Is the "F*ck Trudeau" Movement Completely Ignorant, or Am I Missing Something?

While I don't like Justin Trudeau (or, Sockboy, as I like to call him), and have never voted for him, I'd really like one of the Caucasian "F*ck Trudeau" people to explain exactly what they think he's done to them, in their actual day-to-day life (I understand why Indigenous people are pissed at him, however). I mean, it wasn't the federal government issuing mask and vaccine mandates, for the most part - it was our provincial governments...you know, the ones almost exclusively run by Conservative party leaders? They control all health regulations for all employment fields and businesses that aren't federally controlled (there are very few of those, by the way...just inter-provincial trucking, airlines, and banking, really, outside of the military and RCMP).

I'm not saying people have nothing to complain about, but I do think they're diluting their own issues by ranting about things that have nothing to do with Trudeau. If they really want specific changes, they should be communicating that...with the appropriate governmental authorities, rather than blaming someone who has little control over provincial actions.

Ostensibly, the issues were mask and vaccine mandates. However:

"Up to and including August 19, 2022, a total of 370 reports with an outcome of death were reported following vaccination. Although these deaths occurred after being vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine, they are not necessarily related to the vaccine."

Source: https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccine-safety/

That's 370 people from a total of nearly 60 million doses given, and not all of those deaths were likely to have been caused by vaccines. (I could only find two deaths in Canada, specifically triggered by the AstraZeneca vaccine, but I'm likely missing some of the reporting on that.) Nearly 45,000 people have died from the virus in Canada, though that number is widely believed to be underreported. I prefer my quadruple-vaxxed odds, personally.

For those who believe there's a microchip in them, one only needs to take a look at the size of the needle they have to use to microchip a pet (12-gauge for the older chips, and 15-gauge for the newer, much smaller ones - source: https://www.microchipidsystems.com/faq-items/develop-mini-chip-for-pets/). The chips themselves can be felt under the skin of the animal, even though they're smaller than a grain of rice.

Vaccine needles are super small - only 22- to 25-gauge, according to the CDC. They simply do not have the carrying capacity for microchips.

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/admin/downloads/vaccine-administration-needle-length.pdf

Chipping is done subcutaneously, which is just under the skin. COVID vaccines are an intramuscular injection, which means you're basically stabbed with it. Two completely different methods. Additionally, most people carry around cell phones that can be remotely activated unless you can pull the battery - which most cell phones no longer allow you to do, since they prefer you buy a new device rather than replace the battery. If the government chose to be that heinous, they would be far better off listening to your conversations than merely getting your location information from a tracking device (which your phone also does).

People seem to spend their entire lives being pissed off at the wrong leaders (or just for the wrong reasons), because they have no real understanding how government functions in Canada, and also seem to have no understanding of the actual definition of dictatorships or communism, much less the difference between communism and socialism (there's a big difference, I promise you).

Most of the people who complain about Alberta having to pay a lot of money have no idea how deeply in debt Alberta was at one time (a large number of the people who hate Trudeau hail from Alberta). During the Great Depression they defaulted on their debts, and it's the only province to have ever done so. It was the Social Credit party in charge at the time, who got into power on a platform of religious fundamentalism and radical monetary theory. Religious fanaticism does not make anyone wise, and certainly not in the realm of financial matters - particularly if they base financial decisions on religious beliefs. The general problem with the Alberta economy is a total lack of diversification. Apparently they've never heard the phrase, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." They're still making the same mistake. Oil is dead - it just hasn't learned to lie down yet.

While I hate to spoil the trucker pity-party, very few people who went to the rally in Ottawa were employed as truckers. 90% of truckers were already vaxxed when the rally took place, and it was led by people who weren't even involved in the industry. The vast majority of truckers cannot afford to take even a single day off that isn't required by normal trucking regs. They have far bigger concerns than being afraid of needles, and the rally distracted from those real concerns. Particularly when the hate flags started flying (Nazi and slavery symbolism, in addition to the Trudeau flags). Trying to argue your point of view doesn't fly when the hate flags are flying. More informed people turn deaf.

