My day started early, 5:00 a.m. early, when my phone made a bloop to tell me that an update was available for some such something. I have a new phone and I haven’t figured out how to silence it during the nighttime hours, making me susceptible to applications needing updates and Europeans sending texts.

I didn’t actually get up at 5:00 a.m.–that is the stuff of Gods–but my sleep from then onward was fitful and full of non-encouraging dreams. 

My scheduled 8:00 a.m. alarm didn’t go off: apparently when I “silenced” the alarm on my new phone yesterday, I mistakenly turned the repeating alarm off. Fortunately my body woke me up all on its own at 8:10 a.m., so the day wasn’t lost.

As I do every day, my first stop was Oliver’s room, where I said good morning and found some clothes for him.

After ablutions and getting dressed myself, I headed downstairs to make us breakfast–cereal and yogurt for me, a bagel with peanut butter for Oliver, just like every weekday–and to make myself coffee.

Before doing this, however, I went outside to move the car so that I could drive it later in the afternoon to visit a friend in Central Queens. Just as I was doing this, Steve Howard arrived to park his electric vehicle in our driveway for the morning session of the Legislative Assembly, so my timing was perfect. I had a brief chat with Steve, and headed back inside, now running a few minutes later even still.

Oliver is more self-contained these days than ever, so I don’t need to make him lunch in the morning, which has left me some extra minutes to do things like scan the back yard for Japanese Knotweed and to check on the tomato plant, but this morning I was running late, so had just enough time to eat, to roust Oliver, and to ready my day before Allie from Stars for Life arrived at our door at 9:30 a.m.

Oliver’s plan for the day was to go fishing (the Province of PEI generously donated fishing licenses to all Stars for Life clients and staff). So we headed out the door together, he toward the fishing hole and me toward The Bookmark.

I was headed to The Bookmark because the “we’re having a sale on fountain pens” klaxon was sounded two days ago:

We wanted to let you know that we’ve made a special purchase of Conklin, Monteverde and Viscounti fountain pens. Models include Duraflex, Omniflex, Rodeo Drive, Monza, Breeze, Mirage and Rembrandt, deals from $10 to $80. Regular prices from $35 to $260. The sale starts tomorrow at 9 am.

I arrived about 9:45 a.m. and I was fountain pen shopper number four. We are nothing if not a fountain pen sale-loving fountain pen community here. There really are some nice pens on offer, at some remarkable prices. After looking them over, and getting a cook’s tour of each from Dan the Pen Merchant, I selected a Conklin Raven in black with a flex nib.

Leaving The Bookmark, I walked down Queen Street to Richmond, and then headed toward the office. As I was passing Receiver Coffee I thought “Receiver Coffee won’t be there the next time I pass if I don’t support Receiver Coffee,”, so I went in and ordered a tea. While I was waiting for it, I got to have a nice chat with Rob Macdonald, who I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic; Rob is recently the Writer in Residence at The Guild, which is, let’s face it, the greatest thing ever. It was good to catch up.

Tea in hand, I headed down Richmond Street again, passing the Row House, where I overheard one of the staff telling a neighbour about the bird that flew into the restaurant earlier this week. Apparently there was some internecine bird-on-bird warfare happening involving crows and other birds, and this was part of a larger campaign. I thought about stopping to do an interview for my podcast, but then remembered that I don’t actually have a podcast (all appearances to the contrary aside).

Walking down Richmond Street I realized that this is the last week that we will truly have the Island to ourselves: because of the lockdown, every single person I saw this morning as I did my loop around the downtown was from here. There is, of course, an uncomfortable ingredient of xenophobia in revelling in that, but there’s also an amount of “this is us,” a sense of solidarity that we are those that are truly here, and not just in for a dip in the ocean. Such is the essential dichotomy of Prince Edward Island.

I got back to the office at 10:26 a.m., Google Home told me when I asked. At 11:00 a.m. I have my weekly called with my Yankee colleagues. Then out to Central Queens for the afternoon, stopping at Leonhard’s on the way to pick up sandwiches. Home for 4:30 to have a drink on the deck with friends (my first overt have-people-over effort in this new era). And then tonight we gather as a family for the weekly Family Fun Night on Zoom, this week’s episode celebrating the 10th wedding anniversary of my Montreal brother and sister-in-law.

I’ve a few minutes now to fill my Raven with ink and see how it writes.

Enjoy your day.

As we embark on our deliriously tourist-free summer here on the Island, let us remember that if we want delicious wood-fired pizza to be ever at the ready, we need to step up and take the place of the tourists.

