More sad times

My cat Winnie died just before Christmas. Apparently, he had cancer but we didn't catch it until it was too late. He was my best friend since I was a teenager - over 15 years at this point - and was the nicest, friendliest cat. As soon as you would pet him, he would start purring ferociously. He was a big orange fluff ball. He loved being picked up and sat on laps, and could stay there for a long time. He never bit or scratched intentionally, and he was a joy in my life. Now he is gone. I miss him greatly. R.I.P. Winnie.

Bandaid times

It started with itchy, dry skin, the skin on my fingers. At my work, I use my hands a lot to place and replace objects, so it makes sense that it would get chafed. The simple solution that worked was just putting bandaids on the affected areas on the days that I work, and letting the skin breathe when I don't have work.

But then, I got into a bike accident. Nothing major, but on the first icy day of the year, I was biking back home from work when I took a corner a little too rapidly and my bike slipped on the road and I fell. It was a quiet residential street, but there was an SUV right at the intersection. The driver got out to see if I was okay, and thankfully I was - just a couple big bruises on my thighs and a scraped knee. It was almost 9pm, and the lady was super kind to offer me a lift home, but I was only a block away and was able to walk so I thanked her for the offer and went on my way.

A few days after the bike accident, someone in my house tested positive for COVID, and I become sick barely a day after that with milder symptoms than my housemate - just a slight fever, runny nose, sore throat and sore muscles. It was annoying, but I'm glad I'm mostly okay now.

2023 is coming to a close already. Time really does seem to go faster when you grow older.

Waterloo

 Gah. Waterloo is stuck in my head. Yeah, the song by ABBA. It's been in my head for the past week or so after it was played a couple times while at work. Can't say I know the lyrics very well, and I'm not looking them up for fear that the song will burrow even deeper in my head. So here and there, I find myself repeating Waterloo... couldn't escape if I wanted to-ooo and yeah, this song isn't escaping anywhere. It's not a bad song by any means - ABBA is always catchy - but I'd like something else, please.

Here's some bullet points of things I've been thinking about or observed:

• I saw two cats, on the same street, a few houses apart, tied up and leashed to a tree or porch in a front yard. Seems kind of sad if I'm being honest, but I guess they're getting fresh air and not cooped up indoors which I find sad as well. The cats I live with don't really go outside as much, they seem content to be indoors while the weather gets colder. And they seem happy, so to say it's sad isn't objectively true.
• I get very annoyed when drivers just skip on past an activated crosswalk light. Like, all you have to do is step off the gas pedal for a few seconds, and you can't be bothered to do that? It's just dangerous behaviour, and I actually find it safer to jay walk because I never know if cars are going to stop or not.
• The Raptors are a fun team to watch again. They had a rough start to the season, but they're actually demolishing top teams like the Bucks and Mavericks. Some players have some off days where they're not playing anywhere near their potential, but then other players step up and take over. It's fun.
• Who the hell thinks that launching a cyberattack against the Toronto Public Libraries is a good idea? Absolute scumbag behaviour - couldn't you attack corporations like Nestle or Big Oil or something instead? Libraries enhance the quality of life for so many people: from those without a home to scholars advancing human knowledge. I get that the hackers are trying to score big cash, but this kind of greed is so detrimental and is totally anti-humanist.
• I feel naked if I don't have a deck of cards to fiddle around with somewhere - either in my backpack, or on my desk, or in my room. Even if I don't touch them, just knowing that I have a lightly used deck of Bicycle playing cards lying around somewhere brings me a bit of joy.

Waterloo... toodeloo...

The light in the shed

There's this rectangular shed in the backyard that I go into fairly regularly. The shed's concrete floor has a long crack in the middle running length-wise, and the gap grows every year due to the shed being built on uneven ground. For now, the shed is still perfectly usable as storage because the crack is mostly hidden underneath some shelving.

The roof is in good shape. Every year during cherry season, I use the roof as an elevated platform to pick cherries from the tree growing right next to the shed. There's raccoon droppings that I have to circumnavigate when I'm cherry picking, but otherwise it's super convenient. Unfortunately the cherries sucked this year, but that's besides the point.

This shed, you see, has a single tubular fluorescent light to illuminate it. It does a good job - when it works. For some strange, unknown reason, the light only turns on 33% of the time when I flick the switch. The percentage used to be around 50% a few years ago, but it's gone down recently. When it's dark out and I have to use the shed, I now go in expecting it to not turn on and am pleasantly surprised when it does turn on. For the times when it doesn't turn on, a feeble glimmer of light still appears at the extremity of the light bulb, as if to taunt me. I can flick the switch on and off a couple times, and still that faint glimmer will appear - but no real illumination. It's only when I give it a couple days and come back another time to try the light that it will magically turn back on.

