Have some flowers

I haven’t been posting my photos much lately, but here’s a few flowers I’ve shot recently while practicing my physical distancing skills outdoors.

Pretty and pink
Purple and prickly

Treadmill walk: Pandemic edition (5 of an ongoing series)

It’s my third day of being on the treadmill. The idea of running outside is acting as actual enticement to stay indoors, so it’s good in the sense that I am still doing workouts.

Tonight I started out feeling pretty good and fast (9:09/km pace) but by the last four minutes or so I was actually starting to feel blah and tired. I also am experiencing heartburn/mild acid reflux, possibly caused by stress, so while swigging water from my water bottle during the walk helped, it was still an unpleasant thing to endure on and off for 30 minutes.

The stats (BPM was down, so yay for that):

Speed: 6.5 km/h
Incline: 10

Pace: 9:19/km (9:18 km/h)
Time: 30:03 (30.04)
Distance: 3.22 km (3.23 km)
Calories burned: 275 (306)
BPM: 137 (141)

Treadmill walk: Pandemic edition (4 of an ongoing series)

I really don’t want to think how high this particular series will go.

Unlike the phantom workout reported here, this one was quite real–and extra late. I didn’t start until 10:40 p.m. after flipping back and forth on whether I wanted to do a workout (I knew I should).

And I was peppier, as the stats show below. I was also wetter, as I forgot to screw the cap of my water bottle on tight enough. Oops. Other than that, things went fine and I am pleased with the result. BPM was about the same, but pace was improved, so yay.

Stats:

Speed: 6.5 km/h
Incline: 10

Pace: 9:18/km (9:29 km/h)
Time: 30:04 (30.04)
Distance: 3.23 km (3.17 km)
Calories burned: 306 (313)
BPM: 141 (142)

The mysterious workout

I got a notification on my watch and like any well-trained modern technology user, I checked it out, to find this:

Nice indeed! There are a few issues with this, though:

  • I do not own an elliptical
  • I was sitting in my chair at the computer doing pretty much the opposite of burning calories. How many calories are consumed by using your eyes to read text off a screen? I’m assuming not many.

This raises the question of how the Fitbit Inspire HR, which was in my pocket at the time, somehow decided I not only did an impossible workout, but did it for 19 minutes. Normally there would be some semi-plausible explanation, like I was moving back and forth from one room to another, and it was misinterpreting that as exercise, but no, I was sitting still in a chair.

Now, I have tricked my Apple watch into thinking I did a few minutes of exercise by vigorously singing along to music with the headphones on, but that’s one of those semi-plausible things. With the Fitbit the only way I could have been less active is if I was sleeping.

It is a mystery, then, and a reminder that while technology can be great, it can also fall flat on its shiny metal face.

Treadmill walk: Pandemic edition (3 of an ongoing series)

After a few days of being slothful and shamefully leaving my activity rings incomplete, I hit the treadmill at lunch today, despite the sunny weather, as I am still practicing physical distancing (no longer social distancing, because you can still yell hello to the other person on the sidewalk on the other side of the street).

I was a lot pokier than Monday’s effort, but not too bad overall. BPM was accordingly down. I listened to They Might Be Giants (brand new album) Flood and how can it be 30 years since that came out? I just checked and the two Johns are 59 and 60 years old. Time is weird and frightens me. But Flood is a good album for exercising.

Stats:

Speed: 6.5 km/h
Incline: 10

Pace: 9:29/km (9:09 km/h)
Time: 30:04 (30.03)
Distance: 3.17 km (3.28 km)
Calories burned: 313 (328)
BPM: 142 (151)

How to make me feel old (Lenovo edition)

I like my Thinkpad X1 Carbon. The finish has this weirdly soothing texture, the keyboard is like everything Apple would never do (a good thing) and it generally runs well.

I am always keeping my eye on laptops because I am in the market for a new one this year, so I am subscribed to Lenovo’s newsletter.

It is a total coincidence that I am writing about newsletters two days in a row, I assure you.

Today I get this:

Basically, Lenovo is telling me I am old. A senior.

Hmph.

Zinio: We don’t know how April Fools works

I get newsletters from Zinio, the online magazine store, offering savings and such on various, well, online magazines. It’s a decent service, though increasingly niche as the general web provides a less-curated overabundance of information on any topic out there.

Today is April 1st, aka April Fools Day. During a global pandemic, with thousands sick and dying and everyone forced to stay away from each other to prevent the spread of the virus, some companies, like Google, have wisely chosen to forsake the usual “funny” jokes we see across the web today.

Zinio had this in today’s newsletter:

“April Fools is not cancelled” would seem to be saying that what follows is a joke or prank. Does this mean “Get up to 40% off?” is a joke? No, it still applies. This is Zinio’s standard promo discount on magazines that they offer regularly.

Unless you use a very broad interpretation of April Fools as a “holiday” or special occasion to “celebrate”, this ad makes no sense at all. It’s confusing and ill-conceived.

It made me realize I don’t need to get these newsletters anymore, so thank you, Zinio ad department, for helping slim down my inbox with your inept attempt at humor.

March 2020 weight loss report: Up 5.9 pounds

There is no sugar-coating this month’s report, though it might seem accurate to say everything in the report was coated in sugar, then eaten by me.

I am up 3.9 pounds for the year to date. This is not good, as I had been trending down. Looking at the calendar, I see that I impressively gained five pounds in the ten days from March 21-31.

What happened? Cookies, and plenty of them.

But also the global pandemic, which is actually connected to the cookies. While others were hoarding toilet paper, I was hoarding food, specifically hoarding it in my mouth and then in my belly. More than any other time in recent memory the stuff I ate was comfort food. I apparently needed a lot of comfort.

