I haven’t talked about the weather for what seems like, well, a good solid week, at least.
Two days ago it was the last day of summer. It was mostly clear and the sun felt pleasantly warm on my back as I went for a walk.
Yesterday was the first day of fall and it was also pleasantly sunny and warm. I like pleasantly warm fall days, because it creates the illusion that a cold, wet and going-on-forever winter is not really coming.
Today, however, the weather app had this:
And this:
This promise is being fulfilled outside, right now, as I type this. In a way the heavy rain is nice, because it makes it easier to make decisions, like, “Should I go outside?” because the answer is invariably, “Hell no.”
It does complicate my walk/runs, though. I don’t mind (but don’t prefer–I’m not crazy, after all) running in the rain, but walking in it is different. When you run you generate enough heat to stave off the cold and wet, for awhile. When you walk, even briskly, this doesn’t really happen. So I must ponder if I want to do a walk/run, a run or maybe “Hell no” it and stick to the treadmill.
In the meantime, I am putting together a playlist of nothing but rain-related songs. And then not listening to them.
At the start of the year I set what I felt was a modest goal for reading books: 26. One book every two weeks. I’m not a fast reader so giving myself two weeks to read a book seemed entirely reasonable, assuming I wasn’t going to read the equivalent of Stephen King’s Complete and Uncut Edition of The Stand each time.
Almost all of my reading is done during my commute to work. It is a long commute–just over an hour each way–and I previously would just zone out and listen to music, which was nice in its own way, I suppose. Switching to reading significantly boosted the number of books I read, though, and I feel this is a better use of my time. For one, it allows me to explore more new authors than I might normally, because I have such a generous block of time set aside just for reading.
I’ve not moved much from my preferred genres, though. Some things are harder to break from.
At the start of this year I was in a bit of a funk. Overweight and struggling to get back on track, unhappy with work life, unhappy with having such a long commute and losing a significant chunk of my day to it, reading or not. The end result is I read less than normal, opting more for the blissful escape of music piped through noise-canceling earphones, possibly the best indirectly-related transit purchase I’ve ever made. Sometimes I put them on and don’t even listen to music, just the velvet silence they provide on an otherwise loud, roaring train.
I was keeping up with my book goal, though only just until mid-March, when the pandemic hit. From March 18th until this past Wednesday my commute was gone (we are now obligated to go in once a week to provide on-site support for the few classes that are still happening on campus). Without the commute, my reading place was gone. Sure, I could just use the same time to keep reading, but that’s not the way most people work, I suspect.
You find your routine disrupted, you make changes and adjust. For me, this meant getting up later in the morning. Not sleeping in, but simply getting closer to the proper amount of sleep. A net positive. For the space where the afternoon commute existed I now exercise. Both of these things have made me feel better and have improved my health. I honestly don’t want to go back to a daily commute. The thought sours my stomach.
But what of the reading? Goodreads tracks your reading challenge and lets you know if you are on track, ahead or behind. I fell behind, by a few books, then by a seemingly insurmountable number. I was eight books behind at one point.
As of today that number is about to be cut in half to four and I now think I can catch up and meet my goal. How did I do this?
By taking baths.
My Kobo Libra ereader is water-resistant, so there’s no danger in getting it a little wet, so it has become my companion in the tub. I get in and read for maybe an hour or so, then tend to the actual bath part. It is a very relaxing way to read.
I re-read almost all of The Amityville Horror in the bathtub. While the book wasn’t really worth re-reading, it proved the experience of reading in the tub was a worthwhile one.
I’ve also started reading more often on my iPad when I go to bed (yes, I know they say this is bad, blue light keeps you awake and so on, but I don’t read for long, honest!) and so I typically have two books on the go.
So far this has been working and it’s getting me back on track on my reading goals for the year (I’m more goal-oriented than I realized, I think). The fatigue of the pandemic has been pushed aside, even as I find myself wearing masks and being more cautious than ever, because I need to get back to just doing stuff. And if that means reading in the bathtub, that’s what I’m doing.
