Cal's Journal

April 3, 2020 Fifty spins around the sun; still doesn’t feel quite real to me.  Life to this point has treated me well; I have had my pain and my trepidation along the way.  Like Joe Walsh says “Life’s been good to me so far.”  Now is probably the most uncertain I have ever been in my adult life.  I embark on a new chapter, one I find myself writing as I go along.   Fifty years on planet earth and Read more…

April 2, 2020 Tough night last night; sleep was fleeting and short.  Awaken to the same dilemma; motivate my kid and motivate myself.  I go for the cup of Jo and sit down and try to work, focus escapes and I find myself emptying the junk drawer. A junk drawer is like opening a time capsule of the past.  Concert tickets, coupons and various mystery keys surface, time to purge.  Focus still escapes me and the drawer sits incomplete and Read more…

April 1, 2020 April fool’s day… I don’t feel foolish and I already know that this isn’t some kind of mass April fool’s joke.  I decide coffee is far more important than any fool on T.V. . Upon opening the cupboard for the coffee I discover plates; who is messing with my coffee!? With further exploration I see someone has moved all the stuff in the cupboards around.  I feel dismayed and angrily return the coffee to its proper place.  Read more…

March 31, 2020 Morning seems to creep up on my broken sleep.  Dreams.  Strange and vivid dreams haunt my night.  I awake slowly hoping that it is the reality of my dream that I awake too.  Turning on the TV I see Trudeau’s face, confirming that I am still living the nightmare I went to sleep to; not the crazy dream I was having.  I want to wake my daughter, she should be in school, but with no school I Read more…

March 30, 2020 Two weeks ago the world turned upside down as our new reality sunk in.  Two weeks seem like two years.  In what feels like another era they closed Big White and told us we had to stay away from each other.  I try hard to remember what it was like before we were told to adopt social distancing, a term out of some kind of manual, now it’s a policy, a state of being.  The damage done Read more…

March 29, 2020 Sunday has come down and it is a good day to get the soil ready in the garden.  Spreading the manure into the garden seems fitting after the morning news.  Trump is rambling again, I missed our fuzzy faced PM this morning, and not sure what he is doing Sundays in his self-isolation.   A true disaster looms south of the border as the numbers are mounting.  The death toll could be staggering yet it doesn’t feel real Read more…

March 28, 2020 Life feels a bit more back to normal this morning.  Saturday like any other, relax and cook breakie, yet in the normalcy of the morning a tension seems to grow.  We need to go to the drug store, need hand sanitizer… Surviving the drug store is easy yet I feel naked without my shopping cart to defend myself. Feeling brave we grab take out and head for the lake.  Kukuli café is playing indigenous music that takes Read more…

March 27, 2020 The morning lazes frantically along until my wonderful wife explains she has offered to help some friends that are in quarantine.  My wife, the one who still has full time work.  I step in and offer to go and help out, she should stay home and work.   Anything to have a project, get out of the house. Feeling like I am in a spy movie I am told to pick up the dog on the porch tied Read more…

March 26, 2020 I went to work today downtown, social distancing in mind.  It felt weird somehow going downtown; with no one there it felt almost like working on Christmas or Remembrance Day.  Guilty feelings washed away when I got on the roof and soaked in the view of the lake, framed by snow-capped mountains.  The air felt good, cleaner somehow, nice to breath and move forward.  Still hard to focus and do the job, just staring at the awesome Read more…