Category: Uncategorized

My T4 became available online today which meant I could do a rough calculation of income tax return for 2020. I write rough because not all my receipts and forms have been sent to me. For example, my charitable donation receipt isn’t available yet but it’s fairly easy to calculate it down to the correct dollar. I also don’t have all my receipts for the savings account interest I accrued for the year. These amounts are marginal though and won’t swing my return one way or the other too far.

Using some tax software, I discovered that in my current situation, I would owe the government of Canada another $450 or so. I won’t find any more tax credits hiding in my couch anywhere, if anything the accurate calculation might show I owe even more. Since it was easy to do, I ran the calculation again but this time I added in another $5,000 worth of RRSP contributions. This turned an amount owing to a refund of about $1,400. This was good enough for me, I didn’t want to fiddle with the contribution amount too much and I also need to factor in some breathing room, because the numbers aren’t firm yet.

I then went online to contribute another $5,000 to my employer RRSP. There’s still well over a week, almost two weeks until the RRSP deadline at the end of the month, so I can relax now. Once all my official receipts and forms are available, I’ll re-visit my return and enter in the official numbers. I can now complete my return at my leisure.

This afternoon my stomach wasn’t feeling so great. It was uncomfortable enough that it delayed me from eating lunch for a few hours. I kept on drinking water though because that didn’t bother and also it’s important to keep hydrated throughout the day. As I was getting more water for my glass, I noticed there was a chip missing near the rim. I had no idea when this happened. I poured the water out and there was no piece of glass that I could see. I would have heard it in the sink too.

Of course, I began to think the worst, that I had somehow swallowed the piece of glass and that it was not wreaking havoc in my stomach, ripping it to shreds. I entertained my own panic for a few minutes before logic took over. While I couldn’t prove I hadn’t swallowed this piece of glass, it seemed like it would have been unlikely. The piece was large enough that I probably would have noticed it in my mouth. I also have this habit of never drinking all of the water in my glass before refilling it. Since glass will sink in water, I’m guessing if this piece of glass was in my water, it would have been in the bottom, where it would have stayed.

That glass has now been put aside for recycling and I felt much better later on, enough that I very hungry in the late afternoon. While I’m somewhat confident I’ll be ok, I’ll be watching my poop for glass for the next few days.

Monday was a public holiday in this province, so it was a long weekend. I gotta admit, all the long weekends are now blurry together. Without the ability to travel or see friends, it’s mostly another day at home. At the same time, I am very thankful not to have to “go to work” on this extra day off.

It snowed this weekend in the greater Vancouver area. It was enough to be noticeable but not enough to overwhelm all the municipalities’ snow removal equipment. The city looked great with the snow but all the roads were driveable, which I guess is the perfect combo if you’re gonna have snow.

Well tomorrow is Tuesday, which means it’s a short week. We’re already one day closer to the weekend.

The cold front dried up the air real quickly overnight. This morning the relative humidity was 29% in my apartment and my skin was itchy and uncomfortable. I brought the humidifier out at noon, placed it in my bedroom, and turned it on immediately. I set the target humidity to 50% and closed both doors to my bedroom. After twelve hours of continuous humidification, the humidity is still only around 45%.

My skin feels a bit better but it’s still freezing cold. The humidifier will be on all night.

We’re currently experiencing a cold front here in the Lower Mainland. I believe this is the first of the winter. It’s two degrees below freezing and with the wind chill it’s minus seven. This is cold for us here. As terrible as everything has been, I can say the winter has been quite mild up until now. The forecast is for some snow on Friday and Saturday.

As I refuse to turn the heat on in my apartment, I am sleeping with socks and a toque on tonight. The humidity has also dropped quite low tonight. If it wasn’t so late I would have brought out my humidifier. That’s something to do for tomorrow.

When dinner time rolled around this evening I looked in my fridge and realized I was out of any sort of meat and vegetables. I had nothing to make dinner from. My first though was to get groceries downstairs but then I thought it would be more enjoyable and easier to get some takeout. Then laziness took over. There’s a strong cold front happening in the province now, so it’s freezing outside. I really didn’t want to anywhere. So, I looked in my fridge. It was full of half-eaten bags and boxes of stuff. I really should eat some of this stuff before it becomes too old to consume.

I settled on finishing up a bag of frozen corn and some chicken nuggets in a box that I had opened and sampled once but left for a few months. I boiled the corn in a saucepan but for the nuggets, I brushed them with some oil and then air fried them.

You can’t really screw up frozen corn but the nuggets turned out really good, at least for frozen, months old nuggets. They were quite crisp, not especially juicy but not too dry.

I saved myself some money and effort by eating from my freezer. There are some corn dogs I need to get to next.

We’re approaching a full year of living in the pandemic for the western world. It’s still going and despite the creation of vaccines, it won’t be ending anytime soon. Yet, as human beings, we love to look back on events when come up on arbitrary milestones, like a whole year.

The picture you see above is what my facial hair looked like in the middle of May, two months after everyone started working from home. If you can remember that far back, it was still a very scary time for everyone and people were still very reluctant to venture out. Since I was basically stuck at home, I decided to grow out my facial hair from the beginning. What you’re seeing above is about two months of growth, which is sad because I know some dudes who can look like that after a week of not shaving. I have some weak-ass hairs on my upper lip, which gave me a tired looking “moustache”. The chin part looks ok but the abundance of white hairs makes me look like an old dude because I guess I am an old dude now.

I would have never stopped shaving unless we were in the pandemic and I feel like a lot of men made the same decision. I kinda looked like a hobo. Growing it out was fascinating to me though. At beginning, it didn’t feel that great. It felt prickly and uncomfortable at times. When the hair got a certain length though, it felt softer and easier to deal with. I got into this habit of playing with the chin part of it. Sometimes I’d just rub my hands along my beard because it was just so strange to feel all that facial hair. It was a novelty.

It wasn’t very long after this picture was taken that I shaved it all off. It just wasn’t me and with the warmer weather coming, I felt it make the summer less cool. It was quite fun seeing all that long facial hair in my sink when I shaved it off. I wonder if I should try doing this again to celebrate a whole year of pandemic living!

The Starbucks location downstairs closed permanently this week. It wasn’t the only one as hundreds of other locations in Canada were scheduled to be closed by March. This particular location was one of the first tenants in the retail complex below. If I wanted Starbucks coffee, this was where I went. I haven’t been inside that location in over a year and I’m probably not the only one who can say that, which might explain why it closed.

I won’t be going without coffee though. There’s a Starbucks location within the Safeway downstairs. I admit, however, those Starbucks outlets within the Safeway usually isn’t as good as the standalone ones. Speaking of which, there is another real Starbucks location just a three minute walk away. That one won’t be closing, though it is slightly farther away.

More importantly though, the independent coffee scene is strong in my neighbourhood. There is a local coffee shop by the water that has been rated one of the best in the city and next week, another independent coffee shop is opening downstairs as well. I already go to the former quite a bit, looking forward to patronizing the latter soon.

Whatever caused my diarrhea last night continued to provide me minor issues today. I very gassy for most of the day and I might have even farted once during a Zoom call when I speaking. Oh well.

The farting continued into the evening and I had one dodgy poop around dinner time. It actually left me a bit winded afterwards, even though it wasn’t strenuous at all.

It’s time for bed now and I’m feeling a bit better but I can tell I still have some good farts left in me.