Flaaaaaaags!
Any video that combines legit flag critique and legit humor gets an A+ from me.
Nunavut’s flag is cool. But I actively hate BC’s flag. It…it bugs me.
I AM CANADIAN!
Yes, you read that right! I took my Citizenship Oath this afternoon and am now officially a Canadian citizen.
The citizenship ceremony took place entirely on Zoom, which was an interesting experience, because there were about 80 other people/families in the meeting in total. I don’t know if everyone was from Alberta or if they were all scattered around, but the judge that performed the ceremony was in Montreal, so who knows!
The whole thing took about two and a half hours; most of the time was spent waiting for the clerk to do one-on-one meetings with everyone, during which we had to cut up our Permanent Resident cards on camera. Then we all came together, said the Oath, sang the national anthem, and became Canadians.
(I had to pledge my allegiance to King Charles and all his successors, which was pretty wild.)
So no longer do I live in a foreign country. Canada is my country!
TWO THINGS TODAY
First: Nate’s surgery went well! He and his mom got back around 5 or so this evening and he’s doing a lot better than either of the previous two surgeries already.
Second: I got an email from IRCC Canada giving me a notice to take my citizenship oath! It will be over Zoom on Thursday, November 30.
That’s wild. I’ll be an official Canadian citizen in a few weeks!
Pass!
Awwww yeah!
I’m pretty sure I know which question I missed because I overthought it, haha.
Now the next step is to wait for them to contact me (they have to review my test and the recording of me taking it to be sure I wasn’t cheating, haha) so that I can take my official oath.
Super exciting!
Well, hell.
So you know how I sent in my application for Canadian citizenship back at the end of July? And how we all figured the process would take like six months minimum so that I’d have some time to study up for the Citizenship Test before I got called in to take it?
I got called in to take it.
I have until October 23rd to take it, specifically.
Have I studied at all? No.
Do I have time to study at all? No.
Is this the worst possible semester for this test to happen? Yes.
But I want citizenship, so I’ll have to GIT ‘ER DONE somehow.
Oof.
Guess what I did today?
I APPLIED FOR CANADIAN CITIZENSHIP!
I’m finally eligible and I finally got around to filling out the application, so now it’s on its way and I get to see how long this whole process takes now.
At least it was easier (and cheaper) than permanent residency.
SCREW IT, GONNA BE CANADIAN
Hi.
So I’ve been eligible to apply for Canadian citizenship for quite some time now, but obviously haven’t done it yet. I hope to do it soon, though! I was initially going to apply online since they allow people to do that now, but every time I try to create an account it says their system is down.
Every. Single. Time.
So I’m like screw this, let’s do the paper application. It’s a lot less convenient and makes me worry that I’m going to very easily forget to submit something, but I had to do a paper application for permanent residence that was a LOT more involved than the paperwork for citizenship, and that went through fine.
The fee for the citizenship application is also quite a bit less than the fee for the permanent residence application, so there’s that.
Ultimate Canadian Coins
I don’t care how exceedingly extravagant this is, these coins are beautiful.
My dad used to collect coins. He obviously couldn’t afford these, haha, but I wonder if he still pays attention to this kind of thing.
END!
r/place
So if you don’t know what r/place is, here’s some history and info. In 2017, this particular subreddit was home to an experiment that involved a blank online canvas, a limited color palette, and collaboration. Basically, registered users had the ability to place a single colored pixel on the canvas (and had to wait a certain amount of time to place another). People coordinated with each other, fought each other for space on the canvas, and produced overall a very cool looking image by the end of the event.
Fast forward to now. It’s 2022 and there was a new version of r/place with a bigger canvas, more colors, and more collaboration.
ANYWAY.
The reason I’m mentioning this is because the r/ucalgary subreddit was all about trying to get the U of C logo on there. But in the process, they kept bringing up the Canadian flag and how NO ONE COULD DRAW THE MAPLE LEAF. And how Germany drew a perfect maple leaf on their flag just to show that they could do it.
