The last time I was on the grounds of an abandoned tuberculosis sanatorium was in 2011 when Catherine, Oliver and I found ourselves in the woods outside Berlin with a ragtag group of artists and DJs on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’ve been feeling a little lost of late, lost in a fog of care-giving in two directions, worried about what happens next for our small family, more quick to anger than I would like, and generally unable to place myself on a solid mental footing inside the constellation of my lot.

A few months ago I remembered seeing something in the media about mental health walk-in clinics, and I kept the idea of walking into one in my back pocket in the weeks since. I wasn’t entirely sure whether I was the target market for these clinics, but it seemed that I might be, for their description positions them squarely in the “if you’re having some challenges” territory.

I finally decided that today was the day.

Not because of a particular crisis or confluence of events (although the death of a friend from metastatic breast cancer has weighed heavily on me this week), but mostly because I rationed that, if you find yourself Googling “PEI mental health walk-in clinic hours” more than once a week, you should probably go to the mental health walk-in clinic.

As with all previous self-directed mental health interventions I’ve undertaken, I had to confront a lot of monkeys on my back to get me from my lunchtime perch near the waterfront up to the McGill Centre: Was I really allowed to go? What if it’s full? What if the counselor is someone I know? What if I fall apart? What if I don’t fall apart? Why don’t I wait until next week! Surely there are others who need this service more than me! My, there are an awful lot of puddles near the road. Yah, right, maybe next week.

Fear and inertia are powerful, and I finally realized that if the only reasons for not going were fear and inertia, I owed myself the favour of ignoring them and pressing on.

And so I headed off to the northern regions of Brighton, through a neighbourhood both familiar and unfamiliar, toward the Mona Wilson Building at the corner of North River and McGill, located on the grounds of what, at one time, was Charlottetown’s tuberculosis sanatorium.

The walk-in clinic today was from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. I re-confirmed several times that the description could embrace my circumstances:

…offer immediate mental health support to help with anxiety, as well as life events causing stress and other mental health issues.

That seemed close enough.

I walked in the door, found my way to the reception desk, and was given a short form to fill out, a form that asked for my Health Card number, my name and address, and a brief description of why I was there.

I wrote “need to check in with someone on the state of my general mental health.”

There were a few people in front of me, so I bided my time in the waiting room for about 40 minutes, at which point a chap named Ian came to fetch me. He guided me up to the second floor, and into a room with a couch and chair.

And for the next hour, we had a chat.

What I ended up doing was the psychological equivalent of what’s called, in my trade, a core dump:

In computing, a core dump… consists of the recorded state of the working memory of a computer program at a specific time, generally when the program has crashed or otherwise terminated abnormally.

And that’s pretty well what I did: I described my circumstances, my challenges, what was going well and what wasn’t. What I dread and what I welcome. What I’ve done, and what I haven’t.

Ian chimed in with helpful insights from time to time, and his presence was vital to the exercise. But it was mostly about me structuring my consciousness in a protected space with a helpful interlocutor.

An hour later, I was still the same me, but the process of working through some things was undeniably helpful, and I left with a few references to other resources, a few new terms (“psycho-oncology,” “fullness of person”) and generally feeling like I’d done the right thing by going.

Late in 2017, the CBC ran a series on the radio about youth mental health on PEI and on one of the stories they posted to the web they chose a photo of a young person sitting, head-in-hands, alone, in front of a bank of lockers in a school. I took umbrage at that photo, for it telegraphed that mental health challenges are something self-evident and obvious, that unless you look sad and are hanging your head low, you must be doing okay.

I wasn’t in crisis today. Indeed it was, for most intents and purposes, a regular old day and I was my regular old self; I’d hazard a guess that, to look at me on my way to work you wouldn’t say “there’s a guy who could use a mental health walk-in clinic today.”

But I was. And it helped. And I’m thankful that it was there.

Walk-in mental health clinics are run every week in locations across PEI. They are free and confidential, and you don’t need an appointment.

For almost a decade, I’ve been engaging in various experiments related to monitoring and visualizing energy load and generation on Prince Edward Island.

And because of the scattershot, following-the-shiny-tin-foil nature of the way I’ve been working, various experiments have ended up on various servers with various URLs. It’s gotten confusing.

So today I created a page that, while not entirely bringing order to this universe, at least gathers links together.

Visit http://energy.reinvented.net/ and you’ll find links to everything I’ve got.

(I also used the opportunity to play with CSS Grid Layout for the first time).

