After breakfast this morning I had some free time, and, as my hotel is only blocks from Parliament Hill, I walked up Metcalfe and found an excellent perch, inside a bus shelter, from which to make a quick sketch.

You had me at №.

I’d planned to take public transit from Trudeau Airport to my brother and sister-in-law’s house in Montreal, but when I emerged from the arrivals area, however, I was immediately greeted by a banner advertising Téo Taxi, with an all-electric fleet, and I remembered that I’d signed up for an account last year but never used it.

Never one to turn down an opportunity for a novel experience, I quickly downloaded the Téo app, and booked myself a car.

The app told me that it would be there in 8 minutes and, sure enough, by the time I reached Gate 6 (on the departures level, a temporary source of confusion), my driver, Aghil, was waiting for me in a Tesla Model S.

Aghil turned out to be a personable chap, and gave me the lowdown on what it’s like to drive a Tesla, what the battery life is like in a Montreal winter, and what it’s like to drive for Téo. And he expertly drove us in a such a way as to avoid the paralyzing rush hour traffic along Rte. 40.

My plane landed at 4:56 p.m., I left the airport at 5:11 p.m., and Aghil dropped me off in the city at 5:56 p.m., a trip of 45 minutes.

The fare was $55; with a 20% tip it came to $66. Which is a lot more than the $13.25 that it would have cost me by a combination of the 747 bus and the Metro. But it also saved me 30 minutes and a lot of luggage-juggling-on-escalators, was a zero-emissions trip, and gave me a chance to ride in a Tesla for the first time.

In all the years I’ve been flying since Air Canada introduced its “we decided there needs to be even more classism when flying” zoned boarding system, I’ve universally been assigned to Zone 6, the “you’re a complete a total loser and mean nothing to us” zone.

But today, miracle of miracles, I was assigned Zone 2 for my flight to Montreal.

Solidarity with the lesser zones should have dictated that I artificially delay my boarding. But power corrupts, and we so quickly forget whence we came. So I boarded with the other Zone 2ers. It was luxurious.

I am, slowly, en route to Ottawa for a celebration of the life of Laurie Kingston, a friend who died in January. It’s an odd way to spend a midwinter break—my friend Gordon is on the same plane, in the way to Mexico, which seems more sensible—but one I’m looking forward to for reasons I can’t completely explain.

Before Ottawa, though, I will spend the night in the company of my young Lower Canadian nephews (and their parents) in Montreal. Then train to Ottawa where I’ll spend Friday night and Saturday. Finally back to Montreal for Saturday night, and home Sunday.

Now, off to enjoy the onboard pleasures of boarding Zone 2.

Six years ago I moved my office from 84 Fitzroy Street into the second floor of The Guild, 3 blocks south, leaving my mates at silverorange behind, and placing myself inside the rollicksome heart of the Island’s musical theatre scene.

The Guild has been a lovely home for these 6 years, but I’ve been getting itchy feet since last summer. It would be nice to have “composing” and “printing” in the same room, as opposed to being separated, as they are now, by three flights of stairs. I was looking to save a little on rent. And, truth be told, for all its myriad wonders, I didn’t feel myself capable of living through another season of Anne and Gilbert playing steps from my desk through the summer and fall.

So I’ve been keeping my eyes open for possible new homes.

I have unique needs: I need both a digital-friendly office space, and a space capable of supporting the weight of a 1 tonne letterpress. Such spaces are not easy to come buy: unlike other cities, Charlottetown doesn’t have an industrial past that left hulking factories ready to be re-purposed. Downtown office space is always in short supply, and downtown “light industrial” space is almost non-existent. Believe me: I’ve looked at almost everything available over the last 10 years.

One day in January, though, I happened to be cutting through the yard between St. Paul’s Anglican Church and the church’s Parish Hall. I noticed a light on in the basement, which was the first time I was aware that there was a basement under the Parish Hall.

Which is strange, because I’ve lived directly across the street from the Parish Hall for the last 18 years. You think I would have figured this out.

When I got home, I sent the church office an email, inquiring as to whether they might have space in the basement they were interested in renting out; the next morning I received an email back telling me that, indeed, they did have a room to let, and that I was welcome to take a look at it.

Long story short: the room turned out to be perfect. And I have a new office.

