General

Happy 20th birthday to this blog!

I knew I should have set a reminder. 😛

It was 20 years ago yesterday that I made my first post on this blog, creolened.com. Here it is in link form and as a quote in its entirety:

I was the last one to get bell bottom jeans in grade 5 and now I’m the last person on the Internet to have a blog. Hooray for me! As you may have guessed, I am using WordPress for my blogging needs. An apparent feature of WordPress is relentless self-promotion as witnessed by the three separate links for the software on this very page. I’ll be culling a few soon and adding some other links that might prove interesting or not.

Yes, blogs were seemingly cool back in 2005. And they are again! WordPress was new and was exactly what I wanted.

Today I am pondering moving away from it, because it’s both way more than I need, and it’s being run by a man with, uh, let’s say a few issues.

But in whatever form, the blog will continue. A lot has changed in the 20 years since I started writing here (5,498 posts ago, counting this one). I have less hair. I started running. I’ve had an IV stuck in my arms for 11 days. I’ve been to Nashville.

We’ve had three U.S. presidents, one of them especially terrible and literally trying to usher in both the end of democracy and the rise of fascism. So that’s fun.

In Canada, we’ve gone from Conservative minorities to Liberal minorities and our best bet is maybe another Liberal minority.

The world is hotter and stormier than in 2005. Aliens still haven’t saved us. Everything is, of course, more expensive. The internet is a pit of hell controlled by tech oligarchs who want everything they can get their hands on, but mostly power, money and control. It’s kind of bleak.

But some things haven’t changed, such as my capacity to ramble. Here’s to years more of that.

And, of course, cats:

It hailed today

I was not expecting that.

It also snowed some more, but it feels kind of perfunctory, like someone had a checklist with “Make it snow in the Lower Mainland” and did the bare minimum in order to check it off. I’m okay with that.

The week ahead looks mostly cloudy, clear and well below seasonal temperatures, with highs between 0-2°C and lows all the way down to -10°C. This seems like a good time to resume running on the treadmill.

It’s February!

Benefits of February:

  • Valentine’s Day if you’re in love, or just like candy and plenty of it. Or you’re a candy-selling conglomerate.
  • In most provinces, there’s a statutory holiday–Family Day! And it’s on a Monday, for a nice three-day weekend.
  • It’s shorter than normal, if you feel the months drag.

Downsides of February:

  • It’s shorter than normal, so you have less time to complete month-long projects.
  • Snow is still possible.
  • It’s still another month until Daylight Saving Time–the correct time!

As I type this, we are seeing our first intermittent snow of the winter. I disapprove.

I still find these weird things groovy

As a kid, I loved these things. As an adult, I still do, even if my approach to them now is more…nuanced.

When I was nine years old, I remember watching Chariots of the Gods in Duncan’s sole movie theatre. It was cheesy good fun. Someone threw their bucket of popcorn at the screen. Not a true believer, I guess. I also watched Mysterious Monsters in 1976, which, if I remember accurately, imagined Bigfoot as being kind of a rude jerk to people, crashing into their cabins and making a mess.

These aliens and monsters undoubtedly tap into some part of my psyche that loves the mysterious and unexplained for reasons I, uh, can’t explain. I mean, why is red someone’s favourite colour?

Anywhere, here’s the list of the weird things I still find groovy:

  • Bigfoot/Yeti. Will also answer to Sasquatch/Abominable Snowman.
  • The Loch Ness Monster and other similar creatures, like the more local Ogopogo.
  • Ghosts, poltergeists and the like. Boo!
  • UFOs or as they are often called now, UAPs. To a lesser degree: aliens [guy from Ancient Aliens gesturing].
  • Cryptoids. These are really adjacent to the first two items.

There’s other wacky stuff as a kid that I found interesting, but more in a horror story kind of way, like:

  • Witches, vampires and the like
  • Demons, and all that (the Satanic panic of my youth was something I found highly amusing)

Now, as someone pretending to be a relatively sophisticated adult, do I actually believe in any of these things? Not really.

BUT.

I am willing to entertain the notion that some of these things may exist. It does make me wonder why we have yet to uncover incontrovertible proof, though. Also, it’s hella (as they say) easy to fake photos, video and other evidence these days. Also also, there’s about a billion ghost hunting and UFO shows around, which kind of dilutes the mystery and turns it into Product.

But in the end, it doesn’t really matter to me. The best part about a mystery is the mystery. Once it’s solved, you shrug and move on. I don’t want to shrug, I want to revel in the delicious and improbable possibility of a big stinky humanoid wandering the forests of the Pacific Northwest and who isn’t just a tall hippie opposed to bathing on principle. Like Mulder, I want to believe.

I’m willing to settle for being entertained.

Politics 2025

In summary:

[image of Pennywise the clown here]

But more seriously, my hopes are modest:

  • In Canada, I hope the federal Liberals elect a competent, interesting and articulate new leader and go on to win another minority or maybe even majority government. For a long time the Conservatives have had a big lead in the polls, but it seems suddenly shaky after Trudeau announced he is stepping down. Pollievre would be a terrible prime minster, as he’s completely consumed by ideology and politics–and is out of step with most Canadians on many core issues and values. I’m not a huge Liberal fan or anything, but they would be far, far better than anything we’d get under Pollievre’s leadership.
  • In the U.S. it’s simpler still: That Trump and his acolytes don’t destroy democracy. It’s too early to call it yet, but early signs are not looking good.

