I’ve talked about A Charlie Brown Christmas before and how its message decrying the commercialization of Christmas resonates just as much today as it did when the special first aired in 1965.
It is then ironic, to say the least, that you may now purchase this:
Yes, you can buy a plastic replica of the humble tree Charlie Brown picked out–the only real tree in the lot where he and Linus went looking.
It’s only $8.62 U.S. That’s just over $10 Canadian, a bargain for those looking to simultaneously pay tribute to and mock the message of A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Yes, I’ve completely remade the look of the site. The couple of bots scraping it probably won’t even notice. 🙁
Changes made:
Super Spud logo removed
colored text removed from site logo, post headers and sidebar headers and blog titles on home page
navigation at the top of the site is now sticky and full-width
footer now full-width to create a kind of visual bookend with the header
post background now off-white
site background now medium gray for contrast
spacing between posts removed (I actually want to have something to split them a little but haven’t figured how to do that yet EDIT: I found the relevant css and now have a thin line to visually separate posts)
tightened the spacing above social media links in posts and between sidebar widgets
possibly something else I’ve forgotten about
added 3% more love
I may chuck it all in a week but for now I kind of like the more subdued, cleaner aesthetic. It will work great with the slightly grainy animated cat gifs I love posting.
Hopefully this will be the only post I make in this particular series.
Yesterday I went to work in pouring rain. This is not terribly unusual in December. However, the temperature got tricksy and started going down instead of up as the morning progressed, and by 10 a.m. the rain turned to snow and it snowed a fair bit, then it warmed up, turned back to rain for awhile, then back to snow again and then finally it stopped in the early evening.
Today it was clear and it’s not as bad as I make it sound. Most sidewalks and roads are clear or clear-ish, with some slippery sections. The trail around the golf course is jog-worthy (several were out during my noon walk today).
The 10-day forecast calls for a mix of sun, clouds and some showers, so we may get through the rest of 2017 without more of the infernal white stuff. Hooray.
Here’s a picture taken from the Langara Trail looking toward some trees, behind which is Langara College. I’m posting this shot because it says damn snow more than the others I took.
Langara Trail, Dec. 19, 2017. Come for the snow, stay for the giant slush puddles.
As always the character of Odd remains endearing and funny, with the customary pathos mixed in, but Odd Hours feels incomplete, more like the first act of a larger story, with plot holes left unexplained, characters lightly sketched across a few scenes, a couple of awfully convenient coincidences, and an incredibly high stakes story that feels utterly the opposite in the way it is executed (no pun intended–that’s a minor spoiler).
Still, it’s a quick read and by this fourth book Koontz has built up enough good will with the character of Odd Thomas that I’m willing to overlook the flaws and press on to #5, albeit with diminished enthusiasm.
I’ve spent far too many hours searching in couch cushions for my Apple Pencil
Does Chance Miller really spend hours looking for his Apple Pencil in his couch? Is his couch as big as a city block? Perhaps. I’ve seen some pretty big couches. Or maybe he is perpetually losing it in every couch he encounters, as he goes through life dangerously nurturing his couch obsession, risking permanent loss of his Apple Pencil.
More curiously, he states that “I’m hard-pressed to find a reason to choose the Slim Book over the Smart Keyboard” then lists the Slim Book’s superior features:
a holder for the Apple Pencil (take that, couches!)
backlit keys
lasts for up to two years on battery
costs less
a full set of function keys (wait, he doesn’t even mention this, though they are plainly visible in the review’s screenshots)
a decent amount of travel in the keys
is easier to use on your lap
is more versatile, with multiple viewing angles
includes a palm rest
has a much sturdier stand
It’s clear why one would be hard-pressed to find a reason to choose the Slim Book when its list of superior features is as big as a couch.
But wait, let me provide the full quote from above:
I’m hard-pressed to find a reason to choose the Slim Book over the Smart Keyboard, but I’ve grown very accustomed to the typing experience the Smart Keyboard provides
Thus proving himself utterly mad for preferring the terrible, joyless, noisy MacBook Pro keyboard. Okay, to be fair, I actually find the Smart Keyboard for the iPad Pro to be superior in feel to that of the new MacBook Pro, but he still professes “to love” Apple’s keyboard design and specifically calls out the MacBook Pro. Insanity!
Mostly, I wished he had written “I’ve spent far too many years searching in couch cushions for my Apple Pencil” just to see if the editor was paying attention.
