Bellini-induced Brain Freeze

Mom and baby sister are pretty much going stir-crazy and I'm being too lenient of a "parent" and not enforcing the social distancing measures enough. Sunday morning I grabbed some coffee for the three of us and a bagel for my breakfast (I miss my lazy Sunday brunches with Butch so much) and got to the house in time for the 10am livestream of our Bishop celebrating mass downtown...only the livestream did not seem to be working. So we watched a YouTube video of mass from Toronto and ordered our lunch for delivery from Big T's BBQ for 1:30. I then brought them to Superstore to do their grocery shopping. Weird Kid and I have been trying to get mom to give us her shopping list but she purposefully withholds the info because she needs it as a reason to get out of the house. Superstore was pretty good at keeping things clean -- I have not seen these types of measures at Walmart. As soon as we came in with a shopping cart from the parking lot they came and sprayed the h...

I'm still a whole post behind my Lenten commitment. I need to blog earlier in the evening so I can actually get it done before bed. Yesterday was my second-to-last shift at the travel office. Not a single phone call but I did have a few emails to action. A couple asking what their options are for changing the dates on their summer honeymoon; with everything going on right now they're not sure if their wedding date is going to remain the same. And then also wedding related I had a room/family cancel out of a destination wedding group. Neither client purchased travel insurance and also their travel dates are outside of the flexibility policy in place with the travel suppliers right now. I handled everything as business as usual which felt very strange given I do not like handing off my clients/work to someone else to handle...but I will be forced to do that after next Saturday. Pairing that with me loading up three bags of my personal belongings at the end of my shift and ...

Yesterday started like pretty much all the other days this week. Woke up, breakfast, set up the basement for my work-mode and got to it, and the bird on the roof continued on with his "construction" activities. Before my first break of the day my watch went nuts letting me know I was getting a call on my cell. It was not a name I recognized it so I easily ignored it, besides I was on a call. And then the same number called again. Still on a call so again, dismiss. The person left a voicemail so, fine, I made note to check it once I was on break. But then my doorbell rang over and over again. At this point I got really nervous because it reminded me much to vividly of how Weird Kid tried to wake me up on the day that dad passed away. I started thinking worrisome thoughts but I was still on a call so I couldn't answer the door. After I got off my call I set my status to away and ran to my phone to see what in the world was going on. The person at the door was th...

20 minutes left in my birthday. I survived. I worked the early shift today and yeah, the early start made it a little brutal to get out of bed. The bonus of telecommuting at least is that it buys me an extra hour of sleep. Some of my calls were pretty long but it was satisfying to be able to help them all. One lady actually had the same birthday as me! I wished her a happy birthday but she said after you hit (a certain age past mine) it just becomes another day. Maybe this is the start of that sort of feeling for me? Thankfully I was able to make it to my parents house so that my baby sister, mom, and I could all get in on the FaceTime date with my grandma. I did not factor in her routine when I made the appointment and so she actually spoke with us while she was in bed as they woke her from her nap. XP The smile on her face when she us though...I'm sure she thought it was worth the wakeup call. Mercifully she did not ask when we were going to see her again, and even tho...

So the travel office had a conference call with the rest of the corporate offices this morning -- of course I was not able to attend because I was busy doing my work with the call centre but I had a feeling I knew what was about to go down. Sure enough, when I checked my travel email during my lunch break an email advising me of my "temporary layoff" was waiting for me. I figured it was an easy decision for them to make since I am only there for a handful of hours each week, with little sales to show for it at this time. If my layoff meant that the office would have an easier time staying afloat then I was fine with that. To be honest, if it was a permanent layoff, although it would have been very sad, it might have been just the kick I needed to move on 100%. What I had not expected, though, was that they were effectively "temporarily" closing all of our offices down. Here in Calgary there will only be three senior consultants maintaining all of our current c...

The bird on our roof definitely has a project he's working on. Jackhammers on our roof every day now. The lady who runs recreation at my Grandma's nursing home was great and reached out to me almost exactly when I started my lunch break. Unfortunately, they can only arrange FaceTime during regular business hours. So I made an appointment to visit with her on Thursday after my shift. Butch suggested I see if my team leader will let me leave my shift early so I can try and make it to the parents house and have grandma FaceTime with all of us at the same time. Hopefully, I can encourage mom and baby sister to make more FaceTime appointments since they are the ones who have the time when this opportunity is available. Also, our city's health department announced that Calgary has suffered its first fatality due to COVID-19 and it was a vulnerable 80 year old lady living in an assisted living facility. This fills me with so much fear and sadness. It validates all my conc...

