  The fallout from the pandemic will provide fodder for academic studies in a variety of fields for years to come.  But I strongly suspect that we are all grieving, and we need to be careful, as we deal with that grief, that we do not do so in ways that are destructive to us, to others, and to society as a whole.

Hoodie

I am wearing my CanSecWest hoodie.

So what? you may say.

Well, this is a big deal because first of all, I have, after years of submitting presentation proposals to CanSecWest (mostly because Dragos, even if he didn't accept me as a speaker, would sometimes take pity on me and give me a free registration just for submitting, and it's always a ton of fun attending the conference), finally had one accepted, and I'll be speaking at the conference this year.  As a two-hour "workshop," no less.

But also because the "wearable" swag from CanSecWest was always too small for me.  Lots was just too desperately small and I gave it back, but the hoodie we kept because, even if it was too small for me, it was big enough for Gloria.  So, my one piece of CanSecWest swag that was kept became Gloria's.  She wore it quite a lot.

I've dropped weight.  Which was rather a surprise to me, since "stress eating" is basically my default activity.  So, when I realized that I had lost about 25 pounds during the course of Gloria's illness, and *kept* losing weight over the move and resettlement, I figured I should at least try to capitalize on the loss, and keep going.  (Dieting tends to be a rather selfish or self-centred activity, and, since I no longer have to worry about anybody else's meals, I can use my "all-or-nothing" personality trait to best advantage.)  I've lost thirty pounds since Gloria died, and I'm down around eighty from my highest weight a few years back.

So, today, after folding the laundry (which always makes me feel inadequate because, even if I can do it, it's never as good as it would have been if Gloria had done it), I was hanging up my other pair of newly hemmed jeans, and found a BSides hoodie.  And I could get into it.  Quite handily, as opposed to the squeeze that it must have been earlier.  And then I found that I'd kept the CanSecWest hoodie after Gloria died.  And I tried it on.  And *it* fit.

So, I'm wearing my CanSecWest hoodie.  Because I can.  And possibly because it was Gloria's.

And now there's tears on it ...