Sadly, I've seen "Every Child Matters" flags alongside "F*uck Trudeau" flags, and they were at the rally, too, where the other hate flags were flying. Those Trudeau flags weren't really seen anywhere until that rally. Considering the history of slavery in Canada, where Indigenous people were enslaved alongside Black people, I find that a little shocking. I'm not sure why anyone who cares about Indigenous rights would be flying the Trudeau flag, since most people associate the flag with hate groups. I do understand their anger toward Trudeau, but from a PR perspective, they would be far better served creating a different flag without the negative connections and connotations. Something that carries a real message, perhaps.

It seems most Canadians need to retake a history class (there are many free university courses online) on the things that have happened in Canada over more than just the last five years - looking for the root causes of the things they're seeing today, instead of just the present situation. [I'm talking about Caucasian people here, since many Indigenous people are all too well aware of their history, and the actions of the Canadian government.]

Economic policy takes about ten years to come to fruition in the real world, so the majority of what Trudeau has been dealing with, economically, throughout his three terms has been fallout from Harper's smoke and mirrors budget that sold off most of Canada's assets at a fraction of their value, and a global pandemic that's broken most other countries' economies, whilst we retain an A+ credit rating. The first year Trudeau was in office, Ft. Mac had their big fire, and Canada had zero money in the pot for emergencies. None. It was all gone. I speak as a former accountant and investment analyst, so I do know exactly what I'm talking about. I looked at the budget from Harper very carefully (what little he allowed the public to see, since he was never transparent). The fact that Trudeau's government has been able to provide any sort of support for Canadians during COVID is almost miraculous. As for why I, personally, don't like Trudeau, I looked at his voting record before he ever got into office - something most people never bother to do. He was an MP and was happy to vote in favour of things like Bill C-51, introduced by Harper, which restricted many of our rights and freedoms in Canada - particularly the right to privacy, so if you want to complain about privacy violations, that would be where to start. He was supposed to amend it, but never did - not a surprise when he voted for it. He never fulfilled his promise to get rid of first-past-the-post voting, and it's no longer even on his radar - his government created a convoluted survey no one knew how to answer, so they could cherry-pick the result they liked, which supposedly gave them the justification to go back on their promise.

I'm disgusted he never shows up for Indigenous rights. He also voted for Keystone XL, and bought the newly-defunct Transmountain pipeline expansion, paying far more than it was worth, considering it wasn't yet a functioning pipeline (and likely never will be now - the first one is still going, but leaks on the regular). His claims of being environmentally friendly are a joke, as are his claims of being friendly to Indigenous people. Many of them wanted him to remove the Haida tattoo he sports, because it's like a slap in the face.

While I instinctively agree with the anger at his many trips using up a lot of jet fuel, when he could just as easily use secure forms of video calling, I also realize there are other factors at play on the global stage - sometimes it's a lot easier to talk in person (which I despise, but am forced to acknowledge) and get things done, and there's now the added security risk of Russia being a lot more determined to listen in on our political meetings with other nations. China (with their 'unlimited friendship' with Russia) also makes all of our tech. All of it. It's truly stupid, and I've been yelling about it for years, but there isn't a nation in the world (that I'm aware of) that uses their own proprietary chips or motherboards, even in their most secure facilities.

The US is finally getting a clue there, and they'll eventually be making their own, but otherwise every single comms device we have was made by a Chinese company. Every cell phone, every computer, you name it. And that includes all the 'smart' devices in people's homes. They've already been caught adding miniscule spying chips to everyday tech. Motherboards, CPUs (despite major production largely being shifted to Taiwan, China still has power over Taiwan), GPUs, etc., are nearly all made in China. Think about it. CSIS and C-SEC computer systems were all made by Chinese companies. That's our internal and national security. The only thing Canada has done is require the removal of Huawei tech from our 5G network. The big telcoms are in the process of doing so now. That's just one company that was literally caught stealing technology from Canada (they bankrupted Nortel, a major Canadian employer).

There's one big hiccup with regard to removing Chinese tech, however. Stephen Harper signed a deal with China right before he left office, that forbade Canada from infringing on China doing business within the country, and allowed China to resolve any disputes outside of Canada's court system. It was one of his many backroom deals Canadians were not informed about until it was too late, and most Canadians still aren't aware the contract exists.

