There’s an entire section of the food industry devoted to Goldfish crackers. They come in a variety of sizes and flavors, but all of them are shaped like goldfish and usually orange-colored. For obvious reasons, they have chosen not to emulate the look of a black moor, since a black cracker would be kind of gross-looking (they do come in brown, though).
I’m guessing–because I’m too lazy to search the internet right now–that someone thought it would be cute to make little orange crackers shaped like fish, but not tasting like fish, as that would also be gross, like black crackers.
But who wants to eat a cracker shaped like a fish? It’s not like it’s a great association. Fish are stinky and slimy, crackers are crunchy and yummy. Fish can be yummy, too, but science has yet to transfer that into cracker form (or maybe it has. Like I said, I’m too lazy to check).
Now, Goldfish crackers are indeed yummy. I can open a bag and my hand assumes an automatic motion where it grabs crackers from the bag, shoves them into my mouth, then continues until the bag is empty or I exercise the barest smidgen of self-control and place the bag on the top of a difficult-to-reach shelf. Still, Goldfish crackers do not taste like goldfish, so the whole concept is wrong. It’s like making crackers shaped like worms. No one wants to eat worms, not even cracker worms. Okay, someone out there probably does, but there’s no way they’re getting them (unless they already exist).
Anyway, now I want some Goldfish crackers, so I guess you win this round, Goldfish crackers!
I remember eating grapefruit as a kid (not at the same time as corn dogs) and it always involved two things:
that weird triangle-shaped spoon you used to cut into the grapefruit flesh:
lots of sugar
Adding sugar to a grapefruit basically turned it into sour, sugary candy fruit. There’s some nutritional value buried under all that sugar, but really, why not just eat something not incredibly sour-tasting that you won’t drown in sugar? And every kid I knew did this–and every parent let them. The Sugar Days, as we called ’em.
We were kind of dumb in the old days. Do people still eat sugar-encrusted grapefruit now? My hunch says…yes. Maybe they use Splenda instead, though. “Just one drop, Jimmy, that’s all you need. Jimmy, don’t squirt the bottle on it!”
I was originally planning on updating my PC this spring but thanks to crypto currency miners driving the price of video cards into orbit I’ve decided to hold off and peruse my massive backlog of games for titles that will still run on my current rig, which is about four years old.
Instead I started playing Diablo 3 again. Like World of Warcraft, it acts as comfort food because it’s pretty mindless. You click, things die. You click more, more things die. You get loot. Your character gets increasingly ridiculous looking. It’s fun. Since I last placed (coincidentally four years ago) they’ve added seasons, which locks your character into a “start over” mode that gives you a few trinkets and baubles for completing various goals. I’ve completed one of nine goals. I probably won’t finish them all and I will be sad, but only a little, because there’s good clickin’ fun in the meantime.
I’m almost worried that Diablo 3 is now distracting me from my writing the same way WoW was. Don’t ask about my writing…
I can’t remember the last time I had a corn dog. It was probably at a fair when I was in my teens, so about three hundred years ago. But when I think about them, they just seem weird. You take a wiener and coat it in a thick layer of fried cornmeal. It’s just an odd thing to decide to turn into a dish. I can’t even remember if I liked them. I kind of want to try one again but there’s no easy way other than buying an entire box of them in the grocer freezer. Then I’d have to figure out what to do with the rest of them. Donate them to orphans? Turn them into fertilizer? Science experiments?
But maybe this is a case where it’s better to let sleeping (corn) dogs lie.
Also, I categorized this post under Health, though I’m not entirely sure it qualifies.
Run 574 Average pace: 5:49/km Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Start: 1:47 pm
Distance: 5:03 km
Time: 29:20
Weather: Clear, some cloud
Temp: 12-14ºC
Humidity: 40%
Wind: light to moderate
BPM: 163
Weight: 167.1 pounds
Total distance to date: 4455 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone 8
Today’s run can be divided into Good and Bad.
Good:
the weather was pleasant and mild, the sun actually felt nice
my knees surprisingly didn’t bother me
I didn’t experience any other issues, though I could feel a bit of that “not-quite-in-shape” burn
two geese standing right next to the trail at an especially narrow point did not react as I passed close by, apart from one shifting slightly. There was no hissing or pecking, from either the geese or myself.
the bugs at Deer Lake Brook were gone, possibly having already died from old age
the new bridge is in at Still Creek
Bad:
I had the first taste of dry mouth for the season, as it was rather breezy
my knees actually felt worse on the walk back after the run, though they’re fine now
I was surprisingly slow at 5:49/km. I think the weekly pace (ie. running only once per week) is catching up to me. I plan on running on the holiday Monday to start getting into regular runs, totally for real this time.
the new bridge at Still Creek is closed, so you still have to use the old one. For now they co-exist peacefully.
a weirdly large number of cyclists on the trail getting in the way and such. Also briefly a horse, though the rider stopped just short of moving onto the “no horsey” part of the trail.
Signs of spring were all around, too:
the water fountain by the dam was awakened from its winter slumber
the “Icy conditions” signs have been removed
general increase in green, with trees budding and blooming all over
The skunk cabbage is also on the verge of blossoming, too. This is the time of year when it looks pretty and isn’t stinky.
Pretty before the stink.
Four (!) trees have been cut down since my last run at the lake, including several that had been leaning rather precariously. A fifth that had a large branch angled over the path, requiring you to either duck under or go around has also been amputated. This past winter has probably seen more trees come down (via storm or chainsaw) than in the seven years I’ve been running here.