A full day solo. So. Weird. The crazy bird on our roof made sure I wasn't completely alone, though. :P Instead of making my lunch last night I left it till my actual lunch break to put it together. Unfortunately I missed grandma's nursing home returning my call. Hopefully I'll reach them tomorrow during my lunch. My day went pretty quickly with only a few hiccups when the system would disconnect me. It's definitely strange working all alone in the basement, very lonesome. I still feel like I covered as many calls as I usually do at the call centre. After I signed off for the day I took a walk to the mailbox. I got a birthday card from Daisy and her family. She has always been a fan of regular mail and I think right now with COVID-19 keeping us all in our respective homes her card was a very nice touch...even with phone calls and FaceTime and texts at our disposal it's still all so quiet and lonely. I tried facetiming with my sister but mom bogarted her ...

Butch left this morning for his work up on site. It's going to be so weird in the house without him all week. So much last minute modifications up until even half an hour before he left. I sincerely hope the trip up there isn't a waste and they get the job done so he does not have to go back up there. I also hope they stay safe and warm. I was going to head over to my parents house soon after he left but I ended up putzing around a little while. This morning there was a bird on our rooftop that was hammering on our vent pipe quite rhythmically, almost like someone with a little jackhammer was knocking on our roof. Butch threw a pine cone at it to make it go away but the little guy was oblivious and persistent. :P But soon after Butch left the bird stopped pecking away. He might have come back while I was out of the house but I did not hear much for the extra hour or so I was here at home. Unfortunately we never did get to have FaceTime with grandma. And with the wa...

After working at the travel office I set out to grab the rest of what I needed (wanted?) for my work setup. Luckily I scoped out some websites for a corded phone that would meet my requirements. Almost of them were only available online; London Drugs had one available at my nearby store so I promptly purchased it for in-store pickup. And then over to the ReStore to hopefully find a decent deal on an office chair. $30 -- and it has some of those adjusting levers so it makes it more "ergonomic." Thank goodness it fit in my car. :P Even though I was fine with the price of the phone I just couldn't rest until I absolutely knew I exhausted all options. I took a look at the Buy & Sell and shockingly they had no phones. The WIN thrift store had one but it had a built-in answering machine and I could not be sure that it would not complicate the whole system so I passed and stuck with my initial purchase. Then I impulse bought the puzzle pieces tray set I saw at the ...

Quite a few people were super cranky today -- I wonder if all the self-isolating is making everyone a little nutty. I spent a few hours at the travel office sorting out my clients some more and my colleague was over hearing about anything COVID-19. A stark contrast to Wednesday when I popped by and they were listening to the press conferences non-stop live-streaming it into the office. After I got my client's ticket reissued I went over to the parents' house to have fish and chips with the family and to get mom and baby sis' cable subscription renewed and repriced. Somehow while I was sitting in the living room after lunch mom and Weird Kid had a conversation between the two of them that he did not want to hear of any more. So he quickly departed, but he also had to go back to working from home. Then when I finished sorting out the cable (after a half hour nap waiting for a call back and then an additional 2.5 hour hold!) and mom checked their voicemail. She did not ...

You deserve a cookie if you know where that line is from. Life is definitely imitating a (poorly scripted) sci-fi movie. COVID-19 policies everywhere keep changing. Kinjo Sushi on Tuesday announced that, as per AHS recommendations, they were going to cut the customer capacity by 50% or 50 guests, whichever is less. The next day they sent out another announcement that the dining rooms were now closed and only takeout and delivery options remained. This morning my teammates and I came into work to do our thing; our team leader came in when he was scheduled off (is that a problem given the 50% on 50% off rotational work schedule?) because he knew we had lots of questions and just to put us more at ease. Before he left early that afternoon he let us know that tomorrow we were scheduled off again...if he didn't call us over the weekend then we could expect to be at the office on Monday. Maybe an hour later his leader-partner was coming over to all of us asking if we had landlin...

