I got three envelopes in the mail today, all from the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Two were dated August 18, one was dated August 25:

The first notice says that I’m owed a refund of $1660.11.

The second notice says that I owe them $6713.

The third notice says that I owe them $48.68.

All three notices relate to the 2017 tax year, the year I became subject to the IRS 965 “GILTI” tax, by virtue of being an American citizen owner of an overseas (Canadian) corporation. This was an artefact of the first Trump administration.

It took me 20 minutes on hold with the IRS international desk to learn that the third notice, the one that tells me I owe them $48.68, is the real one. Actually, they are all “real,”; that’s the one that’s the most up-to-date.

It turns out that the notice telling me I owed them $6713 was a notice telling me that, in 2017, I had originally owed them $6713. Nowhere on the notice does it actually say that.

Left unexplained is how I ended up, for a few short days, in a position where they owed me money.

I thanked the agent for their help, especially because they were able to tell me that I didn’t owe them $6713. They were happy about that too. We wished each other a good day.

I stopped being a US citizen on June 13, 2025. I still have to file a tax return for this year, which will be my last official act. 

I will not be sad to see this bureaucratic relationship in the review mirror. 

Next time you’re in Queen Elizabeth Hospital, I encourage you to go and find the original architectural model of the building (right now it’s tucked in under the stairs that lead down from the main entrance to the cafeteria and paediatrics).

The model, of course, is of the hospital as it existed in the planning stages, leading up to its opening in 1982. Since construction, it has  evolved significantly, with the addition of an expanded emergency department, cancer treatment centre, and ambulatory care area.

My favourite element of its design are the bright yellow flourishes that punctuate the cladding. Here’s a photo I shot just last week, showing the Physical Medicine department from the outside:

Unfortunately the additions to the hospital since its original construction have not included these yellow elements, leading to a lack of architectural continuity. Perhaps each new architect has needed to put their own stamp on things? I miss the yellow on the new parts: they seem unadorned, naked.

Over the last 33 years I’ve been through myriad experiences in the hospital, both my own and with those I love. 

I’ve had my gallbladder replaced, my elbow replaced, four colonoscopies, an earphone tip removed from my ear. 

Olivia was born there, she had a button removed from her nose there, and we rushed her there when she had the croup. She went to appointments with her paediatrician, the same paediatrician who was in the delivery room when she was born, every six months until she was 16.

Catherine had several surgeries over the years, and then received six years of cancer treatment there; she died in the Palliative Care Centre next-door. 

My mother had a stroke, and received quick and miraculous treatment in the hospital.

I’ve had a lot of coffees from the coffee shop, a lot of cinnamon rolls from the hospital auxiliary. I’ve never ceased to be enlivened by the fantastic art collection. 

Despite all the ups and downs, the anxiety, the spending time at the intersection of life and death, I love the place dearly, and a lot of why I love it is because it has such a strong and welcoming sense of place.

The hospital was designed by the partners—in life and architecture—A.W. Cluff and P.J. Cluff.

When P.J.—Pamela—died in 2023, her obituary showed evidence of how it came to be that we ended up with a delightful building, as she was clearly a delightful person:

In 1956, Pamela started both a family and an architecture firm, which became A.W. Cluff and P.J. Cluff architects after Bill joined her — their first office was at Belsize and Yonge. With seemingly endless energy, she’d design buildings and attend client meetings by day, then race home to change diapers, tell stories, cook dinner, hand out crayons and books, arrange playdates and parties and teach us to play chess, make pies, or jitterbug. When you came to our house on Manor Road – kids, dog, cats, parakeet, hamster, rabbit, visitors — you never knew what to expect.

Pamela spent the majority of her career designing and renovating hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, special care units and group homes for the sick, elderly and disabled, believing that good design (and the artful use of color) improved everything. On her initiative, she became involved in accessibility design and fought to remove physical barriers – helping the City of Toronto establish wheelchair accessibility standards, the curb cut program and Wheeltrans service. International recognition of her work and research brought invitations to lecture in the U.S., Israel, South Africa, Egypt, and Korea.

A fellow of the Royal British Association of Architects and Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, Pamela published many articles and received many awards, including the Premiers Award and OAA DaVinci Award in 1985 for her contributions to the field. She was interested in the role architects could play in shaping policy, building codes and the built environment, using her creativity and talent to develop solutions for those who would otherwise be shut out or were unable to speak for themselves.

