Apart from the weight gain, assorted technology failures, the U.S. election, strata-related nonsense and various existential threats, I guess it was nice that what little hair I have left on my head didn’t spontaneously burst into flames or something.
And the bacon was good.
I hope December will be better. I am making plans for it. Ho ho ho.
Enjoy this holiday cat:
I’m still not sure. Some people have a passion that drives them and pushes them through their entire life. No one wonders what Picasso’s hobbies were1Apparently he liked gardening and photography, among other things. I suspect most or many people are like me–good at certain things, interested in a variety of stuff, but not especially driven by any of them. So a lot of what we do seems to be puttering around, or a bit unfocused. These are not necessarily bad things.
I like to draw and write, but I’ve left both of these interests go fallow at times, sometimes for years. I know how my mind works and constantly do battle with its weaker aspects. I am an expert at procrastination, so I’ve adopted the two-minute rule and other techniques to help. I’m lazy, so I try to motivate myself early in the day to let the momentum carry me.
I try to be funny and good to others. I try to be wise, or at least not appear to be a dummy. I consider other viewpoints. I apologize when needed. I realize I will never be perfect or everything I could be because no one can. Not even Picasso.
I’m not sure what prompted this. Sometimes I just have random deep thoughts and write them out to see what comes of them.
I conclude with a bookish cat.
I don’t actually have a follow-up on this, it just felt like a catchy thing to say.
But if I was trying to boil it down into something meaningful, it would be something like this: If you really believed in something and it turned out to not just be wrong, but very wrong, don’t beat yourself up over it, just acknowledge it, learn from it, and move on.
It’s kind of fortune cookie wisdom, but it’s mid-week and my watch told me I’d have a harder time thinking today, so that’s what you get.
But also this artsy black and white photo of my feet next to a pipe by the river edge as a bonus:
The answer is no.
The question comes from this pile of garbage neatly arrayed along the river trail this morning as I was heading out for my run. I have no idea why it is there or who put it there, but the neatness of the pile suggests it may have been collected in order to be picked up and disposed of later. Maybe. Also, where all this stuff came from is another good question, since I have not observed any of it along the river trail itself. The location is right below the overpass for the #1 highway, which may–or may not–be a clue.
The splayed-out doll on top is the perfect creepy pièce de résistance, though.
Probably not on the moon. But never say never.
The WordPress 6.7 update got pushed out tonight, with a few new features. Normally I’d be interested, but since I’m actively trying to find a replacement for WP, not so much now.
Speaking of, I have one more major platform to try: Ghost. There will be others, but this is the main contender that’s still left.
Currently, Posthaven is looking decent, but not quite there (but maybe?) with Pika and Scribbles as lesser possibilities (I love Scribbles’ UI, but it focuses almost exclusively on text).
I’ll try to test Ghost soon™, but I have to admit I’m a little burnt out on all the options and fiddling and whatnot. I really hoped Blogstatic would be The One, but it wasn’t. They are making some changes soon, and I gave them feedback that they seemed to appreciate, so I may look at it again at some point.
UPDATE, November 18, 2024: Blogstatic has rebranded to BlogMaker and eliminated all plans in favour of one that gives you unlimited blogs. Neat! But now, instead of paying $50 per year for a single blog, you pay $25 a month for as many as you want. So if you only want a single blog, this is now six times more expensive, or a 500% increase in price, if you prefer. This putsBlogstaticBlogMaker firmly in the HELL NO category.
In the meantime, I really want to post the cat typing GIF again, but I won’t. Instead, this:
Back in my public school days, I wrote and doodled using a variety of ballpoint pens. I also really loved using fountain pens, and enjoyed the ritual of going to the local stationery store in Duncan, The Letterbox, and buying new ink cartridges for it. The idea of having and keeping a pen instead of just throwing it away when the ink ran out seemed a good one back in the ecologically-aware 1970s.
Alas, fountain pens and left-handed writing do not go great together, so some of my output would get a bit smeary. I adapted and bought faster-drying inks, while also learning to slow my writing, to further let the ink dry before my left hand would smoosh all across everything I’d just written.
Most of my writing with fountain pens was cursive, as the flow of ink from the nib just seemed to lend itself to that. But around grade six or so, I gave up on cursive (mine was fine) and went to printing everything. It was slower, but I enjoyed it more, and modesty aside, I had really nice printing. I even started doing fancy a’s.
Occasionally, I wanted to use different colours of ink to better emphasize certain words or phrases, and this is when I discovered the Bic four-colour pen, which offered:
All in the same pen!