I think this phenomenon is weather dependant. May be not the temperature, because the likelihood of it turning on doesn't seem to change from winter to summer in any given year; perhaps the humidity, then? Or barometric pressure? Something affecting the electrical connection, somehow. An electrician would probably have an answer, but for now, I'm content with playing a sort of roulette with the light in the shed.

Break a fast

I've eaten every day for a long while now. I haven't been sick much lately, but even when I was sick, I also remember eating that day, so I can't say I've taken much of a break from eating in a long time.

Today, and tomorrow, and the day after will probably not be exceptions. Right now, my breakfast is a simple hard-boiled eggs and some hot pepper olives. I don't have much of an appetite early on in the day, so most of my weight gain comes from when I eat after dark.

It's hard to change the habit of eating most of my calories later in the day, for numerous reasons that I won't go into.

At least I'm cognizant of my dietary habits. I have been for some time now. And yet, I still make the mistake of consuming 1. way too many calories overall and 2. the wrong kind of calories. If all I ate for a while were some fatty olives and some protein-packed hard-boiled eggs, I would definitely lose weight. But I would struggle. Because I'm so used to variety. Because carbs are addictive. Because the ease of reaching for something high in sugar overwhelms my rational desire to be fit.

I take pleasure in cooking things from scratch. I don't do it enough, but there's a solid foundation there.

I have hope that I will build on this foundation in a meaningful way, so that I can finally move on from struggling with my food picks.

Reddit doomscroll & a Journey

I spend too much time on Reddit.

I've improved things - by getting rid of most of the default subreddits like, for example, r/worldnews and r/AmITheAsshole and r/facepalm that add nothing positive to my life - and curated my front page feed so that I'm not mindlessly doomscrolling. But I still spend too much time on there. I realize that I'm living vicariously through the comments - even on the most innocuous subreddits like r/whatisthisplant - that are found in any given post. And I still occasionally leave a comment here or there, especially on the gaming subreddits, because I do enjoy that limited interaction with other like-minded people. I don't think I can realistically cut Reddit out entirely because it's incredibly useful, but being mindful of my time on there is a good foundation to a more balanced life. I think.

So instead of going on Reddit and feeling like I've wasted more time again, I figured I'd write here what I originally felt like writing on r/books: a short overview of the books that I've finished reading and what I've started recently.

Okay, so last week I finally finished Voyage au centre de la terre (Journey to the Centre of the Earth) by Jules Verne. I'm so happy I read this book! I read it (pun unintended) entirely in the original language of publication, which feels great because I haven't read a novel in French in a while. Plus, many of the novels I have read in French over the years have been translations from the English, so to have an actual French novel to read is, well, novel to me.

This is the edition that I read

I've never read any Jules Verne before, but of course I'd heard of him from such other novels as Journey Around the World in 80 Days and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. As I've done for other books I've read in the past, I happened upon this particular novel by browsing my local library for anything that looks familiar, or interesting. In this case it was both, so I checked it out and read it over the course of a couple months, usually during my break at work. It was a french learner's edition, so there were beautiful full-page drawings littered throughout the book that helped with visualizing the carefully crafted settings that Verne lays out so eloquently. So eloquent, in fact, that I found myself seeing brand new words that I had no idea were in the french lexicon and that I now might recognize again in some of his other works that I intend to read eventually.

The gist of the story, without spoilers, is really all in the title. After discovering an ancient document explaining how an explorer once made a path to the Centre of the Earth, a scientist and his nephew decide to travel to Iceland (in the 19th century) to explore whether there really is a way to make it all the way down. During their expedition, they experience various natural (and, it has to be said, supernatural) phenomena that add interesting twists to this epic sci-fi adventure. Verne does a great job of suspending disbelief in my opinion, and provides solid (but imaginary, of course) explanations for how heat and lighting and geology work in this fantastical, yet almost realistic, universe.

Because I enjoyed this one, there's a good chance I'll read Verne again. For now, though, I've started a collection of short stories titled Hidden Girl (and other stories) by Ken Liu, which is also sci-fi but from what I've read so far, focused on aliens and space travel. I'm enjoying it, and I've finished 3 stories (with about a dozen or so left to go). Perhaps I'll summarize my experience with this book in a blog post later down the line, too.

Once in a while

So I've been posting a lot less lately. It's okay; it's always been this way. There are periods in my life where I want to post every day, and I do it for a little bit, and other times where months go by without an update. As a general rule of thumb for me, I do try to write at least on a monthly basis, even if it's just a song from YouTube or some freewriting. So I guess this is September's post, if I don't publish again.

It's a lonely place out here; but I knew that going in. I had an English teacher in high school who told me that writing was pretty lonely, and she was right. So I came into this blogging thing prepared.

What I wasn't prepared for is how fast life is moving! I'm in my thirties now, and I started my blog as a teenager. There are lots of life experiences that I've shared on here, but so many more that I haven't because, well, it's still a public blog and I don't want to share everything. But it's definitely true that the years seem to go by faster and faster as I grow older, and the explanation for that is apparently that each year takes up a less percentage of total years spent living, so they feel shorter.

