This dream came before almost meeting Indiana Jones and was more ominous.
In it, something had happened that was probably bad, as there was thick black smoke belching out of downtown Vancouver–enough to suggest a large section of the downtown core was affected. And the smoke stretched in tendrils across the sky, to where you could see other places that had been struck by…something. As I looked around, I could see multiple of these pillars of black smoke everywhere, all of them connected in a way that seemed unnatural.
It was never revealed, but in the dream I felt some kind of meteor was likely, because I was totally a pseudo-scientist. I also recall most people never found out what happened, because whatever it was knocked out all communications at the same time, so maybe hostile aliens. I was helping someone who looked just like the archaeologist on Curse of Oak Island sort through a box of tiny snails that were apparently being distributed as food. I was helping because of my scientist stature, I think. I didn’t actually do anything else in the dream that I can recall, just snail duty. And the archaeologist may have actually been one of the coop students I worked with at the college, because he looked a lot like Laird Niven now that I think about it.
I was in some desert plaza with a few other people, apparently waiting for Indiana Jones to show up. I was playing as some 20-something (I remember this–I was clearly playing a role, I was not meeting Indy as myself) and apparently got on the wrong side of the villain, who was in attendance. He came over to intimidate me and I made some move on his ample villainous neck, claiming that I thought he was going to fall over my chair and was saving him. Then I got up to pee, which I announced to everyone for some reason. I was called back before I left because Indy was arriving. Then I woke up. I’m pretty sure it was the 1930s Indy, and not the 100-year-old one. I was also the 20-something version of me, not the 100-year-old one.
I’m pretty sure I had the dream because I’d read an article about the game Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis earlier in the evening.
And now I’ll never know why we were meeting Indy. :sadtrombone:
It’s cloudy and slightly cooler than normal. Yay! It’s better than a heat dome, I guess.
However, the 10-day forecast currently1It’s still June for nine more days, so I assume nothing here has no precipitation in it. Could this be the start of our allegedly hot ‘n dry summer? Let’s find out!
On the third and final day, we had an open agenda and only a few things to do:
Check out of the hotel before noon
Get home before dark (neither of us has great night vision for driving)
First, we tidied up our hotel room and checked out. One thing I forgot to mention in the previous posts is that while the shower was very strong and the water was nice ‘n hot, the drain could not come close to keeping up with the water flow, so showers were more like combo shower/baths because you’d be standing in ankle-deep water by the end. Not optimal, but better than not enough water pressure, I suppose.
We once again dined at McD’s and I had another Sausage and Egg McMuffin. I don’t know what they put in those things, other than the parts in the name, but I have a disturbingly powerful hankering for them.
After breakfast, we decided to return to disc golf–but first we would get some bug spray to fend off the mosquitoes. This led to another debacle using the in-car navigation and just weird bad luck (the Pharmasave we first went to was closed on Sundays. Sorry, people who need prescriptions, you’ll just have to deal!) but I eventually got a can of Deep Woods Off! at a Save-On Foods. Speaking of weird, the guy ahead of me was buying two nags of Tim Hortons coffee (this is such a Canadian entry) and asked if I was just buying the one item. I said yes, and he let me go ahead of him. This was nice, but I mean, unless he was expecting some horrible complication with the coffee, I wouldn’t have had long to wait. Maybe people in Kamloops are just that nice.
With the bug spray secured, we returned to the course, sprayed ourselves liberally (spoiler: It worked!) and set out to play 9 of the 18 holes, cleverly using the app to make sure we played in the right direction and everything. At several points, multiple marmots would gather on the fairway ahead of us, apparently knowing we couldn’t throw far enough to imperil them. And they were right.
I started…poorly (7 shots on one hole) and this let Jeff cruise to a win of 41 to 44. We were 13 and 16 shots over par, so not quite tournament-ready (Kamloops is the “tournament capital of Canada” as noted on multiple signs all over the place). Jeff also won the bonus award of “most discs in the water” at three discs! His were very clean by the end of our round. I put a few in the weeds and one over a fence but managed to stay out of the water. With just a few hundred hours of practise, I could probably get pretty good at this!
