Today, the college is among many post-secondary schools being hit by declining enrolment, particularly from international students. Budget cuts and layoffs are happening and as you might imagine, it’s not great for morale.
I’m more glad now than ever that I left it all behind. I wish everyone there that I know and like the best, though!
I leave you with this photo of a snazzy new label maker we got shortly before I left.
Scheduled to start taking patients in 2026, the new acute care tower they’ve been building next door since 2021 is pretty much complete, at least from the outside. Jim Pattison, a famous-in-BC entrepreneur, donated something like $30 million to the hospital, which is a lot of money even in Canadian dollars. As a result, he gets his name prominently displayed on each long side of the tower, where it reads:
Jim Pattison Acute Care Tower
Except for some reason, the east side of the tower reads:
Jim Patti
And this amuses me because I’m just that kind of guy. I assume the rest of the letters will go up at some point, but in the meantime, I draw comfort from having Jim Patti looking down on my home from nine storeys up.
View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run. Warm and humid, but not too warm and humid.
After skipping Wednesday’s run due to the fluid behind my knee, I came up with a plan of sorts on how to deal with it:
Elevate the leg with the affected knee
Rest(ish)
Hope for the best!
The leg elevation came in the form of using our adjustable old fogey bed to raise the foot part, so my legs are actually pointing up (a bit) when I’m sleeping. This means the knee will stay in an elevated position for a good eight hours every day, which seems pretty good.
Other than that, I just figured I’d try a run where I wasn’t going to push or anything, just go at a reasonable pace.
I may have pushed just a bit, but my pace was very consistent:
Lap
Pace
1
5:49
2
5:46
3
5:43
4
5:44
5
5:40
The knee did not bother me at all, not at the start, nor anywhere else during the run. I can feel it a bit now, but it’s not hurting. Once I’ve had more time to recover, I’ll see if the bulge is bulging even more, if it’s about the same, or if it’s actually gone down (haha).
As for the run itself, conditions were decent–a sun and cloud mix, with a nice breeze at times. It was not as humid as Monday and that made a difference, as I was a full 11 seconds faster, even with the unsightly bulge.
It was also apparently Fitness Friday™ as I passed something like eight other joggers while running, and saw even more when I was walking out. I even saw old Green Shorts on the river trail. He was not wearing green shorts, but did have a snazzy yellow cap on.
There was also a large walking group on the trail, but fortunately I encountered them a few minutes after finishing the run.
Right near the intersection of the main loop and the Piper Mill Trail, I encountered this sign (from the other side):
Works better if there’s another sign like it at the other end of the trail.
I encountered a tractor with one of those giant scary cutting attachments lopping off vegetation along the side of the trail, so I assume the sign was there because of it. Maybe they only had the sign at one end of the trail because the people coming from the other direction (like me) would be seen by the driver, since he was heading my way (and in fact, did stop and signal me to pass), while others approaching from behind would just bumble ahead and get chewed up by the giant scary cutting attachment, the driver never seeing them.
In any case, it was a pleasant way to end the week, and hopefully I haven’t doomed myself by choosing to run today instead of just loafing around and whispering reassuring things to my right knee.
Stilll Creek, seen from just north of the bridge, post-run.
Stats:
Run 951 Average pace: 5:44/km Training status: Maintaining Location: Burnaby Lake (CW) Start: 11:01 a.m. Distance:5.03 km Time: 28:52 Weather: Sun and high cloud Temp: 19-20°C Humidity: 67% Wind: light to moderate BPM: 152 Weight: 165.3 Total distance to date: 6,585 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: ASICS Trabuco Terra 2 (180/403/583)
Image courtsey of pexels.com. I just like the juxtaposition of sunny and bright with the “giving up” pose.
There, even the title is depressing!
I did not imagine things going so badly for the world as they are right now, as of August 2025. But with perspective, I can see this was decades in the making. Alas.
Things may get worse before they get better. How much worse? I don’t know. But for the first time, I feel glad to be older than younger. I don’t know how long the bad times will last. Maybe they’ll persist through the rest of my life and beyond. Maybe humans just aren’t very smart and we’ve hit our limit.
Maybe aliens will save us.
But given that I am older rather than younger, I will at least have less to live through than if I were some 20-something hipster. This shouldn’t be a comforting thought, but somehow it is.
Mind you, I still want to live to be a robust 95 or something and if they could magically extend life to something crazy like 150, I’d probably be up for that, too, just to see if monorails ever really take off.
Still, this dystopia thing is a bummer. I wish we were better, collectively, as a species.
I’m mulling another redo of this blog’s look and I’m thinking of going all-in on retro. Not in a crazy way, like trying to simulate the <blink> tag or embedding MIDI samples, but something a little warmer, less corporate-looking.
I shall mull things like colour choices, fonts and assorted bits of whimsy. The downside of this is I am not a programmer and can’t just whip up some fancy CSS using my big brain, so the process will be slow, painful, etc. But possibly worth it.
I could do things like change from a basic white background. But should I?
It’s very summer-like today, after the first week of summer was cool and a bit damp. A lot of people prefer the latter, even though we get it for about six months of the year.
There will probably be some fireworks going off later this evening.
The new sidewalks on our street are very bright in the sun.
I feel like more people cheat now than, say, ten years ago, possibly because more people are realizing they won’t get caught. This is not a good thing.
I have an itchy bug bite on my left leg. I have nothing in particular to help with this, except the power of my mind insisting it’s not really itchy at all.
I still love Bongo Cat. He is currently wearing a pineapple.
Apparently, Canadian patriotism is surging. A house a few blocks away is positively festooned with Canadian flags. I’m not sure how I feel about this, because nationalism generally leads to bad things.
I’ve seen reports that people are getting dumber. This feels right to me.
Am I getting dumber? My phone is often at 90% charge at the end of the day (even though it’s 4.5 years old). I think this is helping to preserve some brain cells.
When birding in Pitt Meadows, I went to check the temperature on my phone and it couldn’t pull the data in because of a very weak cell connection. It please me that such places exist, and you don’t even have to go too far to find them. Also, places where you can’t hear any traffic.
The forecast today is for intermittent showers and a high of 17C, which is a few degrees below normal.
It’s also the first day of summer.
How you feel about this forecast will depend on how you view summer in general. A lot of people are in the “Summer is too hot, I hate it” camp, so they will delight in the cooler temperatures. They may be less thrilled with the rain, but something something prevents forest fires. Even though that doesn’t really apply to an urban area like Metro Vancouver.
For me, I just take whatever we get. We’ll have warmer and sunnier days and I will enjoy them, slathered in sunblock and whatnot.
In the meantime, the current conditions are actually pretty decent for running. The rain can hold off, though.
