General

Remembering mom

My mom died last night (June 22) at the age of 89. That’s a pretty good run. The last few years of her life were rough–she suffered numerous ailments and had early-onset Alzheimer’s on top of that. I last spoke to her a few weeks ago, and her memory was reduced to things from the distant past. But she seemed to still recognize my voice, and she laughed at my dumb jokes. When she laughed, she sounded the same as she ever did.

She was kind, generous and patient (five kids probably instills a lot of patience). She could also be a bit of a rascal, but was very sneaky about it. No matter how I try, I really can’t think of anything negative to say about her. She was a great person and the world is diminished by her passing. I don’t believe in Heaven or anything, but I do think there is the possibility that something non-physical survives our lumpy old bodies. If that’s the case, I’m sure her soul or whatever it might be is out there is having a good ol’ time wherever it is that souls (or whatever they might be) gather.

I don’t have many photos of her here (she kept most of the family albums), but I was also a bit of a rascal, and loved taking “candid” shots. One I do have is below. It’s a petting zoo, possibly at Knott’s Berry Farm, circa 1974 or 1975. I’m not sure what the goat was doing, but she clearly did not like it.

Complete with rounded corners, which was the style at the time.

Thanks for everything, mom. You were the best.

It’s the first day of summer (2024) as we know it (and I feel adequate)

Good news: My favourite season has arrived. Yay! Yes yes, climate change, heat domes, etc. I don’t care, summer is still my favourite season.

Bad news: I am still sick, though improved. I was able to go out and aboot without any issue. At home, I was coughing occasionally, mostly when sitting in certain specific positions that told my body, “Now is the time to cough.” They were all the most comfortable positions, too. 🙁

Neither good nor bad news: The weather today was very summer-like, with a high temperature of 28°C and “felt like 32”. It was pretty warm compared to what we’ve been getting. We’ll get one more day of sun before YMS (Yet More Showers). I don’t think I’ve ever seen grass so lush and green on June 20th before.

Anyway, here is another shot of Hume Park, this time the lower part.

It’s the last day of spring (2024) as we know it (and I don’t feel fine)

It was actually a pleasantly sunny day for the last day of Spring 2024, with a high of 26°C (not a record). The not-fine part is related to the allergies/cold/flu/alien incubation I currently have. I slept horribly last night, but I think I am on the mend now and will hopefully at least be back to somewhat normal by tomorrow, the first day of summer.

I will frolic about if that’s the case.

In the meantime, here is a wide-angle photo of Hume Park, with the grass unusually green for mid-June:

I need a fancy new logo

With the site redesign mostly complete, I think I need a new logo, something that isn’t just literally the name of the site. Yes, I know it’s clean and efficient, but it’s also sterile and blah.

I still want something sleek and uncluttered. I will ponder.

When I tinkered around in Canva, I ended up with this:

It both does and doesn’t speak to me. It’s also full of hidden meaning that no one else would ever figure out.

But the actual logo will probably not feature a jar of pickles.

Run 865: Son of baby run

View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run

Whoops, I swear I didn’t mean to go another two weeks between runs again. But I also didn’t expect to develop FOK1Fear Of Knees. I am now paranoid about my knees giving up, giving in and giving out. It has made me afraid to run at all.

But today, with the weather being nice again (finally), I decided to get out there and…do half of a 5K. If it went well, I’d do the second half on Friday, then resume full 5K runs on Monday.

I think it went well.

My pace was off, which is no surprise. I have done so little running in the last few months that I have lost my form, stamina and sense of direction. Fortunately, there are signs to help with the latter.

My route began at the Jiffy John for reasons best left unstated, then I followed the Spruce and Conifer Loops, turned back after rejoining the main trail and ended my run right near the bridge at Silver Creek–just about exactly what I was hoping for. This had the secret bonus of little overlap on the trail, despite how short the run was (see map below, which makes it look like half the area is dead because they obviously stitched together satellite data from different seasons).

