Yesterday (Friday the 13th–dun dun dun) was the last day of work at the place I’ve been working since November 2012. I chose to leave to start doing my own thing, to be my own boss, set my own schedule, meet my own goals.
It’s a leap into the unknown, and I know I could fall on my face.
But it’s also exciting, and I’m looking forward to taking on challenges I’ve set for myself.
The fact that the Styx album Kilroy Was Here really got made
I’m listening to “Mr. Roboto” right now, and I’m leaning toward the last one. I loved this album when it came out in 1983. I was 19 years old at the time. I present this as my only defense. Well, that and being a sucker for concept albums, apparently even bad ones.
See title. July saw no measurable precipitation, started with record-breaking temperatures in the 40s and is ending with temperatures in the 30s (for reference, today’s average high is normally 25C, though 30C doesn’t seem as hot anymore after experiencing what 42C feels like).
I know talking about the weather seems kind of dull, but it really has been remarkable. Up to mid-June people were still making “Juneuary” jokes. Now the bush outside the office window is withered and sad in a way it’s never been before, but still green, for the time being.
Wildfire smoke is expected to roll in today, and indeed it looks cloudy out. With a province-wide fire ban in effect, we get quotes like these from this CBC News story on enforcement of the ban because people gonna people:
Hunter said there have been instances in the South Coast region where they have discovered campfires within metres of campfire ban signs in provincial parks.
I’m going out to take photos today, so I don’t necessarily want it to rain today, but I wouldn’t object to some nice showers overnight. I love summer (unlike a lot of people), but it’s making it tough to love this year.
Sometimes I’ll read an article that nearly perfectly matches what I’m thinking, and this Atlantic article on wearing masks is one of them. It’s free to read, as is all of their COVID-19 coverage, so the link below should keep working. And yes, I did feel a bit weird reading at the end that the free coverage is in part due to sponsorship from the Chan Zuckerberg (re: Facebook) Initiative.
Case numbers in BC have doubled over the last two weeks, and are back into daily triple-digit territory. For me, it’s really simple, with Reason #1 being dominant–I don’t want to catch COVID-19. We simply don’t know enough about long term effects for me to be comfortable lowering my risk for the (admittedly welcome, but ultimately minor) benefit of going mask-free in public indoor spaces, especially transit.
This is another entry from the handwritten journal I kept back in 1987. I had been living in Vancouver for five months at the time and was 22 years old.
Tuesday, January 27, 1987. 10:53 p.m. When worlds collide, headaches follow.
Sorry, nothing even slightly, vaguely, infinitesimally exciting happened today.
Goodnight.
No, really. Work was uninteresting, after work was uninteresting, sleep was uninteresting.1Alright, I’m just guessing that sleep will be uninteresting. We’re talking boring here.
Briefly, for the sake of posterity, here are the lowlights:
I got up
I dressed, ate breakfast and left for work
I worked
I came home
I talked to Mike on the phone
I washed dishes and cleaned up
Brook came over and worked on his play
I watched (with brook) Moonlighting (a rerun, strangely).
I went to bed
And now, goodnight for real.
Log off: 11:20 p.m.
Supplementary note, 12:09 a.m.:
Okay, seeing Tiny Tim being pelted by snowballs during the New York Giants Superbowl Celebration was kinda fun. Those fans, ya gotta love ’em!
This is, as you can see, not a particularly memorable entry, but it is short, which is why I’ve included it until I can see if there’s any kind of text recognition software that can convert my stunningly neat handwriting into electronic form. Also note that the footnote was originally presented with an asterisk and was written in all caps vertically on the left side of the page. I’m going to re-read more of this journal, to possibly gain insights, but mostly to see how funny I was as a young adult. I hope I don’t disappoint myself.
It’s time to metaphorically step back and take a look at Facebook again, that lovable scamp of the internet accused of everything from destroying democracy to poisoning all public discourse.
I do not make any effort to post on Facebook at present. In fact, the only posts that appear there are auto-generated from Instagram, and these consist entirely of photographs I take of flowers, birds, scenery and objects I find interesting or weird. I don’t post pictures of food or myself, though the occasional exception is made.
My time actually spent on Facebook consists of a few things:
Looking at the photos posted by a friend
Looking over the posts of other friends and family
Otherwise, getting out as quickly as possible
The friend’s photos I also see on Instagram (which is a surprisingly terrible site for posting photos, given that its origin was for doing exactly that), so it’s more a review of what I’ve seen, and FB does an admittedly better job at displaying them.
The friends and family list consists of a majority of people who never or rarely post, a few who post semi-often and a couple who post pretty much constantly. All of these groups overlap in that they post little original content—photos they’ve taken, thoughts that have popped into their heads, interesting milestones in their lives, funny things they’ve personally witnessed and so on. Most just re-post stuff they’ve found elsewhere or on FB itself. The whole “share and like” thing. Several of them often share the exact same “funny” story or “interesting” quiz.
It’s all basically a bunch of garbage and I ponder ignoring their posts (which is to say changing the settings to stop showing their posts but not actually blocking the people themselves), but there’s always the niggling thought that they might post something genuinely interesting and would I want to risk missing it?
So FB is pretty much now just a waste of time. It’s not a huge waste of time because I’m typically only looking at it for a few minutes, but I toy with the idea of just taking a good, long break from it and seeing what the consequences, if any, are. I wouldn’t flounce off dramatically or make a big deal out of it, I’d just stop checking it for a few months or something. Treat it as a kind of junk social media detox.
Now that I’ve written this out, the idea sounds more appealing. Maybe I’ll try it and see how it goes.
In the meantime, I really wish there was another social media site that was really just about people posting interesting photos, but I suspect there’s no viable market for that or it would exist already. Alas.
Intellectually, I understand what causes low tides to occur, but it still feels supremely weird to see how far ocean water can retreat before eventually, steadily pouring back in to where it once was. Watching an entire ecosystem temporarily morph into something different, being able to suddenly walk across a bay, or stroll to an island, it just seems so strange to me, like it shouldn’t be possible but there it is.
Maybe I was a Neanderthal in a past life and these ordinary aspects of nature still seem like magic. Whatever it is, I’m happy that I live close enough to the ocean that I can go and stare gap-jawed when the tide goes out.
During our now legendary “heat dome” event that unofficially ended yesterday (today’s high was a relatively bone-chilling 27C) I opted to do something I almost never do–wear sunblock. And it worked really well. Even as I strolled about in 42C heat and sweated like a very sweaty person, I remained burn-free and am as shimmeringly pale as ever. You’d never know I’d been out of my ice cave!
Anyway, I feel like I am somehow getting more sensible as I get older. Will sunblock leave my exposed skin feeling vaguely sticky and gross? Will dust, grit and small animals adhere to it as I spend time outdoors? The answer is yes, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s better and healthier to avoid a nasty sunburn. Sensible!
I’m also thinking about getting new socks and underwear. I won’t say the prospect of this excites me, exactly, but it is perhaps a little enticing.
Don’t worry, though, I still don’t see bingo as an entertaining recreational activity. Yet.