Here is the Nimrods’ menu. Their phone number (902) 393-7637. They’re located on the “floating food court” at Peakes Quay on the Charlottetown waterfront (map).

The ball is in your court, neighbours.

I have largely ignored the move to offer “dark mode” on computers and mobile devices. I got inspired by the post Dark Mode Support in WebKit, and its demonstration of how easy it is to add dark mode support to a website via CSS, and I have implemented it here.

If you’re using a regular old web browser on a regular old computer without dark mode support (or without dark mode enabled), you’ll see this website as you always have:

If you enable “dark mode,” though, you’ll see it it lovely white-on-black:

While I’ve left “light mode” turned on for my desktop, I much prefer browsing this site in dark mode on my iPhone, and so that’s what I’ve got it set to there.

I found myself this morning in the odd position of dancing, Career Opportunities-style¹, through the aisles of Sobeys, to the song Spiracles, by the German duo COMA. I challenge you to put it in your earbuds and not do likewise.

It’s a good track.

1. Okay, not quite like Career Opportunities.

A verse from Rufus Wainwright’s You Ain’t Big (emphasis mine):

You ain’t big if you’re little in Texas
Don’t know who are who you are unless you made it in Lawrence, Kansas
Wait a minute, Lawrence, Kansas
Doesn’t really matter at all

A verse from Options Open by Kathleen Edwards (emphasis mine):

I love you so much, everything
You do, you say, you speak, you wear, it just works for me
But I blame it on the weekly flyer
That took me down to Crappy Tire
‘Cause you were smiling when I looked up
I guess we’ll always have a parking lot

A verse from Can I Be Your Friend by Chevy Mustang ft. Evan Rachel Wood (emphasis mine):

Oh I see that you are
Oh wow… oh my
You’re actually Evan Rachel Wood
Wow, nice to meet you
Can I be your friend?
Oh I see that you’re from Fresno
Can I be your friend?
(I Evan Rachel would love to)
Oh I see that you have new shoes
Can I be your friend? (haha they’re adidas, shell toes)
Oh I see that you’re a guru
Can I be your friend?

These three songs played, one after the other, in my Spotify earlier this week.

You get me Spotify, you really get me.

It’s Bike Week in Charlottetown. In our case this is about celebrating cycling, not celebrating motorcycling as it is to the south (I once called a cottage on Lake Winnipesaukee to inquire about a rental; “you know that’s Bike Week, right?” they asked, as though I should know that was a week to avoid if seeking a quiet family vacation on the lake).

Among other things, you will find:

• an #IBikeCharlotetown billboard on the Confederation Trail near the Charlottetown Farmers’ Market where you can take a selfie in front of a whimsical fox (see below),
• the Charlottetown Cycling Handbook, a remarkably well-designed and useful primer on cycling in the city,
• an updated version of the Bike Map, showing cycle routes through the city, businesses that offer cyclists discounts, places where you can park your bicycle.

Tomorrow, June 19, 2020, is “Bike to Work Day” in the city; while in my case my commute, being 25 seconds across the street, does not lend itself to cycling, many others might consider leaving the car at home and discovering that cycling to work is not only feasible, but also kind of fun.

Cycle on.

I celebrated Catherine’s 30th, 40th, and 50th birthdays with her; today would have been her 57th.

Her 30th was momentous: we were young and wild and free, and had landed on Prince Edward Island just a few months earlier. I have little recollection of what we did that day, other than that it was warm and sunny and we were very very happy.

Her 40th went sideways: she was in a funk, Oliver (age 2) and I tried our best to make it epic, but failed. 

Her 50th was much better: we booked a table at The Dunes, about which I wrote, in part:

By way of celebrating Catherine’s birthday we headed out to The Dunes for supper midweek and had what turned out to be an excellent meal. The highlight was an appetizer they call “The Grazing,” which was, as it turned out, almost enough to feed all three of us for the night: sausage, olives, spiced almonds, salad, roasted onion jam, fresh bread and more. It was the kind of dish that makes Catherine swoon, so, only by coincidence and not by plan, the perfect dish to celebrate her birthday.

I remember that meal like it was yesterday.