Only a smidgen of overlap during the last 0.25 km

I ran in my Speedgoats, which are probably nearing time for replacement. Last Friday I snapped one of the laces, so took laces from my old Brooks Revels and used them. They were fine, even if they aren’t colour-coordinated with the shoes. I didn’t have anyone scream at me, “You fashion monster!”

Speaking of colour-coordination, I saw a guy running on the river trail. He was passing by me from the other direction and his t-shirt was utterly soaked in sweat. Kids, don’t let runners wear cotton when jogging!

The weather was nice, around 14C, with a mix of sun and some high cloud. I only encountered a few people and my BPM of 153 was fine, though my average pace of 5:50/km was a bit slow. That should improve as long as the knees allow it.

We’ll see how the back-half of the 5K goes on Friday.

Turtle nesting area, post-run

Stats:

Run 865
Average pace: 5:50/km
Training status: Recovery
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW, short loop)
Start: 11:33 a.m.
Distance: 2.51 km
Time: 14:38
Weather: Sun and high cloud
Temp: 14°C
Humidity: 65%
Wind: light
BPM: 153
Weight: 168.5
Total distance to date: 6197.5 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: HOKA Speedgoat 5 (337.5/634/971.5 km)

Pronouncements

Here are some, because it’s important for people on blogs to have opinions on trending topics or something.

  • AI: Very bad, silly and harmful, not necessarily in that order
  • Microsoft’s Recall (which uses AI): Very bad
  • Linux: Good, but could be better
  • Windows: Good, but Microsoft is determined to ruin it for reasons (see above)
  • macOS: Not really getting better, but good enough
  • Mechanical keyboards: Yes
  • Billionaires: All of them are bad, except those who got their money indirectly and not by design, and are giving it away
  • Capitalism: Deeply flawed and getting worse
  • Climate change: [screaming into the void]
  • The U.S. Supreme Court: Evil, corrupt and vile
  • Kittens: Yay!

Here is a kitten:

The Rainening, plus bonus dream report

And so it begins. As I type this on Sunday morning, the heavy rain…

…has begun.

I may go out and take photos later, because that would be a silly thing to do.

In the meantime, I had a bunch of dreams last night and remember bits from at least four of them:

  • Some ancient Greek or Roman stage play where I was hosting people in togas and such, with political intrigue. Also, someone had their genitals hanging out like they were auditioning for Caligula. It was not sexy.
  • Going down the stairs in a university, and they had big art displays in the stairwells that were awkward to move around. I noted this while chatting with a girl, who then bumped into one, which may have been a giant telescope model, and it rolled down the stairs into the lobby. It didn’t seem damaged, but she took off, and then I had to also take off, because even though I had nothing to do with it, I was the next obvious suspect.
  • Visiting the grocery store near our old house in Duncan (which is actually a Shoppers Drug Mart now). I was apparently there very early, as I passed the morning meeting/scrum where most of the employees had gathered. After leaving, I realized I didn’t have my phone and recalled using it in the store, so it seemed odd that I would suddenly not have it. I thought how I couldn’t check with mom at the old house because she doesn’t live there anymore.
  • Speaking of houses, I was in some big mansion or something and being chased by villains or zombies or maybe villainous zombies. I acquired a pistol and might have had a melee weapon in my other hand. I remember shooting several of these whatever-they-were, and it had a very video game vibe to it. It wasn’t scary at all. I took it on the lam and at one point hid in the world’s largest closet as they pursued me. Seriously, the closet was bigger than some of the places I’ve lived. Maybe it was a secret room and not a closet. I hid in a pile of stuff in a corner and remember hearing them talking just on the other side.
  • There might have been a bonus fifth dream, but I no longer recall it.

Welcome to June 2024 (bring your hip waders)

From Environment Canada:

A year ago, I was noting the FIRE DANGER signs had just gone up. That won’t be happening for a while this time around1My totally scientific prediction is by the end of June, if the weather trends dry after the current soaking. The 10-day forecast does show sunny and warm temperatures returning on June 5, though, which means some will be complaining that it’s too hot by June 8.

But hey, no forest fires. Just the possibility of flash floods, which is totally something you expect with summer 19 days away. Weather2Probably climate change, actually, amirite?