It's a little disheartening that I don't really see myself building a future with a partner at the moment. I'm not into dating, and I spend way too much time in front of screens when I'm not working or cooking. I try and stay in touch with a couple friends, but I find that I tip toward spending time by myself rather than going out and spending time with others, and it's been this way for most of my life.

I kind of miss university, but I also kind of don't? It felt like I was working toward something when I did study, but I've lost touch with pretty much anyone I was friends with while there. Getting rid of things like Facebook made things harder in terms of ease of communication, but I don't regret it because it wasn't truly a social platform for me. Just a place to ogle and probably feel inadequate comparing myself to people posting updates of their perfect lives.

The hardest challenge right now for me is managing my crutch, and not eating junk food. I've gained weight over the summer, over 20 pounds, and I already wasn't at my ideal weight back when I started another health crusade late last year. With winter coming up, and me not being a very young adult anymore, it's only going to get harder to shed the weight.

I still keep my YMCA membership. It's a sort of sanctuary for me, and I'm glad I went to my first yoga class in over 2 weeks last weekend. Better something than nothing.

Another good thing that I've got going for me is that I live a frugal lifestyle. I'm saving up so that when I do figure out where I want to go in life, I'll have something to work with. I don't make much money, but I don't spend much money. I haven't been to a restaurant in months, and I'm satisfied with my cooking and that's good enough for me.

A blog topic for another time: the internet feels so corporate. I fight that by writing on this corporate-owned platform, but with my own free thoughts - as lonely as they are.

Toodles.

On ephemeral dreams

 More of a freewrite this'll be; I'll try and share my philosophy. Scattered thoughts, why not. Sorry that the title isn't really relevant.

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Bright and sunny skies today, but I was inside at a yoga class earlier. 10 years ago if I had said "I will be doing yoga 10 years from now" it would have been believable and indeed, I still am, somewhat regularly. So that's rather interesting.

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I feel good about putting my laundry out to dry on the clothesline. It's not the fastest but it's meditative to sit there pinning my various articles to the line, so I enjoy it somewhat. Plus I'm outside, and that's always better.

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I listen to music sometimes. I like www.di.fm: there's a really diverse selection of electronic music stations and it's always high quality music that I enjoy. But lately, they've started limiting the selection of music stations (e.g. Trance, Drum n' Bass, House, etc.) to only a handful rotating daily unless you pay for a premium account, so I bounce off sometimes. I'm a bit crafty: by not updating the app on my phone to the newer version, I can still choose any of the stations and just have to contend with ads once in a while. Been using their service since I was a teenager.

---

Busy days ahead for me. Even though it's a civic holiday, I still have work, and it'll be busy for sure. But then I'll get a proper 2 days off after, so that's something to look forward to.

The future is fast approaching

 Just some stream-of-consciousness up ahead...

Today I saw a video where a side topic was explaining how to use AI (Chat GPT) to code something for you. And it was easy peasy. You didn't need to know how to code, you just needed to know how to ask ChatGPT to code for you.

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Right now, I'm watching a live stream of someone in Japan on Twitch. Someone on foot exploring what looks like shrines in Tokyo, but I'm not sure if it's actually Tokyo. And I can chat with them, randomly, even though they have no idea who I am. A total stranger online. And that's pretty futuristic, and there are dozens if not hundreds if not thousands of people doing this sort of live streaming at all hours of the day.

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I should get out of the house more often, and stay out. It's nice to go out for my short trips to nature spots in the city, but they don't last very long. Still, biking's fun nonetheless.

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Each passing year feels faster and faster. I'm already in my thirties. And damn, this decade is starting off lonely with the pandemic wrecking havoc on my social life.

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Weather's been nice lately, getting some sun is good.

The night before the 1st

'twas the night before Canada Day and all was silent on this Friday

One of my cats settled down beside me at my computer chair and continued his incessant purring

I feel content this evening, even if I lead a lonely life

I still write here because it helps keep me accountable

I could have gone out this evening, to a jazz festival with a co-worker but chose to stay in instead. I guess I could blame the really poor air quality for not going, but really, it's because of my habits that I don't go out much.

I'll go to the islands sometime, get some fresh lake air if possible.

Song in the Head

I did a "Song of the Day" for a while on this blog, where I updated practically daily on a song I've listened to. I've stopped doing that because I'm not listening to as much music on the daily, but I still get songs stuck in my head from time to time.

Currently, I've got "Turn It On Again" by Genesis (with Phil Collins) stuck in my head and for good reason: it's catchy as hell and the lyrics are easy to belt out.

