General

Run 921: Mid-afternoon malaise

View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run. Not seen: A breeze which was not particularly refreshing.

This was a hard run. Why? Probably because it was warmer, windier and I have felt weird and lazy all day.

After sleeping in, which is uncharacteristic of me, I saw it was showering a little and thought to maybe wait a bit before running. Then I debated running at all. Finally, I changed, started my warm-up stretches and my right ankle began to hurt like I’d been abusing it (I have not, to my knowledge). I sat back down and pondered. Eventually, I tried again, completed the stretches, and headed out, with vague plans. By this time it was mid-afternoon, a time I generally try to avoid running.

I initially thought I’d do a brisk 7-8 km walk, then changed that to walking to the end of the river trail and doing a 5K run from there, before eventually settling on going to the lake and running a short loop.

For reasons, I started exactly at the 10K marker:

I believe the goose image is a warning.

My first km, which includes a prominent uphill section near the start, was a bit sluggish, but I pressed on and found myself pausing briefly, like I was running too fast or too hard. After 10–15 seconds, I resumed. I ended up doing this four times, though once was at the Nature House, in order to get a drink from the fountain, as the breeze was resulting in a bit of Dry Mouth Syndrome.

To my surprise, my second km came in under six minutes, as did each of the rest. That said, I was a second slower than the last run (rounding error) and despite BPM being a bit lower at 151, it felt like a lot more effort. I experienced some mild cramping, though I don’t think it affected my pace, just my will to actually keep running. But I did finish the 5K, so I’ll take it!

The start of the run also saw me carefully navigating through a large group of geese and goslings who were making a section of the trail their own. Nothing happened, though a few goslings scooted a bit and one adult goose bobbed its head in that threatening way at me.

In all, I’d like to say lesson learned, but I guess we’ll have to wait till Friday to find out!

The area near the dam was full of mini-poopmonsters.

Stats:

Run 921
Average pace: 5:56/km
Training status: Productive
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW, short loop)
Start: 2:33 p.m.
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 29:53
Weather: Sun and cloud mix
Temp: 18°C
Humidity: 63%
Wind: light to moderate
BPM: 151
Weight: 171.9
Total distance to date: 6,440 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: ASICS Trabuco Terra 2 (35/49/84)

Music: R.E.M., Lifes Rich Pageant

A few thoughts on the recent Canadian federal election (April 28, 2025)

The election was held on Monday, April 28, 2025.

UPDATE. May 5, 2025: A freshly-elected Alberta MP in a very safe Conservative riding has surrendered his seat so Poilievre can run. Barring some extreme karmic shenanigans, Pierre Verb-the-Noun should win and get back in Parliament.
  • Hooray for short Canadian elections! Five weeks and done.
  • I am relieved the Conservatives lost.
  • I am chastened by their share of the popular vote, which increased, along with their seat count.
  • I am amused by a poll that showed they could have potentially won it all without a leader. But only without a leader.
  • I am deeply satisfied by Pierre Poilievre losing his own seat. He had been elected seven times previously in the Carleton riding.
  • I am saddened but not surprised by the collapse of the NDP, going from 24 seats to just seven. Singh, who also lost his seat, gave a warm and gracious concession speech and announced he would resign. The party, IMNSHO, needs to go back to being fully socialist, to give people a clear alternative to the Liberals, who are in some ways moving further from the left.
  • The Greens desperately need something to be more than a blip. Elizabeth May ain’t going to run forever.
  • Maxine Bernier came in fourth in his riding. I think the PPC is PP-Done. The bad news is the Conservatives seem happy (?) to absorb the extreme right-wing he represented.
  • The Liberals fell three seats short of a majority (getting 169), but should probably be fairly safe with help from the gutted NDP, who will not be in a hurry to have a new election.
  • The whole election is kind of a shock from what was expected before the re-election of Trump. It is not an exaggeration that Trump’s demented grandpa antics aimed at Canada helped revive the Liberals (along with Trudeau resigning), giving them a mandate they may very well have lost had the polling showing the Conservatives with a 20+ point lead held. This is good for Canada in that Poilievre would have been a terrible PM.
  • My own riding switched from NDP to Liberal. I can live with that.

Now we wait to see how Poilievre gets back into Parliament without a seat. Some newly-elected MP will need to resign “for the greater good” but I suspect the party will start developing fracture lines even if this happens. Remember, it’s the result of merging the Canadian Alliance (nee Reform) and the old Progressive Conservative parties. It’s no coincidence they dropped the “progressive” part, as the party has pushed much harder to the right thanks to the CA/Reform wing, which drive the merger. Poilievre is also taking the worst cues from the U.S. Republican Party, by constantly spouting lies, misstating and misrepresenting everything and being just an angry, unlikeable sod, and I think some in the party realize that and know the gains made in this election may have been in spite of their leader, not because of him (though with any “populist” leader, he will always have his base of cult-like loyalists).

Interesting times ahead.

So long, doodlingsandnoodlings.com!

For a time I had the idea of a more purpose-driven blog and out of that I secured the domain for doodlings and noodlings.com.

