I was in Metrotown this past weekend and as always it is a bewildering experience, as there are about five thousand stores and a hundred times as many people buzzing through the mall between them.
I did get a pair of glasses and prescription sunglasses at Lenscrafters, though. The experience was surprisingly easy, the woman who helped me was knowledgeable and a couple of promotions made the two pairs (eight eyes, lol!!) decently affordable. The only downside is they won’t be ready until I am partway through vacation. My own fault for waiting so long to get my prescription updated.
While there I spotted an outlet that is Coming Soon® and did a double-take, because it seemed more like something you’d see in an Onion story than an actual retail store. But no, it is real:
I especially like the guy on the left looking like he is about to plow into some meter-high pink monster cone.
It turns out Sweet Jesus is a chain that started out east and is only just starting to open locations out west, like the one above in Metrotown. Their menu seems to be based primarily around frozen treats containing 32,000 calories each. I’m not necessarily objecting.
It’s kind of a ballsy name, though. Do Christians feel good about going there for sundaes? Is it sacrilegious or sacrilicious?
I’ll find out this summer, because I’m definitely going to try…something.
Today is the first day of summer and it also marked the abrupt end of the current heatwave, with temperatures in the high teens and cloudy skies, with even a few drops of precipitation in the morning. Yesterday it was around 30ºC and the older SkyTrain cars were like communal sweat boxes thanks to the lack of air conditioning.
So I’m not complaining, exactly. Yesterday was hot. Today I wore a jacket to work. I’d like some more sun, just not Africa Hot sun. The forecast through the end of the month is a crazy quilt of mainly sunny, light rain, cloudy, partly sunny and who knows what else. Meanwhile, the FIRE DANGER signs are in no, er, danger, of going up any time soon.
Again, not complaining. And as I type this the sun is trying to poke out from the clouds, so perhaps it’s time to step outside.
UPDATE: Later in the afternoon it became sunny, with a high of 22ºC or so. Not-a-complaint rescinded!
Today saw the return of a high pressure ridge and much warmer, summer-like temperatures, just in time for the actual start of summer (in five days).
I had planned on doing some shopping but didn’t want to stay cooped up inside during our first day of truly glorious sunshine in weeks, so I nixed the shopping and went for a walk around Burnaby Lake.
Here are some stats courtesy of the Activity app of my watch:
Total distance: 19.31 km
Total time: 2:57:51
Total calories burned: 909
Average pace: 9:12/km
Average BPM: 124
My knees started out fine, started to get sore partway through, got a bit bothersome some point after that, then came around to feeling not too bad again for the last few km. They don’t feel bad now, but I’m under no illusions. My knees have turned against me after 4400+ km of running.
When I approached the athletic fields I was presented with a dilemma, as illustrated in the photo below.
You shall not pass (without being pecked).
The choice was to plow through and see how the adult geese would react to me indirectly threatening their goslings, or to cut wide onto the field and avoid them altogether.
I chose the latter because having more than a dozen geese chasing and trying to peck me is a little too close to a scene from The Birds for comfort.
After taking the photo (I approached from the opposite side), I passed a woman who was going to face the same predicament. I watched to see if the feathers would fly. She got closer and closer still, then stopped. She took some pictures. She resumed walking and I actually though she was going to try the ol’ “if I just calmly walk through them nothing bad will happen” trick. But instead, she went wide onto the field like I did. Considering this was a beautiful Saturday afternoon, I wonder how many other people were diverted by the goose-stepping blockade.
The rest of the walk was pretty straightforward, though I actually began to sweat a bit toward the end. There was the usual mix of walkers, runners and cyclists pretending they totally didn’t realize they aren’t allowed to ride here. No park workers around to warn/lecture/fine them, however. The cyclists, I mean.
One jogger–who obviously read the forecast–was wearing the legal minimum to stay nice and cool. Or cooler. As I passed through Lower Hume Park another pair of runners went by also wearing the vaguely ridiculous short shorts and nothing else at all. Well, running shoes. And one had a heart strap on, which, when going shirtless, looks like you’ve put your belt on about a foot higher than you meant to. They had perfectly sculpted bodies, of course, just to rub it in.
I’m going to run tomorrow, and will attempt to do so in the morning before it becomes Africa hot. Because I did the mega-walk I am thinking of just a quick run on the river instead of tackling the lake again. We shall see.
This month the second non-trilogy Star Wars film came out, Solo: A Star Wars Story. The first, Rogue One, released in December 2016.
Box Office Mojo posted a comparison of their domestic haul after 17 days. It shows a rather astonishing gap of $248,882,233.