Sadly, leaders like Pierre Poilievre are cut from the same cloth as Stephen Harper, and they're happy to brag about it. There were good reasons Erin O'Toole didn't bring Harper in to vouch for him during the last federal election - he's hated by most Canadians. Instead, O'Toole decided Brian Mulroney was a better option, despite him being ousted for taking literal bags of cash from lobbyists and getting ousted from his role as Prime Minister. In other words, a crook was less hated than Harper. Harper had more scandals than any other PM in Canadian history. Thus far, Trudeau has had seven scandals whilst in office, though not all have been directly related to him, and there was one in particular that wasn't actually a scandal (Elbowgate - there's plenty of video showing what did, and didn't, happen). Harper had more, and they were of a particularly serious variety, such as election fraud (the Robocall scandal being just one of them).

Any scandal is bad, frankly, so I feel little interest in supporting anyone who ends up in the middle of them. In Trudeau's case, his multiple brown-face scandals are enough for me to conclude he's unsuited to lead a country full of people of varying ethnicities. It showed him as the overly-entitled child he seems to be to this day. He shows little understanding of the needs of anyone who couldn't afford private school. Even the recent 'help' for people to buy a home has an age limit, when there are plenty of people in Canada who have never been able to afford to buy a home - age has little to do with being priced out of the market. Far too many adults are still earning minimum wage, and fifteen dollars an hour (depending on the province) is nowhere near enough to buy a home, when the median price is (as of this writing) just shy of $700K.

I hate finding myself in the same camp as those who can't iterate their reasoning with regard to their anger and disgust toward Trudeau, however. I'm definitely angry with, and disgusted by, him, but I'm also not interested in associating with what amounts to a hate group in my mind. I find myself increasingly frustrated with the lack of awareness shown by a majority of Canadians, including those in power. Problems that could be solved with just a few moments of forethought and empathy are being swept under the rug as if they don't matter. Question Period in Parliament looks like squabbling children, rather than serious politicians trying to get work done for the people who hired them. The fact they're visibly enjoying the byplay makes it worse. It's not funny. People in Canada are dying of exposure and starvation, whilst our government employees are chuckling and having a good time getting nothing done for them.

That's where the anger needs to go, frankly. It's happening in every legislative system in Canada; from Queen's Park in Ontario, to the Alberta Legislature, to our federal Parliament. Canadians are human beings, and we deserve a hell of a lot better than we're getting from our staff. One thing Trudeau should note, however, is that when people disengage from politics, it's usually not the Conservatives who do so.

The Return of 'Bad Jack' the 7-String - And the Rise of the Custom Build

As a metal and rock guitarist, I have two seven-string guitars - a super-cheap Jackson, and a slightly less-cheap Ibanez. Neither of them are studio-quality, but I've at least been beating the hell out of them the last two plus years. I practice a lot, hoping to get good enough one day to play my own music.

Jackson JS22-7 DKA HT Dinky Archtop

The Jackson is made in China, and, as one would expect, has really cheap parts. I eventually had to replace the output jack with something that didn't behave like an acrobat, bending in every direction and causing annoying grounding issues. It was my first soldering job, and it's honestly a miracle it worked as well as it did, since my daughter had oxidized the tip on the iron without me realizing it. I barely got things joined, but somehow I've had no issues with the jack since then. It got its moniker, 'Bad Jack', due to the brand name and the output jack being faulty. I still think of it as Bad Jack, despite the fix.

Ibanez RGMS7

The Ibanez (I call it Ben in my head) was made in Indonesia, but it was below the $1,000 US threshold that generally indicates a competent guitar. It took longer to start experiencing issues, but eventually it got to the point where it was impossible to record or take any more guitar lessons. Now it's worse.

I should point out here, frustration is my enemy. I don't tolerate it well, and I end up having meltdowns - I'm autistic, so I've learned I have to walk away when I start getting that frustrated. The frustration made it impossible to even practice at times, so I finally gave in and decided to get the guitars repaired. We took in the Jackson first, since we figured the Ibanez was still quasi-playable and we wanted to keep a 'working' instrument.

We took the Jackson to Cithara Guitars here in Hamilton, Ontario, and we were well aware they were swamped and couldn't get to the Jackson until the new year, but we had assured them it wasn't an issue. Until it was, of course.

That fantasy died a couple of weeks ago...along with the electronics in the Ibanez. It started putting out a thin, almost clean sound for a few minutes, until it failed utterly and completely, refusing to peep and squeal any further. I thought something had gone wrong in the amp sim on my computer. After rebooting multiple times and checking for updates, I went through the rest of the signal chain. I eventually plugged in an old six-string, which worked appropriately, in the very out-of-tune way one expects of a guitar that hasn't been played in years (at substantial risk of old strings snapping and cutting me, so I proceeded with caution).