It’s about the same size as my current office,  300 square feet (about 25 square metres), has a solid poured concrete floor, easy access, with wide hallways and strong staircase, to the parking lot (important for moving heavy objects like the letterpress) and, despite being in the basement, is bright, has two windows and a ventilator.

And, of course, most significantly: it’s at 101 Prince Street, about 14 seconds walk from our home at 100 Prince.

I picked up the keys to the new office yesterday, and I’ll gradually migrate east up Richmond Street over the month of March.

Lots of arrangements still to be made. I’m hoping to be able to beam Internet across Prince Street to allow me to have one high-speed connection for both home and office. I need to arrange to have McQuaid’s come and move the letterpress (and to figure out how to shave off an inch of its width to allow it to fit in the 31 inch wide door to the new office). I’m going to swap out the fluorescent lights for LED ones, and I need a couple of additional electrical outlets installed. And there’s moving the rest of my stuff, which I plan to do a little bit of each day.

The church has been nothing but wonderful and welcoming through all of this: they cleared out the room, which had been a Sunday School classroom in a former life (hence the cloak hooks and dual blackboards and bulletin boards, one at either end of the room) and was, more recently, a storage room. They repaired and painted the floor. And, most importantly, they’ve fully embraced the notion of my tenancy.

It’s not without some trepidation that I move, mind you. Nothing to do with the new home, but a fear that, by having work and home be so close, I’ll end up constricted my already-geo-constrained life further. I’ll need to make a little more effort to leave the neighbourhood more often.

Fortunately, I long ago mastered the art of not working all the time, so I’ve little fear about “I’ll just pop over to the office for a bit after supper” creeping back into the 3:00 a.m. coding sessions of yore: my mind and body no longer support that kind of activity.

When the move is complete, and the dust has settled, I’ll have an office-warming and invite you all.

It’s 25 years this month since I moved to Prince Edward Island; my first office was at 156 Richmond Street. So it’s taken me a quarter century and I’ve simply moved 600 feet east.

Our hearty band of Prince Edward Island subscribers to The New Yorker–about a dozen of us–gathered in conclave last night in the lounge of The Haviland Club.

As it happened, the annual meeting of the Charlottetown Yacht Club was happening in the room next door, meaning that there might never before have been a greater concentration of the Island’s pompous (it’s notable that there was one person who lives in the union of the two groups who opted for the Yacht Club gathering, which, I think, marks it as being slightly more pompous; but it’s a toss-up).

Our gathering was everything I’d hoped it would be: a motley collection of young and old, rural and urban, longtime subscribers and aspirational ones.

Among us were someone who had achieved the hat trick of visiting the New Yorker’s offices, volunteering at the New Yorker Festival, and having had supper with Calvin Trillin.

We heard the tale of a subscription shared between brothers, then inherited when one brother died, then passed along to the next generation (what a life those copies must have had as they wended through the extended family).

Only one of our number had ever entered the cartoon contest.

Nobody had pitched the magazine on a story. Yet.

There was a rainbow of opinion about reading the magazine online, ranging from my originalist position that it is only truly experienced on the printed page, to those who are daily, enthusiastic consumers of the website in a way completely foreign to me.

We talked about whether we read the fiction (ranging from “never” to “sometimes it’s all I read”), whether we read the poetry (“always” to “The New Yorker prints poetry?!”), and whether we read the front-of-book listings (almost everyone seems to, even though we’re 2000 km away from New York and the magazine arrives a week late).

We reviewed a dossier of editorial mentions of Prince Edward Island in the magazine over the last 93 years, running from casual mention of Malpeque oysters to the 1996 article by the aforementioned Trillin about Anne of Green Gables.

Plans to ferry back issues to the aspirational were arranged. Email addresses exchanged. Feelings that we might someday do it again were floated.

My thanks to journalist Meg Campbell for being the catalyst to bring us together; Meg was there last night, with her inquisitive ears on, and it wouldn’t surprise me if something arises out of this from her pen.

Ever since we’ve been paying the people who work with Oliver after school and on weekends, and making Canada Revenue Agency payroll remittances for them, I’ve been confused about one thing: what pay periods to include in my monthly remittances.

