A very wise person admitted to me this week, “I’m not sure I want things to go back to the way they were before…”

And I agree.

Here are the things about life-under-COVID-19 that I like and don’t want to give up:

• I talk to my family way, way more often; I think I’ve talked to my mother more in the last month than in the last decade.
• Weekly Learning Seminar every Tuesday.
• I play Crazy 8s with Oliver after supper every night.
• I don’t need an alarm to wake me up: I can get up when I want (which, it turns out, is about the same time as I would wake up with an alarm).
• My Wednesday afternoon trips to the Farmacy to pick up my food order.
• My Friday drop-offs from Receiver Coffee and Purity Dairy.
• I’m much more aware of what’s in the fridge and in the pantry than I’ve ever been, and I treasure every bit of food much more.
• Prince Street is much, much quieter; often there are more bicycles and pedestrians than vehicles.
• No meetings. Well, the occasional Zoom meeting. But, generally, meeting-society is on hold. May it never return.
• No airplanes in the sky.
• I drive my car once a week. Now that summer’s coming, I could easily do without a car entirely. I’ve got nowhere to go!
• Same-day delivery from The Bookmark of books, stationery and pens.
• No tourists. No prospect of tourists.

More so than anything, though, the pace of life has slowed to the point where I can start to see patterns as never before.

I’m as anxious as the next person to have some degree of predictability in my life, for people without jobs to regain them, for people to stop getting sick and dying around the world; at the same time we’ve been granted a unique opportunity to look at how we live and to reconsider it. Let’s not let that opportunity escape us.

A great initiative from Autism Nova Scotia that’s open to autistic people in the four Atlantic provinces. Oliver’s signed up.

Today’s Weekly Learning Seminar at 100 Prince Street consisted of an attempt to represent the shifting membership of the band Kansas, in its many forms over the years from 1973 to present, in visual form.

From the information we found in Wikipedia, here’s what we ended up with (click the image for a larger version):

It was a good lesson in visualizing relationships, and in understanding that when we think of venerable, unchanged institutions, the reality is often quite different.

Remember traffic light bird?

Well, the traffic lights that were once its home have been disassembled, and the parts for their replacements delivered. Soon the intersection of Prince & Kent will sport shiny new signals.

It appears, though, that the new horizontal poles have sealed ends, meaning that there will be no place for birds to roost. Perhaps not the most egregious habitat loss, but, still, a small change to note in the natural life of the city.

Over the last month, due the pandemic, I have not paid for a single thing with cash, meaning that I have a complete record of all my discretionary spending.

I exported my Mastercard statement, manually added the two Interac transfers I made, and produced this pie chart:

I’m happy to see how much of my spending, 32%, goes to local food–Heartbeet Organics, Receiver Coffee, Gallant’s, Purity Dairy. That’s a big improvement.

I’ve been buying more music directly from artists on Bandcamp, which explains that 2%.

Streaming services are Netflix, Disney+ and Crave right now.

Books came from The Bookmark.

Charitable donations went to Folk on Foot, The Mackenzie Boys, and the Green Party of PEI.

Flowers were from Hearts & Flowers which, yes, is still open and making deliveries.

I have levelled up to the carrot muffins level of single fatherhood.

Oliver and I had waffles and coffee with our friends Lars and Valerie in Vermont this morning. I brought my wide-angle Logitech webcam over from the office, mounted it on a tripod, and fussed with the lighting, all in service of better simulating having them across the table from us. I think it worked.

This Storm, a great musical gift to the world from Tara MacLean and Catherine MacLellan.

We held our second “Pen Night in the Clouds” tonight, in Zoom. We maxed out at 15 participants: 14 with video, and one person who dialed in by telephone.

For a Zoom meeting it was pleasantly non-chaotic, as was last month’s inaugural edition.

We had nothing on the agenda, which was convenient because “everyone introduce yourself and tell us what you’ve been up to” took 90 minutes. Lots of pen and ink and paper talk, but useful for many of us, I think, as a social-isolation-buster.

Some things for me to follow up on:

• Step Forward-brand tree-free paper was highly reviewed.
• Nock pen cases
• Lamy Safari 2020 in mango (with mango ink!).
• Melt wax (candle or sealing wax) into a Chapstick tube for a handy “prevent envelopes addresses with a fountain pen from running if they get wet” tool.

Our next meeting, again on Zoom, will be May 23, 2020, at an earlier start time of 4:00 p.m. Atlantic to provide interested Europeans with an easier way of attending.