the no convention year 2020

well, that Anime 1980 thing yesterday was my last anime fandom convention event or panel or piece of programming or whatever it is we're calling the things we do for online conventions, that's it for the year for me, so far anyway. I don't have anything else on my plate at present. And that's kind of a weird feeling, not having a big video editing deadline in front of me every day. I used to think that these things would take up less time, but it seems like they take up more time as the years go on, that I'm always having to dig up more stuff and that it takes longer to assemble things, edit them together, and put music and narration and titles on top. At least I think I let it take up more of my time.

To be honest, everything getting cancelled this year has been good for me. I'm more relaxed, I'm not stressing out about getting everything ready to pack it into the car and schlep it across town and load it into a hotel room. I haven't had to go to any staff meetings. I haven't had to pay for hotel rooms or airport restaurant meals, and the things I would have bought in the dealers room I have bought at The Beguiling or Eyesore Cinema.

I've had more time to ride my bike and write articles and do podcasts, I've gotten a little illustration work done, more trips to the trails and more bug bites. We drove out last week a little west of Orangeville and parked on a side road until we could see the comet NEOWISE and there it was, a smudge with the naked eye and clearly visible through our cheap binoculars, which is not a thing I've seen a comet do in pretty much ever.

I do miss conventions, don't get me wrong, but I think we needed a year off.

july 26

wow, it's been a month since I did one of these COVID tracking posts.

worldwide cases: 16,076,713
worldwide deaths: 645,192
US cases: 4,181,268
US deaths: 146,484
Canada cases: 115,470
Canada deaths: 8,929
Ontario cases: 40,457
Ontario deaths: 2,802

Ontario is mostly in Phase Three except for the Toronto area which is still in Phase Two - patios are open, that's the most visible thing. Masks are mandatory inside businesses. We were in the grocery store yesterday and everybody was masked except for one clueless looking middle aged guy. When we're out and about and we want lunch, we either have to bring it home or find somewhere outside to eat it.

The numbers in Ontario have been in the "100-200 per day new cases" range for the past week or so. I think one day last week the numbers went above 200 cases and everybody got nervous and then the next day they went back down, but I want to see those numbers below 100. I want to see them at ZERO for a solid two weeks, that's what I want to see before I can even think about doing any sort of socializing in groups of more than four or five.