For the first time since March 17th, I went into the office today. Theoretically I was the only one there, though a few others showed up or passed through, along with one cleaner and a couple of the guys delivering stuff.
Work itself was a bit odd, just because of the way the campus is set up to allow for safe movement in these kooky pandemic times. Buildings felt more like security checkpoints, with only one point of entrance in most cases, and said entrance staffed by, well, security. The vending machines, currently the only source of edibles, were poorly stocked or broken and I gave up on them. My coworker took mercy on me and bought me a steeped tea from the Tim Hortons a few blocks over.
Speaking of Tims, this lets me segue to my main topic of this post: My first long commute since the virus hit. This is something I had been quietly dreading for months and I was bracing for the SkyTrain to be packed and awful.
To my surprise (but not as far as delight), the trains were substantially less busy than normal. I often don’t get a seat when leaving Sapperton station, but today it was not an issue. The Canada Line was a little worse, only because it runs those runty two-car trains (great planning there), but even if wasn’t anywhere close to capacity.
So in terms of crowding, it was actually okay. I never had anyone sit beside me across five trains and on the three that have single seats, I was able to nab one.
Translink has a mandatory mask policy, but enforcement is soft, as in, there is basically no enforcement as far as I can see. They just kind of hope everyone will wear masks. And nearly everyone did. In all, I saw five people not wearing masks, two on the way in and three on the way back:
Three (all young men) were drinking coffee from Tim Hortons, so I now view them as unintentional contributors to the pandemic.
A fourth was a young woman who ate a pizza slice from Broadway to Joyce stations. Once she was done, she did not put on a mask. I stared at her the entire time she was eating. She never noticed.
The fifth person was another young man, a hulking Aryan type with close-cropped blond hair and tattoos all over everything. When he boarded the train, he threw his pack onto a seat, then plopped down beside it, staring intently into his phone. He had a demeanor of someone just begging to be asked why he wasn’t wearing a mask, so he could explain in a loud voice and through the use of colorful metaphors. No one asked.
I wore a mask and because it isn’t designed for glasses, it fogged up regularly, which was not great. Riding in the newer air-conditioned cars helped, riding in one of the ancient 300 year old cars did not.
I can’t decide how the combo of cap, mask and giant headphones makes me look. Like I’m taking part in some kind of bad cosplay, perhaps. Also, I find a certain irony in the GNC slogan “Live well” being on a mask I’m wearing because we are in the middle of a global pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people. Even better (worse), GNC is permanently shutting down because of the pandemic.
In all, the commute was not as bad as I had expected, but seeing so many people wearing masks provided another tangible piece of evidence that we have slipped past whatever we considered normal times into where we are now.
Also, though I didn’t need a pandemic to remind me, that twice-a-day hour plus commute? It still really sucks. I like having those two hours back. I sleep more, I exercise more and feel better. And even not counting the commute, I was struck by how awful the office was. The air quality is terrible–my eyes felt itchy and it was cool to the point of nearly being cold, my chair is not comfortable, I have a mushy keyboard, the lighting is harsh, the monitors are kind of lousy. Really, my home setup is superior in every way. I honestly would be happy to never step foot into another office ever again.
I’ll see what can be done to make that impossible dream happen.
In the meantime, I’ll look for better masks and hope that future commutes don’t turn into COVID nightmare sardine cans.
And yes, I do mean this specific scene, with the Yakety Sax music. I’m not sure what made me think of this again, but it still delights me as much as it did back in 2012.
The irony is that it is 33ºC as I type this. But for the second summer in a row temperatures have stayed low enough and we’ve had just enough precipitation to stave off the appearance of those FIRE WARNING signs that appear on the Brunette River trail and at Burnaby Lake.
