And as of yesterday, it was worse, when I tipped the scales at over 178 pounds for the first time in 12 years.
This is what a full month of working from home looks like, where access to snacks is easy and constant. This is what a pandemic does to my waistline. It expands it.
Looking back since the actual start of WFH on March 18, I can see most of the damage was done in the last 10 days of March, when I quickly packed on more than five pounds. Through April my weight has regularly gone up and down, so ending with only a one pound weight gain seems pretty decent, considering I had put few controls on my eating.
That will change in May because I am now only 10 pounds shy of the overweight version of me that was told by a doctor at a clinic in 2008 that I was a year away from Type II diabetes on my present course.
Some things are different now, of course. I do generally eat much better than I did back then. I still run or work out on the treadmill (though that waned in this last week) and I’ve eliminated sugary drinks from my diet (and am starting to drink more water).
Still, 41 pounds of fat is a lot of fat. I am fat. Jeans are no longer comfortable. I slovenly wear sweatpants and pretend I’m being hip, somehow. I know I need to cut out the snacking, so some exercise every day and get that slim ‘n sexy figure back.
On another positive note, with campus shut down, I was guaranteed to go donut-free for the month. And shall do so again.
Here’s to a slimmer ‘n trimmer May.
The fatty stats:
April 1: 176.3 pounds April 30: 177.3 pounds (up 1.0 pounds)
Year to date: From 171.8 to 177.3 pounds (up 5.5 pounds)
And the body fat:
April 1: 22.5% (39.6 pounds of fat) April 30: 23.1% (41 pounds of fat) (up 1.4 pounds)
I started working from home on March 18. It’s April 23 as I write this, so 37 days later. It feels like a hundred years.
A few things have changed. There is now talk of easing some restrictions. The Saskatchewan government has announced its plans for Phase 1 and 2 (of 5) as follows (quoting from the CBC News story linked above):
Beginning May 4, restrictions on certain medical practices in Saskatchewan, such as dentistry, optometry and chiropractic therapy, will be lifted along with restrictions on fishing and boating. Golf courses will open mid-May and campgrounds on June 1.
The second phase of the province’s plan is to begin May 19, when some retail businesses, such as bookstores, jewelry stores, sporting goods stores and electronics shops, will reopen.
(Note that golf courses never actually closed in B.C.)
B.C. is widely expected to announce its own plans to ease restrictions next week, and will probably follow similar measures to what Saskatchewan is doing.
I don’t see anything about re-opening schools, whether public or post-secondary and when I try to imagine how campuses could have students safely return, the lengths required to keep people apart seem almost impossible to overcome. One-way hallways? Classes with only half as many students (where would the other half be)? Staggering students at end of class so they leave one at a time? Have courses start and end at different times? Or on different days? I mean, all of these things are doable, but you’re constantly fighting against the inherent design of schools, which is to pack rooms full of people, sometimes hundreds of people.
That said, I would not be surprised if my work at home order is lifted before the end of May because I think the desire to re-open schools may collide with caution and caution may lose.
On the home front, the scarcity of the first few weeks when shopping has largely dried up, save for a few select items which are still hard to find. We’ve been able to get toilet paper (still a limit of one package per customer) each time we’ve gone shopping (separately now, never together), so we now have more than 64 rolls, more than we ever had in the pre-pandemic times. We’ve also finally managed to stock up on other paper products such as napkins and paper towels. Most of the usual food we buy has been in stock. The days of having to settle for chili-style baked beans are over. For now, anyway.
Two changes in New Westminster in respond to the virus:
The crosswalk light at the corner of Fader and Braid is normally pedestrian-activated. No more! It now changes automatically so you don’t have to press the filthy, virus-laden button (which I did when I went out today, because I pressed first, read after).
And the where East Columbia turns into North Road, right near were I turn in to the river trail to walk or run, they have closed off part of the lane adjacent to the sidewalk on the bridge to allow people to keep apart without getting run down by semis.
This is both nice to see and kind of bonkers that it’s needed. But kudos to the city for doing these things. I feel a smidgen safer about not keeping myself cooped up.
Thinking ahead, we already know a few things. All major outdoor events are already canceled:
Pride parade
Celebration of Light fireworks
PNE
Concerts and festivals (Folk Festival in July, etc.)
I suspect that community pools will stay shut for the summer. The one in Hume Park normally opens in late June and the idea of it opening in just over two months seems highly implausible. It will be weird to see it sit empty on hot summer days. But I could end up being wrong.
And that’s the thing. Governments want to be cautious–and this is good–but how long will they really keep some things locked down? I can easily see the pressure to open more things up as the weeks turn into months.
For myself, I just want to buy groceries without having to give a wide berth to every other shopper, because like schools, grocery stores were not designed to keep people apart, and the experience of shopping has become awful as a result (as has most other things that require being outside of the home).
I occasionally toy with the idea of starting a journal again. While this blog mostly serves that purpose, there are things that I don’t really want or need to discuss publicly (ie. here), but might be helpful to write down somewhere. It’s kind of like how I make shopping lists, but wouldn’t post them publicly because who cares about my shopping lists?
Shopping lists will suddenly become a thing now.
I have the Day One app and despite some quibbles with it, it functions fine as an actual journal, yet I’ve only written in it a few times. Maybe committing to it on a daily basis would help my overall writing, as well as my state of mind, especially in these nutty pandemic times.
For example, a few days ago I wrote on the board on the fridge: Do something positive or productive every day. I wrote this for myself and my partner, thinking it would help us find something good in every day, even if the overall day was a bit poo. These positive or productive things would be good for recording in a journal. Today’s entry would be something like: Um…I was kind of lazy today, actually. I offered advice. I helped my partner with a technical issue on the iPad. I put away the clean dishes and loaded the dishwasher with the dirty ones. Okay, I guess I wasn’t totally lazy. But I could look back on this in a journal and nod at how I always put the dishes away, because I’m highly organized or something.