And that’s all I have to say about politics. Now I must take a bath to cleanse my body, if not my soul.

Have a kitten as reward for reading this:

Is nostalgia bad?

Yes!

But also no.

I think nostalgia can be healthy, as it provides an anchor to a past that is presumably pleasant and nice to reference back to. It can be a big warm fuzzy to embrace on a dull, rainy day, or when you’re feeling down and want a little mental boost.

It becomes bad or even dangerous when you ignore the things that were not so great in the past, or when you embrace those things instead.

For me, nostalgia is childhood memories of family activities like travelling, hanging out at picnics, going to movies and playing in the backyard, or bouncing tennis balls off the back of the high school gym (and occasionally hitting a ball at a bad angle, causing it to skyrocket up and disappear somewhere on the roof. I wonder how many balls ended up there?)

Sometimes my nostalgia goes retro and I think about what technology was like in the early 1990s, how I added a 2X CD-ROM drive to my first PC in 1994 so I could play Myst, or wrote a batch file to present a screen on boot-up that let me launch different DOS games, or boot into Windows 3.1 if I wanted to get my GUI on.

But in all of these warm, fuzzy memories, there is always some darkness. The fights with friends, the ignorance or mean-spirited behaviour of others, or little things like growing up under the existential threat of nuclear annihilation!

Mostly, though, my dives into nostalgia are like easing myself into the cool waters of a lazy river on a warm summer day. I’ll stop here before I start mixing metaphors.

It’s been almost five years since I saw a movie in a theatre

That movie was Pixar’s Onward. It was fine, mid-tier Pixar stuff. At the time–the first week of Marc 2020–I had no idea we were on the verge of movie theatres and nearly all other retail shutting down due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Onward ended up on Disney+ before the end of the month, mere weeks after it opened. I could have saved $12 or whatever if we’d waited.

Since then, the movie-going with Nic has been replaced with birding. Birding is better because it gets you outside, you get exercise, you see birds, and going to a movie always seemed like a weird way to socialize, since you don’t actually speak during the length of the film, only before and after.

Do I miss going out to movies? Given that theatres have been open for actual years again, I’d have to say no. I no longer have the urge to see something new ASAP. I’d actually wait for reviews before seeing a new Star Wars movie. Nothing else gets me excited enough that I just can’t wait for streaming, VoD or just skipping it altogether. Sorry, Marvel, I’m just not that into you anymore.

Part of it is likely just getting older and having shifting priorities. I don’t need big and loud now. Quiet and deep works just fine.

I suppose I should eventually get around to watching Inside Out 2, though. I hear it’s quite good. And it’s on Disney+, so no need to go to a theatre!

A farewell to January 2025, with my foot firmly planted in its monthly butt

Sometimes I am glad a particular month is over. Sometimes a month was mostly fun or rewarding.

And then there is January 2025, the start of a new calendar year and a month that was just kind of horrible, mostly due to health issues. Let’s look:

  • I did not run. The month began two days after I mangled the heels of my hands on my last run, due to tripping and falling hard on a sidewalk. Technically, I could still run today, but that is unlikely. Running is something that keeps me centered and focused. Not running does not help me achieve these things.
  • Any month I get blood taken three times is not a good month.
  • One day I logged 190 steps because I was bedridden, feverish and in a kind of delirium thanks to an infection.
  • Said infection plagued me for more than the first half of the month.
  • 11 days of outpatient IV therapy.
  • Having to shower, sleep and exist for those 11 days with an IV in my arm (five days left, six days right).
  • Still awaiting tests, including my first-ever MRI scan, for possible follow-up issues.
  • Speaking of firsts, I had my first CT-scan.
  • And all those IVs? The first one was also my very first.
  • Strata nonsense added greatly to my stress. I still haven’t found an effective way to deal with it. The stress, that is.
  • My camera stopped working, though technically that happened before January.
  • I leaned into comfort food a lot. I had Pop Tarts. Surprisingly, I was only up a modest 0.4 pounds for the month.
  • My sleep scores have been generally terrible–too much stress, generally not enough of everything else. I had one score of 81 (rating: good) shortly after the IV therapy wrapped up. It feels like a dream now.
  • No drawing. My last was at the end of December.
  • Blogging was down and I spent a lot of time staring at a blinking cursor.

On the plus side:

  • I got Jeff red velvet cake for his birthday and it was yummy, the perfect indulgence.
  • It didn’t snow (that may change in early February, sadly).

Will I write 22 posts tomorrow?

This would ensure1I can never remember if I should use “ensure” or “insure” I maintain my average of two blog posts per day (62 for the month of January), an arbitrary metric I settled on a few years ago to keep the ol’ writing juices flowing. Don’t ask what’s in writing juice.

The answer is very likely no. But it would be kind of amazing to see what I’d write over the course of those 22 posts.

I must conclude this post with typing cat.