General

Raincoat vs. hoodie: A surprise winner

Every day I either go for a run or for an exercise-style walk, by which I mean I walk for at least 30 minutes at a brisk pace, so the Apple Watch activity app registers the walking as exercise.

Today was a walk day and since we are square in the middle of a system that is endlessly pouring rain, I opted to head out late morning, just to get it over with. Waiting out the rain was not a realistic option.

But knowing it would be very wet and that I might venture to areas with massive puddles, I made a few changes to my usual outdoor wear:

  • I wore my nice Scarpa boots, which are waterproof
  • I wore my Goretex raincoat, which is theoretically waterproof

Normally I’d wear my old trail running shoes and hoodie, but I felt these would not hold up.

I was half right.

The boots worked very well and kept my feet nice and dry. The only downside is I have to wear regular insoles, or they fit too tight, but for shortish treks, it’s fine.

The jacket was a weird and appalling disappointment.

The pockets got wet. And by that, I mean the indies of the pockets, meaning my hands, phone, mask and AirPods case all got damp. This was bad.

The wrists on the jacket allowed enough water ingress that I had to lock the screen of my watch to keep it from wigging out. And the hood is so big and floppy that it kept bouncing out of position, and any sudden breeze threatened to pull it completely down off my head.

The only good part is my torso stayed mostly dry.

The hoodie, in comparison, does not keep my chest and abdomen as dry when it is pouring out. I’ll end up with some lines of dampness running vertically down my t-shirt, enough that I’ll change when I get out of the rain.

But the hood itself not only keeps my head dry, it actually fits over the brim of my cap, keeping the cap dry and providing a kind of shield to keep the water away from my face. This has the added bonus of reducing rain splattering on my glasses.

And the pockets never get soaked through, so my hands stay warm and dry.

Really, it’s just weird that the jacket works so poorly, almost like the waterproofing has completely broken down.

I felt a bit silly going out as it was. No one voluntarily goes out in weather like this. I went down to Hume Park and didn’t even see some lunatic out with their dog, and there’s always some lunatic out with their dog. I did see two people riding bikes, though.

Mostly, I just want summer back. Yes, even with the occasional heat dome.

Here comes the rain again

Except without the catchy tune or Annie Lennox.

I went for a walk in The Rains this afternoon and the Brunette River was on the cusp of flooding over its banks at Lower Hume Park for the second time in two weeks. Oy.

Here it is looking all swollen and such:

Hooray for water! No, wait…

The view from the paved path, with water from the path flowing directly into the river. That will likely reverse overnight. The narrow gap is a short trail you can normally use to get right next to the river. Technically you still can do that, you’re just going to get a little river in your shoes at the same time.

Take the path from the water to the water to get to the water

This blog of mine

This blog of mine was started in 2005 and is approaching 16 years of age. It will make a terrible driver when it gets its license.

Here are a few random stats as I contemplate where to next take this blog (of mine):

  • 3,597 posts
  • All-encompassing General category has 1,151 posts. The next most:
    • 673 for Outdoor runs. One might say I obsessively document my runs. I say I’m thorough.
    • 381 for Health. I’m sure this has been on an upward trend as I get older and closer to being a Futurama-style head in a jar
    • 294 for Writing. So many dreams crushed. But some good laughs, too.
    • 237 for Photography. This went up significantly in the last three years and bird pics started in January 2021 after I got a mirrorless camera.
    • 220 for Creative. Like photography, most of these posts happened in the last few years, seeing a big uptick when I did Inktober in 2019 and 2020.
    • 100 for Lists. It’s probably higher than this, I sometimes forget to use the Lists category. I liked lists before listicles became a thing. Also, listicle is a gross-sounding word.
  • 26 comments (most very early on, when I asked people to test comments–they pretty much count as a vestigial feature at this point)
  • 46 pages (only a handful are actually publicly viewable, but I’ve deleted very few once they’ve been made)
  • 2,418 spam comments blocked (this is pretty low, considering how long the site has been up–even the spambots generally ignore this site)
  • 61 posts in September 2020. I was posting my snack intake every day. I took in a few snacks.
  • And so much more

In 2022 I plan on reworking the site design, which will make it magical or something. I expect it will still be mostly ignored, but that’s okay. As blogs come in and go out of fashion, creolened.com will be here, wearing its bell bottom jeans and not caring who (if anyone) looks.

Not gourmet food

Today, I discovered ketchup-flavored Goldfish crackers at the grocery store. It was hard to miss, actually, as they had a whole end cap filled with them. They’re apparently a limited time thing. I, being a Canadian, had to get some.

And I like them. I like them almost too much, even as I think they are also sort of revolting. I’m going to try to limit myself to just the one bag until they are gone from the shelves, with only memories of red-stained fingers left behind. If I buy another bag, I will be sad at my lack of self-control. And I’ll need to wash my hands again.