Hmm. I will have to ponder this journal thing. It seems like a positive step, with no real downsides, so I don’t have a good reason to say no to it.
I went to London Drugs today, to get things both trivial (bubble bath) and not (toilet paper). It was my second time there since the pandemic forced us all into “physical distancing.”
Most of the Lougheed Town Centre mall is closed. The only ones open are London Drugs, Walmart, and a couple of banks. Oh, and Tim Hortons. The food court is nominally open, but only for takeout–the entire seating area is taped off. Most food outlets appeared to be closed.
I walked to the mall, taking my usual scenic router, with a brief detour to Burnaby Lake, to see hoe many cars were at the Avalon parking lot near the dam. There were a fair number, though somewhat surprisingly, not as many as when I was there last on March 21. There were new signs up regarding physical distancing, including this one:
Also handy if you need to determine if you are about to be attacked by a bald eagle.
The unfortunate thing here is that much of the trail around the lake (including the part right behind this sign) is pretty narrow, so you can’t even get 2 meters apart, even if you walk along the edges. I guess as long as you don’t sneeze into someone’s face…
I also found this on the path leading into Burnaby Lake:
This angers me, because it’s not just litter, it’s putting others at risk. A mask is by design going to be covered with the germs of the person wearing it. It should be disposed of responsibly, and carefully, not tossed on the ground. Imagine this scenario:
Asymptomatic person wears mask, then decides to discard it on the ground because they are thoughtless and dumb. Minutes later a family comes along with a young child. The child sees the mask and immediately picks it up to exam it, because it’s “neat.” The (hopefully) horrified parents tell the kid to drop it, but it’s too late–the kid is now carrying the virus. The family returns home, where they live with their grandparents. The kid eventually spreads the virus to everyone. One of the grandparents, already in less than good health, becomes very ill and ultimately dies.
All because someone was too lazy and irresponsible to dispose of their mask safely.
Unlikely? Maybe. Possible? Absolutely.
Passing through Hume Park, I noticed a new sign aimed at my least favorite people, dog owners:
PSAs featuring terrible puns are OK by me
I find the language interesting. “Please keep your pet leashed to help keep out parks and trails open.” At first glance, this doesn’t seem to be related to the pandemic, until you realize they would never close the park because off-leash dogs were running around, so it’s totally about the pandemic and fears associated with having pets running loose and, I guess, potentially spreading the virus? I’m not sure if that’s possible, but I like the city giving it to dog owners, anyway, because I had my fill of off-leash dogs way back. I’m also guessing the signs went up after complaints were raised, which would also be good.
On the way to the mall, I encountered a fair number of people (it was another unseasonably warm and sunny afternoon), but managed to keep my distance without difficulty and enjoyed just being out in the sunshine. It felt good and for moments at a time I could forget everything else.
Then I get to a pedestrian bridge that crosses over Stony Creek and see this:
This is impressive in its simplicity and clarity, yet also terrifying in how it doesn’t actually mention the pandemic, other than the covid19 in the URL at the bottom. It’s like, “This is your life now. STAY APART.”
I didn’t pass anyone on the bridge to find out how well others know right from left.
Once at the mall, I was greeted by several signs related to the pandemic (safety tips and a list of the few open stores) and a giant hand sanitizer dispenser, which gushed sanitizer into my awaiting hands.
London Drugs is now set up for physical distancing, which stickers on the floor showing you where to stand at the checkouts. The checkouts have Plexiglas barriers to protect the cashiers–it’s like they’re suddenly inside the salad bar. The Plexiglas is thick enough that talking to the cashier feels a bit like using the Cone of Silence from Get Smart.
They also had a giant stack of baskets at the front of the store that had a sign declaring them clean and ready to use. Buggies were similarly arranged:
Technically the arrow should be pointing to the right, unless there are buggies under the floor.
It’s a lot trickier to maintain distance inside a store, because stores are not really designed to keep people apart. While ducking through aisles and avoiding others, I observed a phenomenon I noticed again later today when I went grocery shopping at Save On Foods. While some people clearly try to avoid others and some make at least a marginal effort to do the same, a small set of people appear to be making little to no effort to avoid others and several of these people brushed by me multiple times. The one thing they all had in common?
They were all wearing masks.
It seems some people may be viewing masks as some magical shield that means you no longer have to worry about anything.
These people are dumb. And they make me nervous, and make shopping even more unpleasant now than it already is.
On the way out I went to use this sanitizer station in front of the taped-off playground–which looks like an abandoned crime scene–but the dispenser was empty so I made note to note touch anything for the next 30 minutes. Fortunately the mall has automatic doors at the entrance.
On the walk home, a guy on the sidewalk passed by carrying a take-out bag from White Spot. He was wearing a mask. If that isn’t a sign of the times, I don’t know what is. It also made me want a Legendary burger.
On North Road another guy passed by wearing a mask, as well as a bike helmet. He was not riding a bike, or even walking a bike. There was no bike. I have no idea what was going on there. I kept walking.
As I mentioned, more of the “I can do anything, I’m wearing a mask!” people were at Save On Foods, but I was buying a ton of stuff (to minimize trips) and used a buggy, which is a great way to keep people from getting too close. Also it was kind of fun to toodle around the store with it. The last time I used a buggy while grocery shopping was…probably never.
I try not to think too much about it, but every time I got to a store, I wonder how long it will be before we can shop normally again. A few more weeks? