I have two text shortcuts set up on my Mac, px and pz, which, when I type them, automatically get replaced by Peter Rukavina and peter@rukavina.net respectively. Setting these up is easy: System Preferences > Keyboard > Text:

Given that I have to type my name and my email address dozens of times a day, this is a big timesaver.

The key here is to make sure you don’t use a key combination that occurs frequently in nature: on my first go I set pr as the shortcut for my name, and got really confused every time I typed probably or procrastinate.

From this month’s edition of The Craftsman Newsletter:

Second was the encounter with textile artist Rachael Matthews who introduced Noguchi to the use of darning mushrooms, a tool for mending and not a hallucinogenic substance. The view of a sweater that Matthews had patched up time and time again using colourful yarn challenged Hikaru’s understanding of repairs. Until then, she believed that you had to make the damage become invisible, the repaired object needed to look like brand new. Hikaru started darning her own clothes.

This seems like a way of maintaining clothes but also a way of maintaining oneself.

This is what happens when we allow Twitter to make editorial decisions.

Postscript: it turns out that this wasn’t an example of Twitter censorship at all; Barbara got in touch with me to tell me that she had accidentally ended up with her Twitter set to mark her tweets as “sensitive.” So it was accidental self-censorship.

This is one of my favourite photos; I took it two years ago at Receiver Coffee Brass Shop, and magically managed to capture the People of Receiver at just the right moment in their smiles:

Receiver has been a lifeline for me and Oliver during the pandemic; their weekly deliveries of coffee beans, bread and “Seany’s Suppers” have been invaluable both for their sustenance and for allowing us to retain a tether to the world outside our doors. This will be the first week I haven’t placed a Receiver delivery order, but that’s simply because Receiver is open again, now that we’re in Phase 3. So I can pop in any time. In fact I might go there for lunch today!

We drove east today. Wood Islands for a picnic lunch. Visited Trudy on her farm, met a dog and a pony and a cow and enjoyed ice cream bars. To Montague where we charged the car by the marina and walked up the hill to get Oliver an urgent hot dog at Gillis’ Drive In. A good day.

The duvet cover on my bed had a couple of holes in it that were only getting bigger with time. Duvet covers are expensive, and I kind of like this one, so I decided to see if I could patch it.

The most frequent suggestion you run into online for patching things like this is to use fusible interfacing, essentially an iron-on patch. Seemed reasonable but for Charlottetown being sold out of it (now that all the pandemic bread has been baked, are we turning to pandemic patching en masse?).

At Walmart, however, I did find some fabric-patching glue, and decided to try that.

I cut out a piece of similar-looking fabric about an inch larger than each hole, tucked them inside the duvet, and then applied a thin layer of glue. I managed to make something of a mess of things, but, in the end, it all held.

I wasn’t content to leave my patch in the hands of chemistry, so I supplemented the glue with some hand-sewing around the edges. I managed to make something of a mess of things, but, in the end, it all held (I should become a better sewer).

The result isn’t elegant or invisible, but the holes are patched.

I have not had my hair cut since January 20.

That’s 130 days ago.

A long time.

Playing a logistical game of cat and mouse, I reasoned that a Friday afternoon, after a week of Island barber shops being open, would mean a lighter line at Ray’s Place.

I was right: there was nobody was waiting outside when I arrived. Or at least until I was steps away, when the universe intervened in my luck and saw two men arrive just before me.

I’m currently standing on Social Distancing Sticker № 3 in the chair-free waiting room. I should be having my hair cut in less than 15 minutes. I’m very excited.

Postscript: it was 10 minutes; Rhonda cut my hair with enthusiasm, same as it ever was. Feels great.

Karine Polwart in today’s edition of her email newsletter:

My home, like some of yours too, I’m sure, has become a place of industry these past two months. I’m a writer, so my kitchen has long been a working environment (and I don’t just mean the dishes and the laundry). But my home has never before been a place of performance, a place into which strangers are invited to peer. To be frank, it requires a whole lot more hoovering and tidying than I can ordinarily be bothered with. And then there’s the need for careful curation. I mean, how clever and idiosyncratic are my books? How manky is that carpet? Where am I going to stash all these non-minimalist piles of guff out of camera view? And how is anyone else, distantly appraising my home, supposed to know that so much of the stuff in this or that shot, represents memories, kindnesses, gifts and losses, rather than any innate aesthetic sensibility I’d want to stake my identity on?

Ocht, who cares, really, given what’s upon us? It’s vanity. Still, it’s oddly unsettling on an intimate, personal level.

We’ve gone through a similar version of the same thing this week: Oliver’s workers have been supporting him based out of our house rather than from Stars for Life, which is turned our home from being a private hideout into a more public workspace. Meaning that I need to be more attentive about dishes left on the table, socks left on the floor, and toilets left without fresh hand towels. To say nothing of losing a place to escape when the exegencies of work become too much.

Not quite the same as opening our home to YouTube, but a change nonetheless.

Provincial Credit Union and a street artist confront the same issue.

You had to see this coming: Oliver and I walked the 1.3 km to Dairy Queen tonight after supper so as to throw off the shackles of my childhood and have Dilly Bars for dessert.

And to engage in investigative journalism: are Charlottetown Dilly Bars made in-store and have the curl, or are they curl-free and made in some far-off factory?

No curl.

And, truth be told, not worth the walk.

The Dilly Bar of my childhood imagination was a dense thicket of fudgey goodneess. The Dilly Bar of University Avenue was a hunk of milk-flavoured ice wrapped in the thinnest and least satisfying sheen of chocolate possible.

My parents were wise to keep them from us.