Member of the Legislative Assembly for Morell-Mermaid, Sidney MacEwen, went where no member of the public had gone before: a meeting of the Health PEI board (CBC, The Guardian).

And he provided a compelling blow-by-blow account of the experience on Island Morning this morning.

I applaud Sidney’s efforts: he’s doing what opposition MLAs are supposed to do, shining light into some of the darker less-noticed corners of government (in this case, a corner with a $640 million budget).

Sidney’s efforts point to a larger issue: a growing schism between two views of the relationship between government and the citizenry.

The first is the “leave things to us” model, the predominant model of the MacLauchlan government and governments before it. In this model there is a professional public service, and a very clearly defined (and generally very limited) set of portals through which citizens can see and offer feedback on the policy-making process.

The second is the “we’re doing this together” model, and it’s a model informed strongly by the ongoing digital transformation. Under this model, government and the citizenry are involved in a joint, constant, ongoing, multi-faceted policy-making partnership that dramatically increases the surfaces over which the public service and the public collaborate. This model is messy, we’re not quite sure how it works yet, and it’s likely that many of the cherished institutions and approaches to governance will break when exposed to it.

On the floor of the Legislative Assembly, the Premier sits beyond the rail, where he is served chilled orange juice by pages, and citizens sit thirsty in the gallery, remaining silent.

On the Internet there’s no rail, and the Premier’s just like us.

How we rationalize that dichotomy is the project that Sidney MacEwen is ultimately engaged in.

It will be fascinating to see how we work this out.

I wrote in December about how PEI had reached a new peak electricity load on December 27, 2017; since that time the temperature has remained low, Islanders have continued to use a lot of electricity to heat, and so electricity usage has remained high. The peak on Saturday, January 6, 2018 was 279.71 MW, which was just shy of the December 27, 2017 record.

I pulled the peak load for each day in January from 2013 to 2018 and created a chart to allow for a visual comparison:

 

 

We’ve had 5 days in January 2018 so far that have seen the highest daily peak for that day of the year ever.

Here’s the raw data for the chart as a CSV if you want to create your own visualizations.

Oliver and I took our last run up to Sears tonight; it closes on Monday forever, so we didn’t quite make it to the end, but we were close enough. And given that we were pictured in The Guardian on opening day, we can truly say we were around for the entire 13 year run.

Sears in Charlottetown always seemed like an implausible proposition, and I can’t recall ever visiting the store when it seemed remotely busy. But we bought a lot of sheets and pillows and towels there over the years, a couple of appliances, three mattresses, several suitcases and a smattering of clothes.

For things like sheets and towels, I’ve no idea where else on Prince Edward Island one might buy such things now that Eatons and Sears are both gone. The Internet, I suppose?

The final weeks at Sears were a fascinating look at what’s left over when everyone’s bought everything: from the look of things tonight, it’s small men’s shirts, sheets for twin beds, Lagostina frying pans, and curiously compelling stationery.

It was the stationery that was my last purchase: we waited in line for 20 minutes for the privilege of buying half a dozen gold ink pens, a collection of beautiful, simple, colorful greeting cards and a pencil case.

Goodbye Sears: I never really loved you, but I’ve a feeling you will be missed.

I’ve long been a happy customer of La Sazón de Mexico at the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market.

So I was quite happy to learn that they’re making the jump from Saturdays-only to a full-fledged restaurant, a restaurant that’s conveniently located right beside the Reinventorium in the space recently vacated by Burrito Jax.

Our household came into an Instant Pot over the holidays.

In case you’ve missed the Canadian phenomenon that’s taking the world by storm, the Instant Pot is a new-fangled pressure cooker that, by virtue of its precise electronic heating and timing controls, can also sauté, act as a crock pot, cook rice, proof bread dough and make yogurt. It’s also an attempt to, in one fell swoop, get my generation over the “remember the time the pressure cooker exploded over at Reg and Joyce’s and blew a hole in the kitchen ceiling” stories that have heretofore kept us all a safe distance from any cooking implement with “pressure” in the name.

I’ve jumped in with both feet, and Catherine is following quickly after me: so far I’ve made apple sauce, aloo gobi, rice, and pressure-cooked pounds of chick peas.

And I’ve made yogurt. Twice.

We go through a lot of yogurt in our family, a couple of grocery store tubs a week on average, and yet the fermentational mysteries thereof are something I’d never given a second thought to. Until last week.