A few years ago we went an entire calendar month–July–without any official rainfall. Grass was turning yellow in May. I thought, “Well, climate change is slowly turning southern BC into a desert, whaddyagonnado?” But the past two years things have tracked more normal, with no long stretches of nice weather, just days of nice weather punctuated by clouds or some shower, then sun again and back and forth until The Rains of the fall start in earnest.
I’m not complaining, exactly. Some precipitation in the summer also means no out of control forest fires and the sky has not turned a hazy amber that lasts for weeks on end, either. These things are nice and good. I guess we’ll see if extremely dry summers return next year. Based on current events, I don’t think humans are going to do much to stop or even slow climate change.
I should probably have been mentioning here that I ended my last week of vacation by going on roughly hour-long walks down the Brunette River trail in lieu of running (exciting heel update also coming soon). The weather has been fairly good for these brisk walks and I’ve resumed listening to music. I am now doing the walks immediately after work and they serve as a nice way to unwind from the day–and help get ye old blood circulating after spending most of the day sitting.
Normally I will listen to a specific album if I’m in the mood or just shuffle all songs and skip any that come up that I’m not in the mood for. Or just kind of suck, because let’s face it, not every album released is filler-free.
The last three walks I have done something different. I started listening to songs in alphabetical order. My song library consists of over 3,600 titles so it would take awhile to get through the entire alphabet (10 days if iTunes is right). That’s a lot of walking.
I am still on the letter A and it’s actually not a bad way to listen to music. I sometimes hear songs with the same title from different bands, I’ve discovered a lot of songs start with the word “All” and I’ve mostly not skipped any songs.
I may move to the B’s early, though, because I’d like to hear some other letters without having to necessarily commit to 240 hours of walking.
And by “great” I mean they do not have soothing, melodic voices or are obviously not professionally trained, but I love ’em anyway, because their voices have…yep…character.
You may disagree on the alleged vocal greatness of some of the people on this list, either thinking them good enough to not be on this list or maybe bad enough to not merit inclusion. I also did not set out to make an exclusively male list, but every female singer I like has a genuinely awesome-sounding voice. Women are just better.
Stephin Merrit (The Magnetic Fields). Merrit has this wonderfully rumbly bass that often feels like it’s on the verge of going off-key but never quite does. “Papa Was a Rodeo” from the album 69 Love Songs is a great example of it.
Roger Waters (Pink Floyd). I compare Waters’ vocals to the dialogue of David Lynch’s Dune, where everyone seems to either shout or whisper. Waters is very good at the shout/whisper thing. The period around his second solo album, Radio KAOS, is the “highlight” of this where he seemed to be especially struggling to just sing in a normal tone. But he is very good at getting across venom and anger.
https://youtu.be/l5MigxIKovI
Robert Smith (The Cure). I went to a Cure concert in 1987 with a couple of friends when they played at the Expo Theatre (RIP). At the time I had no idea who the band was, confusing them with The Cult. The show was pretty good, though I was not entirely sure why girls (and some guys) kept throwing themselves at the lead singer, an unimposing man who looked a bit like Edward Scissorhands minus the scissors. Smith’s vocals are well-suited to the goth dirges the band is famous for, but I especially like his takes on their lighter material like “Why Can’t I Be You.” The video below has a bit of everything, from the regrettable use of black face to Smith dressed as a proto-furry.
Bob Dylan. I’m not even going to explain this one. Everyone knows Bob. That said, his vocals on the two Traveling Wilburys albums are strong and he clearly had fun with the material. “Tweeter and the Monkey Man” remains a favorite of mine.
My annual summer vacation began yesterday (technically it begins tomorrow, but I prefer a holistic view of vacation, which is a fancy way of saying I count every day off as part of the vacation, including weekends I would normally be off anyway). Yesterday I cleaned the toilets, went grocery shopping and did a workout on the treadmill. It didn’t feel very vacation-y.