Overall, I am left a bit nonplussed by the run. I was hoping to get a pace in the 5:30s range, but at least the knees were fine. Well, I shouldn’t say fine. I’ve come to realize that for awhile now (several years, at least) my knees have been very tender whenever I have to use them, like when I kneel on the floor to tie a shoe or scrub something off the kitchen tile. They feel weirdly sensitive. I can replicate this by going into a crouch. I have no idea if running caused this, or if it’s hereditary (my dad had bad knees) but I’ll keep running for as long as I’m able to or possibly get bionic knees.
One other positive was the BPM holding at 163. It’s been remarkably stable, which seems like a good thing. As I get in better shape it should go down. I just need to do more stuff to actually get in better shape. 😛
There’s a big office building that sits midway between the condo and nearby grocery store and when it opened, we got a bonus walk that acts as a shortcut to the store, saving us having to walk up and around the block. It’s a pleasant little walk, with a nice view of the river (until they finish building the new condo towers, at least), and there’s a little grass area with picnic tables and a garden. The area is a bit truncated due to encroaching construction, but what’s there is green and lovely.
And now the garden there has this sign:
This is not the kind of sign put up proactively, so it means it went up after needles were found in the area. If you stand at this sign and look to your left, you are looking directly at a daycare facility, with a playground beside it. It’s about ten steps away.
Addiction sucks, for sure, but maybe if you’re going to shoot up, don’t toss your needles out where they can prick and infect innocent little kids (or anyone else)?
The Fitbit One is a step tracker that, unlike most, does not strap onto your wrist. It comes with a clip but I always kept it in the watch pocket of my jeans where it tracked faithfully.
I am using the past tense because my Fitbit One is now dead, murdered by washing. To be more precise, when I did my last load of laundry this past Friday I forgot to take the Fitbit out of that watch pocket and realized this with five minutes left in the wash cycle. It came out dead and remains dead. It is tracking in technology Heaven now.
I’ve actually done this once before and the Fitbit One not only survived, it gave me a bonus 1400 steps from tumbling around inside the washer for 45 minutes. The difference this time is the button on it had collapsed into the unit and while it still worked fine after the button collapse, tracking just as it always has, I suspect that this created a gap for water to get in and zap everything to heck and back.
I looked into replacing my deceased device, but apparently Fitbit quietly stopped making the One awhile back. Local stores don’t stock it. The closest replacement is the Fitbit Zip, which only tracks steps and is shaped a bit like a watch, sans strap. But I have my Apple watch now for tracking and it’s on my wrist where it more easily guilts me into meeting my goals (see here for more), so I think I’ll just stick to the one device.
I feel a bit silly killing the Fitbit One like this, but I appreciate the slight de-cluttering of the technology in my life.
Run 573 Average pace: 5:27/km Location: Brunette River trail
Start: 5:25 pm
Distance: 5:05 km
Time: 27:34
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 6ºC
Humidity: 75%
Wind: light
BPM: 162
Weight: 166.8 pounds
Total distance to date: 4450 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone 8
I had another weird glitch with the music before starting my run. I told Siri, though my watch, “Hey Siri, shuffle R.E.M.” It processed the command and then…no music. I look and instead of R.E.M. it’s showing…Supertramp? I bring out the phone and there’s a pop-up that says something like “Ruh roh, where’s the internet??”, which was odd because I had a couple bars on my cell signal. I make sure the AirPods are connected and they are, so that’s good. The music app doesn’t show the Supertramp song, although the watch does. Instead it just says “Music”. No song title, nothing else. When I press play it actually plays. But it’s Supertramp.
So I just issue the command through the phone again and then…it works. No other issues after that.
Technology is weird. I wonder if the iPhone is hinky. Or maybe it’s cosmic rays.
It was also chilly out, so maybe it was that. The chill was making the phone cold and afraid to work properly.
It rained hard in the morning and I was not enthused about running, so I waited and all of a sudden it was 4:45 p.m. and I’m thinking I should go or I’m just going to slump on the couch, getting up only to use the bathroom and to fill my face with food (not from the bathroom). I wore my long-sleeve shirt, which was a wise move, but shorts were fine. It wasn’t windy, so that helped to keep it from feeling as unseasonably cool as it was.
I ran the river trail, again by first walking to the far end, then starting from the end. The left knee was fine, the right knee was a bit sore but not too bad and for the second half of the run it settled down much more than in the last run. But I did notice that at times it seemed to jiggle a bit–the actual kneecap. I’m thinking more than a compression sleeve is worth getting.
I tried not to push on the run, but did at one point when I was catching up on another jogger. She was on the left so I moved to the right. She had a giant phone strapped to her left arm. I don’t think I could ever do that, it just looks so awkward. Plus I’d feel like I was constantly tipping very slightly to the left. As I caught up to pass she suddenly looked over her shoulder, as if she intended to move over to the right. This created an awkward moment because I was in the space she wanted to move into. I turned on the afterburners and increased my pace for a few hundred meters. My lungs felt the fire. I mostly eased up after that and was pleasantly surprised by the final result, a 5:27/km pace, with the BPM at 162, no different than my much slower previous runs. Yay.
Here’s how the last three have gone:
5:57 > 5:38 > 5:27
So it’s a good trend. I should note that the river trail is not really a trail at all, but a very compacted gravel road. As such it’s a lot wider and smoother than the trail at Burnaby Lake, so I always tend to be faster on it. Still, an improvement is an improvement and I’ll take it.
I will once again promise myself to run during the week now that there is daylight to do so. We’ll see how it goes.