Jeff got par once! I almost got par…five times!
I only took a few quick shots on my phone this time, Here’s one looking over the South Thompson River.
After wrapping up the disc golf, we began the trip back. It started to rain shortly after we started up the Coquihalla, but fortunately the rain didn’t persist, and it was partly sunny the rest of the way. The rest of the trip broke down1This phrase becomes relevant, as you’ll soon find out like so:
A brief stop at a Dairy Queen in Merritt, for ice cream cones. This is another example of fast food that was strangely yummy. I haven’t had a DQ cone in probably ten years or so.
Another stop to let Jeff rest at the Coquihalla Summit (elevation around 4000 feet or 1200 meters). Jeff reminded me again how nice it would be if I had my driver’s license again. The pressure is on! I made a vague promise of sorts.
A stop in Hope just past 4 p.m. to have an early dinner at Home (but not home). Jeff had schnitzel, I opted for the turkey dinner. I ate almost everything before remembering to get a photo of my food. Sorry, Instagram, you’re out of luck this time!
Traffic moved better than expected once we got out of the mountains, but slowed then stopped outside Langley. It turned out two pickups got into a pretty good fender bender (more like a “whole front end bender” for the one that hit the back of the other), but we got past the accident just after RCMP arrived and before the fire truck, so the delay was minimal.
Jeff quizzed me extensively about getting cats nearly the entire drive from Hope to home
We arrived home at 7 p.m. with plenty of daylight left. I unpacked. Jeff immediately went to the deck. 😛
And that was it!
Although the trip started not-great, and the various map tools all let us down, often in spectacular fashion, it was nice to get out of New West for a few days and there’s something about the look of the area around Kamloops I find strangely compelling. Maybe it’s just that it’s so visually distinct from the coast, where I’ve lived all my life. I’ll have some shots in the gallery soon™.
We began Day 2 in Kamloops and with time to relax and take in some local scenery before journeying to the wedding.
We had breakfast at McDonald’s because I really wanted a Sausage and Egg McMuffin. And I liked it!
After, we decided to visit the disc golf course at McArthur Park. The park is billed as the second largest in BC and indeed, it is big. I think it has something like 40 soccer fields.
We discovered the course is part of UDisc and had an app. There truly is an app for everything. We downloaded the app, created accounts, selected the course, created a scorecard and were off!
As it turned out, we should have checked the course map, because we started off literally in the wrong direction, the ultimate golfer faux pas. A nice guy helped us out, but by this point time was already starting to run a bit short. I suggested we move the golfing to the next day, when we would have nothing else to do (except drive back home at some point before dark). I then shot a few pics with my camera. There was a marmot. So cute! I took a bunch of photos of it. Then we found that the marmots are everywhere. Then we also discovered the mosquitoes–or rather, they discovered us. I further suggested we get out instead of being eaten alive. We did so.
The first marmot. The first of about a million, as it turned out.
We planned on leaving around 1 p.m. for the 3 p.m. wedding ceremony, but ended up heading out around half an hour later. At first, things were fine. The weather was partly cloudy, and the drive to Chase is along a flat stretch of highway that parallels the South Thompson River. As we approached Chase, I entered the address into the in-car navigator. We end up on a gravel road, but it seems to be going the right way. We continue on and it tells us we’ve arrived a short time later. But we’re at some random farm. As it turns out, it mysteriously stopped us far too soon. We (or rather I, because I totally should have realized what was happening) made the first wrong move: We switched to Google Maps. It sent us back and way off course. Time was starting to run short. I keyed the route into Apple Maps. It wanted to send us around the far side of Little Shuswap Lake–a route that would take us many km out of our way. We finally figured out we had been going the right way initially and returned to the gravel road.
Jeff drove at what one might call a brisk pace. Perhaps just a little above the posted 40 KPH speed limit. Perhaps. We also saw a scruffy young bear, which was sort of cute. Mom was probably just out of view, waiting to rip out the throat of anyone getting close to her kid.
We arrived literally a few minutes before 3 p.m.–technically not late!