Today I did the dishes, vacuumed the condo, and did a few other chores. This also did not feel very vacation-y. Finally, the evening arrived and with it, quiet time on the computer, where I could relax and read all about the horrible things happening everywhere.
It was then that the fire alarm in the building went off. I didn’t have to read about horrible things at all, I was now living it.
The condo has two alarms inside–one in each bedroom. This means when I am at the computer, one of the alarms is about a meter from my head.
They are very loud.
We silenced both with the “please don’t permanently damage my hearing” buttons and headed out. The hallways alarms are, if anything, even louder. One is right outside our suite door. Jeff went to investigate the source of the alarm, which is not something I would personally do myself, but different strokes and all that. I went outside to gather (while physically distancing, of course) with my neighbors while the firefighters investigated.
The alarms continued to screech, as they do.
The first of three trucks to arrive. The others did not put their lights on, alas.
Jeff ascertained that the alarm was pulled by a suite on the second floor, way down the other end of the building, safely past the fire doors. It looks like what happened was:
someone attempted to cook something on the stove
this attempt was unsuccessful, resulting in things getting burnt
the odor of this cooking cock-up was sufficient to get into the hallway
someone panicked (?) over the smell of smoke and pulled the alarm
After about 20 minutes or so, they took one of those industrial fans in, apparently to blow the offending smoke out of the suite and into the night. One of the firefighters advised us to maintain distance as we filed back in. Everyone pretty much ignored this. Pandemic fatigue. Which will probably extend the pandemic.
Speaking of night, at least it was clear and mild out. This would have been worse–and more ironic–in the rain.
Anyway, that wraps up the second day of my vacation. I have a short list for Day 3:
When I went grocery shopping today I noticed the 2 meter lines placed on the floor to remind customers to keep apart were looking rather worn and faded, which makes sense considering they’ve been walked on for close to four months.
Which then made me think that we have been living with the immediate effects of lockdown/quarantine/pandemic for about four months now and no real end in sight.
How will we adjust as this continues on? While some places have opened up early (with predictably disastrous results), only to close again, and large events like concerts being pretty much off-limits (unless you’re a certain flavor of idiot country musician) until–or if–there is a vaccine, it feels like more people are adopting a “just let it happen and get it over with” attitude.
Why people would feel this way is easy to understand–they are tired of having their lives upended by all the changes the virus has forced on them. They don’t like physical distancing or wearing masks or having to do take-out instead of eating at their favorite restaurant (though they can do the latter now in many places–time will tell how prudent eating out is).
What remains to be seen is where we go from here. Some people are engaging in a weird sort of anti-coping by doomscrolling. Others are decrying their “freedom” being curtailed and doing whatever the hell they want, safety be damned. Most are just plodding along, tired, but still understanding the necessity of following guidelines and the measures in place. B.C. has had it much easier than some places and things still seem to be under control here, so complacency is also taking root among come crowds. How careful do we need to be when it really doesn’t seem that bad? Why would the government allow things to open back up if it wasn’t safe?
Who can say what the future might bring, though? Recently I’ve been reading about some of the less-reported effects people have endured after contracting COVID-19 and the list of ailments is scary as all get-out. There is evidence emerging that some may suffer permanent organ damage, such as to their lungs. The virus is less than a year old and we know very little about it. The fact that it is infectious enough to shut down the world is frightening all on its own. It’s not the flu. It may turn out to be so much worse.
While the pandemic has in some ways become so much background noise, I wonder just how many people have thought about how long it will be before we return to “normal”–or if we ever truly will.
2020 has been a year of change and upheaval. And it’s only half over.
UPDATE, July 4, 2023: I should note that at the time I posted this, I was unaware of the website Abandoned America, which I highly recommend. The title of this blog post is not meant to indicate any connection, official or otherwise, to the website.