The six-string isn't a playable instrument, which means I haven't had anything I could use for practice. Most of my songs were written on a seven-string and require those extra notes. I'm trying to rehearse for studio recording, so it's been a little crazy-making for me. While I started out not using an amp at all, I now need the auditory feedback (not actual feedback) to know if I've got the feel of something. If I can't hear how it sounds through an amp, I'm not sure if my muting technique is correct, or even my pitch in many cases. I don't want to practice something the wrong way, in other words, because breaking a habit is a pain in the butt...and fingers, hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders, and back. Playing rock or metal guitar is a very physical thing. One just has to watch Angus Young, shirtless and dripping sweat on stage to get the idea.

With all that, you can be forgiven for assuming I was excited to get the e-mail from Cithara that the Jackson was ready for pickup. Because, your assumption would be correct. My husband has it in hand, and I am awaiting its return as I write this. He's now dropped off the Ibanez, as well, and it's just a matter of time before we have two working instruments once again.

This is important, because it's pretty tough to rehearse with someone whilst sharing a guitar. Yes, I know Walk Off The Earth can do a lot with one acoustic. We're not them. My husband normally plays the Jackson now, since he had to learn to use a seven-string if he wanted to play my music. For now we'll share it. We do have a five-string bass, so one of us can play that in the meantime and get more of our bass lines written.

Our recent issues have highlighted the need to have better instruments. However, as a female guitarist with a fairly large chest, I have a big problem with standard guitar shapes. (Nita Strauss might not understand the need, and jokes about it, but she's not particularly large up front.) They may be designed to look like a woman's body, but they sure as hell don't fit one for playing - especially not lead, where the angle of the guitar changes drastically. There's only one guitar on the market that was designed by a woman, for a woman's body (the St. Vincent model). Cheers to Ernie Ball for doing more than any other guitar manufacturer in the world, but the problem is, it's a six-string. They don't make a seven. I guess they don't think women play metal. But, for their effort, at least, they deserve something. My husband loves their guitars, so he'll likely end up with a John Petrucci model at some point.

Ironically, it was Fender that stumbled onto the fact nearly half the guitarists are women these days. They did a survey a few years ago and got the shock of their lives, apparently. They haven't actually done anything about it beyond giving a few women 'signature' models that look the same as every other guitar in their very small lineup of shapes. Not having a woman design them from scratch is a huge lapse in judgment on their part, and they're still missing out on almost half the market. And Fender, while 'classic', is boring. They never seem to do anything different. Teles, Strats, and the odd squashed versions they do of their own designs. Not very imaginative.

I'm not going near Gibson with a ten-foot pole. Their litigious tendency, and poor design choices top the list of reasons, but the fact you can't keep the damn things in tune is really the biggie for me. They have a lot of nerve charging thousands of dollars for a guitar you can't properly use. When it comes to metal, you're also digging in a lot more, which causes almost any guitar to have tuning issues. So, why make it worse for myself?

This is the reason I've never gone with a vibrato bar (Leo Fender named it a tremolo, and the term stuck, but it's not accurate - he made the opposite mistake on an amp, calling the tremolo knob a vibrato). Even the best vibrato system has tuning stability issues. If one string breaks, the rest usually go wildly out of tune. It happens on a regular bridge, too, but it's not as severe. It's why we have to go through the tuning sequence a couple of times to get things as lined up as possible, and there's a particular way you have to tune vibratro. It's actually not possible to have a guitar in perfect pitch, but we do what we can.

So, after years of frustration with horrid designs, we decided it was time for me to build my own. At one time I would have literally done the building part myself, but I was one of the 'lucky' ones who got early-onset arthritis. My work with hand tools is at a minimum these days. I'll destroy my body to play a guitar, but I'll have to get someone else to build it for me.

The repairs at Cithara are a sort of test, though their reviews are really good. They won't be able to start making it until summer, giving me plenty of time to sort out the details, but I've got most of the stats and components figured out. I'll be doing a video about it on my YouTube channel at some point, but that will be skewed toward the guitar nerd audience. None of the components will make any sense to non-guitarists.