Edit: Here’s a video showing the evolution of the Canadian flag and how terrible that leaf was. Like, oh my god, guys.
That’s hilarious.
Edit again: here’s a really cool video giving a much better description than I can and showing how the canvas evolved:
I love this kind of stuff. It’s so cool.
‘Berta
I got my Alberta driver’s license today!
…am I cool now?
(Sorry not sorry for the short blog.)
Yeah, Pretty Much
And -22 is NOT that cold of a temperature for Calgary. Just sayin’.
GET IT, CANADA
Go, Canada, go!
We got off to a very slow start up here, but things ramped up quickly. Now we’re one of the top countries when it comes to the percent of the population with at least one shot. Hopefully our rate of second shots will start increasing at the same rate.
WOO THERE MIGHT BE HOPE FOR THE FUTURE YET
Speak the Speak
I hadn’t heard “pencil crayons” until Nate said it when referring to my colored pencils. I guess it makes sense, though. They’re like crayons but in pencil form?
I have never heard “garburator” in my life and if I didn’t see what it was referring to, I would think it was Canada’s name for Bigfoot or something.
What kind of nerd is down with “soccer baseball?” “Kickball” is a fairly unambiguous term; you’re kicking a ball like in soccer, but you’re doing so in a game form that’s like baseball. “Soccer baseball” could imply that, but it could also imply that you’re whacking soccer balls around with a baseball bat. Which I guess is kinda cool.
Definitely heard it referred to as “hydro bill” in BC.
Odd.
USAY2K
Not being able to go back to the US for more than a year has made me realize just how much stuff I still get from there. Mostly it’s stuff that I can’t find up here (like my particular brand of deodorant or the ONLY lip balm that seems to work for me), but a good amount of it is stuff that is WAY cheaper in the States. Examples:
- Sunscreen
- Vitamins
- Razors
- Shampoo
- The pens I use when I lecture (though I guess I haven’t been using these since we’ve been online anway)
- Clothes (like even the basic stuff like socks and bras)
- Earrings
That’s just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head.
And it’s too terrifying to go into a Walmart or a Superstore right now, so everything has to be bought at Safeway, which is SUPER expensive.
Yay. I hate this freaking pandemic.
COVID PARTY 2020
Six-digit daily case counts in the States? Yeah, sure, why the hell not.
That is absolutely terrifying, America. I feel like it’s right on the verge of being past anyone’s control and the only way it’s going to slow down is by just chewing through the whole US population.
But Canada isn’t doing all that much better. Here’s our second peak going strong:
Alberta, specifically, has really dropped the ball. We were in new daily case numbers between 100 and 200 for the longest time, then things jumped up to the 500s a few weeks ago. Yesterday? 800 cases. Today? 1,441 cases. People keep gathering and are apparently not staying home when they’re exhibiting COVID symptoms.
Why is everyone so freaking stupid and selfish, I don’t understand.
Like, I get the whole “pandemic fatigue” thing, but holy hell. If people just calmed their tits for like TWO MONTHS and isolated as much as they could, we could probably cut this thing down significantly.
Why is that such a hard concept?
UGH I AM SO FRUSTRATED WITH THIS WHOLE WORLD RIGHT NOW.
Wave goodbye to any sense of normality this year
So we are definitely in the “second wave” of COVID up here. It’s a bit scary because Canada was doing quite well as a country through July and August, but cases are spiking again nonetheless.
I guess the comforting thing (if you want to call it that) is that the second wave seems to be happening in almost every country that appeared to have the virus under control, so at least we’re not an outlier as far as that pattern goes. I mean, it could be worse, right?
(That, of course, is the US)
Canada did really well squelching the first wave. I hope people take this second wave just as seriously.