I never used it, and I am passing on the opportunity to renew it, so anyone else who wants it, go get it!

The idea seemed sound at the time:

  • Take my two main creative interests, writing and drawing, and combine them into a blog that would showcase each.
  • I could use lots of old material to get the site rolling, so I wouldn’t immediately need to create new content.
  • I could opine about writing/art in general to “fill in the gaps”.

There were a few problems, though:

  • The URL, though kind of catchy, is long. Also, I could never remember if it was doodlings andnoodlings or noodlingsanddoodlings. This didn’t seem like a good sign.
  • My brain doesn’t seem to like being restricted to just a few topics, which is why this blog (creolened.com) covers anything that pops into my head.
  • I think part of me just wanted to do something more “worthy” than rambling about random things.

In the end, I realized I was not going to seriously pursue the site and chose to let the domain expire. It’s also why, as we start May 2025, I have not yet moved off of WordPress, despite a desire to unhitch from a platform that is apparently running largely based on the whims of a single person with, uh, interesting views.

I’m still not entirely ready to start up something new, but I will let the ideas just appear organically or something–which may mean never. And if it’s never, I can live with that.

I never remember what SMH means

I know, I am typing this on a blog, which means I have the vast collected knowledge of the web available to me and even with Google flailing and AI slop overrunning everything, it’s still pretty easy to search and find out that SMH is short for Shake My Head (expressing mild disgust, disbelief).

But for whatever reason, my brain refuses to remember this, and I don’t want to search every time the term pops into my head, because it reminds me my brain can’t remember this specific abbreviation. I can remember LOL and IANAL (lol anal) and IDK and lots of others, but this is one that just never sticks.

But instead of wondering what it might mean, my brain always offers up the incorrect, unhelpful, and weird: Smell My Hand.

I want to say it still kind of works, but it really doesn’t. It’s just weird.

I am weird.

Aw, Clem Burke, the drummer for Blondie, has died

Clem Burke, one of the original members of Blondie, a favourite band of my youth (and still today), has died at age 70 after battling cancer.

Burke was always fun to watch in concert footage or music videos, because of his maniac style. I will be listening to Blondie tonight and checking out some of his spastic moves in various videos.

Vintage Burke in the clip below.

I can ease your pain

A few years back I had my ears tested and the guy who tested them, a professional ear-testing guy (I forget the term and I know I could look it up, but I have posts to crank out, and I’m falling behind), had kind of a grave look on his face during the test. I probably did, too.

You know how when you’re taking a multiple choice exam at school and you have this feeling that you’re getting all the answers wrong somehow?

That’s what this ear test was like, especially when he moved to my right ear.

My left ear was rated not great, definitely some hearing loss.

My right ear was basically terrible. Like, you can hear things, but everyone below the age of 20 will be like they’re talking inside a cone of silence or something. Just a huge swathe of my hearing range gone.

Why? I was in my 50s, which I have been assured is not old and is, in fact, the new 30s. Thirty-year olds don’t have bad hearing.

But I did listen to loud (and often terrible) pop music on headphones when I was young. Was the volume too high at times? Probably.

More recently, in 2010 I dated a guy for a while, and we went to a club that was having some kind of contest and there were judges at a table, plus very bug speakers pumping out music at very high volume. We were standing near one of the speakers. My right ear was the closest part of my body to it. I remember after leaving the club, my right ear rang for a long time. It felt like my hearing had been permanently damaged. Probably because it had been.

Then the guy said he wanted to break up. This admittedly had nothing to do with my ear (as far as I know).

The worst part of this loss of hearing was I could tell how bad it was by listening to some of my favourite music. For example, in the song “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd. It features Roger Waters singing the line, “Just a little pinprick” followed by what sounds like a triangle going PING. I could no longer hear the PING. Where once was a PING, now there was now nothing. It made me very sad.

Tonight, I did an experiment where I reversed the left/right channels of my earphones (by cleverly wearing them backwards) and played the song, because this would make the PING go to my left ear, which is not completely destroyed yet. I nervously waited for the song to get to that part, noting (not a music joke) that the song so far actually sounded pretty much the same, indicating that the mix was, as the professionals say, balanced.

When it got to the PING…I heard it! It was faint, but I definitely heard it. So now I can still hear the PING, as long as I listen to music in reverse stereo. Or maybe when I get some sort of hearing aids, which I am totally too vain and silly to do.

Anyway, in a world where so much seems to be collapsing all around us, it was nice to know the PING has not completely vanished for me.

Looks like I’ll be spamming a lot of posts soon

I am way behind on my two-posts per day minimum (which is an arbitrary number I made up, but my blog, my rules). Let’s do the math:

  • There are 31 days in March, so two posts per day = 62
  • As of this post, I have written 31
  • This means I must write 31 more
  • After today, there are four days left in the month
  • If you divide 31 by 4, you get 7.75

I must write 7.75 posts every day for the rest of March.

I’m not sure if I can do it this month, for reasons.

But I’ll try.