So last night while we were having dad's birthday dinner my team leader called my cell to let me know that they were going to do a rotational schedule: 50% on 50% off. Today was my turn to be out of the office...and if I did not hear from him tonight that I should report to work tomorrow. So I guess I'm on tomorrow! Instead of staying at home, though, I decided to pop into my travel office and try to get my client's ticket sorted instead of waiting till I was in on Saturday. Saturday is two days away from their scheduled departure and obviously the world has been flipped upside down so that is not happening. Self-isolation is also a thing at the travel office; they have recently started locking the door. No walk-ins unless we have set an appointment with them and EVERYTHING is Lysoled after they leave. The crazy thing is I spent almost the whole day with the girls in the office and I STILL did not get through the wholesaler to sort my client's ticket out. I ev...

"It means nobody gets left behind or forgotten." So yeah, today had more than its fair share of sadness. At least the whole family got to visit dad, we did not get to visit him all together but we all got out there. As I was pulling up to the grave site a Beatles song started up on my phone...Martha Dear. It's not one I'm very familiar with but my phone is full of songs I just load up without remembering much about it. So I sat in my car for a bit before walking out to dad's plot and just took in the whole song. The lyrics had some important lines but overall I don't think it was a "sign" by any means. And as planned we picked up some bbq and had our little nuclear get together to celebrate his birthday. Good food and good company. Butch streamed Beatles music on his phone as dinner tunes when the Google mini (cuz we don't have a Spotify Premium account) could not deliver only Beatles songs. But one living family member was still missin...

Tomorrow is going to be really tough. I've already teared up several times tonight just thinking about it. So hopefully I can just immerse myself in work until I'm off...but then I'll be heading off to the cemetery to have a visit (and to see if the groundskeepers were able to install the wreath mom ordered on Sunday. Sadly because of all the covid-19 updates that are swiftly changing EVERYTHING around us we had to decide to cancel our get together with the uncles and aunts in dad's honor and we'll just have a small little dinner just the family and our partners. That is upsetting as well -- the people we can reach out to for more "dad comfort" and we can't even surround ourselves with them on this day. Grandma's all by herself...I really hope to reach her on the phone tomorrow. The orchids are looking fantastic. Butch said he aimed to have it in full bloom this week and I think he full-on delivered. It's wonderful. We had intended to...

Self-isolation is becoming more of a serious thing at an UBER rapid pace. This morning I went to drive mom and baby sis to church but I was running late so as a fix we watched mass online. Little did we know that by the end of the day the province would be including religious gatherings as part of the public events that would be shut down. While we were at the house we discussed Tuesday's plans and mom admitted she would be more comfortable if we hosted the dinner at home rather than at the brewery. So I called and asked to order food for take out and cancel our reservation. I also reached out to the rest of the family and luckily everyone is still available to attend and meeting at the house is perfectly fine with them all. The hostess on the phone made a it very clear that they thanked us for supporting their business at this time. I'm sure they are not having it very easy right now. After that we went to the nursing home to spend some time with Grandma. I figured it...

After a long week it was finally my turn to come into the travel office after my colleagues had spent the previous five days quashing all the cancellations and re-protections coming in from all angles at a furious pace. The lucky thing for me was that my clients have lessened dramatically since I cut down my hours at the office. I have one client and her boyfriend pondering their alternate dates for a trip that was scheduled to happen in less than two weeks. I have a couple of guests from a destination wedding getting a bit nervous about the trip to Mexico, but unfortunately their departure date is outside of the dates the tour operators are concerned with at this time. I have another couple who are wondering what to do with their trip to Vegas, but again their departure date is just outside of the dates covered by the flexibility policy right now. And I had one couple who arrived back home that day...their return flight got rescheduled because Cathay Pacific cancelled their orig...

I'm typing from a laptop! I owe three posts to catch up with Lent! Let's do this! On Friday I worked the super early shift, and 15 minutes into the day I was scheduled to attend the first Q&A seminar regarding covid-19. We did not have much to discuss other than collecting questions for management to bring forward to the higher ups and labor relations. By then there were already some companies who shut down their downtown offices. Butch sent me a text saying he was working from home because a coworker's kid was possibly in contact with someone who tested positive for the virus. Weird Kid's girlfriend had a patient test positive for the virus as well so he decided to work from home that day. An employee at my workplace asked during the Q&A what she was supposed to do since her husband's downtown office was closed (he wasn't at risk, his office just closed to be cautious) Nobody knew how to answer that, but I have a feeling she just wanted to stay...