This new guitar is already in the process of being named. Yes, it's a thing. I'm not sure if all guitarists do this, but it does make it easier to tell someone which guitar to hand you if you have multiple models of the same brand. I believe Keith Richards and Todd Rundgren both name their guitars. I don't really follow either guitarist, but I did watch interviews about their gear.

My brain has decided this guitar is female, not male like the other two. She's either going to be called RainStorm or Nemesis. I like both, so it's a toss-up at this point. Nemesis is the goddess of Justice and Retribution, and I've sort of identified with her for as long as I've known of the mythology. It's appropriate the guitar is likely going to be made by a company with a Greek gods theme going on. A cithara is an ancient type of lyre, but they've named at least five of their models after gods. They have yet to use the name Nemesis, so I will be mentioning it to them. Frankly, I want a trademark on the body shape, so I have to figure all that out.

There are two or three companies that make something fairly close to what I'm planning, but one of them charges ~$8,250 US for the model I like, and the others are fully custom shops that charge exorbitant prices. While my own build will be over $4,000, it's still something we consider reasonable for what we're asking from our luthier. The build quality is important, obviously, but some of the parts are also expensive and some require extra router work.

Basically, I'm getting rid of everything in the guitar that bothers me on a regular basis, and tailoring the shape for playability both sitting and standing. Every component will be extremely high quality, and a lot of parts will be Canadian-made. I could get custom pickups wound in Canada, but I already knew I liked the sound of a certain kind of active pickup that happens to be rechargeable, so I didn't want to go with something else that required a disposable 9V battery. Lithium Ion is already bad enough for the environment.

I expect this to be something of a journey, and I'm hoping to include the whole experience in video form on my guitar channel. I've waited this long for a proper guitar, so I'll have to be patient a little while longer. Or try to be, anyway.

Life in the RV World, Part 2: Procrastination Screws Up Our Winterizing in a Good Way

We're in the middle of our third cold snap since winter began. We've had above-seasonal temperatures for most of the winter, but clearly the cold wants to sneak in there somewhere, climate change or not. This means winterizing, even with a four-season trailer that includes the Arctic package.

If you know me, then you know I procrastinate. Constantly. It can save me a lot of work, to be frank, because doing things early often means hearing, "I've changed my mind and no longer need this." At least, that's how it works in the corporate world. I always hit my deadlines when I worked those jobs, but usually waited until the last minute. I don't think I consciously knew that would happen, or that I procrastinated for that specific reason, but it did sink in somewhere in my hardheaded brain.

Of course, I've always procrastinated. Even as a child with school assignments. It gave me plenty of time to think about a project. I could figure out the best way to do something, and (potentially) it added a lot of value to my work. I constantly came up with new ideas, because the project was sitting in the back of my granite-like skull, awaiting execution.

Winterizing our trailer has been one example of this, even though it's also led to some issues for us. Those problems have shown me what I really need to focus on, however. Let me elucidate my strange reasoning.

The one thing I did right from the start was to winterize our exterior, potable water line. I added a strip of aluminum tape, and then used more aluminum tape to attach a heat trace (also called heat tape) down the length of it. The aluminum tape supposedly disperses the heat from the heat trace over a wider strip of the hose, which may or may not be helpful. I'm not entirely sure, but I wasn't taking chances with our water line. Then I added foil-covered bubble-wrap insulation. I covered the entire hose with it, and secured it with reusable zip-ties. Not only is it insulated, but it also has a thermostatically-controlled heat source. When the temperatures drop below 3C (37.4F), which is just above the freezing point (depending on your elevation), the heat trace turns on to keep the line warm(ish).

I still did this at the last minute, because we moved into the trailer right before it got cold and it took us a while to gather the necessary items. It was the night before we were going to hit a cold spell, though, when I finally got it done and installed it.

I did not insulate the post coming from the ground. It froze before I got to it, but I was planning to get it done. I eventually did that and even made a hood for it, which has since blown away in the wind because the rope wasn't fastened (I forgot to tell my husband the rope was there, and he just stuck the hood over the post without securing it). Now I have to make a new one, but I've run out of the bubble-wrap insulation. We bought a giant roll, but used most of it to make skirting - more on that in a minute.

As a make-do project, my husband used aluminum tape to press the heat trace against the brass y-connector that kept freezing, and then he wrapped scrap bubble-wrap insulation around that. Thus far it's been working, and we haven't had our water line freeze since he did it.