The Instant Pot’s success is often credited to social media–‘Cult-like worshippers’ turn Canadian-invented Instant Pot into a phenomenon, reported the CBC in November–and certainly you’ll find a plethora of recipes and advice online. The unseemly downside to all of this, however, is that the “sign up for my useful email newsletter of Instant Pot tips and advice” crowd has taken over much of the space, and so recipes, rather than being concise and easy to follow, become SEO-optimized thickets of keywords, with the recipe itself tacked awkwardly at the bottom.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

And so I present to you a simple postcard-sized “How to Make Instant Pot Yogurt” guide in comic form:

That really is all there is to it:

1. Add some milk to the pot. Put the cover on.
2. Press Yogurt twice; the display turns to boil.
3. Wait a while, until you hear beeps. Remove the cover.
4. Wait for the milk to cool to 115ºF.
5. Add a few teaspoons of yogurt to start things rolling.
6. Cover, and press Yogurt once; the display turns to Yogt,
7. Wait 8 hours.

At the end of the process, you’ll have yogurt. Behold the awesome power of bacterial cultures!

In my experience a litre of milk yields a large mason jar of yogurt, which is enough to keep us going for 4 or 5 days. The only challenge to the recipe is that you need to start things rolling when there’s still 9 or 10 hours left in your waking day, so it’s best done as a morning activity with a suppertime finish.

Go forth and ferment!

I first met Dana Doyle almost 10 years ago at a Prince Street Home & School meeting; she was one of a new wave of parents breathing new life into the group, and she emerged as someone always ready to volunteer to pop the popcorn, or make the hotdogs, or to find sponsors for our silent auction at the yearly Spring Fling.

I remember one time, when Oliver was in grade 6, when Dana wasn’t available to pop the popcorn in advance of movie night, and so I stepped into the breach.

A few days before, she gave me a lesson in running the popcorn machine, how much popcorn to make, and how much time to set aside for the popping. She suggested that I come into the school mid-afternoon to get a jump on the popping, as it took a long time, advice that I quickly ignored; there’s no way it could take that long, I said to myself. Which is how I found myself popping furiously to fill my quota as the clock ticked ever-nearer to movie start time and I realized that Dana had been right.

This escapade gave me one small window into the number of hours that Dana poured into supporting the school community, hours mostly unseen by others.

Over the intervening years I came to know Dana as a friend and neighbour–she lived right on my route to and from Birchwood Intermediate School and I would often run into her on my way back from walking Oliver to school–and as a school crossing guard on Walthen Drive, a job she took seriously but with the kind of good humour and rapport with kids that made her daily charges grow very fond of her.

When Dana was nominated by the Home & School at Prince Street for the School Crossing Guard of the Year award last year, and my fellow directors selected her from the many nominations to receive the award (being a friend, I recused myself), I was overjoyed, as there was nobody that deserved the award more. It was an extra special joy to be asked to present it to her last June; it was a complete surprise to her, and I will never forget the look on her face as she walked into the Prince Street School gym to be greeted by the entire school community.

Dana continued to be involved with Home & School as her son Seth moved from Prince Street to Birchwood and on to Colonel Gray this year for high school; I was happy to see her at the first Colonel Gray Home & School meeting of the year last fall, and I looked forward to the chance to work with her again, now that our boys were both in high school.

Dana died unexpectedly last week, and her funeral was today; the large attendance from family, friends, neighbours, coworkers, and members of three school communities was a testament to the rich life Dana lived and the many connections she made.

She will be missed.

It being January 1, 2018, it was time to go a-leveeing, and Oliver and I decided to take a different tack altogether this year, eschewing the chichi urban levees altogether, and heading west for a loop that took us along the south short of Prince Edward Island from Canoe Cove to Borden-Carleton to Kensington to Summerside to Miscouche, and then back around to Long River and New London.

Traveling this “rural levee loop” gave us a chance to experience a whole different kind of levee, to suffer some unexpected disappointments and some singular pleasures.

To guide us, we prepared a handy cardboard map showing the levees and their scheduled times, along with the travel distances between each. Careful readers will note that, as per my 25 year habit, I got the position of New London wrong on the map, at least relative to Long River.

Along the way we covered 182 km on what might perhaps be the most beautiful New Years Day weather I’ve seen in 25 years: bright, sunny, crisp; large, you might say.

All told we visited 7 levees (plus the Premier’s Levee, once we got back to town), and by way of shedding some light on each of them, to encourage you to follow the loop in future years, here are The 2018 Levee Awards:

Levee of the Year: Canoe Cove

I’ve been putting the Canoe Cove levee, held in the hall in this rural community 30 minutes south-west of Charlottetown on the south shore, on the list for many years; this was my first time to visit, and I’m so, so glad we did, as it was just lovely.