Edit: okay, just for funsies, Canada has had a total of about 197,000 cases and about 9,800 deaths. That’s about 0.52% and 0.026% of the Canadian population, respectively. The United States has had a total of about 8.1 million cases and about 219,000 deaths. That’s about 2.5% and of the population and 0.067% of the population, respectively. I’d say that’s a decent difference, especially in the percentage of cases.
North of the Border
This is probably going to sound super stupid, but every once and a while I remember that I am not living in the country I was born in and I’m like…oh.
Yeah, that sounds pretty stupid as I’m typing it out. But it’s not something that I consciously think about very often, so when I do actually think about the fact that I live in a country where I’m not technically a citizen, it’s kind of a weird thing. It’s kind of a shocking thing. I never thought I’d be living anywhere other than the US, but HERE WE ARE in a world where I’ve spent more of my adult life in Canada than in ‘Murica.
Kinda wild.
Sorry, that’s all I’ve got for today.
Coronavirus Madness
Take a look at these two different graphs of daily cases of COVID-19.
Which one is the US? Which one is Canada? I’ll give you one guess.
Even with the population difference, Canada is seeing much smaller rates than the US. And we’re flattening a lot more. Will we spike again? Probably. But I don’t think we’ll spike to the extent the US currently is.
Hell, that isn’t even the second wave in the US. It’s still the first wave. It just picked up a lot of momentum.
That’s terrifying. Are you all terrified down there?
Nova Scotia
There was a mass-shooting in Nova Scotia today/yesterday.
That kind of stuff doesn’t happen up here.
It’s getting national news coverage. It’s all that’s been talked about today, even with the pandemic and all its fallout.
But in the US, something like this would probably just be a headline on CNN. Maybe not even the major headline. The major headline would be Trump being an idiot in some form or another. This would be “18+ people killed in mass-shooting” as a smaller headline somewhere further down the page. A lot of people probably wouldn’t even click on it because we’re so damn desensitized to that kind of thing in the States.
Ugh.
US vs. Canada
Hey friends in the United States, is it as bad down there as the news is making it sound? ‘Cause it sounds pretty bad.
Obviously no one is really focusing on Idaho; how’s Idaho? Is everyone walking around in fear of getting the virus? Is Gritman overwhelmed? Are people protesting the shelter-at-home orders to get back to work?
Obviously Canada is getting hit by this as well (just like the rest of the world), but I think the biggest difference between Canada and the US as far as how this is being handled is in how it’s become such a political thing in the US whereas up here, we haven’t politicized it.
At least, not nearly to the extent that the US has.
Like…the crisis is being dealt with despite political differences up here. Political differences are not being deepened by the crisis. Again, at least not to the extent that they are in the US.
It’s interesting and weird and scary.
And this is going to sound really stupid, but I feel guilty for not being in the United States. I feel guilty for living in a country that seems to be handling this quite well while like 99.8% of all the people I’ve ever cared about are getting traumatized by the Trumpster Dumpster and his complete incompetence. It sounds scary down there, and I feel guilty for not having to share that scariness, if that makes any sense at all.
Anyway.
Blah.
Annnnnnnnnnd the border’s closed.
I’m actually surprised they waited so long, but the US-Canadian border is now closed to all “non-essential” travel.
It’s only closed for 30 days, but I suspect it will extend for longer than that.
I know that this closure was a mutual decision between the US and Canada, but if things start to get really rough with all of this (economy-wise, especially), I really hope it doesn’t drive a wedge between the two countries. I’ve posted this video before on here, but I’ve been thinking about it with the recent talk of closing the border (and, of course, the actual closing of the border today).
Oh, Canada…
Also, Calgary has a ton of walking/biking paths.
It’s one of the main reasons I love this city.
I FORGOT TO MENTION…
I got a huge tax return this year. We’re talking $8,700.
What in the actual hell, Canada.
A good portion of that is going to the furnace/water heater we just had to replace, but what about the rest of it?
(Can I buy a Theremin?)
Eigenblogger 