I chose to wrap our giant (120-pound rental) propane tank with the bubble-wrap insulation, just in case we had a really cold winter. Propane can turn into gelatin if it's exposed to extreme cold, and it won't fire once it does. The last thing we need is our heat source not working. According to one of the gentlemen who fills our tank, that's what he has to do in the Yukon Territories when he goes winter camping there. We don't get quite that cold in southern Ontario (not even close, actually), but it's possible we'll get an ice storm or some other freak-of-nature occurrence. We weren't sure what this winter was going to look like, and it was an easy thing to do.

The tank was delivered with a cap already on it. The valve is covered, as is the wireless sensor that tells them when it's time to come fill the tank. Of course, that failed and told them our tank had plenty in it. We ran out and they had to deliver more, but we told them it could wait until the next day, because we have three spare tanks. Two came with the rig, but they're only 20-pound tanks. We bought a 30-pound tank we were also refilling until we were able to get the big tank delivered. Now we keep them full just in case. It's a good thing we do.

I considered wrapping the pigtail hose for our propane, as well, but propane doesn't tend to remain in place in the hose when it's cold, so it doesn't have very much exposure before it's pushed through for use. So far it's been working. If it stops, we'll know the reason and we can fix the problem.

To make sure we're never without water, even if there's a freeze-up, we keep quite a few 4-litre jugs of tap water on hand for washing up, or to flush the toilet for solid waste. We also buy spring water in large jugs for drinking, coffee, and for the ferrets (we have three, and we hate giving them tap water).

We bought almost all the stuff we need to skirt the entire trailer, but I ran out of the snaps I intend to use to attach it. I misinterpreted the quantity information and didn't realized they were talking about pieces, not sets (there are four pieces to a single snap), and now we have to order more.

I used the 4-foot-wide bubble-wrap and cut it to lengths corresponding with each section of the trailer. Otherwise it would have been a hundred feet long and a pain in the butt to handle (our trailer is 33 feet long and about 8.5 feet wide, with a hitch/tongue extension). Some of the segments are already long enough to be annoying. Then I used a cheap landscaping fabric and spray glue to cover one side of each piece - I wanted it to match our trailer a little better and not be so reflective.

At some point I installed snaps on each piece and also smashed the back pieces together to ready them for attaching to the trailer itself. Those will be epoxied on, rather than screwed in where they would create holes that might be problematic (RVers hate putting holes in their hulls - it's a thing). The problem I've been trying to figure out has been how to keep the snaps in place while the epoxy putty cures, while still making sure they're placed in exactly the right spots. Measuring might work for some, but for me I don't trust how accurate I am there. It takes five minutes for the JB Weld putty to set, and another 24 hours for it to cure. I'm not sure what other brands are like.

The solution, which we will likely implement one day soon, is to use hook-and-loop strips. We buy it by the roll already, because it's awesome for putting up paintings and other things, rather than sticking holes into something. I haven't had good experiences with 3M adhesives, but my husband bought Command hooks the other day that seem to be staying up in our shower now. I might give their products more of a look for interior stuff, but it's unlikely I'll trust them for the exterior where windy weather is more of a factor.

We also bought a vent cover for our bathroom vent, but haven't put that on either. We don't get a lot of snow in the Hamilton, Ontario area, so we've always been able to open it if we needed to. I still want to put it on to keep out rain when it's warmer and we're opening windows and such again. Neither of us are keen on being on the roof, eleven feet off the ground, so we've put it off. We have two other vents, but we had a lot of other expenses at the time and only bought the one cover. We'll likely get the other two later, and maybe they'll all get installed at the same time.

The benefit to having procrastinated with the vent covers, however, is that I realized quite recently that I want to put insulation in them. We don't want light coming through them, for one thing, so we're going to have bubble-wrap insulation inside them to keep the sun from glaring in and heating us up during summer months, as well as keeping our own heat in during the winter. I'm not sure why they aren't sold as insulated units already. The insulation won't cover the air slits on the side, just the bubble on top. Hopefully they won't increase our roof height beyond the air conditioner already sitting up there.

Many RVers insulate their shower skylight, too, which we will likely do in the summer to limit heat exposure. Our bathroom is already too warm because we keep the door closed (ferret-proofing), and there's a heating vent blowing into a very small room. It's really nice when one of us is cold for whatever reason, because we can heat up almost instantly. It's also nice to have the extra heat when you're wet from a shower.