The stuffy formality of the city levees was nowhere evident: instead, everyone just wished each other “Happy New Year,” anarchist style.

We met new friends–many of whom we had connections to already, this being PEI–and enjoyed a bountiful spread of food and hot coffee and tea, all in the congenial confines of a well-preserved historic building.

If you only go to one levee, make it this one.

The Unexpected Delight Award: Borden-Carleton

When you’re headed to a levee hosted in the “Industrial Mall,” you don’t get your hopes up, but Borden-Carleton was also a delight. It was only slightly less informal than Canoe Cove, and that only because the Mayor, in full mayoral regalia, offered up himself as a receiving line. But he also found us napkins and forks, and told us where the coffee and tea were. There was a small but hearty group of Borden-Carletonians, young and old, gathered around a board room table piled high with food, and, despite being outsiders from town, we immediately were made to feel welcome.

I learned a few things in the process. First, you don’t leave off the “-Carleton”–apparently this causes offense to those on “the Carleton side.” Second, if you’re referring to “town”–like “we’re not going to any levees in town this year”–it’s assumed you mean Summerside, not Charlottetown as that’s what “town” is that far over the Prince-Queens county line.

We’ll certainly be back to Borden-Carleton’s levee in the future; and, indeed, my entire opinion of the community was raised by the reception we received. Well done!

Best Awards Award: Town of Kensington

Things got a little more formal at the Town of Kensington levee, with a receiving line, and a guest book. But, being hosted at the stunning Broadway 45 restaurant downtown, it was decidedly more casual after that, with folks gathered around tables chatting, and a selection of sweets and savories on offer.

Kensington was unique in that in addition to the usual business of the levee, the opportunity was taken to hand out awards to citizens in several Christmas-related categories (best Christmas lights, etc.). This was done with appropriate pomp and ceremony by the mayor, with official certificates and cheques presented. It made for a good opportunity to bring the town together in celebration, and it’s something other communities may want to consider.

Best Levee Receiving Line: City of Summerside

I hadn’t been inside Summerside City Hall in a very long time, and I’d forgotten what a beautiful building it is. Gathered in the second-floor council chamber we found the mayor and members of council, each accompanied by their spouse, as well as two Summerside Members of the Legislative Assembly, gathered in an impressive horseshoe-shaped receiving line. Oliver really upped his receiving-line game for this one, greeting each person with a hearty “Happy New Year” and a firm handshake.

Despite the presence of so much elected glitterati, Oliver was most star-struck by Lynne Lund, Deputy Leader of the Green Party of PEI, who was huddled in conversation across the room from us, and I was chastised for rushing him back to the car before he got a chance to wish her well for the year.

Summerside also deserves credit for serving the best punch of the day, dispensed from a silver pot in a light-filled front room overlooking downtown.

Biggest Levee Disappointment: Miscouche Legion

When it comes to determining what goes on the levee schedule, I’ve always used the “if you call yourself a levee, then you’re a levee” rule, and that means that a wide range of formats and facilities end up on the list.

The levee at the Miscouche Legion looked like a rollicking good time, with a live band and teaming revelers in attendance; alas we were turned away at the door, as it was a “19+” event, due to liquor regulations.

This will prompt me, in future years, to add a “are you an all-ages event” question to the yearly query I send out when assembling the list; I’ll still include all the levees, I’ll just have a column on the schedule to indicate which aren’t friendly to everyone.

Getting kicked out (by very friendly bouncers, who we wished a Happy New Year on the way out), and having a long stretch of driving until the next levee on the list, we had a good opportunity to chat about the ins and outs of PEI’s draconian liquor laws, especially as we’d been in New Brunswick in early December, seeing a concert, at night, in a bar, and benefiting from that province’s more progressive attitudes (minors must be accompanied by an adult; that’s it).

Miscouche was only a disappointment to us, of course: everyone of age, inside the levee, appeared to be having a good old time.

Most Intriguing Levee Award: The Kitchen Witch

The Kitchen Witch is a summertime restaurant and gift shop in Long River–I wrote about it when the business changed hands in 2008.  A few years back it started opening up on New Years Day to host a levee. It was in exactly the right spot on our way from Miscouche to New London, and the warm reception we received from the extended family that wraps around it did much to stanch the disappointment of Miscouche.

The food on offer was second-to-none: there was a special gluten free section, pots chili and soup, sweets and savories of all kinds, including some very good cheese balls and dips, and an especially interesting dish called “Texas caviar,” which, despite the name, contains no caviar at all (but does contain black-eyed peas, which, Texas lore says, it is good luck to eat on New Years Day).

