INCOME TAX RETURN

Despite the deadline for filing your income tax return for 2020 was April 30, 2021, I didn’t actually calculate my income tax return until this weekend. I was going on the assumption that I was going to get a refund and not have to pay more tax. Luckily, my assumption was correct, most likely due to a final RRSP contribution in February for tax year 2020.

I really had no excuse for not doing it sooner and in the end, I just kept myself from getting my refund sooner. I’ll probably be lazy again next year.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

After four years, I now have the ability to heat my living room. I woke up very early this morning to allow an electrician into my home, the first stranger to spend an appreciable amount of time in my apartment since the beginning of the pandemic.

I would later find out that my electrician’s name was Chris. Chris had to cut two exploratory holes in my drywall where my electric fireplace was. This was so that he could location the proper wiring for the new baseboard heater.

Once he understood what was going on behind that wall, he knew had to cut along the bottom of the wall and then across the wall where the new heater was going to. This was required because he had to splice new wire and pull it along. He was able to purchase the exact same heater that is in my bedroom.

The actual wiring and installation of the heater took very little time. Most of the time was spent trying to figure out what the wiring situation was like behind the wall. Chris then had to leave for about an hour to get more wire and also buy my heater.

He was very professional and even vacuumed my living to room to get all the debris cleaned up at the end.

As I’ve mentioned before though, this is just step one. As you can see in the above photo, the baseboard trim has been removed for two of my walls and there are now two holes in the wall where the fireplace used to be. I need to repair the walls and then paint them. I need to start getting quotes on the drywall repairs very soon.

EARLY MORNING

I could never be a tradesperson. My lack of skills with my hands notwithstanding, I could never work the hours. The electrician is supposed to be at my apartment at 8am tomorrow. I usually don’t roll out of bed for work until 10am on most days. I need to get to bed now.

ELECTRIC

In March of 2020, I was preparing my living room so that an electrician could come in and install a baseboard heater. I had removed the only source of heat in my living room, a fake fireplace, a few years prior and it was now time to get a new source of heat. I moved some furniture around so I could remove some baseboards from the walls. My living room was in a “temporary state” when the pandemic hit. The plan was to have some furniture in temporary locations and stuff just set aside for a few days while I made room for the heater and for the electrician to do their work.

The pandemic threw those plans out the window. I had gotten as far as getting quotes from some contractors but imagine having a stranger come into your home during the last few weeks of March of 2020. That would have been crazy.

It’s now May of 2021 and on Thursday morning, an electrician will finally come to install that baseboard heater. More than a year after I had anticipated the work being done, it’s will actually happen this week.

This is actually the first step in a series of home improvements that I will be doing. The next step is to repair some drywall and after that, some painting.

FATE SAYS NO

In 2013, there was a massive fire in my neighbourhood that took out several businesses. Among them was a Vietnamese restaurant that I frequented. It was the only place I could get a bowl of pho within walking distance. The next closest Vietnamese restaurant was probably a 25-30 minute walk, all uphill.

Before the fire, my local Vietnamese restaurant was probably open for about a year. It burned down and I held out hope that the owner would find some way to open up again, somewhere close by. I don’t know the details but they never did. Maybe they didn’t have insurance, maybe they didn’t want to be in the restaurant business anymore, it could have been anything and I don’t blame them for not being able to bounce back.

About four years went by before another Vietnamese restaurant opened up in the neighbourhood. This one was about a block further down than the old one. I was beyond excited to have them open their doors. I didn’t hesitate to visit as soon as I could. To my delight, the food was great, reasonably priced, and the lady who ran the establishment was friendly and engaging. The restaurant was conveniently close to one of the train stations, so on many nights when I was coming home from work, hungry and not sure what to do for dinner, it was an easy choice to pop in for a pleasant meal.

This weekend, this wonderful restaurant was destroyed by a devastating fire that also gutted several other businesses. Like many restaurants, I am sure they scrambled, adjusted, and pivoted as best they could to survive a pandemic where dine-in patrons weren’t allowed for months at a time and even where they were, people were vary of going to restaurants. I personally just had take-out from there just a few days ago. I got a bowl of pho and two of their awesome spring rolls. It was one of the best meals I’ve had in weeks.

The expectation is that this province was going to allow restaurants to have dine-in patrons starting tomorrow. This will be a huge development for all restaurants and coupled with dropping positive case numbers and increasingly vaccinated population, I am sure all restaurant owners are seeing the light at the end of this long pandemic tunnel. But to get this far, to work so hard to get this far, to overcome all the obstacles and challenges, to see the beginning of normal operations ahead, only to fall victim to a fire that they had no control over. It’s incredibly sad for all the businesses affected today.

I don’t know how of many of those business owners will bounce back from this fire. I hope they all have insurance. I hope they find a way to make it all work again.

POOPS

I had some ice cream this evening and I didn’t have my lactose pills handy. What followed was a gassy experience, ending with two poops. I feel much better now but I question why I continue to have ice cream without my pills.

ANNOYING

So every few weeks, I’ve noticed I lose connection to the Internet in the morning for a few minutes and then it comes back.

It’s not frequent enough to be a major blocker but happens just enough to annoying. At first I contacted my ISP and they said they didn’t see any obvious faults on their end. They were able to tell me though that on a particular day where I reported an outage, their equipment in my building also got reset. They asked if my building had experienced a power outage. It had not. Then they asked me if my building was doing generator testing. I wasn’t sure.

I left it at that for a few days but one morning I had to go run an errand. As I was coming back, I had to use the elevator to go up to my place. While I was waiting for the elevator, the power seemed to be removed from the elevators and all of them stopped working. It was weird because the lights were still on. It was as if there was a selective power outage.

I called the property manager and it turns out my building does generator testing every second Tuesday of the month. This causes all the telecommunications equipment to lose power for a few minutes, along with the elevators. It’s super annoying and there’s nothing my ISP can do.

So every month, I lose my Internet a few minutes in the morning. I’ve learned not to schedule Zoom meetings on the second Tuesday of every month, in the morning. Does this happen to anyone else?

BITCOIN

I got into the Bitcoin market last week when I purchased some shares in a Canadian Bitcoin ETF. I understand cryptocurrencies are volatile and I guess that was proven to me because less than a week later, my investment into Bitcoin is now worth 10% less. The great thing is I only put in about $1K into the ETF, so it’s not like I put all my life savings into the Bitcoin basket.

It’s kinda crazy that single billionaire can make some comments and make a cryptocurrency drop in value significantly. If it can drop significantly, it can probably rise significantly as well.

WEEKEND OVER

My four-day weekend is over and I really don’t want to go back to work. Having four days off was awesome. For the first two days, I did more errands and chores than relaxing. I washed my car for the first time since I bought it. I cleaned my kitchen and my bathroom. I did laundry. I re-potted one of my plants with new, nutrient-rich soil. I took some clothes to get dry-cleaned.

On Saturday and Sunday, I relaxed more and did less cleaning and organizing. I had dinner with my parents and I played lots of video games.

Tomorrow is Monday and it’ll be kinda tough to get back into work-mode again.