I was actually first introduced to this song without knowing what an iconic song it was when I discovered Dream Theater (a progressive metal band) as a teenager. They cover the very end of "Turn It On Again" in "The Big Medley" which is basically a 10+ minute metal cover mashup of popular rock songs. It's good, but the original is the one that's now stuck in my head.

I can't pretend to fully understand the social commentary behind the song, but there's something there for sure. Here it is if you wanna listen to it:

Reddit protest

You know, it's odd that I don't mention reddit very often here considering how much time I spend on that website. Maybe I feel embarrassed about how much time I've wasted, or maybe it's because browsing reddit can get pretty exhausting - especially if you're not tailoring the content to your interests - and I just don't have the energy to write something about all the posts I've read.

Now seems like a good time to write about reddit, because as of today, there's a huge protest going on and many of the largest communities are "blacked out" in solidarity with 3rd party apps being forced out by API changes. It's a little bit complicated, and I haven't really delved too much into the details, but the gist of it is people are angry because reddit is charging developers for access to the content whereas before it was mostly free. So these apps will no longer work. It's kind of boring to talk about, but I agree with the protest because reddit is trying to limit how we interact with the content we, as internet denizens, create for free.

Anyway, it's kind of interesting to see masses of people agreeing to protest this, and reddit is definitely far less interesting at the moment, which is a blessing in a way for me because I spend way, way too much time on there just endlessly scrolling.

I don't post or comment very often because although reading all this content is exhausting, getting into internet arguments is exponentially more so. And also, the fake internet points that you get from other people upvoting or downvoting what you write can get pretty silly. If you say something that redditors in a particular echo chamber disagree with - even if you're clearly contributing to the discussion! - you'll find your comment buried and with a negative score. And they're just fake, internet points, I know, but it still feels like you're being told "no, what you wrote isn't valid".

On the other hand, you can learn and have really interesting discussions with people, or learn vicariously through the really interesting discussions that people post, and I feel that's when reddit is at it's best: a place where people can share and discuss with some degree of anonymity and you get to see how others view the world, essentially.

I personally have filtered out a lot of content on there. I really despise the public shaming aspect of reddit, where endless videos of people doing stupid shit gets uploaded and they get all the visibility because, well, it's shocking and gets people talking. I try and avoid political communities too, and just overall places where there's too much negativity and not enough room for constructive discussion.

Among some of my favourite communities are the "what is this" communities, where people post pictures of plants, or insects, or man-made objects and ask for help in identifying them. It's really cool seeing the process of these things being identified in real time by casual hobbyists or even experts, and I don't end up feeling overwhelmed by negativity.

I also like the gaming subreddits, because there's no better place to find hidden strategies, or to discuss how fun a game is than these forums. Plus it's easy to help out noobs, and feel a small sense of accomplishment in helping them discover a game that you love. The Path of Exile daily discussion thread comes to mind. The gaming subreddits can get toxic, however, so watch out.

Anyway, it'd be nice if this reddit protest accomplishes something, but given the corporate nature of reddit now, it's hard to say what will happen. Either way, it's got me thinking critically about how I engage with the site that I use Every. Single. Day.

Burning sky

The past couple days have been interesting, weather-wise.

For starters, it literally smelled like smoke yesterday morning. You could walk outside, and it'd smell like a faint campfire.

It was also foggy. If I looked toward the end of the avenue, I could see a gray haze not unlike a fog, this without a hint of rain in the air.

This morning, the smokey smell remains, and instead of a sunrise, the sunlight literally looks like an orange sunset. It's quite strange.

Of course, the air quality is terrible, and thankfully I don't suffer from any respiratory conditions, but I know that people who have those conditions are seriously advised to stay inside while the smoke blows over.

Yeah, it's smoke from forest fires out in Quebec and Northern Ontario blowing down smack in the centre of the city; it's quite a phenomenon.

Kinda bummed that I still don't have great picture-taking capabilities, but I'm budgeting kinda tight with my money and a new phone or camera isn't really a necessary expense for me so it'll have to wait.

Doom & bloom

Listening to Doomsday by MF Doom it kind of makes me want to write improvisally; making up words, rapping makes it sound pretty. Don't really care if I'm no good at making things sound good; can't rap can't finish my day without my green dope.

See my words on the screen that I freewrite for thee; is the next sentence free or do I have to make it rhyme perfectly? I need to catch up on vocabulary, maybe even read the dictionary. Trying to express as best I can with a beat in mind and a vape in my hand. I'm gonna keep rambling a bit to the tune of doom, but don't expect anything too great or a silver spoon.

I tire of the negative buzz in my head; if I care to sum it up it's all about comparing myself to the common ideal; the glass circus, the identity politics. Sure I might not be rich or fully independent but I still try to improve my present circumstance in the small ways that I can. Not constantly, not even primally; just living day-to-day with some stability. 

So I'll end now with my session done; feeling good, but should still go outside and feel the burning sun.