Yummy yummy yummy I got red-stained crackers in my tummy

(I nicked the image from the walmart.ca site. Oddly, this is one of the rare times when DuckDuckGo’s search failed me–I had to use Google to find the photo.)

How much is the local weather changing? (Fall and winter 2021-22 edition)

With global warming and climate change an established thing, I have been wondering if the local climate is changing in ways that are noticeable now (rather than in 30-100 years, when predictions look a lot more dire).

This was brought on yesterday when I found my eyes involuntarily rolling upon reading another weather advisory in the Windows Weather app. They seem to be coming up more frequently. And so, just to satisfy my own curiosity in a completely unscientific manner, I am going to record the remainder of the late fall and winter advisories on a page here through the remainder of the 2021-22 season.

The first entry, from today, is below.

Nerd stuff: Since the text in the Weather pap is not normally capturable, here’s how I did it (I will find a way to streamline this process later):

  1. Take a photo of the Weather app report on my monitor screen using my iPad
  2. Use iOS 15’s text recognition to copy the text from the screenshot
  3. Paste the text into iA Writer, save the file to iCloud
  4. Open iA Writer on the PC and grab the text from there
  5. Lovingly apply formatting to the version pasted to the blog here

Rainfall – Warning

From 11/14/2021 5:22:40 AM to 11/14/2021 9:22:40 PM
rainfall warning in effect

Total rainfall up to 100 mm for Metro Vancouver, western Fraser Valley and parts of the Sunshine Coast, and up to 150 mm for Howe Sound and the eastern Fraser Valley for today and Monday. Warm temperatures will accompany the rain.

Timespan: Today to Monday.

Locations: Metro Vancouver, Fraser Valley, Howe Sound, Sunshine Coast – Gibsons to Earls Cove.
Hazard: 100 to 150 mm of rain. Rising freezing levels with melting snow giving rise to increased river flows and localised flooding.

Remarks: A significant atmospheric river event will bring copious amounts of rain and near record
temperatures to the B.C, south coast today through Monday.

The rain will be heaviest this afternoon and tonight ahead of the cold front. The heavy rain will ease on
Monday as the cold front pushes the precipitation out of the region.

The lowlands of Metro Vancouver will see up to 75 mm of rain by Monday while the North Shore, Northeast sector including Coquitlam and Maple Ridge and Fraser Valley – West including Abbotsford could see up to 100 mm. Howe Sound and central and eastern Fraser Valley including Chilliwack and Hope could see upwards of 150 mm.

This could result in possible washouts, debris flow and pooling water as rising freezing levels will also melt snow at higher elevations, Local river levels will rise and river flows will increase as a result of the heavy rain.

Heavy downpours can cause flash floods and water pooling on roads. Localized flooding in low-lying areas is possible.

Please continue to monitor alerts and forecasts issued by Environment Canada. To report severe weather,
send an email to BCstorm@ec.gc.ca or tweet reports using #BCStorm.

Watch for possible washouts near rivers, creeks and culverts.

Dramatic journey to the ophthalmologist! Available at Amazon!

UPDATE: I thought I had saved a local copy of the image but apparently not, and it’s now been updated (presumably by Book Bub) to something completely different, thereby ruining this sarcastic post forever.

UPDATE #2: The image keeps changing, so I appear to have turned this post into a micro-portal for Book Bub ads. I should probably fix this, but at the same time it amuses me. If the original ad reappears, I’ll grab a local copy of it, but it has seemingly vanished.

That’s the best I can gather based on this BookBub ad I’ve seen a few times. That is one nasty eye-swirly issue happening there.

I otherwise have no idea what the story is about, other than it’s a series, so maybe there are multiple ophthalmologist visits. Also, typing the word “ophthalmologist” is hard.

Scheduling myself, Part 2: Whoops on the scheduling part

In this post I said I would make a decision on a task manager/to-do app in a week, then two weeks went by and here I am, sans decision.

Which perhaps underlines the need to start using one of these apps.

Previously, I had considered these options:

  • Things 3
  • TickTick
  • Microsoft to-Do

I’ve tinkered with the trial version of Things 3, and it’s very nice, even fun, but ultimately I feel it being limited to Apple devices only is a dealbreaker. I still do a lot of stuff on my PC and will continue to do so into the future. If they at least offered a web version, I’d probably still consider it. But alas.

To-Do offers good integration with Office 365 and collaboration, neither of which are of any use to me. As one reviewer noted, it’s nice-looking and the ability to set custom backgrounds for different tasks allows you to make them visually distinct, handy for at-a-glance recognition. But this is easily the most basic of the to-do apps (I mean, look at its name), and I feel it’s just a little too simple to make it worth committing to.