Construction junction

Right now, in my neighbourhood and as close as literally next door in some cases, we have:

  • A major new bridge being built across the Fraser River (Pattullo Bridge replacement)
  • A gigantic acute care tower for Royal Columbian Hospital (nine storeys with helipad) being constructed next door
  • The lane and pedestrian path related to the above, which has been closed since last August, remains closed and under construction. The work on the path was supposed to be complete by last November (six months ago as I type this)
  • A major office/residential tower being built on Keary St. across from the existing hospital (currently a gigantic1This word will come up a lot hole in the ground)
  • Another major office/residential tower still being finished next to the one described above, with its front-facing courtyard that connects to the Sapperton SkyTrain entrance still barricaded.
  • Plans underway now to redesign and rework Sherbrooke St. and East Columbia where they parallel the hospital (Sherbrooke is the street I live on). The work will happen over the next six months.
  • A new SkyTrain maintenance yard just across from where the Brunette River trail starts
  • Probably other things I’m forgetting. Almost certainly a road or three being torn up for sewer replacement, a project that takes so long it appears to exist in perpetuity.

And yes, isn’t it nice that New Westminster (and Coquitlam) are “cities on the grow”, but you know, it’s kind of wearing me down. We’ve had this construction going on in some form for the last 10 years. It feels like it never ends. It would be nice for it to end. I want to walk the neighbourhood and just see people and buildings and trees, not cranes and open pits and excavators and the constant din of hundreds of construction workers operating machinery, hammering and making a lot of racket, which is part of their job.

It would be nice. Maybe it’ll happen eventually, for a moment in time, before the next project commences.

The allure of the olden times, Part 2: The telephone

Photo by Pixabay

Original post here: Something that really was better in the olden times

I made a note to revisit my February 13, 2024 post about nostalgia and how some things were better in the long ago days of the 1970s, in which I reflected on how life moved slower back in the olden times. I made the note in case I had any new insights to add later. Thinking about it some more, there is one thing I allude to it when I mention a smartphone without reception as a way of escaping the always-connected feeling of life today. And that is the phone, and how we communicated with it (or didn’t) back then.

In 1975, we had a phone in the house. It was mounted to the wall in the downstairs hallway and had a long coiled cord that allowed it to reach partway into the adjacent kitchen, if it was a long call, and you wanted to sit down. 1975 predates any other phone technology–you dialed numbers using an actual rotary dial (at the time you could leave off the first two digits, so you only had to dial the last five, saving some wear on your fingers. Compare to today where there are so many numbers they had to add two new area codes to BC and you now have to dial not just the seven digits number, but also the area code and 1 at the start). Voicemail did not exist in the consumer space and even answering machines weren’t adopted back then, though they did exist in nascent form. This meant that you had one way to contact a person in real time: Call them on your medieval rotary phone and hope they were home. If they weren’t, you just had to try again later, or maybe hope to run into them at the local grocer or something. As a kid, I never called much, I just walked to someone’s house or one of the usual haunts, or we’d pre-plan at school (face to face during recess, lunch or an especially boring class).

Being unable to instantly and always communicate and especially knowing someone who had a lot of 9’s in their phone number (this was a thing) resulted in a certain kind of isolation, but it was never perceived as such. You just had your own little part of the world, your friends and neighbours had theirs, and you made specific, conscious choices to have them intersect. And if you couldn’t reach someone on the phone, you’d just do something else, like read a book, or go bowling.

I’m not advocating going back to rotary phones to recapture some lost magic, they were pretty awful (push button phones were genuinely exciting when introduced), but having that level of removal from everyone else, where we existed as communities, but smaller, more intimate ones, is something I look back on fondly, not with any sense of “we had to walk uphill both ways in the snow” old-man-yelling-at-clouds bitterness, just in appreciation of the quiet it brought. I think of kids growing up today with smartphones practically embedded into their hands, and it does not appeal to 10-year-old me at all. And I was a tech nerd! Maybe that part is a little old-man-yells-at-clouds.

Something to ponder for a future post.