Pamela was a skilled mentor and teacher who enthusiastically shared her skills and ideas with many people over the years, some of whom kept in touch with her for decades. She also loved to share her many interests with friends and family. She was a talented painter, diver and swimmer, an avid reader, and life-long patron of the arts, her music collection spanned every genre. She loved to travel and spent many happy times in Northern California and Bermuda. She was always up for a lunch out, a trip to the theater or symphony, or an interesting chat over a properly-made cup of English tea.

There is is: “the artful use of color.” 

This is how we ended up with our yellow. 

How lucky we were.

Fifty-three days ago, during my workout, I fell off a box and broke my elbow. Since then I’ve had surgery, and started physiotherapy.

Today I went back to the gym for the first time since my accident and worked out.

Coach Cayla adapted the workout, so that I didn’t need to use my affected arm: one-armed deadlifts, one-armed kettle bell swings, and the like.

I was nervous about going, “returning to the scene of the crime,” so to speak.

Partly this was about fear of returning to the space where I’d suffered a trauma; partly this was because I was afraid of confronting myself with diminished physical capabilities.

But, I was happy to find, I do still have physical capabilities.

I have a long road back to two-armed fitness, but I’m happy to have started walking down it.

By the way: Cayla has reconstituted a 9:00 a.m. Tuesday and Thursday morning small group workout. If you’re looking to get a friendly, no-machismo twice-weekly workout, I cannot think of a better opportunity. There are a few places left: see Cayla’s website for details.

We are lucky to have one of the city’s designated food truck parking spots just a block from our house.

The original tenant was the late Street Eats, which was so great that it transitioned to a bricks and mortar restaurant, the great Salt & Sol, at the Charlottetown Yacht Club.

A few weeks ago, the spot got taken over by Curry Up & Eat, serving Indian food.

The menu—posted on the outside of the truck—is simple: three mains, two poutines, two burgers.

My favorite, by far and away, is the Aloo Tikki wrap: it’s hot, spicy, gooey. 

We’ve also had the curry bowl a couple of times, and the butter chicken is delicious.

The couple that runs the place are friendly and welcoming. You will not go wrong to make it a part of your regular routine.

Jeremy got fined €300 for being in a park in Rome after closing time.

Reading this reminded me of a letter I got in the mail this spring from the Commune di Lucca, Italy notifying me that, a year earlier, I’d transgressed into a restricted traffic zone — a ZTL —  while there on a visit.

The infraction had made its way from Lucca to my car rental agency, Sixt, and then back to Lucca, and onward to me. The journey took a long time. 

I have to hand it to them: the completeness of the ZTL-violating bureaucracy was impressive, down to the availability, accessible by logging into a violation website, of a timestamped photo of my offending car snapped by the CCTV:

Paying the fine—which I did because I’d like to visit Lucca again someday, and don’t want to end up in the Italian slammer—cost me $156, complicated international wire transfer fees included.

“Do you have Dr. Pepper?”, the woman at the next table asked.

“Sure”, the server responded.

I caught her eye as she walked by: “Can I trade this ginger ale in for a Dr. Pepper?”

I was cleared to drive by my orthopædic surgeon yesterday. The last time I drove was July 17, to the gym. I didn’t drive home, because I broke my elbow during the workout, and I hadn’t driven since.

Yesterday I got called into service for an unexpected school run. It turns out that I am ready to drive: I’ve got all the flexibility and strength needed. I was happy to have the opportunity to find that out, without overthinking it.

Today, with L. and Lisa both out with friends, I took the opportunity to take my new abilities out for a drive.

First stop: The Blue Goose in Desable, where I hoped to score a Peter Pan Burger Basket, recently resurrected from the dead. 

I was not disappointed:

It was, dare I say, as good or better as the original.

And I washed it down with the aforementioned Dr. Pepper.

Next stop: Island Chocolates in Victoria. 

Long time readers will know that I am an inveterate fan of their Factory Coffee (2020, 2019, 2014, 2006), and having missed one on a Labour Day stop, when they were unexpectedly closed, I was determined to return before the end of the season. 

Again, I was not disappointed:

It was every bit as deliriously good as I remember.

As has been my long habit, I carried my sketchbook with me, and tentatively tried my hand at drawing the front window. It was my first sketch since July 13, and although I felt some twinges in my drawing hand, I was happy with what I was able to do.

Not being able to drive for two months was weird: it’s the longest I’ve ever not been behind the wheel since I was 16. I relied upon Lisa to drive me the places I needed to go by car, and my feet, otherwise.

For an afternoon of driving for the first time, I can’t imagine a better solo expedition.

Lisa’s show, Beautiful. As I am., opened at The Gallery in Charlottetown this week. It is, dare I say, spectacular, and best viewed in person.