The benefit to procrastinating with the skirt is that it's allowed me to figure out how to do it properly, in addition to showing us what parts of the trailer really need it. We know the rear of the trailer is quite exposed in our current space, which means the lines to and from the water heater are exposed (we've lost our hot water when these lines have frozen, but it was extremely temporary). That's also the end with our kitchen's grey tank, and the gate valve froze for a couple of days so we couldn't empty the tank. In other words, we have to cover our ass in this trailer...as in life.

The non-door side of the trailer (where all the utility stuff is dealt with) doesn't need to be covered at all, since we're back-to-back almost with another trailer, and we aren't getting heavy winds from that side at all. The other two gate valves are located near the furnace exhaust (carbon monoxide, so you have to be careful) and we haven't had any problems with them so far.

I was originally trying to figure out how I could get the skirting to cover the utility area, because we would still need access to the valve handles to empty our tanks, but it looks like we won't have to cover that section at all. This means I have a nice, long piece of insulation I can use for other purposes. If we park in a different location, with different exposure, next winter, we can always buy another roll of it to make another piece. As it stands, I prefer to use it on interior windows.

Speaking of windows, that was something else I did to keep things a little warmer in the trailer. Our bedroom windows and vent are all covered inside with bubble-wrap insulation, using hook-and-loop fasteners so they can be quickly removed. One of the windows is our emergency escape, so we can't block it off in a way that's problematic to remove. Interestingly enough, since I stuck the fasteners to the screen on the emergency escape window, it actually pulls off the whole screen if I just grab the insulation to take it off. That makes it easier to remove the screen, now, than it was by pulling the tab they installed on it.

Only the stuff covering the roof vent is visible, since our windows all have blackout blinds on them. Strangely, the bedroom windows did not have the side pieces of the valences to prevent people from seeing in around the blinds. Yet the living room windows do have them. How that makes sense, I'll never know. The bedroom is where you want the most privacy, one would think. But, I'll get into the foibles of this trailer in another post.

I also covered our door window. It was the first window I covered, actually, because we were getting too much heat through it when the sun was beating on it, and I didn't appreciate the sun blasting through it to pierce my eyeballs with its strange pain while I was trying to sleep.

At the cold end of the trailer is also where my desk is situated. It's built-in (and the only model that had this feature, it seems), so I can't move it somewhere else, and with my arthritis the cold drafts I was getting were pretty hard on me for pain. I insulated the window over my desk, and also the wall in the knee well. It's done a fantastic job of keeping me warm while I work.

The only other window I've insulated so far is the one behind our theatre seating. We're there every night to watch news and educational (research for my novels) programming together, and my husband sits there with his laptop while he's working on stock reports, so I wanted to make sure we were warm there.

The roof vent in the kitchen was insulated, too. I've left the bathroom vent in case we need it, but in the kitchen we already have the range hood, which vents out the side of the trailer. We don't need a second vent for that kind of thing. It's mostly good for air flow in the spring and fall.

As someone who grew up in northern Ontario, I know what a cold winter looks like, and this doesn't feel anything like I remember. Today's conditions are nothing like what we dealt with in Muskoka back then. In fact, even in Muskoka they no longer deal with anything close to what we had when I was a kid and young adult. In my mid-twenties I remember we had a cold snap in Huntsville that was particularly nasty. The temperature itself was already -50C/-58F. We had wind chills down to -70C/-94F, according to weather reports on the radio at the time. (Much to my surprise, however, my car started that blustery winter day, and the block heater wasn't even plugged in.)

All-in-all, I think we're probably set for the rest of the winter, even if we never put the skirt on. The fact my husband generally walks around in his boxers is a good sign, and I'm often barefoot (neither pregnant, nor in the kitchen, thanks). A day or two of freezing isn't going to be a problem for us, and it's good to know that. In fact, having the challenges I talked about in Part 1 has not only brought us closer together as a couple, but they've also increased our mutual confidence in our ability to look after ourselves in adverse conditions. The next step is going to be off-grid upgrades - something I'll tell you all about in a future post - and I cannot wait. Incinerator toilet and solar power here we come! Now, if only we could find a decent mobile internet provider. Yet another future post...