There were, of course, other birthdays in there: I celebrated 28 of them with her, maybe 29 if you factor in the birthday going on next door while I was but her shy next-door neighbour in Peterborough. I wrote here about her birthday in 2006, 2010, and 2016. Because late June was often time to travel, more than a few of them were celebrated while en route to some exotic foreign locale; in 2014–The Last Great Summer–we were en route to Germany for our caravanning vacation, and that wasn’t the only time that happened. To the point where, just now, as I write this, I received a text from Oliver:

Catherine was never averse to aging, and generally greeted her birthday with enthusiasm, but she never wanted to be the centre of attention, and there was a standing order, from the time we first met, that there should be No Surprise Parties. I followed that order strictly, and tried to work magic, as best I could, in other ways.

Tonight Oliver and I will go to Richard’s for fish & chips, and will think of her. By happenstance I had a grief support group meeting this afternoon, and halfway through, talking about “what rituals will you uphold?”, I realized that every single time we’d ever been to Richard’s as a family, I’d go and get a table with Oliver, and Catherine would order. Tonight I will have to order.

Later in the evening we’ll gather with family on Zoom to remember Catherine–it’s one of a punishing cavalcade of family Zooms that Oliver has arranged for this week of memorializations.

I answer the question “how are you and Oliver doing?” a lot these days. “We’re okay,” I generally reply. And, most of the time, that’s honest: it’s been five months and two days since Catherine died, and we’re slowly starting to find our sea legs. I am not sad all the time (but I am sad some of the time). We made it through the worst of the lockdown together and emerged unscathed. We planted a tomato and some peppers. We’re about to plant some patchouli in Catherine’s honour. We eat. We sleep. We do the laundry. Some nights I look over at the rocking chair and am surprised to not see Catherine there, and some nights the loneliness reaches out to bite me something fierce. But most nights I’m okay. I’ve learned a lot about grief, most notably that it’s largely indescribable in words, and that it’s different from being sad (which is why it’s not simply called “the sadness”). 

I’m starting to tentatively hold out hope that maybe 2014 was not, in fact, The Last Great Summer. Tentatively.

Wherever this June 18th finds you, please take a moment to raise a glass to Catherine, who is, no doubt, sitting on a stool at God’s microbrewery, enjoying tapas, and wondering why we’re making such a fuss about her.

I have become a huge Phoebe Bridgers fanboy. She released a new album yesterday, Punisher. I love it.

When the speed kicks in
I go to the store for nothing
And walk right by
The house where you lived with Snow White
I wonder if she ever thought
The storybook tiles on the roof were too much
But from the window, it’s not a bad show
If your favorite thing’s Dianetics or stucco

One of the curious psychological effects of grief is that I am moved to accomplish household tasks that were either long-uncompleted or which I would have actively opposed while Catherine was alive. Hence, patio umbrella; a little bit in each column.

Kudos to brother Mike for remote guidance, and to my mother for the inspiration.

We hosted the monthly Pen Night in our back yard tonight, our first non-Zoom meeting since February.

I wanted to make sure we did it right, so I got out the measuring tape and ensured that there was 6 feet between each chair.

It turns out that 6 feet apart is a lot more apart than I thought; if I hadn’t measured, I likely would have placed the chairs 3 or 4 feet apart, in error.

Makes me realize the people in the grocery store are a lot closer than 6 feet apart a lot of the time.

I look forward to the arrival of the Dense Discovery email newsletter each week.

I am particularly fond of the subject line of this week’s issue:

Unrecognisable casualties of the growth cult

Although it was a reference to a notion in the editor’s letter about software, it’s a notion that has general application, and harkens back to a public meeting I was at many years ago, where the architect of a prominent Charlottetown megalomaniac developer stood up and, in support of his client’s development, exhorted that the city must “develop or die.” That is the mission statement for the growth cult, and it’s something we’re all wrapped up in, at our peril.

We are all of us unrecognisable casualties of the growth cult,

From Indie Magonomics, written by Kai Brach, just arrived in the post from Heftwerk in Berlin, a reminder that printing in colour isn’t expensive because ink is expensive, it’s expensive because of everything else.

I’ve printed thousands of pieces from the same can of black ink that I’ve been using for a decade; I rarely use more than a dollop per job. The setting of the type, the makeready, the setting of the type for a second colour, the cleanup: those are the things that take time and thus add expense.

Fiero, our hot pepper plant, has sprouted an actual pepper!

The films of Anna Kendrick, reshot with Anna McGoldrick.

That’s either a Popalopalots sketch or a Steven Garitty blog post, I can’t decide which.

My friend Allan Rankin is back in the Eastern Graphic after a long hiatus. This week he writes about the devil-may-care attitude of many Islanders toward masks and distancing, echoing feelings I’ve had.