Take this week, for example: we paid Oliver’s workers last Friday, we’ll pay them this coming Friday, and the end of the month is today, in the middle. Do I include last week’s pay? This week’s pay? Only a part of this week’s pay?

The answer, helpfully explained over the phone by a CRA customer service agent, is really simple: you remit for the pay you paid out in the month you’re remitting for.

So today I’ll remit for the weeks ending February 2, 9, 16 and 23, because those all fell in February.

But I won’t include the week of March 2. Because that’s in March.

Problem solved.

With new prescriptions for two pairs of eyeglasses in-hand, and two relatively new sets of frames in daily use, I set out to have new lenses put in the current frames.

I was worried, though, that this would mean that I’d need to do without one set of glasses or the other for an extended period, and as each has its strong suit, this wasn’t an attractive prospect.

To my delight, however, when I went into Charlottetown Vision Care this morning to spec out the new lenses, they told me they could give me my current glasses back after taking measurements, order the new lenses, and then simply have me come in for 20 minutes to have the old ones swapped for the new.

I’d no idea this was possible, but it’s a big help.

Catherine and I had a meeting at Colonel Gray High School this morning with Oliver’s teachers, and when the meeting was over we headed back to the car. Snow had started to fall in the interim, and it was lightly dusting the ice below, creating prime slipping conditions.

Catherine is the primary slipping danger in our family, as she has cancer sites in her bones that render her more brittle than the average person; the orthopedic surgeon she consulted with a couple of years ago gave her strict instructions not to fall, ever, under any circumstances, a request she’s (mostly) honoured since.

As Catherine was (gingerly) getting into the car, she said “be careful, Pete, it’s really slippery.”

Advice I promptly ignored, as I threw myself headlong into the task of brushing the snow off the car.

And, suddenly, I was falling backwards onto the aforementioned ice.

It was slippery. Very slippery.

Fortunately I did not break anything, and my injuries appear restricted to some pain in the heel of my right hand when I put pressure on it (most noticeable, so far, if I get out of a chair, using my right arm to help, or if I use a stapler with that hand).

I was concerned, though, that trouble might be lurking–catatonic carpal thrombosis syndrome or some such thing. I didn’t want to go to the ER, and I didn’t want to use my doctor’s time, so I did what you’re supposed to do in non-emergency medical situations, and I called 811.

After a couple of rings and a bleep and bloop through a shallow phone tree I was talking to a very helpful and friendly registered nurse. They took my name, my family doctor’s name, and my date of birth, and then walked me through an exhaustive set of questions over the course of about 10 minutes (is there a bruise? is there a puncture? is there swelling? do you have full range of motion in your hand?). At the end of the flow chart was the recommendation that I could ice my hand, take pain relief if needed, and see how things go over the next 7 days.

The most impressive part of the dialogue was the nurse asking me to repeat back the instructions I’d just received to make sure I understood them: that’s a great idea, especially when dealing with people who are, inevitably, under more stress than average.

Given the range of calamity that could have befallen me, I’m more than happy to deal with a little bit of pain in my heel for the next while, and to avoid stapling.

811, meanwhile, has revealed itself to be a treasure of a service.

My keyboard of choice for the last 10 years or so has been the Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard, which I switched to after many years of the Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro.

I don’t love the Sculpt: its key travel isn’t fantastic, I don’t like the combination of the function keys and special-purpose keys (like volume controls) into one row of keys with a toggle, and the key labels tends to wear away pretty quickly with regular use.

But its ergonomics work well for me, I love the fact that the numeric keypad (which I seldom use, but keep handy when I need to do a lot of bookkeeping) is a separate device, leaving room on the immediate right for my mouse. And it’s still in production, relatively easy to pick up retail almost anywhere, and is reasonably priced (although I wish you could buy it without the companion mouse, which I never use looks like you can buy it separately from Amazon now: woohoo!).

My first Sculpt here in the Charlottetown office finally gave up the ghost today. The key labels, especially on the left side, were long-ago worn away, and the keys had been gradually more mushy for a while; the final straw was the right-hand side of the space bar giving up.

Fortunately I pre-planned, and had a backup Sculpt at the ready, upon which I type this very post.

It’s taking some getting used to, as the key travel is crisply new, and all the subtle modifications in hand behaviour I’d unknowingly been making in recent years to accommodate the decay of the old one are no longer needed.