It’s a sign of Spring, perhaps? It’s a miracle of love? Everyone knows I have a horrible green thumb, but I can’t help but take flowers/plants/herbs home just to slowly watch them deteriorate under my incompetent care. But wouldn’t you know the orchid I bought at IKEA last year is starting to bloom again?! With a lot of loving help from Butch, mind you. Seeing the two buds start to open up makes me happy-cry though. Dad’s birthday is in a few days and he has always been the orchid-whisperer in the family. My corsages for my debut and my high school graduation came from daddy’s plants. The current timing could not be more serendipitous. Sitting beside the orchid pot is an aloe vera plant from Daisy‘s dad; another parent we lost last year. The aloe vera is growing pretty wild, too.  It’s kind of poetic having the two “dad plants” side by side in my dining room. I get comfort glancing over to them at breakfast and dinner.

So all of Italy has decided to stay home; they’re not coming over to play. The USA is not letting anyone from Europe come over nor are they going to be visiting there anytime soon. Canada has advised against cruise travel — but that’s alright because you won’t be able to take a Viking river or ocean cruise until May.  The NBA has cancelled games for the foreseeable future. It’s as if we’ re all grounded and no one can come out to play. But just like I was saying the other day I really think if we just kept to ourselves and laid low for the next little while the coronavirus would flitter away and we’d all live happily ever after.

Today, the encouragement continued at work. Several clients expressed a lot of appreciation for my service; not a single impatient or irate customer! At one point I almost felt like perhaps I was being “secret shopped” because it is so rare to interact with such thankful people. It makes my role feel very meaningful and worthwhile.  I love the new challenges and experiences I get to have in my new position. I sincerely hope it lasts (my role and my enthusiasm) for a long time.

I finished episode 9 of Love Is Blind and Jessica is as annoying as ever. Barnett is a more mature and decent guy than I was expecting, and Amber is just a big mooch. And I really hope Cameron and Lauren get married but Lauren is making me really nervous. Today at work I got an email saying I’ve cleared the review phase for using one of our software programs.  Amazing! I’m actually pretty proud because it’s the software I was most nervous about. I hope I can clear review for the other programs soon. Today was a big confidence booster for me. I also finally got around to dyeing my hair tonight. Hopefully it won’t be super staticky.

We had a super indulgent date night thanks to Butch‘s boss. We had lower bowl seats (4th row!) and I had my usual like my malt and pocket dawg. Then after the game we went to Vintage Chophouse and had an amazing dinner. We had mojitos and beef tartare to start and then some luscious prime rib. I added bone marrow butter to mine and had potato confit as my side. He had a bigger cut with bacon scalloped potatoes as his side. We finished with key lime pie and peanut butter mocha ice cream pie respectively. I could not finish my confit potato or my ice cream pie. But at least I could take my potato home. There were a lot of Las Vegas knights fans in our midst and unfortunately their team won.  But they weren’t obnoxious about it. There were two blondes who kept posting instagrams. One had a sparkly ladies jersey named “Khloe” and we had to wonder if that was really her name out if she’s obsessed with the Kardashians. I was entertained by watching them almost as much as watching the act...

After work today I spent a brief moment with Butch shopping at Walmart and then I dropped him off back home and went to the parents house to have dinner with the family. Poor Butch was still tired so he stayed home to rest. Tonight seemed to be a comedy of errors. The brother practically took the back gate of off its hinges when he was taking dad’s car out to be assessed. So add another thing to fix on the house. Then mom’s new washing machine arrived but it’s leaking everywhere (bear in mind this is already a replacement unit because the first delivery was dented.) our Skip the dishes order was missing an item. But it turns out I reported the wrong item missing...I said we didn’t get our beef korma but in fact we were missing the butter chicken. And when I tried to set up the new printer for mom and it turns out her iPad cannot update to a compatible iOS now. *sigh* what a time. But it was great to spend time with the family all together at the house and with my brother’s girlfriend....

Butch’s nephew, little K, asked if he could come over and have a sleepover tonight so here we are watching the classic Lady and the Tramp. He really loves the song La La Lu. I forgot how adorable this movie is.  For dinner I made Butch and I some salmon stroganoff. It’s my second time making it. I put a tablespoon too much lime juice so it was a bit too tart for my liking but otherwise the salmon wasn’t overcooked and the egg noodles were delicious. Little K had Kraft Dinner. Excellent dinner company. :) Daisy messaged me to see how I am doing. We shared thoughts on our dads.  She pointed out it’s almost been a year now since her father passed away. As she described it, she’ll “never be the same.” In a little over a week it will be dad’s 70th birthday so we’ll get together with family and have some yummy BBQ in his honour. It’s not lechon but I think he’d still love it.