As it turned out, the ceremony was late in starting, so it all turned out fine in the end.
Taylor and Derek got married in a barn. Or a very barn-like building. It was rustic.
The marriage barn
After the ceremony, we had plenty of time to hang out and schmooze with people we didn’t know. I took a few more pics of horses, giant bugs and things, which I will link to in a gallery that will be magically edited into this post later.
While waiting for the reception and dinner, guests could choose from some snacks outside the hall, as shown below.
On the left: Meat, cheese and brownies
On the right: Veggies
Meat on left, veggies on right. I think I know which side won.
The dinner was nice, though there didn’t seem to be any butter for the dinner buns. Maybe they were trying to be healthy after plying us with prepared meats and brownies beforehand.
In all, it all went as one would hope a wedding and reception would–short, but ice ceremony, speeches at the reception that ranged from thoughtful to funny, and were also short (you may be detecting a theme here), and good simple food without anything totally weird that would make people go back outside to see if any salami was left over (there wasn’t).
After the dinner and dessert (more brownies! Plus cheesecake), we headed back to our hotel before it got dark and wound down the evening, tucking in around 11 p.m. We both slept very well that night, probably because we were worn out from driving up and down that gravel road about a hundred times. I still see it in my dreams.
Loakin Bear Hall. No actual bears attended the reception.
Programming note: I normally post vacation or travel entries on the day in question, but opted to just take notes and write them after the fact instead this time, so some details may be missing or totally made up for dramatic effect.
The last time Jeff and I went to Kamloops (in 2015), it was for his niece’s convocation (high school graduation). Despite it being June, it rained while we were there, and yet I still got a sunburn.
I did not get a sunburn this time.
This time we were heading there (actually further east to Chase) for her wedding at some quaint little ranch that is billed as a “wedding venue”.
A friend of Jeff’s provided us a gratis rental car, which was very nice. It was a BMW X2 and, as you might expect from a Beemer, was quite nice. The seats did not numb my butt, even on the long journey up the Coquihalla Highway.
We started out a bit later than intended, but would still arrive with plenty of daylight left.
Shortly after leaving, the grey sky turned even more sullen and showers started. We opted to stop for a late lunch in Chilliwack, where there is still a giant flag along Vedder Road. I had chicken strips at a Wendy’s and they were fine. We headed on past Chilliwack and began the ascent into the mountains. The rain picked up until it was coming down in sheets. This made for low visibility and a not-really-pleasant drive. It stressed me out.
Once we reached the Coquihalla Summit, the weather abruptly changed. This actually makes sense, because on our side it’s temperate rain forest, and on the other (Kamloops) side, it’s as close as you get to desert in BC. The mountains go from being covered in Evergreen to being covered in scrub and dotted with a few trees. There’s something about this forest minimalism I find aesthetically pleasing.
We got in and after a few minutes of the check-in clerk puzzling over our MoreRewards™ hotel voucher (we cashed in some points to get two nights free at the Best Western Premier, one of about 500 hotels on a stretch along Hugh Allen Drive. There is another hotel being constructed there even as I type this), we were given our key cards and went up to our room. Really, for the price (especially the free price), it was pretty decent.
But just like the hotel room I stayed at in Nashville 10 years ago, the office chair was broken, so in order to sit at the desk and not feel like a five-year-old trying to reach my laptop, I had to use one of the many pillows from one of the two beds to sit on. At least it was cushy.
By this time, I was feeling out of sorts from a combination of:
Stress
Right knee being a bother from the previous day’s run
Left hand being weirdly achy as well (I think I slept on it funny or something–it’s fine now)
I curled up on the bed and dozed, until Jeff got hungry. We remained indecisive as to what or where to eat as our options began closing for the evening. We finally settled on getting something from a Triple O’s down the road. I had some garlic Parmesan fries. They were actually not bad. We crashed early. Or rather, I continued to crash.
It was a somewhat ignoble start to the trip. And I haven’t even talked about how the various maps apps (Apple Maps, Google Maps, the in-car navigation system) would give us sometimes confusing or nonsensical results. Both Apple and Google REALLY want you to do U-turns everywhere. U-turns are mostly illegal in Canada.