Word on the Street '23

I had a Saturday with nothing planned last weekend, so I decided to check out the Word on the Street festival. I would simply describe it as a big outdoor book fair: there were tents representing publishing houses, editors, independent bookstores; individual authors, poetry collectives, and even the Toronto library's own bookmobile which was my favourite part.

The bookmobile is basically a big bus that's been converted into a library on wheels. You climb inside, and there's enough space for half-a-dozen people to browse books comfortably before it feels a little too crowded. Air-conditioned, too, which was good because it was a rather warm spring day. The books are lined up on shelves attached to the sides of the inside of the bus, and I perused them for a while before deciding to borrow a random mystery book. The bookmobile was parked smack in the middle of the festival, which ran along the east side of Queen's Park, with a couple of streets being closed for pedestrians to wander through the various exhibitions.

I didn't really recognize any of the authors (unlike the last time I went to the festival, pre-pandemic, where I got my copy of Silverwing signed by Kenneth Oppel!), so I didn't attend any of the author readings or panel discussions; rather, I just enjoyed wandering in the crowd and eventually just chilling under a tree in Queen's Park to vape & listen to music.

Not getting a bike flat on my commute there & back was also a positive experience!

Really, the least enjoyable part of the festival was that there were some "F*ck Trudeau, lock Freeland up" wackos on the north-western side of Queen's Park, really, just like... 3 of them... blasting some Neil Young & other ironic music beside a big white van and waving provocative flags. They eventually drove past the festival, honking annoyingly before heading off to wherever else they were planning to "protest".

Anyway, I don't have any pictures to share. I know I keep saying this, but I really want more pictures with my blog posts. Makes them a bit less dull. I'll get around to it... eventually.

Fixed my bike

For the past few weeks, I've been dealing with bike repairs. I've patched 2 different inner tubes a total of 3 times for my back tire before finally fixing what was causing the tubes to get pierced while riding. It wasn't because of glass on the streets, or random sharp debris somehow making through a new tire; no, it was the wheel rim itself having sharp holes where the spokes connect that caused the tubes to get "sucked" in and tear.

I knew there was an issue, but it wasn't always causing trouble and duct tape had done the job of protecting the inner tube from the sharp rim fairly well until recently. Duct tape only goes so far, so the next step was to install a thin sheet of some sort of rubber/plastic made especially for bike wheels to protect the tube, and so far, no flats!

I've also installed a shock-absorbing seat post that actually works quite well at absorbing bumps on the road and makes for a more comfortable riding experience. It's great because I get the speed of a road bike with only a bit of added weight from the souped-up seat post.

Last thing to finish up now is to move the seat post forward a bit more because I installed it too far toward the back wheel. Still rideable, but I'm leaning forward to reach the handlebar which feels a little weird. A simple use of a hex key to loosen and then tighten once adjusted is all that's left and my bike repairs are (hopefully) complete for the next little while!

Memento

I don't watch movies very often, probably less than once a month. But yesterday evening, I felt like watching something, so I spent like half an hour browsing action, adventure, and sci-fi categories in the Kanopy movie database. I settled on Memento. I enjoyed it! It's about a guy who's trying to find his wife's killer while suffering from a type of amnesia where he can't form new short term memories. So he has to leave notes for himself to keep track of his life. And the movie is edited in such a way so that it sort of feels like you're suffering from the same memory issues as the main character all while actually telling a coherent story. Critics were right: it's a good movie.

Cold shower

I'm up to five days in a row now. Five days where, at the end of my shower, I turn the dial way over to the cold side and spend the last 30 seconds under an icy flow, willing myself to breathe normally.

Is it a fad? Is it a "lifehack"? Does it do any good?

Anecdotally, yes to the last question! This morning, I was feeling anxious, but I feel better after doing the above. It's like a switch, turning off the mental buzzing, and forcing you to feel instead of think. The cold shower has a powerful physiological effect, and I just feel better.

I haven't delved deep into the scientific literature at all, only seen recommendations here and there on the internet, and I have a friend who's done some cold dunking in an actual river, which is a far cry from what I call my "transition" showers going from hot>cold. But yes, I can confirm, having some semblance of a cold shower has a positive effect on my mood.

So even if it's a fad, a "biohack", or whatever other term you wanna label it, I'm going to keep up with this newfound routine. It gets easier to do the more you do it.

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Weather's been crazy. It was summer-hot a couple days ago, pushing 28 degrees celsius, and now it's back down to 4... Mother nature's mood swings in tandem with climate change, I guess.

Reflection on weirdness

I often find myself encountering stuff I've written in the past on various forums or other places on the internet that I've visited before. Or on my blog, obviously. And sometimes, I shake my head and try and understand wtf I wrote. I try and understand the headspace I was in when I wrote something, and it's incredibly difficult. And I realize, with some embarrassment, that some of these things that I've written and forgotten about are kinda crazy and not coherent.

