I apologize for my extended absence here on the blog. I normally give the staff at this site a break over the holidays so they can relax and spend time with their loved ones. My absence was longer than normal for a few reasons.
Let me try to sum up what my holidays were like. I spent the majority of the remaining days of 2021 trying to do accomplish two things: staying warm and not catching COVID-19. The last two weeks or so of December were extremely cold ones for the greater Vancouver. It was unseasonably cold, with temperatures going down to around -13 in some cases. I was forced to turn the heat on almost on a 24-hour cycle, which rarely happens. It was bitterly cold, a deep freeze that Vancouver doesn’t see very often all. The air also got very dry which caused me to run my humidifier on a 24-hour cycle as well. I had my humidifier on full blast in my bedroom and it was competing against my baseboard heater. The heat would dry the air out and my humidifier would try to add back in some moisture. I could never get it above 30% humidity in my bedroom. I’d have to dial down the heat to get more moisture in the room but then it would be too cold. So it was either be warm and have itchy dry skin or cold and less itchy skin.
The cold also made for some interesting driving conditions. Before the heat would kick in, my steering wheel would be like an ice cube, so it felt like gripping a block of ice while steering. I don’t like driving with gloves, so this sucked. It of course snowed while it was this cold and invariably I would track snow into my car. I park my car exposed to the outside, so the snow would stay solid in my car sometimes. I also had a bottle of water in my car which froze solid for almost two weeks.
Of course, the holidays and freezing cold all is still occurring during a pandemic. Normally holidays are a time for seeing friends and family but those activities remained curtailed for a second straight year. I kept my social circle small and didn’t take many unnecessary risks. I managed to finish one game, The Outer Worlds, before the year ended.
I used vacation days to extend my holiday until the 13th of January, but I have to say, I haven’t felt very relaxed since the 2022 started. That’s because I had a painter come in to paint my place starting on January 3. That meant that I had to clean up and move my furniture and belongings before that. So while some people had a relaxing New Year’s Day and January 2, I was moving furniture and boxing stuff up and cleaning. The first week of the new year was basically me having my entire apartment unavailable other than sleeping. While the painter was painting in the apartment, I was either relegated to a small spot or I was hanging out somewhere locally. I also couldn’t sleep in during the week since the painter would start early in the morning. The painter finished on Friday and he left a mess despite saying he’d protect my floors, furniture and belongings from paint dust and paint splotches. It’s Sunday, and I my apartment is still not back to where it was before. I still have to do a ton of cleaning before I can move my furniture back. I basically put my bed back so I could sleep and just today I put my desk and computer back together. My living room is still a disaster, with everything piled into the center of it, all covered in a layer of paint dust.
I don’t go back to work until Thursday but I feel like I’ll be using all those days to just clean and move all my crap back into place. As far as I’m concerned, my last restful day where I was completely relaxed was well before the new year.