TickTick seems decent enough, but in my brief time with it I didn’t really warm up to its interface. There’s nothing wrong with it, I just don’t find it compelling. It’s hard to explain.

This leaves Todoist, which I had toyed with years ago, and was reminded of when it came up in several surveys of to-do software. It’s multiplatform, including a web version, and offers a lot of functionality even before you consider the subscription version. And for whatever reason, I spent more time poking around in it and testing stuff out.

So my tentative decision has been made: I’m going to try using Todoist. Starting next week (for real, I double dog swear) I am going to start scheduling stuff and see how it goes. I expect minimal drama and no more than one instance of curling up in a ball on the floor.

Holiday treats, holiday Type 2 diabetes

I got a newsletter from my local grocery store (I won’t name them, but you may be able to figure it out using advanced internet detective skills) that had this at the top of the newsletter:

A delightful collection of not-exactly-light recipes

And had this below:

I mean, maybe this is a coincidence, but it’s a little on-the-nose, don’t you think?

If it was a deliberate juxtaposition, I say kudos to the sassy ad writer not only for posting the logical sequence of thousand-calorie-sugar-nightmares followed by treating-diabetes-because-I-think-you-know-why, but for actually providing a public service while making the point.

Should we talk about the weather?

As I type this I can hear the rain outside. But I am inside and the windows are closed. I should not be able to hear the rain, especially with my lab-certified terrible hearing. And yet I can hear the drops plinking madly off the polished stones in the garden outside my window.

Earlier this afternoon, I went for a walk and got caught in a very localized monsoon. I sought cover under a pine and noted that just beyond this small stand of trees, the sun was shining. I felt like Charlie Brown.

Good Grief! | ReCollections
But without the glove.

This is what it looked like as I waited and watched:

Me: Standing in the rain. 60 m ahead of me: Glorious sunshine.

Once the mini-monsoon moved on, the rest of the afternoon was actually decent. There was a rainbow and everything was swell. Until tonight, when The Rains began anew.

Yesterday, shortly after leaving Iona Beach, where Nic and I were looking for birbs to shoot (with our cameras), a funnel cloud briefly formed over the water and there is now some question over whether an actual tornado landed at UBC as a result. You can see footage showing at least four trees coming down at the golf course there in the video below. It looks very tornado-like. And is a good reminder to not seek shelter under a tree in extremely high winds.

There is another wind warning in effect for tomorrow.

On the one hand, winter is approaching, and it can get blustery around here, so this is not really unusual (save for the possible tornado, which is still a pretty rare thing for this area), but it just somehow feels different, like the minute hand on the big global warming clock (I just made that up) has ticked ahead again. What this means for when actual winter starts next month, I’m not sure, but I feel bad for all the future ex-trees that get knocked down in the storms to come–or anyone who gets knocked down by said future ex-trees.

Happy Halloween 2021 ~or~ Hey, every other person in Metro Vancouver has fireworks and plenty of them!

The title really sums up the whole post. I went out for a brief walk this evening (it’s cool, but clear out) and was greeted by the non-stop crack and bang of firecrackers, fireworks and possibly surplus munitions being set off all around not just the local neighborhood, but even across the Fraser, where I could see fireworks bursting into the sky above Surrey.

It’s all kind of weird. How did fireworks become associated with Halloween, anyway? I realize that in 2021 I can trivially look up the answer, but I prefer to make up my own. So I’m just going to say it was Satan. Or maybe the Robot Devil (I’ve been watching a lot of Futurama).

This is pretty much the only thing that makes me look forward to November. It’s not that I hate fun, it’s just that, well…I hate fun. Specifically, noisy fun that makes my ears ring (even as I am typing this sentence, fireworks are still going off. It’s 11:22 p.m., go to bed, people!)

I need to schedule myself

To find a good scheduler.

I’ve come to realize that while I automatically resist using scheduling/to-do apps (which is perhaps odd because I do like to stay organized), I may actually need one, since I am the sole person currently responsible for my schedule, and it’s easy to let some things slip by because I was busy doing important research on something else, such as cats on the internet.

I don’t have any strong leads yet, but my initial look has revealed a few candidates:

  • Things 3: Looks great, but it’s expensive and Mac-only (well, Apple devices-only)
  • To Do: This is Microsoft’s imaginatively-named app, which took the place of the apparently beloved Wunderlist. It has the advantages of being free and cross-platform, but it seems a bit spartan?
  • TickTick. Recommend by The Wirecutter. But Tick Tick is a seriously dumb name. Still, this one is also cross-platform and also has a web version. On the other hand, it requires a subscription to be really useful, which would ultimately make it more expensive than Things 3.
  • Just using the Notes app on my phone or something. Since I could have been doing this all along, I doubt I will actually consider this.

I’m penciling a decision for this in my head for sometime in the next week. Things 3 has a free trial, so I may start with that.

More soon™.