I think some of these writings can be attributed to wanting to "freewrite" the thoughts down somewhere and not caring about what I'm actually saying. Other times, I've written something with a purpose and a general idea, but taking it to an extreme.

Here's an example of something I came across which I've now removed from my Steam profile:

"Don't talk nutrition with me unless we're very close friends. Don't bring me your sugar. Don't try and sell your garbage-processed-transformed food-like items to me (and that includes cookies).

With that out of the way, yes, I still like to play video games but I'm transitioning away from iMac and moving back into the Windows world eventually.

e=mc^2 is not a reason to drink alcohol.
I like plants.
I like transformed plants less, but I like them, too.
I like animals best of all.
And I often play games with cool people.

And finally, I'm awesome because I usually like playing as fairly as possible. "

Who am I addressing here? Who would even "try" to sell me junk food? I either buy it or I don't. When I wrote the above, I was likely in "extreme-healthnut-mode" and rejecting all sorts of foods and focusing on only eating the very healthiest stuff. Well, that couldn't last forever. But I can always improve.

What does the speed of light have to do with drinking alcohol?

Am I saying I like nature, or that I like oil, or something else?

True, in the past, I played games with cool people. These days, it's very much a solo thing aside from random global chat interactions in games that support that kind of communication.

Finally, qualifying my awesomeness with how fairly I play games is just weird. I mean, I do literally have a clock with a metal engraving saying "Gabriel is awesome and stuff." that I got as a present when I was 18 and volunteering in Vancouver, so I wonder if I saw my clock and needed to write about being awesome.

In my current headspace, I just have to laugh about this stuff. I'm just glad I'm not doing more damaging things when I get into weird states.

Dogs & Time

 Harmlessly passing the time only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air

For some reason, the above quote drifts in and out of my head, almost on a daily basis and has been doing so for the past week. There's music accompanying it as well, because it's taken from a Pink Floyd song. I think it's taken from Dogs, on the excellent Animals album. But I'm not sure if I've got the quote quite right, and I'm not bothering to look it up.

I don't know what to make of it. It seems like it could be insightful, something to reflect on. 

Now that I think about it, it makes me think of another Pink Floyd song, much more well-known, called Time (Dark Side of the Moon is the album, of course). There's a quote in there that goes: "Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day". That one, I'm sure I've got right because David Gilmour enunciates it so clearly, in an iconic way really.

Anyway, I wonder if I've somehow mixed up the two songs and altered the lyrics for Dogs as such. Am I harmlessly passing my time? Is the clock ticking my time away? I dunno. Here, I'll make Dogs the "Song of the Day" and link it below to mull over.

Biking & reminiscing

I'm back on the bike! After a couple weeks of walking everywhere, the snow finally melted enough to make it possible to road bike again. Don't get me wrong, I love plugging into my headphones and walking to my destinations - and walking is great for the central nervous system - but being able to get to where I want to go 4x faster and without having to pay for gas, parking, or transit feels great. Well, until you get a flat... which I did on my way back home from work a couple nights ago. That sucked. And I know you're not supposed to ride on a flat tire, but I was too tired to care, so I noisily made my way home, walking up the large hill on my path and then slowly pedalling down the street, trying to avoid every little pothole.

So, until I fix the flat (which is fairly easy to do, I've done it enough times now), I'm gonna be riding on an ancient bike that's heavier, slower, can barely change gears (until I fix that, too), but that almost never gets flats. Ol' reliable. I still lock 'er up, but it's such a janky bike, and as such I don't live with the fear of having it stolen because it looks so crappy. It's unfortunate that bike thievery is so common in the city. I've had my wheels stolen before - thankfully never a whole bike -, and it's just so frustrating.

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I'm in a reminiscing mood, positive reminiscing I guess. Mostly thoughts about times when I was more social, more integrated within a community, where I hung out with close friends & acquaintances alike, and where the drudgery of working to make a living wasn't an omnipresent worry in my head. I often find myself thinking "well, the pandemic wiped off my social life" nowadays, which is kind of true, but also kind of an excuse. So, while I specifically, currently don't have plans to integrate myself into a community, it's on my mind. I mean, being steadily employed brings a sort of community feeling, but it's not exactly fun.

In related news, I've been talking to K on the phone on a monthly basis, which is awesome. Sharing tales of our daily lives, it's a positive experience for me.

'till next time.

Clean eating

Feeling a bit anxious. It's my own doing: I'm not eating as clean as I was, say, a month ago. Too much sugar. All I had to do was not start eating it! But now I'm addicted again, especially when cravings hit later in the evening. And the chips, oh, the salty potato chips. I need to cut back on those, too. And I will, because insidious weight gain is not something that does my body good as I grow older.

Okay, so that's some self-reflection for encouragement.

