This is probably an over-reaction. In part, I’m doing it to protect the world from me. My father-in-law (with whom I share a house, for reasons that are complicated, and maybe we’ll get to that) was at that mining convention where some guy went home with COVID-19. Neither my father-in-law, nor I, nor my mother-in-law, nor Ellen have come down with any symptoms. And from what I can tell, that Sudbury guy was the only person at the convention who contracted the virus. But still. I cough lot on a good day. It would probably freak out my co-workers.
Possibly more importantly, tho, I’m doing it to protect Ellen and my mother-in-law from the world. Ellen has a litany of health problems already and doesn’t need another one. The MIL is just getting over pneumonia, probably brought on by the bronchitis I probably gave her a couple months ago.
I do still feel bad about that. I mean, having bronchitis in general feels bad, so I was a bit pre-occupied with that at the time. And I did make a concerted effort not to pass on the various plagues I was carrying at the time. You know, before the big pandemic plague. So I’m not entirely confident of my ability to keep viruses to myself should I encounter them out in the world.
So I’m avoiding the world for a bit.
It’s probably weird, but a global pandemic kinda seems par for the course right now. I mean, I’m fine and everything, but it kind of feels like I’ve spent the last five years being bounced from one crisis to the next. In some ways, it’s kind of reassuring that the rest of the world is along for the ride on this one.
I gotta level with you folks: 2016 was pretty rough on Ellen and me. Geo-politics and other tragedies aside, we faced a series of challenges that we’re still struggling to deal with.
at the 1920’s Great Gatsby themed Netsuite Holiday party in Guelph, Ontario on Friday, November 25, 2016.(Photo by Peter Power)
A year ago, Ellen’s neighbour announced that he had decided to sell his two properties–both directly upwind of her, one next door and one behind–to developers. This was the thing we’d been fearing most since the City of Waterloo began the process to rezone Ellen’s neighbourhood, and it happened mere months after we’d gotten married with the intent to move Ellen out of a house that had worked well for her, but had become increasingly confining and problematic as more construction happened around her and more and more neighbours moved in.
We had already stated the process renovating my house to sell, but also maybe to give Ellen a temporary place to escape from the problems in her neighbourhood. With that in mind, we took on renovating my bathroom. It was a bit of a trial to see if we could do renovations Ellen was reasonably okay with.
The renovation was funded largely from the generosity of our wedding guests, who we still haven’t properly thanked. For that, we apologize. Ellen still wants to send cards! I’m also sorry you couldn’t see the bathroom for yourself.
It turned out pretty well, too, as you can see. But as Ellen’s neighbour’s sale went ahead, we made the decision to sell my house, so we could have a downpayment if we managed to find a place we could share. The bathroom was a big part of the quick sale of the house.
We haven’t found that house yet, but we’re still looking. It turns out that air quality like Ellen found when she first moved into her house is very hard to come by. We’ve been to quite a few properties now, but with our requirements, combined with a very… active… real estate market in Waterloo Region, our home together hasn’t materialized.
A few weeks ago, Ellen addressed Waterloo city council to talk about how the developments are affecting her (skip to about 56 minutes in):
I finished my first full year employed at Netsuite Waterloo. Netsuite was acquired by Oracle late in the year which, while the process added a little additional unwelcome uncertainty in our lives, was completed successfully and the equity I held in Netsuite gave us a bit of a boost in our downpayment fund. I still greatly enjoy working with the people in the Netsuite Waterloo office, and it looks like very little of that is changing with the acquisition.
Aside from house hunting, my major extracurricular project this year was my second year on the oranizing committee for Maker Expo. As well as chairing the committee, I coordinated our social media efforts and our awesome team of photography volunteers.
You can see a whole pile of photos from the event here:
This was probably my favourite moment of 2016: in September, Ellen and I finally took a road trip to Grand Bend. We’d been talking about going to a beach on Lake Huron for years, but in 2016 we finally packed up a picnic and drove out to Ontario’s west coast for some clean air and clean (if cold) water.
But, of course, just as it seemed like we were making some progress in house hunting and getting past all the crises, this happened, on my way to Certified Scrum Master training in Waterloo:
Unfotunately, this is the only car in the world Ellen can comfortably ride in. It took two months, and altogether too much wrangling with the insurance company, but I managed to get my little Corolla fixed up and picked it up just this week. I’m claiming that as a victory at least.
For those we’ve seen and talked to and supported us through this year, thank you so very much. It means a lot. If we haven’t been able to keep in touch, maybe we can correct that in 2017. Things aren’t going to get much less hectic any time soon, but you all mean a lot to us and we’re happy to have you in our lives.
Belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, from Darcy and Ellen.
at the 1920’s Great Gatsby themed Netsuite Holiday party in Guelph, Ontario on Friday, {month name} 25, 2016.(Photo by Peter Power)
I’ve in the past been an advocate of strategic voting.
Strategic voting, though, is very, very hard to get right. Even with all the polling data (which, for individual ridings, you don’t even have), you don’t really know what your neighbours are going to do election day. We have great tools like Vote Together and Three Hundred Eight, but I’m not convinced these are really enough information to base a good strategic vote on.
In strategic voting, you’re voting for a less-favourite party to keep out a hated party. Say you’re a big fan of the Greens, but your riding is a close race between the NDP and Conservatives, with the Greens trailing far behind. In this case, you might choose to vote NDP to keep the Conservatives out.
And this might be a rational choice. But are you sure the NDP and Conservatives are the only parties who have a chance at winning? How do you know that? Is that data reliable?
Vote Together, for the first time, actually did riding-specific polling for hotly contested ridings. Waterloo was one of them. They chose to use the results of their polling to say that people who didn’t want Peter Braid to take the riding again needed to vote Liberal.
But if you look at the actual polling data, their margin of error is about 4%. They’ve got Chagger at a significant lead with 39% and Braid and Freeman fairly close at 31 and 26% respectively. This isn’t the case that the NDP have no chance of winning, even by their own polling. And the poll was taken a month ago.
Maybe now as the Liberals have the momentum local NDP support has fallen further, but do you know that?
Also important are other factors that may not show up in polling. In the last provincial election, and the by-election that proceeded it, this riding went to the NDP. Now the races and issues (and even the riding itself, now) are different, but what it does mean is die-hard NDP voters who might normally stay home because they think their party has no chance are emboldened and determined to come out and vote. And that Freeman, a popular city councillor, has more name recognition on the ballot than, say, a Chagger or a Walsh. The polls only ask about parties, not candidates.
Both the NDP and the Liberals have been making appeals to strategic voting, further muddying the waters. And the NDP has been the most egregious here, honestly. It’s a bit of a mess.
If you actually want to vote Liberal, that’s awesome. I’d usually agree with you. I actually prefer the Liberal economic plan and get really irritated by the populism of the NDP. But C-51.
If you were thinking of maybe voting NDP, at least in Waterloo, I don’t think strategic voting is a good reason not to. There are lots of other reasons why strategic voting’s bad for democracy, but here, now, I don’t think it even makes sense.
While I know it won’t eliminate strategic voting, I do take heart that both the Liberals and NDP, who seemed destined to form the next government, barring a constitutional crisis, have promised to introduce some form of proportional representation before the next election. And, from my perspective, it can’t come soon enough.