I exercised for over three hours yesterday, which is a lot for me. First there was the usual weekend stuff:
10K run at Burnaby Lake
8K walk to and from above-mentioned lake
About an hour and a half later Jeff and I went for a bike ride at Colony Farm that inadvertently included a decent amount of uphill cycling (Colony Farm itself is entirely flat). This worked out thusly:
13K cycling, average speed 12 km/h
All told, I burnt oodles of calories and was confident that I would sleep soundly that night. Indeed, by about 9 p.m. I could barely stay awake sitting in ye olde computer chair and so I went to bed early.
And spent the first half of the night having a weird un-sleep where I kept waking up, felt weird and bad, would get up to pee and would feel even more weird and bad, with almost flu-like symptoms. By early morning it all seemed to settle down and a Tums plucked from the bathroom cabinet went unconsumed by the bedside.
Still, it was a strange experience. I fully expected to conk out almost immediately after all the exercise but the opposite happened.
Also, my butt is slightly sore today and I wore my special biking undies, too. Also also I kept getting the high and low gears mixed up because it’s been that long since the last bike ride. I managed to get them right for our one big unplanned ascent, though. I still hget nervous bombing downhill. I do not have a need for speed.
Today, after all that exercise yesterday, I suggested we go to the Canada Games Pool. So we did–and I spent half an hour on the elliptical. And then I forgot to turn off the activity on my watch, so it thinks I was on the elliptical for an hour. Haha, no. I haven’t gone quite that mad yet.
The bonus activity-recording did capture half an hour of intense ping pong after the elliptical, though. Jeff won 2-1 and all the games were close. At one point the ping pong ball ended up in my shorts. I had no idea this was even possible and mused over the seeming impossibility of it while I fished the ball out of my shorts. I had to do this because it actually got lodged in the mesh fabric of the shorts.
We finished up at the whirlpool, which actually felt kind of nice after all the pseudo-running and not pseudo ping-ponging. I still get nervous about dunking the watch but it always comes out fine. Just before leaving the whirlpool, an old guy showed up wearing massive earphones. He also had a tablet (possibly a Surface) that was playing videos or something. He set it by the edge of the whirlpool so he could rock out while he soaked. I’m not sure I’d risk that much technology so close to a swimming pool, a whirlpool and a lot of wandering and very wet people. But who am I to judge?
I hope I sleep better tonight. I’m not going to bed early.
Also, here’s an official stock image of the Canada Games Pool showing the upper fitness area where I do elliptical training and then forget to stop tracking the activity on my watch:
Run 559 Average pace: 5:27/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Start: 11:18 am
Distance: 10.03 km
Time: 54:49
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 4-6ºC
Humidity: 88%
Wind: light
BPM: 173
Weight: 161.6 pounds
Total distance to date: 4350 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone
My goal for today’s run was to simply maintain a steady pace and perhaps beat last Saturday’s 10K pace of 5:50/km, which is rather sluggish.
Before getting to the run I’d like to say I’m convinced that my brisk walking pace that I adopt when heading to the lake is absolutely being interpreted by my body as the rhythmic signal to evacuate my bowels and/or bladder because I yet again had to go when I got there. Which I did, grateful for the sanitizer in the Jiffy John™.
Having concluded my bathroom business, I turned to the running business. I’d left my Cascadia shoes at work so I ran using my old Hoka Speedgoats. I’d forgotten how much they squeak. The shoes nearly double as an early warning system to other people on the trail. They were otherwise fine.
I also wore my AirPods because I apparently forgot my regular earbuds at work. It was cloudy but not looking particularly like rain, so I deemed it a reasonable risk. They performed fine and remained snug, though there was some confusion between it, Siri, the watch and the phone. Maybe too many Apple products together is actually a bad thing. Perhaps AI-based rivalries form.
It started out fine, with me selecting music: “Hey Siri, play The Go-Go’s.” My phone began playing The Go-Go’s.
Next, I started the run: “Hey Siri, start a 5K outdoor run.” (I always default to 5K because I’d rather go over than finish under.)
This seemed to cause the first bit of confusion. Instead of continuing to play the paused song, it moved to the next one. But it was still The Go-Go’s, as was the song after that. I also delighted in the watch audio signals for each km completed piping through the AirPods. But the fourth song that played was “Wasted Time” by The Eagles. The Eagles, as you may know, are not The Go-Go’s. I also realized that The Go-Go’s songs had been playing in alphabetical order, which was not my preference.
“Hey Siri, shuffle The Go-Go’s.” This fixed the music for the rest of the run. It also broke the audio piping in from the watch. Oh well.