I have the tools to limit this sugar creep. I still enjoy cooking. So if I cook things that are good enough, I can just eat that instead of chowing down on chips.

For example. I make a spicy parsnip hummus, and I love eating carrots with it. Trying to replace chips with carrots might not be the easiest, but if I get used to it and I stop buying the damn chips, I have a chance. The work that I put into making my own snacks makes it so I save money, and I'll feel better if I eat it compared to a processed food coming out of a factory somewhere unknown.

Another thing I really want to do is to keep more pictures of what I make so I can upload them. I'm saving up for a better camera (or an upgrade to my phone), and then I can post them on here. Then, when I want, I can look back on delicious foods I've prepared and counter the junk food addiction.

Still working. I was a little bit worried because of changes to my schedule, but it should be okay. I don't love my work, but I definitely don't hate it. I don't dread it. So it's all right.

... & the March weather

A couple blog posts ago, I wrote about the February weather, and how there wasn't much going on, snow or otherwise. Well, things have changed! Since then, there's been snow, and it has stuck around. Yesterday, I was walking home at the end of the day, and snow fell and never stopped falling. And whilst I was trudging through the sidewalks, lightning lit up the sky and a few moments later, thunder. It was pretty crazy, and the streets were mostly deserted so it felt like I was alone in the remote wilderness because all the cars, and concrete, and pretty much any human-made thing was completely covered by whiteness.

This morning, the snow has stuck around. I can confidently say there was snow this winter, 2022-2023.

Exciting gaming news

As stated in my bio, I'm a pretty big gaming fan. These days, I split my gaming time between remote cloud (PC) gaming, and my Nintendo Switch. For cloud gaming, I connect to a data centre that runs the game I want to play and I stream the game to a derelict Mac that can't run anything modern BUT has a 27" screen. I use a cheap gaming mouse, and a standard keyboard, and I'm good to go. It's great because I have a decent gaming collection thanks to the free Epic games giveaways, and access to my Steam account with all the games I've bought since the mid 2000s.

That's a lot of games, plus the free-to-play options that are on GeForce Now (which is the client I use for cloud gaming). 

Well, there's going to be a bunch more games, now that Microsoft and Nvidia have signed an agreement just yesterday bringing all the Microsoft game studio games to the platform. It's not all publishers that allow their games to be cloud-based, but Microsoft is now one of them and so I'll be able to play AAA games like Skyrim and even Call of Duty (and that's because Microsoft bought recently bought Activision-Blizzard).

Users of GeForce Now, such as myself, speculate that having a behemoth like Microsoft partner with Nvidia means other publishers will now want their games to be on GeForce Now. You still need to buy the game to play it through cloud servers, so it would make sense for other publishers to want to cash in on gamers like me who don't plan to run modern games on expensive modern machines.

So yeah, I'm pretty excited that I'll have access to more games I enjoy! I just need to be careful with finding the right balance so that I don't spend my leisure hours only playing video games. 

I -am- looking forward to playing badminton this weekend!

The February weather

 I'mma write about the weather. Yeah, the weather. The way I see it, it's better than not writing at all.

So it's February. The winter thus far has been pretty dull. There's been snow, but not much of it overall. It tends to melt, so I think there's been a maximum of two weeks in a row where there was snow on the ground before it all melts due to strange weather phenomenons like near 10° Celsius earlier this month. It's not like I live in an area where we get chinooks (super warm winds that blow into Alberta from the Rockies); no, this is plain ol' southern Ontario weather with a touch of ever-increasing climate change.

The problem with having some snow, and then most of it melting off soon after, is that it leaves ice patches everywhere when it stays cold after, which is dangerous for biking. If there's lots of snow, it's also kind of dangerous because the snow compacts from all the traffic over time and basically turns into ice, too. But when the snow all melts, and it stays warm, if I bundle up, the wind doesn't bother me even if it can feel pretty chilly sometime.

Still, I'd say the winter is coming to an end soon. I'm looking forward to more outdoor activities, and the ease of moving around.

Toxic beat

 

 

Here's the Song of the Day. I was walking home from work when this shuffled on. I can't really speak to the lyrics, but the beat is hella catchy, as with all Parov Stelar releases.

The morning routine

I wake up and the sun is out. It is cold outside. The frost creeps up my bedroom window.

I go to the kitchen. I set the kettle to the "green tea" setting, which is a temperature below boiling. I fill the metal insert that goes into the metal teapot with a spoon full of ginger green tea, wait for the kettle to beep, pour the hot water into the teapot, and then wait up to 3 minutes for the tea to brew.

Sometimes I add lemon. Often times I add MCT oil, for some healthy fat. I almost never eat breakfast before noon, and I think the MCT give me energy.

And so my morning routines continue...

