New homeless shelter opened like, on time and at the announced capacity. I'm kind of in shock.

Spent a good half an hour today building a lovely fantasy of Harry and Meghan. SCENE ONE: Charles reading headlines like this one and looking up, his face ashen. A grey-suited courtier bows and says "Your Majesty, I'm afraid it's unavoidable. We need Meghan. Whatever it takes, we need Meghan back."

SCENE TWO: Evening, a private dinner in one of the palaces. Harry is in a tux, Meghan looks devastating in a dress I will indulge myself in shopping for later. She's definitely wearing over-the-elbow gloves and some glittery bauble of Diana's pinned up in her hair. (Maybe the butterflies? mmm they might be too small, I want a moderate degree of flash here.) William and Catherine are also in black tie but theirs is boring. William's hands are tightly clenched; his face is nearly purple and there's a vein throbbing at his temple.

"We're so glad you're here," Catherine says, and grins determinedly, showing many gritted teeth. "All this unpleasantness has been simply horrible, let's try to forget it. But how was your flight?"

Harry glowers. He's a bit flushed and rumpled and looks as if he'd very much like to throw a punch at his brother, but he's being civilized for Meghan's sake. On his arm she looks like an angel, and she smiles serenely. Cruel, snobbish and bigoted as they've proven themselves to be, the feckless pair standing before her inspires sympathy. This situation is quite painful for them: after all, she's very used to winning, and they're not at all accustomed to losing. Especially not to someone like her.

Poor provincial backwater despots, desperately clinging to their shabby stolen goods. They have no idea how to exist in the modern world, or how to even begin building a truly media-savvy team. She'll have to help them. For her beloved's sake, and for the sake of the countries she adopted when she married him. She knows very well that much of Britain, and indeed the Commonwealth, still adores her as their princess: and she has no intention of failing them. When Meghan visits these countries her reception will be much different.

"You know," she says, "I think one of the mistakes I made when I first joined this family was relying on my Hollywood experiences. But in the process of making something as big as a blockbuster movie, or even a long-running series like the one I worked on--tons of people are involved! The issues can become very personal, and it's not uncommon for there to be heated clashes around, whether it's salary negotiations, scheduling, script issues, I mean whatever, right?"

Catherine nods three times in quick succession, her toothy grin still fixed. The brothers continue to seethe. Meghan sails on blithely: to all appearances she is utterly at ease. She waves a hand to illustrate as she speaks. Her husky voice is charmingly intimate, her tone friendly and casual. "But once it's resolved, you've gotta be able to put it behind you. Because these relationships, they go beyond any one project, right? If you're dealing with a studio it might be your whole career, your life." Her gaze is steady. "So you learn to put things behind you when you need to work with someone again. And so, that part of my Hollywood experience, I want you to know that I'm still bringing it."

She nods in mirror of Catherine, but more slowly, and just once. Then Meghan tilts her head, and her smile turns mischievous. "But I have lots more fun showbiz stories I can tell you. Over dinner maybe, shall we?"

“My St. Patrick’s Day drink would be with Francie Nolan, the protagonist of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I must have read this novel 20 times in my youth, and Francie became a beloved friend, a kindred spirit. Though the book was set in a time decades before my own, the Brooklyn depicted in its pages—a provincial, sleepy backwater, like a perpetual Sunday afternoon in August—felt so familiar. Yet Francie assumed an ownership of this place that I too had felt—we were two Brooklyn girls walking those somnolent streets, urban sisters under the skin. And she adored her father despite—or perhaps because of—his faults. I too had a charming but feckless father, so this was yet another reason to love her.”   -- Yona Zeldis McDonough, Sláinte: Nine Writers on the Author or Character They’d Want to Drink with on St. Patrick’s Day

Lost power in the middle of cooking breakfast and am once again left contemplating how incredibly on-its-face idiotic a system 'private utility monopoly with a legally guaranteed rate of profit' is.

I feel like I missed exactly when the changeover happened, but at some point the faux-British pub restaurants around here started serving (deeply mediocre) vindaloo and butter chicken along with the steak&kidney pie and bangers&mash.

Feel like you can (and people probably have) write many, many sociology papers on this.

bunch of local businesses do a novelty burger week promotion so! This obscenity will be minimum three meals, but IS delicious.

Hipstery artifical doughnut place a few blocks from my apartment is ALSO participating in novelty burger week. I was dragged there for lunch.

I can feel my arteries clogging. Worth it.

Is it just an unlucky coincidence around here or is it some iron law of municipal politics that any group called 'friends of [neighborhood]' will be the most noxious and malevolent people you ever meet?

Shoutout to my provincial government for being bullied into actually doing something, I guess. Unit number is comically small but 'build public housing' was entirely out of the overton window like three months ago so y'know. Progress.

Incredibly grating that the local press is reporting the increase in average property taxes as an increase in rates and giving all the free airtime they want to like property owner associations rabble rousing about it, when literally more than 100% of the increase is just because property values have shot up some ungodly percent over the last year.

Nothing to lower your opinion of those you share a city with like reading the reporting on a community meeting about a new homeless shelter.

Regular reminder to self to hold on to my lease until and unless the building burns down around me I guess.

One advantage of spiralling healthcare crisis, I guess!

Not that Canadian nationalism can't be as insufferable and smug and oprressive and atrocity-enabling as anyone else's, but literally every time I'm reminded of the national cult established around the USA's founding fathers (which normal people still seem to take seriously?) I'm left a little more grateful that the main impression a public school education left me of Canada's first prime minister was that he was a drunk who lost power in a railroad corruption scandal.

Love how much people treat labor having the tiniest bit of leverage as the end of the world.

Only morally acceptable form of nationalism is getting righteously indigent over some gentrifying restaurant on the other end of the country charging $20 for something they claim is your local objectively-disgusting drunk student bar food.