It was great. I loved it and kept buying them for years, until I finally just started typing out everything on computers instead.
But a few weeks ago I saw one in the stationery aisle of a drugstore and I had to buy it. And I did!
I still don’t have much need to write things by hand, but I do keep a notepad by my keyboard, and this pen sits next to it, ready to jot down things in four different colours. Sometimes I just click through the colours, like it’s secretly a fidget toy. Maybe it is a fidget toy.
I’m just glad to have one again. I am easily pleased, sometimes.
My REM sleep was rated Good by my Garmin Forerunner last night, and I think it may have accurately captured things, because I had dreams a-plenty. Here is what I remember of them, using four keywords when I woke up during the night to help:
Gay: This seemed to be a dream about olden times, like in the 1800s, and was focused on a man who wondered if he really was a man (i.e. straight), musing aloud about the alternative possibility: “It could not be so”. I think he was sighing heavily on a couch or something. The best I can figure is this keyed off images I’ve seen on a social media account called Old Book Illustrations.
Musk: I was with a group of people outside. There was a hill and a lake or some sort of body of water and it had this weird undulating effect that didn’t seem physically possible. Even in the dream it seemed weird. This part is directly related to seeing a gull bobbing on waves on the Fraser River yesterday afternoon, which undulated in the same way.
And yes, Elon Musk was there. At one point, a bunch of helicopters (?) flew in, dropping off a bunch of random vehicles. They were all the vehicles he had owned, which was supposed to be interesting, somehow. Musk babbled on about all of this and someone by he commented on what a showman he was. I replied that he was a con man and a huckster. Even dream me ain’t impressed. This dream had a strange and somewhat poignant turn at the end, as my mom showed up and upon seeing me, she immediately turned her head in a way to get a welcoming kiss, which signalled to me that she clearly recognized me (she did not quite recognize me in April 2023 when we met in person for the last time). But then I asked her, “How are you?” and she couldn’t answer, like the question had no meaning to her. It was odd and a little sad.
Tim: But just in time to save me from the melancholy, I found myself at my old place on East 19th Avenue, where I last lived in 2011. I was apparently on top of a broken staircase outside and trying to figure out how to get down. The son of Tim, my friend and landlord, appeared at the base of the stairs and I noted how much bigger he was from the last time I’d seen him, apparently going from a toddler to maybe 8 years old? Also, the kid looked nothing like Tim’s actual son, but more like one of my brother’s kids, who is obviously now a full-grown adult. The kid seemed to acknowledge my predicament. Then Tim and Sue arrived and I feel others were with them, but I can’t recall who. Tim was completely naked, but it was OK, because they had been attending some event/ritual where being naked was part of the hippie fun. In the dream I could remember what the event was, but not now, alas. No one seemed fussed about Tim’s nakedness. I managed to climb down the back side of the stairs to get back safely to the ground.
There may have been more, but that’s what I remember. My brain is weird.
The U.S. election took place yesterday, November 5th.
My thoughts can be encapsulated entirely by a simple image, as seen below.
Also, this cat:
Martha and the Muffins is a great bad name, and also a pretty good band based out of Toronto. I remember them mainly for the above-titled song, “Echo Beach”, which was a radio hit in Canada back in 1980. It’s a great little pop song and captures a sense of longing that hits me right now. Plus sax!
There’s a decent write-up on the song on Wikipedia, where I learned that Echo Beach is a real beach, and it’s in Saskatchewan, and that the B-side to the single was a song called “Teddy the Dink.”
Enjoy! (They’re a good live band, too)
Bonus:
Echo Beach as seen on the Map application included in Windows 11:
It’s a run day, but it is also a rain day on this, the first day of November. According to the Windows weather app, it’s rained 19 out of 30 times the past 30 years on this day. That seems about right.
I’ not actually complaining (mostly). Sometimes it’s fun to even go out in stormy weather, as I did a few weeks ago. But it is not fun to run in the rain. It’s low-key horrible, as the kids say. This IS me complaining.
With the rain expected to go all day, I look at my treadmill and ponder. I may have to take advantage of it later.
And think about going out to buy discount Halloween candy. Kidding! I am totally being good for November! Really! Haha.
No, really.
For sure.
You’ll see.
See below. (Better with sound.)
14 posts is how many I’d need to post in the next four hours in order to get my desired monthly average of 2 posts per day.
I mean, I could cheat and do it pretty easily:
But I am doing none of that.
Probably.