I only took a single shot on Day 1. Behold our hotel room, my sexy legs and a Swiss Chalet ad on the TV:
I asked ChatGPT to come up with ten cat names. Here they are:
Whiskers
Luna
Oliver
Bella
Simba
Lily
Charlie
Chloe
Max
Lucy
I mean, Whiskers is probably the most obvious cat name, sort of the cat equivalent of Fido or Rover. The others are all just human names that don’t seem very cat-like to me, except for Simba, which is a little too on-the-nose.
I asked for ten more names, but didn’t apply any new conditions:
Leo
Cleo
Shadow
Ginger
Molly
Jasper
Willow
Felix
Nala
Oscar
Some of these are more cat-sounding, like Shadow and Ginger. Overall, the names are pretty unimaginative. Since ChatGPT is drawing answers from what it finds on the internet, you can draw your own conclusion on how clever most people are with naming their cats.
Finally, I asked for unconventional cat names:
Moxie
Ziggy
Nimbus
Pixel
Pippin
Sprinkles
Quirk
Whiskerdo
Zephyr
Glimmer
Whiskerdo just makes me laugh. Well done, ChatGPT. Ziggy is cute, and Sprinkles is about perfect for some kind of weird Calico.
Anyway, I’ll keep these in mind if we ever get a cat, and we decide not to go with Fuzzy McPurrPants.
Also, here is a cat I’ve posted before and continues to make me laugh every time I see it:
English is a weird language because it cribs shamelessly from every other language and constantly breaks its own rules, making it difficult to pick up for non-native speakers and, well, native speakers, too.
It is, like any living language, constantly evolving and adding new words, some of them kinda dumb (like finfluencer, which sounds like an Instagram for fish seeking to be more beautiful, but is actually just a portmanteau for “financial influencer” which is so boring that zzz….), some of them inevitable (metaverse), and some that feel like they’ve always been words (janky).
Repurposed words or catchy phrases rise up in popular usage much more rapidly now, with the internet all over the place messing things up. Where once it might have taken years for “give no fucks” to enter the popular lexicon (at least in impolite company), now it gets memed to death after a couple of weeks.
Which brings me to unpacking colourways.
What is a colourway? According to my browser’s dictionary pop-up tool: “Any of a range of combinations of colours in which a style or design is available.” That is 16 words to describe just one: colours. And yet people constantly use colourway now to sound hip and in the moment. “The new MacBook Air comes in four colourways.” No, it comes in four colours. There is no meaningful distinction between colourway and colour. Go ahead and find an instance of colourway and substitute colour. It will always work because colourway is used by dopes trying to sound cool. Or whatever word is being used for “cool” now.
Then we have unpacking, or to unpack. Once it meant “open and remove the contents of (a suitcase, bag, or package).” But now it also means to explain something. You can see how this evolved to get the new meaning. Having a lot of stuff to unpack requires time, patience and care (unless you hire a gorilla to unpack for you, in which case it is quick, chaotic and likely to involve a lot of shredding and damage). Unpacking something carefully and methodically can be used as a metaphor for doing the same with a non-tangible thing, like an ethical dilemma, or a big argument over colourways.
However logical this metaphorical extension of the word may seem, I’m still pretty sure you’ll still want to barf if you do a search to see how often the word is used everywhere and all the time. It went from zero to trite faster than you can say pumpkin spice latte.
So, final score:
Colourway: Don’t use this word, it makes you look like a guy from the 1980s wearing suspenders to be edgy and “with it”
Unpack: You can use this word if you want to fit in, since everyone else is using it. Or try to come up with the next “unpack” and make your own mark on the language!
A few weeks ago, we got a blast of hot, summer-like weather. With it, seemingly out of nowhere, came fruit flies. Did they come in off a piece of fruit brought in from the grocery store? Have a secret lair with eggs waiting quietly all winter to hatch? Come up from a sink drain like some subterranean horror? All of these things?
I don’t know.
All I do know is they arrived in numbers, and at first I was content to grumble and occasionally bat at them.