I’ve identified a condition, perhaps unique to we over 50, I call “non-compliance rage syndrome,” characterized by irrationally strong reactions to violations of the social contract: ignoring the hand sanitizer at the entrance, heading the wrong way down the grocery store aisle, riding bicycles on sidewalks, without a helmet, and so on.

The reactions are genuine and rational; the rage, inasmuch as there’s nothing we can do about it, is irrational.

Early in the pandemic times, I noticed a small growth on my temple that, given the general sense of entropy in the air, was cause for concern. I made an appointment at my family doctor last week, and while he was pretty sure it was nothing to worry about, he offered to refer me to a dermatologist, cautioning that it might take some time to get an appointment, as we have only one dermatologist serving the entire Island. As it turned out, it took less than a week: my appointment was for this morning.

In the meantime, I went yesterday to donate plasma at Canadian Blood Services, and learned that waiting to see a specialist about a possible cancer is reason enough to be temporarily disqualified from donating. This was my first ejection from the plasma suite, and I was appropriately chastened, but did emerge with a smart red face mask as a lovely consolation gift.

Wanting to imbue my dermatologist visit with as much positive karma as possible, I opted to ride my bicycle out to Parkdale, and once I’d made that decision, I opted to make a morning of it, and gang together all of my midtown tasks together in a grand loop. A muggy loop, as it turned out, with 85% humidity.

Here’s a map showing where my bicycle took me (geolocations sent to PhoneTrack, in my Nextcloud, via Overland; map tiles by Stamen Design):

From home I rode north on Prince and Upper Prince to Gerald, making a brief stop at Outer Limit Sports to pick up some replacement handlebar grips for my bicycle, the old ones having turned into a sticky gelatinous mess in the summer heat. 

From there I cycled up to Allen Street, and east along Allen Street to Parkdale Pharmacy for my appointment.

My appointment, with Dr. Rodriguez, the aforementioned Island’s-only-dermatologist, took approximately 35 seconds. She looked at my temple with her microscope and declared me simply a victim of age, rather than cancer. That was a relief.

Back on the bike, I headed west on Allen Street to Sobeys for groceries. Mindful of Allan Rankin’s sage counsel, I opted to wear the aforementioned smart red face mask I’d picked up at Canadian Blood Services, something that made me particularly conscious that there was, in a sea of shoppers, only one other person wearing a mask (along with a complete abandonment of even lip service being paid to the one-way aisles and social distancing).

I filled up the bicycle trailer with groceries and headed home, stopping at VanKampen’s for fresh tomatoes, and then cycling down the Confederation Trail to Kent Street to pick up milk and yogurt at Purity Dairy.

By the time I got home the bicycle trailer was filled to the gills:

Spending the morning on my bicycle reminded me, yet again, how much I love getting around that way, and despite the mugginess, it was a thoroughly enjoyable morning, made all the better by, you know, not having skin cancer.

Bonus pro tip: if you need to get bicycle handlebar grips on easily, spritz some hand sanitizer inside them first. Worked like a charm.

When you walk into Shoppers Drug Mart pharmacies you are immediately confronted by the cosmetics counter, where the staff are obviously instructed to greet you warmly. I always say hello, and then make my way into the heart of the store for whatever I’m looking for, never having had cause to stop.

Last week, though, I did stop, to ask the clerk where the sunscreen was.

“Well, the high-end sunscreen is over here,” she said, pointing to a posh looking display nearby, “and everything else is on the other side of the store.”

High-end sunscreen? I had no idea there was such a thing.

More often than not, I am ashamed to say, I am a sunscreen aspirant rather than a sunscreen wearer. I’ve always found applying sunscreen to be akin to spreading a heady mashup of motor oil, molasses, and printers ink to my body, and walking around thus-protected has always proved rather uncomfortable.

Perhaps I’ve been shopping in the wrong aisle, I wondered.

So I walked over to the high-end sunscreen display, where I found suitably high-end brands with names like La Roche and Darphin and Shiseido. 

I settled on a tube of High Protection Spray SPF 50+ from Avène. At $33 for 200 ml, it was roughly 5x more than I’d ever paid for sunscreen.

I’m only a week—several applications—into using it, but I must say that the motor-oil-molasses factor is, indeed, significantly less than what I’ve experienced in “low-end” commodity sunscreen. 

Whether it will be $33 better, I’ll have to hold on to determine. But I am becoming a regular sunscreen user, so signs are good.

(“That’s right, all the fanciest Dijon Ketchup” is a line from If I Had a $1,000,000 from Barenaked Ladies’ 1992 album Gordon).