By way of Pocket, I came across this story about how dollar stores in rural and poor urban communities have become replacements for Walmart and other big name stores–and magnets for crime: How Dollar Stores Became Magnets for Crime and Killing. It is, as expected, a depressing read. The photos of the various stores, often surrounded by empty lots, spoke of neighborhoods filled with decay, abandoned by most and held hostage to these kinds of stores, that occupy areas long abandoned by other retailers.
But instead of providing a needed service, they serve as hubs to crime–robberies, shootings, drug deals and more. They fail to provide security to their low-paid staff and to the surrounding neighborhood.
The story talks first about North St. Louis, noting that the city shrank from a population of over 850,000 in the 1950s to just over 300,000 today, a staggering decline that has left large tracts of the city occupied by shuttered buildings or vacant lots. I was intrigued and went to Google Maps to see what it looked like.
At first, as I scrolled the satellite view of the map over the city, it looked pretty typical–commercial districts, residential areas with rows of houses. I zoomed in more and spotted the first vacant lot–I had initially mistaken it for a grass field. As I continued to scroll, I was stunned at how prevalent these lots were. I switched to street view to “tour” the area and found a blighted landscape filled with shuttered businesses, empty houses and bricked up buildings whose functions had been erased by years of neglect.
It made me realize a couple of things. America is one of the largest countries in the world geographically–only Russia, Canada, China and India are bigger. And while the U.S. is populous–around 330 million–that number is concentrated around urban hubs in a few states like California, New York and Texas. Vast tracts of the country are largely empty, usually because the land is desert or otherwise ill-suited to large populations. But then you have places like St. Louis, where people have simply fled to the suburbs or elsewhere, creating these pocket ghost towns, where there are blocks of dilapidated houses, foundations with decades’ worth of weeds pushing through cracks in the concrete, and then suddenly a neighborhood that has some new housing, a gas station, a few amenities–an oasis before you head back into the desert of abandoned structures.
The U.S. isn’t the only country that has had cities abandoned, of course, but looking at the scenes in St. Louis, this somehow feels uniquely American, that a major city could just get left behind and forgotten, left to fall apart and disintegrate.
The scenes of desolation are despairing to see in broad daylight. I can only imagine the terror of moving down the streets of these places at night, surrounded on both sides by darkened buildings whose windows are either boarded up or broken.
Here are a few images I captured from street view, with the street view date included for reference.
This is both the smallest and scariest private club I have ever seen, sitting on the corner of an otherwise vacant lot, in an area with little else nearby. From the lack of windows to the black brick and barred red door, it’s like something from a horror movie. Street view goes back to 2011 where it was painted blue as the Jefferson Mini- Mart. From appearances, the mini-mart was already abandoned at the time. In its current incarnation it is actually open as the Orange Door. It has a 4.8 rating (scale of 5) on Google Maps, proving that looks can be deceiving. (May 2017)Street view for this large abandoned church goes back to 2007–and it was already empty then. The main differences now are the main doors have been sealed, the sidewalks are more choked with weeds, and a few more windows are busted. (July 2017)The 3D overview of the area the church resides in. Some of the vacant lots have been empty so long they have completely returned to a natural state. A number of the other buildings seen are also abandoned.Ernie’s Market is now closed. The building seen to the right is currently occupied, as are several others in the immediate area, creating a strange juxtaposition of life amid ruin. (March 2015)
My personal and to a lesser extent professional life is in what might call a state of turmoil right now, so I have elected to postpone the restart of the 21-day Complaint Free challenge, since I expect I’d just be constantly restarting and getting increasingly frustrated instead of making even incremental progress.
But I do plan to restart the challenge, hopefully sooner than later.
In the meantime, a re-post of the most amazing cat gif ever:
I completely forgot to do a write-up for my second day of my second attempt to go complaint-free for 21 days. This is because it rained most of the day, I stayed inside and engaged in very little interaction with other humans, greatly reducing the possible complaint window.
This is to say Day 2, the first day of summer, was a success.