The Eagles song is stored on both the phone and the watch and it looks like the watch or AirPods decided it would be a good time to play music from the watch instead of the phone because why not? So it just grabbed some random song. I’ve fixed this problem before by nuking all the music from the watch, but that’s sub-optimal. There is a watch update, so maybe that fixes it.
Anyway, onto the run.
My first km was 5:36/km, so in line with my stated goal of being faster but not, you know, fast.
In terms of issues, I felt a brief soreness in my right calf (that weak feeling again, like the muscle is flabby and out of shape, which it kind of is). It didn’t last long. I also briefly felt some stiffness near the inside of my lower left butt cheek. I don’t have a good explanation for this, except that the stiffness did not arise from doing anything fun (nor I think, from running). It also didn’t last long.
The trail was lightly populated, perhaps a combination of the cold and the threatening sky. I liked it. The “Beware of bears eating you” sign has been replaced with “Caution: icy conditions” sign. It wasn’t really icy, though.
I only felt like I really pushed at one point, along the Cottonwood Trail, where a fellow jogger suddenly sprang from the woods onto the path ahead of me (I suspect the urgent need to pee was involved). She began a pace that was almost but not quite as fast as mine. This was nearly 7 km into the run and I was not feeling super-energetic but it became clear I’d either have to deliberately hold back or expend some extra energy to pass her.
I chose to pass, then maintained that elevated pace until I reached the Piper Mill Trail where I gratefully dropped down a notch or two. My pace at this point was a zippy 5:19/km. I felt it.
In the end I finished at 5:27/km, slightly faster than Thursday’s 5K and substantially faster than the last 10K–a full 23 seconds faster per km. I really wasn’t expecting the result, which is pleasantly surprising.
Less pleasantly, my heart rate was elevated to right near the maximum of what I’m comfortable with at 173 BPM. The combination of the cold and the effort and being kind of flabby and out of shape is not a good one.
But I will try to ease up next week, with two runs planned for work before the holiday starts, then a week and a half of runs at the lake, barring sudden and annoying blizzards.
Run 558 Average pace: 5:28/km
Location: Langara Trail
Start: 12:22 pm
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 27:31
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 6ºC
Humidity: 87%
Wind: light
BPM: 165
Weight: 163.1 pounds
Total distance to date: 4340 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone
Running conditions were near-identical today to Tuesday and my modest proposal (to myself) was to simply improve on the previous run’s performance. And I did, so hooray for me!
My pace improved from 5:35/km to 5:28/km and my BPM dropped from 170 to 165. I also didn’t feel like I was exerting myself as hard, especially in the opening km.
No real issues to report, other than post-run my leg muscles are all a wee bit stiff as they got through the initial phase of getting used regularly again. It’s amazing how quickly you lose your fitness level.
I am toying with the idea of running again at lunch tomorrow since all of my gear is still at work. It’s probably a better idea than donuts.
The ending of The Boy Who Drew Monsters caught me by (pleasant) surprise, which was a fun way to end the novel, but it also made me reflect back on the story’s events that lead up to that ending, and I’m left with the feeling that while this is a good, creepy story, it falls short of its potential.
The potential goes unfilled for a couple of reasons. On the plus side, all the ingredients are here for a spooky tale–a remote(ish) seaside location during a snowy winter, a strange child with some rather unique talents, old shipwrecks and their possible ghosts, unearthed bones, sightings of weird people and animals. Into this author Keith Donohue inserts an unhappy family–a young couple straining to hold everything together as they raise their son, a ten year old with Asperger’s and agoraphobia who spends most of his time withdrawn into himself.
Things get progressively weirder as the house and area are beset by unusual sounds and fleeting glimpses of monstrous things. Holly, the wife, finding little comfort from her husband, the once unfaithful Tim, returns to church, seeking guidance from a surprisingly skeptical priest and his odd Japanese housekeeper, who speaks openly of ghosts over the objections of the priest.
All of this is good material but there are problems. The pacing feels off. When the first big storm of the winter arrives you know it’s going to lead into the story’s conclusion. The problem is that while a lot of plot points are introduced, there is no sense of escalation, things just keep happening until the storm hits and the story leaps forward to an abrupt conclusion.
The priest is an entirely odd character, seeming to fit more of a “skeptical scientist” role who adds little to the story. The housekeeper offers more, bringing comfort to Holly and speaking to the boy, Jack Peter, holding out the promise of a breakthrough with him, but this gets abandoned without further exploration, again making her character seem superfluous.
Jack Peter, the boy, is unsympathetic. While the reader will naturally feel bad about his afflictions, his behavior is compulsively strange and remote, and never really changes.