It’s not a coincidence that I started working from home on March 18.

For April I simply vow to improve. The cookies are gone, I’m going to resume regular workouts, and just generally try to do better on what I eat. At least I didn’t have any donuts.

The fat-filled stats:

March 1: 169.8 pounds
March 31: 175.7 pounds (up 5.9 pounds)

Year to date: From 171.8 to 175.7 pounds (up 3.9 pounds)

And the body fat:

March 1: 22% (37.3 pounds of fat)
March 31:
22.4% (39.4 pounds of fat) (up 2.1 pounds)

Well, that was a month (March 2020 edition)

If I go back all the way to the start of the year–you know, three months ago–I had probably heard about the coronavirus that was starting to appear in China, but it was otherwise just another news story in the background, like so many others.

Today, two days from April, I am in my third week of working from home, the place I work is all but locked down, businesses that aren’t “essential services” are closed, transit is ghost trains and empty buses, and it’s still ridiculously difficult to buy toilet paper, which is a fitting epitaph for this species if we manage to extinguish ourselves–maybe not with this virus, but perhaps with another.

For the first time I am keenly aware of sharing the sidewalk with others. Walks are now solitary affairs, with wide berths given to others. Runs have become stressful exercises (ho ho) in avoidance. Visiting friends has gone virtual. I look at Facebook almost every day (ew).

It’s awful. But enough about Facebook.

The news coverage of COVID-19 is constant and ever-present. You can’t do anything without seeing or hearing the effects of the virus (as I write this, 16 stories on the CBC News website are about COVID-19. That’s all of the stories, by the way). I wonder how long I’ll be working from home; through April seems like a safe bet (UPDATE, September 30: lol as the kids say. I was mega-wrong here. The college I work at is sticking with online courses for most classes, until April…of 2021. By then work from home will have lasted over one full year). Beyond that, it all depends on how under control the virus is. This is the first global pandemic in the age of social media and easy, world-spanning travel, so we are in a very real sense in uncharted territory now.

Some things haven’t changed. I get up in the morning and have my usual breakfast. I work out on the treadmill. I write on this blog. But even the regular things have that undercurrent of unreality to them because I know these normal routines are set against a world that is operating dramatically differently than it was a couple of months ago.

I’m curious about what sort of blog post I’ll be making in June, as we reach the middle of the year and the start of summer. Will things be starting to return to normal, or will we be settling in for longer, more permanent changes to how our whole society works? I don’t know. I’m not even sure I want to know.

But we’ll see in three months. Until then, interesting times.

The no-run, pandemic edition

This is kind of depressing, but not surprising.

Today started out pretty nice–the temperature got up to around 12 degrees, it was mostly sunny. A beautiful day to go for a walk or, in my case, a run.

I planned to go to Burnaby Lake, and was set to run clockwise, starting on the south side of the lake.

There were a lot of people on the river trail as I made my way to the lake. I feared the worst, but pressed on. At the lake so many people were crowding on the top of the dam that I actually stood back and waited a few minutes for them to clear out before making my way across.

I had to pee. The Jiffy John was, naturally, occupied.

I came out and there were groups of people on the trail near the parking lot (families and such), so I thought I’d walk to the road and actually start my run there, allowing me to go directly onto the Avalon Trail, which is wider and can more readily accommodate more people and the social distancing that is the vogue in these plague-filled days.

Sign at entrance to Burnaby Lake

The idea of maintaining 2 meters on a park trail is largely a fantasy because the trails are often barely that wide to begin with, and people aren’t terribly likely to traipse through the skunk cabbage just to comply. But still, it’s possible to at least spread out and do your best. Besides, Burnaby Lake isn’t exactly the seawall at Stanley Park in terms of popularity.

Except today it kind of was. I looked down the road to the Avalon Trail and it was packed full of people–more than I’ve ever seen, groups moving in both directions, with more feeding in from the trail connecting to it from the parking lot.

And the parking lot? Normally in late March, even on a nice day, the lot would have maybe a half dozen vehicles in it. Today they were parking in the middle, the lot nearly full.

Avalon parking lot. Some of these cars are not maintaining social distance.

The lot is rarely this full during the peak of summer.

Now, I get annoyed at having a lot of people on the trail when I’m running when there isn’t a pandemic. But during one? It’s dumb. These people are basically doing the opposite of what they should be. Instead of staying home, they are going out. That itself is fine. They are going to a park. Also fine.

They are all going to the same park and jamming the trails with huge crowds of people. This is not fine. This is, in fact, how you spread the virus.

Metro Vancouver is partly to blame here. In the city of Vancouver the Parks Board has shut all of the parking lots for parks and beaches. While that won’t stop everyone, you can see by the above photo that it may have stopped dozens.

I was initially looking forward to heading out because the forecast was for rain showers and while some would still be out no matter what the weather, a lot would have stayed inside and watched Frozen with their kids for the billionth time. But the weather changed and instead we got a mix of sun and clouds.

I left without running. The stress of having to push through the crowds was too much. I wouldn’t have enjoyed the experience. Ironically, partway on the walk back it did start to shower a bit, but too little, too late.

My next outdoor run will only happen if it’s raining even before I step outside.

At least I got 8 km of walking in.

Two day ordering, pandemic edition

The order is for some lighting, so nothing critical or anything, but it underscores how Amazon is being slammed by everyone with so many physical stores currently shut down. My usual experience is for them to deliver ahead of schedule, now two day delivery has stretched to four weeks.

Just another sign of the times. It’s hard to believe just a month ago the world seemed relatively normal (awful in a lot of ways, but still normal).