Just as the gods meteorologists predicted, today the weather has actually changed. This may not seem remarkable, but considering we’ve had virtually no rain for three months, it kind of is!
It’s currently 9C and instead of getting up to an unseasonably warm 18, 20 or 22C, the high is forecast as a mere 11C! There is actual precipitation lightly falling, even as I type this. It’s pretty crazy.
And now, a pair of cats prepared for the rain:
I spent most of the day with a headache and did a lot of not much at all, other than laying on the bed, drifting in and out of sleep, and having weird dreams.
I did end the day with a 40-minute workout on the treadmill, though. so there’s that.
The haiku:
The head starts pounding Seek a magic pill to fix Modern life is great
(Hi, hi, hi)
I’m sure this forecast will change, but wanted to preserve it for the record.
The normal temperature for October 16 is 15C, the record is 20C, so this would break the record by 8C (or over 14F if you want a larger, even more alarming number).
Not cool. (Geddit?!)
I had this dream last night:
I was the passenger in a car that felt like a small sedan, somewhat sport, like an Acura or a nice Hyundai or something. The driver was a younger guy who seemed to be a nephew or some kind of relative. In the dream, I did not have a good feeling about his driving.
We were on a mountain highway–you can probably see where this is going (no pun intended)–and it reminded me of the Upper Levels Highway on the way to Horseshoe Bay or maybe the Malahat Drive on the way to Victoria–a windy highway that hugs the face of the mountain, with water hundreds of meters below. As we sped along, I saw ahead of us a bunch of fir tree branches, like you might find on a typical Christmas tree. Why they were laying across the highway I cannot say, but instead of driving around them, my possible nephew drove over them, perhaps thinking them a minor obstacle. As he did, the car got caught on them and started drifting into the oncoming lanes.
I distinctly remember audibly saying in a very calm voice, “No no no no no…” as I knew this would not end well. Surprisingly, my nephew did that “steer into the skid” thing, corrected and got us back on our side of the road without hitting any of the oncoming traffic. “Yay!” my dream-self thought. But only for a moment, because while we were in our own lane, we were not heading down the lane, but rather across it, at full speed. There was no time to correct, nor was there even time for me to chant, “No no no no…” to myself again. I did have sufficient time to absolutely know this would not end well.
I woke up either just before the car hit the concrete barrier at full speed, or just as it hit. I laid there in bed with the dream still fully intact in my mind, my imagination playing through what would have happened next:
In both cases, the chance of survival would be pretty much zero, unless right at the end it turned into one of those, “Hey, I can fly!” dreams. That might have been worth staying asleep for. But as mentioned in the title of this post, while my subconscious hates me (by subjecting me to this dream), it still respects me enough to wake me up before the really bad parts happen.
So here’s a half-hearted thank you to my brain. Tonight, if I dream, I want the dream to be pleasant and delightful. It doesn’t have to be enchanting, too, though I wouldn’t object to that. And if any cliffs are involved, I better be able to fly, even if it’s by flapping my arms.
This is the 60th post I’ve written this month. I don’t know why I felt compelled to make sure I had an average of two posts per day for the month, but here they are!
And now a Bitmoji of me eating a birthday cake:
I say no. I mean, stores put out Halloween candy weeks ago. It won’t even be fresh by the time Halloween rolls around.
Happy pre-Halloween!
The people who currently reside above my condo baffle me with the noise they make. I don’t understand how people can be so indifferent to others, so absolutely awful.
But I guess humans are just like that.
EDIT: Someone was cranky when they wrote this! Understandably so, perhaps. But let me amend the above to “some humans.” I haven’t lost all hope for humanity…yet!
My fortune from last night’s Chinese food:
Maybe I’ll do National Novel Writing Month this year and finally write that Great Canadian Novel that has long dwelled in my mind.
Or maybe I should be insulted because the fortune is implying I’m not already an accomplished writer, when I’m sure I could pay several people right now to insist I am!
Or perhaps I’ll play those six numbers, win the lottery and find inspiration in my newfound riches, and become an accomplished writer once the financial pressures of life are gone.
So many possibilities, such a tiny piece of paper.
The Chinese food was not bad, either.
Currently, it’s sunny and 19C. Not too shabby. I will remember this when The Rains return.
Also:
Today I cancelled a Substack newsletter and a streaming service:
The reasons were a bit different for each, but both are part of my ongoing digital decluttering process.
For Sweary History, I actually quite like James Fell’s foul-mouthed writing style, and his personal posts (which require a paid sub) were especially enjoyable and informative. But as someone who chronicles human history, and given how dark and awful so much of human history is, Fell often wrote about unpleasant people doing unpleasant things. And in the same way that actively seeking out current news was making me generally unhappy, I found getting a dose of daily “look how terrible people have been throughout history” started having the same effect. This morning I started to read the latest newsletter and just stopped partway through, like a little switch in my brain flipped. I unsubscribed.
Netflix was different. I found that I just wasn’t compelled to watch any of the current stuff on it (Archer has grown stale, Stranger Things is something I want to catch up on, but it seems the season four episodes are long, and it’s more of a commitment than I’m willing to make right now), plus Netflix seems to think they can keep raising their prices and make up declining subs by squeezing their most loyal subscribers that much harder.
Didn’t work for me! I checked “too expensive” as my main reason for dropping the sub, and it’s true. If Netflix was cheaper, I’d probably just keep it, but it’s $18.47/month after taxes and that is too much for the very minimal use it gets.
For streaming, I still have Prime Video (as part of Prime), Disney+ and Apple TV+ (as part of Apple One), so depending on how things go, I could potentially get down to just a single service. And more time to draw.
Tomorrow–Monday, September 19–is going to be a strange day. Here are just a few of the things happening:
So basically, I get annoyed by fire alarm testing/repairs, don’t have the day to myself (I’m selfish, I admit!), have to put up with every stupid pirate joke conceivable and someone will probably blend those with Queen Elizabeth’s funeral into something like, “Yarr, the Queen be dead. Love live the King. Yarr.”
Basically, I am ready for Tuesday.
I am weirdly fascinated by R.E.M.’s 13th album, Around the Sun. It was a commercial and critical flop (though there are some people who really liked it), and I think Peter Buck’s assessment, circa the release of its follow-up Accelerate, though unduly harsh, has the right general sentiment:
[It] “just wasn’t really listenable, because it sounds like what it is: a bunch of people that are so bored with the material that they can’t stand it anymore.”Peter Buck
I don’t think it’s not listenable (and Buck probably doesn’t either, really), but I remain intrigued by how the whole album is so refined and carefully constructed, yet utterly tepid.
And then I came across this, which is actually a follow-up to the person’s full review, and it made me laugh out loud because that’s the kind of mood I was in:
Random music thought: The song “Aftermath” is actually pretty decent, but could have been better if the tempo had been boosted. It feels like it’s always running about two beats behind where it should be, if that makes sense (I am not a musician or even musician-adjacent).