Today was my first ever experience with strike training. Actually this is my first time ever working for a union. I consider my opinions to be pretty socialist. I love how we have universal health care here in Canada and how so long as everyone participates our contributes their share then everyone is taken care of. It’s also why despite the relative poverty of Cuba I respect how all of the citizens have free post secondary education and how the whole nation is essentially content because there is no “keeping up with the Jones’” mentality.  Alright back to strike training; I already sympathize with what they’re trying to achieve for all of us but I wasn’t really digging all the propaganda speak and spin. I should really read what both sides are saying — as I should always do — so I understand fully what I’m standing for.

On Sunday I wasn’t feeling all the best and it got worse as the day went on. I ended up cutting family time early and went home to rest. Little did I know that Butch has a rough day as well. Both of us were feeling achy like a flu... but Butch was alternating between chills and sweating like crazy all night long. Monday I still wasn’t  super but other than mild aches my biggest issue was more of a sinus headache. When I got home from work Butch was waiting for me to see if I could take him to a walk-in clinic. That’s when you know it’s bad. So it turns out he got a serious infection during his work trip. Really bad. The poor guy stayed home for two days. He’s still not 100% but he’s got deadlines. I’m feeling much better today; but just like what I mentioned in my previous post I figured I should self-isolate to make sure I don’t make my family sick.

Now that I’m trying to reconnect with my blogging hobby I tried to look for a Blogger app for the phone. Too bad it does not exist anymore. So now I’m trying this app called Blogtouch. I think blogging on this phone is still kind of limiting but it’s so much more convenient than firing up the home PC.  I do find that it’s somehow more difficult to piece together my thoughts on this tiny screen and i text on the phone at a much slower pace than touch typing. So far, this app is a lot easier to edit as I go compared to using the Blogger site using Chrome.  People are commenting in the App Store that it is inconvenient that you cannot publish from the app but I’m fine with the workaround writing on the app and then signing into the site to hit “publish.” But I still think my posts would have more substance if I actually sat down at my computer.

A lot of friends in the travel business are sharing their thoughts on the coronavirus situation and how the media is blowing it out of proportion. I get it; I had one family cancel their spring break trip to visit family because their destination was/is quarantining arrivals for two weeks — the exact length of their stay making the long journey pointless. I also had another couple nervous about their once in a lifetime river journey in Asia. There were a lot of nervous consultations every Saturday but in the end they are in destination and hopefully enjoying their trip without much (more) worry. Personally I think it warrants the media’s attention and concern. Sure, the flu is killing more people than the coronavirus but at least with the flu we know how to fight it. We understand “that” enemy. The coronavirus is an unknown. We should treat it much like the flu to protect those with compromised immune systems and everyone around us. So, sure, self-isolating is good. Limiting migration...

I think March is going to be a really rough month. Late last night I put a photo of me and my dad as the banner photo in my Facebook seeing as it’s our birthday month. So many friends have been “liking” it which keeps me checking on the site to see who likes what and who commented. It just ends up making me tear up seeing the photo over and over again. Every Sunday I get a little weepy as I say my prayer for dad or even just think of him. I mean it’s where I last got to look at his face before we closed the casket. Today there were so many Volkswagen cars around me it was quite comforting. It’s like he knew I was having a very emotional day. We are starting to plan a get together with family and friends on what would have been his seventh birthday. On my visit with grandma she asked me twice about dad’s welfare (we still do not have the strength to tell her the truth. Honestly I’m very scared she will pass from heartbreak when she finds out) I thought the days were getting a littl...

So after hearing so much about it I finally started watching Love Is Blind. I have finished two episodes so far. Barnett is a joke. Mark should find someone better. Jessica is too easily wooed. That’s my opinion so far. Amazingly I believe Cameron and Lauren are really in it — although I’d Lauren share her thoughts first for once and not just parrot back whatever Cameron says. When Diamond talked about her dad and how there was a ladybug on the mirror the day Carlton proposed had me weeping. And now I’m on the fifth episode. Jessica is still hung up on Barnett. I knew that would happen. Totally not worth it. Her still talking about what he tolls her in the pods is so clingy. Barnett always looking to the skies anytime he talks about marriage and long commitments just makes him seem extremely fake. But I bet Amber would cut any girl who comes close to her fiancé