In the end the story just needs more flesh on its bones. What is here is decent enough, there’s just not enough of it, leaving the story feeling thin and underdeveloped. Donohue’s writing has a lyrical rhythm to it, which makes the relatively thin material all the more frustrating. This could have been a great read instead of just a good one.
Run 557 Average pace: 5:35/km
Location: Langara Trail
Start: 12:27 pm
Distance: 5.02 km
Time: 28:03
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 7ºC
Humidity: 80%
Wind: light
BPM: 170
Weight: 163.4 pounds
Total distance to date: 4335 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone
For the first time in awhile I actually ran mid-week, taking advantage of the current dry weather to run the loop around the Langara Golf Course.
The first 500m or so I felt like I was pushing way too hard but this has happened before on this trail and I’m not entirely sure why. It starts on a slight downward slope but I’m not sure that’s it. I felt more or less normal later, though my body is still a bit weirded out by the different dynamics of this trail, with its long downward and upward slopes. I’m tempted to try the Nike Run Club (NRC, nee Nike+) app again to see if I can get a bit more granularity in the post-run stats and see exactly how and where the terrain affects my pace and BPM.
Speaking of BPM, it’s still up there but no better or worse, so in line with my current fitness level, I suppose.
Overall I had no issues apart from a brief sensation of weakness in one leg a little over a km in. It just felt very briefly wobbly, possibly because of the combination of doing two runs close together for the first time in more than a month and the unfamiliar route. It went away quickly and didn’t last.
And I was slow. My last 5K here was 5:20/km, today it was 5:35/km. Ouch.
I expect to be a little sore tomorrow.
Here’s hoping that I regain my stamina reasonably soon if I keep up the regular runs. If nothing else I’m at least moving in the right direction now.
Run 556 Average pace: 5:50/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 11:08 am
Distance: 10.03 km
Time: 58:35
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 6ºC
Humidity: 83%
Wind: light
BPM: 171
Weight: 161.7 pounds
Total distance to date: 4330 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone
This was not a good run. It wasn’t a bad run, either, just thoroughly blah.
One complication–my left hip felt a bit sore for no apparent reason, but it largely worked itself out by the end of the run and was fine on the walk home.
I was expecting a temperature of 1-3ºC but it was actually 6ºC when I started out. Again, the difference in temperature here is quite noticeable so while I was not over-dressed with two layers on top and running pants instead of shorts, a jacket and gloves would have been too much. I passed a number of joggers early on and everyone wearing a jacket either had the jacket fully unzipped the next time I saw them or the jacket was tied around their waists.
I wore my fancy new Under Armor jogging pants that include zippered front pockets and everything and they kept my legs nice and warm on the walk to and from the lake. For the actual run I would have been fine with shorts, especially since it was dry with little wind. I also had fancy new Under Armor underwear to go with the pants and they are thin and silk-like, so they stayed dry and pretty much felt like they weren’t there. Gear-wise, the run was a success.
The walk to the lake was one of the slowest ever at 9:41/km. My usual pace is below 9:00/km. The walk back was a bit better but still slow, while the run itself was a full ten seconds slower than last Saturday’s at 5:50/km. Lowlights included a couple of km where the pace was over 6:00/km. By the third km I was already feeling tired, though I got my second wind and felt decent for the last few km, even if my pace never improved. The cold seemed to keep my BPM up, too. It also doesn’t help that each run I’m getting a little heavier.
Basically I need to eat better and exercise more, just like that doctor told me way back in april of 2008. And I will. I’m taking my running gear to work and will dash around the golf course at lunch instead of dashing food into my face at the cafeteria. It also helps that after next week the cafeteria will be essentially closed for inter-session (no classes, no exams).
Since the weather was nice a lot of people were out, though I didn’t encounter any large roving gangs of walkers. Instead of dodging puddles I dodged people. I think I prefer puddles if I’m honest about it. Puddles don’t make sudden movements.
Overall, a slog but I finished it and to quote Elton John, I’m still standing (though I’m sitting as I write this). I plan on doing more and shorter runs this week, rain or shine (but no snow, please). We’ll see if I start to regain some form before year’s end.
This post was lovingly hand-written using my iPad Pro, Apple Pencil and the Nebo note-taking app.
Nebo converts the handwritten text to type on the fly and the accuracy seems pretty good considering l’m writing this in bed while the neighbors make strange thumping sounds upstairs.
All in all, I give the technology ten thumbs up and this post’s excitement level half a thumb up.