December 31, 2017 happened to be the first birthday of young Gemma, granddaughter of the owners, and so cake was offered up, as was a bowl of water for Ethan, and pleasant conversation with a diverse collection of north shore residents.

Most Musical Levee: New London Community Complex

This was the first year that the New London Community Complex levee appeared on the levee schedule, and I wasn’t sure what to expect.

It turned out to be more in the Miscouche style than the Canoe Cove style: a “let’s continue the party from last night” rather than a “let’s greet our community together” opportunity.

But they let us in the door, and although there was no food on offer, and we received instructions at the door to not let Oliver have anything to drink, we did enjoy a couple of songs from Midlife Crisis, the crack oldies band on stage providing the entertainment.

So, perhaps not a highlight of the day, but a good pit-stop on the way from Long River back to town.

By the time we got back to town it was just after 4:00 p.m., and we decided to make a quick duck into the Premier’s Levee in the Confederation Centre of the Arts.

As we were late, this afforded us an opportunity to avoid the long lines that generally afflict this levee: we just marched right up to the starting line, were issued № 234, had our photo taken with the Premier and Duncan, shook the hands of the Liberal MLAs in the receiving line (including Hon. Tina Mundy and Chris Palmer, who we’d seen, hours before, in the receiving line in Summerside).

Also as we were late, most of the food had already been gobbled up, so we reconciled ourselves to the crumbs that were left, and enjoyed chats with several of our chichi urban neighbours.

I’m so happy that we took this year to see what levees look like outside of Charlottetown: we met many interesting people, had some good food and drink, got a solid tour of Central Queens and East Prince, and I learned a few things about how to make the levee schedule better for 2019.

The fates conspired against me for my prideful “it’s not so cold here and I’ve fixed the dishwasher” post yesterday by arranging for our furnace at 100 Prince Street to stop working.

Everything was fine when we got up Saturday morning: a pleasant 19ºC. Oliver and I headed off to the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market and to run other errands, not returning home until mid-afternoon.

When we arrived home I noticed there was a chill in the air, the thermostat was showing only 17ºC, and the radiators were stone-cold.

I did the usual checks of the furnace: was the red emergency shut-off switch at the top of the basement stairs accidentally switched (no), was the furnace itself accidentally switched off (no).

I tried the pilot light reset switch, and there was something of a springing-to-life, but although the furnace appeared to be running, there was no hot water circulating, and the water temperature gauge on the furnace remained at about 30ºC:

At this point, going into a long-weekend and facing very cold temperatures overnight, I placed a service call to Kenmac Energy, the first time we’ve needed to call in their cavalry since we switched from Coop Fuels in late 2015.

Kenmac proved very-responsive, with a helpful person on the other end of the phone who walked me through most of the basic things I’d already tried, and, none proving successful, promised to have a service technician at our door once they were finished with other calls.

About an hour later there was a knock at the door, and a very friendly and accommodating technician presented himself, got the details, and headed down to the basement.

About 20 minutes later, the furnace sprang to life, hot water started to fill the radiators, and the house started to heat up.

I wasn’t paying enough attention to get the specific details of what had conked out, but it was something like two electrical “control boxes,” if memory serves.

After a brief chat with the tech about his 40 years inhabiting the basements of Charlottetown, he was off to his next call, and we were off to run some more errands, and to grab pizza at Casa Mia for supper.

When we returned home at 8:30 p.m., the rads were still warm, but the temperature was only 18ºC, despite the thermostat being set to 20ºC.

Oh no!

I ran the same set of checks, only to find that, this time around, even the burner wouldn’t start.

Another call to Kenmac’s after-hours line, where I spoke to the same helpful person, who promised to dispatch someone soon; about 10 minutes later I had a call from the same service tech who’d visited earlier, and he sent me down to the basement to gather a sit-rep, and when nothing obvious presented, said he was on his way.

He arrived a short while later and headed back into the basement, emerging about 45 minutes later with the news that one of the control boxes he’d installed earlier had inexplicably stopped working. He’d replaced it, and then ran the furnace through several off-and-on-and-off cycles to make sure it was working as it should.

When I went downstairs to review the situation, I found the temperature gauge in the expected 90ºC range, and all the pipes hot to the touch:

I’m happy to report that when we woke up this morning, the temperature was again a a pleasant 19ºC, despite the -19ºC temperature outside. The rads were toasty and all was well with the world.

There’s nothing like having your furnace stop working to remind you how lucky you are to have a furnace.