No more.
Today, war was declared. Surrender was not an option for the flies, only total defeat.
First, I consulted ChatGPT, which put together a bunch of sensible-sounding options. I later confirmed these elsewhere, then set about on my counter-attack. Below is how well each option faired.
Option 1: A bowl with a mix of dish soap and cider vinegar How it works: The flies are attracted to the vinegar, but when they make contact with the soapy combo, they have difficulty flying and will drown. Success rate: One fly caught. Close to a bust.
Option 2: Same as above, but the bowl is filled only with vinegar, then covered with plastic wrap, poked full of holes. How it works: Flies go in through the holes, but can’t easily get out. Success rate: No flies caught. A complete bust. UPDATE: This one just took time to work. After a few hours, it has now caught and killed 11 flies, with three more trapped.
Option 3: A small jam jar with some cider vinegar, with plastic wrap on the top, poked with holes and the wrap secured by a rubber band. How it works: Same as above, flies can get in, but not easily get out. Success rate: For some reason, the smaller jar worked much better, trapping a half dozen or so flies.
Option 4: Suck them up with a vacuum cleaner. How it works: Kind of self-explanatory. Success rate: Hard to say. The flies would disappear when the mighty hose of the Dyson was brought near, but I could never tell if they were pulled in or managed to dart off in time. I think I got a few, though.
Option 5: Spraying them with Dawn PowerWash (basically dish soap in foamy form) How it works: The soap either sticks the fly in place or makes it drop to the counter/floor where it can be dealt with. Success rate: This seemed to have success about half the time. Quite often, the fly would escape the spray entirely. But the kitchen and bathrooms ended up getting slightly cleaner.
Option 6: Whacking them with a damp cloth. How it works: Self-explanatory. Success rate: At one point, I was two for two. At others, I was not hitting any, so literally hit-and-miss.
Option 7: Accidental trap How it works: We have a plastic tray that the dish soap, scrubber and PowerWash bottle sit in, because they tend to leave soapy residue behind on the counter otherwise. Every week or so, I will clean this tray, which by then will have a small amount of soapy liquid in it. Success rate: Although this was not intended to attract fruit flies, it has somehow managed to catch and kill probably around 10 or so thus far, making it the most effective trap of all. Now I’m wondering if I should just set up another one of these trays on the kitchen counter.
Verdict: So far the small jam jar has been pretty successful, so I’ll keep using that. The soap tray is just kind of working on its own, so I will periodically clean it, then let it gather more. Mostly, I wish I could just clap my hands and make them disappear. But that only works when they happen to be between my hands.
NOTE: I updated Option #2, which has actually worked well after being given more time.
Now, this is a 10-day forecast, and predicting the weather multiple days in advance can be a daring proposition in this region. But still, I can’t remember the last time I saw June start with nothing but sunshine in the forecast. And no Heat Domes™. Yet!
Subject to change. I mean, come on, it’s the Lower Mainland.
I have recently begun digging through my old creative stuff–sketches and stories from back in the olden days when I had hair and dreams. Now I just dream of having had hair.
One of the things I’ve noticed about some of the old short stories, dating back to the early 90s or even earlier–so some 30+ years ago, written when I was in my mid-20s or so, is how vulgar they are. Everyone curses, the guys are all leering monsters you wouldn’t let within 20 metres of a woman, or perhaps any other human. Everyone drinks or is drunk. I’d say I was repressed and letting it all hang out in my fiction, except:
I never drank other than an occasional beer, and never wanted more
I rarely swear in the flesh, feeling I can draw on more colourful metaphors to express myself than common cuss words
I have never leered at a woman, nor have wanted to
Also, a lot of stories revolve around death, which is also weird, because ruminations on mortality usually start when you’re, well, older. But I apparently had it on my mind a lot when I was 24 or 25 (this might partly be explained by my father dying when I was only 27, but that goes beyond the time when most of the referenced stories were written).
Anyway, no grand point here, just one of those things I noticed. That, and a lot of the writing is very first draft. I “finished” a lot of short stories that were never really done.