The concept for the show is one that Lisa has been mulling over all summer long; she pulled the prints in a concentrated five day session at summer’s end. She held fast to the vision in her head, persevered through all manner of technical challenges, and what’s on the wall is something she’s justifiably proud of.

Here are some visual hints at what you’ll see:

The Gallery is open 8:00 a.m to 5:00 p.m., at 82 Great George Street, right in front of Province House.

All the prints are available for sale. The heart of exhibition is a varied edition of 34 relief prints ($150); there’s also an edition of 5 trial proofs ($75) that give insight into Lisa’s process. 

I had my second physiotherapy appointment yesterday at Queen Elizabeth Hospital. In the two weeks since the last appointment two weeks ago I’ve gained 7º of extension in my elbow, from -42º to -35º. I came away with a new program of movements, several of which focus on holding low weights for a long time.

This morning I was back at the QEH first thing for my 4-week followup with my surgeon, Dr. Wotherspoon. The appointment started with an X-ray of my elbow, which gave me a chance to get a good look at the titanium radial head replacement:

My arm is healing up well, I learned; no concerns. The road ahead, as it was at the 2-week appointment, is to just do the physio, regularly and relentlessly, to build range of motion and, eventually, to rebuild strength.

From Drinking with Skeletons, Ditching Spotify (emphasis mine):

For now, I decided to switch to Apple Music – mainly because they gave me three months for free and they finally added an auto library transfer from Spotify. 

Part of the reason that I’ve continued to pay for both an Apple Music and Spotify subscription is because I didn’t want to lose my music history in Spotify. This new feature solves that.

The easiest way I found to use this feature is to log into music.apple.com on the web, click on your avatar in the top-right, and select “Transfer Music”:

You’ll be prompted for the service you want to transfer music from—Amazon Music, Deezer, Spotify, TIDAL, YouTube—asked to authenticate, and then given the option to set what you want to transfer. The whole process then takes less than a minute.

One caveat: Spotify’s “Like Songs” playlist isn’t actually a “playlist,” so it won’t transfer when you do this. To work around this, create a new playlist in Spotify, and drag everything from Liked Songs into it. You can then, in Apple Music, mark everything in this imported playlist as a “Favourite.”

My interaction with my laptop and phone since I broke my elbow has been primarily by voice. I’ve done a lot of searches for the term “radial head replacement,” which is, most of the time, interpreted as “Radiohead replacement.” A worthy question, but not the one I’m asking.

When I last checked in, 5 days ago, I’d managed to tie my own shoes for the first time in more than a month. Since that time I’ve added some more skills:

• Wrote a legible sentence with a pen, with my right hand.
• Pulled up my jeans with two hands.
• Fed myself a couple of mouthfuls of food with my right hand.
• Typed an entire blog post two-handed.
• Made breakfast, lunch, and supper, every day.

That last one was necessitated by a household end-of-summer bonus: Lisa tested positive for COVID. We didn’t see that coming.

I tested negative immediately thereafter and have continued to test negative since. With L. away at camp for the week, Lisa and I were able to isolate from each other in the house; we slept apart, ate apart, read apart. It was hard being together-but-separated, given that we’re almost always together-and-together.

It was also hard because, since mid-July, Lisa had been doing everything for the household: driving, cleaning, cooking. To mitigate the infection vector, I took over the cooking for both of us, in an awkward ballet that involved opening jars with my knees, opening bags with my teeth, and cursing the food packaging industry for making products that surely must wreak havoc on the daily lives of millions of people.

Although it was hard, it was also helpful. In addition to my thrice daily 20 minute physio sessions, my kitchen physio has undoubtedly helped improve my range of motion. It also gave a boost of much-needed  confidence.

The one thing that hasn’t improved is my sleep: it’s been horrible for almost every night of the 29 days since my surgery. I’m not in pain, but I’m in discomfort, enough discomfort that it’s difficult to find a position to sleep in that’s comfortable for more than 30 minutes. 

This is, apparently, not uncommon after surgery, and most resources I’ve found suggest constructing some variation of a pillow kingdom, which I continue to iterate on.

Lisa, meanwhile, is now COVID-free, and so we’ve ended our isolation, and life is returning to less-abnormal abnormal.

I have my next appointment with my physiotherapist at the hospital on Thursday, and the next follow up with my orthopædic surgeon the day after. I am perversely looking forward to both of these: a good dose of “keep up the good work!” Is what I’m hoping for.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for virtual orthopædic fun, check out this interactive 3D model of the human skeleton. Here’s a screen shot:

I’ve isolated the radius bone on the right arm. That nobbly bit on top is what got replaced with a titanium upgrade in mine.