Rotten Tomatoes gives Rogue One an 85% fresh rating, which is pretty good. Solo gets a more middling 71%. Still, the difference in popularity is drastic. Some reasons offered for the reception of Solo:
too soon after the previous Star Wars movie. The Last Jedi came out just six months ago.
difficulties with production somehow affected perception/demand (the original directors were fired and Ron Howard was brought in, reshooting up to 70% of the scenes while allegedly sticking to the script)
everyone knows Solo dies at the hands of his jerk son, Kylo Ren, so watching how he starts out is kind of depressing
Harrison Ford is too closely associated with the role
enough with the nostalgic trips into the past
There’s probably some validity to all of these reasons, but my hunch is that most people just don’t care much about a Han Solo origin story, even one that’s told well. It would be like a Boba Fett movie. The character came out with this built-in reputation as a cool bounty hunter, but did very little and got eaten by a giant worm. Why would you want to watch a story about him? Would the opening crawl start with “Before he was devoured by the Sarlac, Boba Fett was a renowned bounty hunter…”
Anyway, I was just surprised by the huge disparity between the two movies. While Rogue One was also set in the past, it didn’t center around well-known characters, it was a new story and one that actually helps set up the very first Star Wars film. And was incredibly popular–especially considering that (spoiler!) it kills off all of its major characters by the time the credits roll.
Perhaps it’s because May was so warm and summer-like, but a week into June and I find myself indifferent to the change to cloudy and (today) rainy weather.
I think instead how this will help stave off the fire ban that will inevitably come once we get officially into summer, and that means toasty campfires while on vacation. I guess what I’m saying is I’m willing to pay for crummy weather now with the promise of gloriously sunny weather later. Or maybe it’s just because I burn easily. Sunburn easily, I mean. In terms of actual combustion I suspect I would burn the same as most people.
Anyway, the rain is making me shrug and on balance I think this is a good and healthy thing.
If the weather is still like this a month from now, my view may be a bit different.
If I have posted this before, it doesn’t matter. This is the most amazing cat image ever and the best way to start June, the official first month of summer.
Tonight after a yummy sushi dinner I got a call on my phone. Strangely it showed as No Caller ID. This is strange because even spam calls usually show the number. I assumed it was spam. A short time later a voicemail showed up, which I assumed was spam in voicemail form.
I was wrong.
Instead, it was VanCity Visa calling to verify several suspicious transactions made today. I called the number they provided and it turns out that at least three transactions were made, up to $189 or so, to companies or places in Winnipeg. I confirmed I had not made these transactions and was rewarded with my Visa card being cancelled.
I’ll have a new card in 3-5 business days, delivered to a nearby branch. Then I’ll have to go through the process of activating the card, creating a PIN and updating the info for everything that uses the Visa as the form of payment–which is basically everything online. I’ll also be getting a call from a fraud agent in a few days to ask questions. I’m not sure what kind of questions, since I assume they can see my transaction history and will have the list of fake transactions. I’m hoping they can confirm where the info was grabbed. The guy on the phone tonight said it was through some online source. The last two online services that processed payments were Netflix and Branzone, which hosts my websites.
In all, a big pain in the tuckus and confirmation that some people suck (on a side note, if everyone committing fraud of this sort got beamed to an island–let’s call it You Are a Bad Person and Should Feel Bad Island–how big would the island need to be? I’m thinking pretty big). Apparently the fraudster in this case is well-known in terms of the purchases they use with the ill-gotten numbers. The worst part is I now have to rely on my debit card in the interim, which would normally not be a big deal, but it was getting fairly unreliable on POS machines, which is why I’d switched to using the Visa.
Maybe I’ll just pay for everything using cash. Crisp one dollar bills from 1987, perhaps.
Or just never buy anything ever again and learn to appreciate a simpler life, free from the trappings of rampant consumerism.
But yes, that island would be neat, if we could beam all those people to it.
The coolest thing ever (when I was 10 years old). A weird list of food, places, objects and seasons.
dinosaurs
sharks
fire trucks
realistic Matchbox cars (I never liked Hot Wheels. I was kind of weird in how I preferred realism)
dioramas
roller coasters
amusement parks
canyons (as long as I didn’t get close to the edge)
summer days
fudge
Peanut Buster Parfaits
Filet-o-Fish
snow days
Mad magazine
raw peas
Now I want a time machine so I can go back to the summer of 1975 to savor these things (I’m okay with missing the snow days). Some of this list is clearly nostalgia-driven, but a surprisingly large number of these items still rank up there as pretty cool even to my sensible, more jaded adult self.
In fact, the pleasure I’d feel while eating some fresh-baked fudge while ogling a diorama of, say, dinosaurs, on a warm summer day, would be downright intoxicating.
Instead I’ll just do a GIS for fudge and lick the screen of my laptop. Or…maybe not.
I’ve always meant to do a best/worst super power list. Consider this the B version of that. These are abilities that might be interesting to have. Or not.
the ability to draw whatever I picture in my mind, exactly as I want it to appear. Basically, to draw magic, instead of stick men and art that looks like, “Dude, you should practice more. A lot more. Like, for years and years lol.” I’d impress a few people, but I wonder how it would affect how I see things, knowing I could later capture them just how I wanted. Would I become indifferent to the ability? Find clever uses for it? See it is just being a practical thing, albeit rather unique?
the ability to zoom in with my eyeballs. I can think of many practical (and a few prurient) uses for this, with no real downside, apart from the occasional “I didn’t mean to look at that” moment. It would be like having a permanent set of binoculars with me, and while I don’t often wish I actually did always have a set of binoculars with me, it very mildly irritates me when I don’t and I want to make out something in the distance and can’t.
the ability to touch type. A boy can dream. Maybe if I typed faster my hands would be gnarled claws by now and I’ve actually saved them by typing slower using my refined hunt and peck method. Yes, that’s it, I’m sure.