On stream of consciousness

I was imagining things I could write about on my blog whilst I was out for a walk yesterday, and I realized that a great majority of my blog posts are really written as is, with little forethought. There's the truly moment-to-moment writing I do with my freewrites, but my regular blog posts are generally written on a whim as well. I guess I try and stick to a topic more when I'm not doing freewrites, but that's one of the only differences.

I have pictures to upload. Stuff I've cooked, graffiti, and natural world things like wild mushrooms and tree cover in the fall. But, most of these pictures are now being taken on my cheap replacement phone (that I just haven't bothered to upgrade because it works fine). That's one thing I miss from my old Windows Phone: good quality pictures (up to 41 megapixels!).

I should get around to uploading photos here and there eventually, because while the photos are sometimes blurry, there's still a story I can tell with them. Really, I'm just a bit lazy and I don't like dealing with Bluetooth transfers and image uploads. There's not much automation there because again my phone is kind of old at this point.

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Snow is arriving! It's falling as I write. It's been a few weeks with little to no snow, so although I've enjoyed being able to bike, it's also nice having snow for the quieting effect it has. And it looks pretty, and it's winter after all.

Last note: I'm not listening to much music this month, but I did have a nice walk with some Melodic Progressive electronic playing in my headphones yesterday, and that was nice.

Y-Yoga & appreciation

I went to a yoga class this week, to a different YMCA than I usually go to for yoga. It was kinda neat to be in a different atmosphere. I was up high, literally, because it's on the fourth floor and out of the windows all I could see were skyscrapers. The downside of going to this Y is that the classes are 45 min instead of an hour, and the centre is just a bit farther away than my usual Y. So I probably won't go as often, because it's not the most convenient spot to get to via public transit, and now there's snow again and I tend not to bike when there's snow.

Still, my class was a positive experience. Although I usually just do my own thing and don't talk to people, I had a short conversation with someone named A. and they made me feel welcome. It's generally a friendly place, whatever Y I go to, so I'm not surprised.

On a different note, but still on that same positivity vibe, I had someone at work the other day tell me "I appreciate you" - even though I couldn't help them find what they were looking for. It was nice to hear, but for a second it seemed out of place because I'm used to hearing those three words together at support groups and the such. Only for a second did it feel weird though, because this customer seemed quite genuine and the fact that I still remember this even though it was a few days ago shows that spreading positive energy works.

Hey you! I appreciate you for being here!

Zen Freewrite

Is this a freewrite? It is! What have I got to write about? All I did was open this page, and as soon as I saw the blank rectangle waiting to be filled with words, I decided "fk it, we'll do it live!".

Is blogging exciting, -oh, I was unrudely interrupted by a snack from my housemate! Hard-boiled eggs & olives with the parsnip hummus I made last night- well, it can be, but I prefer to use it as a place to wind down, to vent, and there is some excitement to be found in those activities, but it's not the quiet place that I sometimes want this spot to be.

I am writing right now because I am writing right now. I read zen books sometimes. Sometimes, the zen books have utterly pointless sentences like the first one in this paragraph. It's okay, I can be zen or not zen - it doesn't matter!

I found the title for my blog post. There, I just put it in now, it's a nice change from all the Freewrite the -insert colour- I was doing because I'm certain I've never used this kind of freewrite before whereas I'm somewhat worried that I've re-used the same colour twice for my titles. Yeah, that's something that bugs me a tiny bit: repeated titles.

Freewriting can seem pretty chaotic. Is my mind chaotic right now? I just write whatever comes to mind. It's not the most fun to read because I do very little editing, even less than I usually do, so the quality of the writing can't be all that great but the ideas, the ideas I can generate when I'm just stream-of-consciousness writing might have some value. I'm jumping all over the place, rarely backspacing. Nothing particularly extraordinary pops up.

I've been writing to a friend, and I said I would work on story writing. Here's a short freewritten story that I will write right now:

The lake was still at this hour of the night. A loon, diving in the moonlight, was the only disturbance. I was crouching behind some rocks, not wanting to sit down on the dark, splotchy ground, but also not wanting to stand. How I ended up beside that lake when I'm usually an urbanite is an easy question to answer: it was camping season. Why I didn't want to get noticed, on the other hand, is a bit more complicated. I should have been asleep in my tent, not too far from the spent campfire after an evening of roasting game, and yet I found myself in the middle of the forest, crouching, waiting. Waiting to hear the sound again. A long, slow moan, almost like a whale's, but a whale it could not be as the nearest ocean was hundreds of kilometres away. A sound that reverberated through my whole body, and that somehow -felt- metallic.

Did the whale sound wake me up? Did it drag me out of the tent, or did I do that? Why aren't any of my campmates here, crouching too? Well, as long as their heads are below that sound line, where the whale sound ebbs and flows, I guess they won't hear it either. It's only when I stood up in my tent that I first noticed it, after all.

It frightened me when the magnetic, metallic sound entered my mind, and it frightens me now even though I seem to have found a way to dull it.

To be continued...