Today the sun sets at 4.27pm.  It rises tomorrow at 7:47am

That means that it sets 19 min. later today than it did the last time I wrote this blog but rises only 8min. earlier. Have the days always lengthened more through the evenings than the mornings? Will this pattern continue until we reach the longest day?  These are observations I would never have made and questions I would not have posed were it not for the imposed idleness of age, back pain and a pandemic. For the answers, I will have to either continue my meticulous observations 🤪or send an email to 'Quirks and Quarks' for Bob McDonald to answer. 😂

And so it goes. We have had two days of glorious sunshine. I really enjoy walking in Polson Park, but my back still aches after about 4km. Priscilla, Lynne and I met for lunch in our cars at Kin Beach on Wednesday. I sat in the back of Lynne's car and Priscilla backed in beside us, properly distanced, of course.🤪With our windows open and wine in our glasses, we ate, drank and were merry. We are going to have more such Covid lunches. 

For the first time there's talk of Covid in Vernon, in three seniors' homes. There are cases among both staff and residents but not many so far. There are a few other cases, but the largest spread in the Okanagan is in Big White, the ski area outside of Kelowna. People I know who ski say that there are plenty of cars with Alberta and Quebec plates at Silver Star, and residents of Fernie are worried about the number of people from out of province in their area. John Horgan has approached the Federal Government to see if there's any way BC can shut its borders to people from other provinces that have many more cases of Covid than BC does. That would be difficult to enforce. 

Talking about closing borders, Jay said the other night that that's one of the ways that S. Korea has kept its numbers down. It's a peninsula with its northern border with N. Korea so heavily guarded only a handful of people have made it across alive in decades. S. Korea can isolate itself the way Newfoundland and some island countries can. It's not so easy to control traffic between provinces in Canada. 

Jay has been Zoom teaching long enough to actually like it a bit now. But he says they will go back to "mask to mask" classroom teaching this week. 

By the next time I write this blog the USA will have a new president, Joe Biden, in spite of Trump's Troopers' storming of the United States Capitol on Jan. 06. It and the state capitols  are being very heavily barricaded and patrolled now. It's unlikely the insurrectionists will do much damage on Inauguration Day. 

Again I'm reminded of Leonard Cohen's:

"Democracy is coming -- to the USA."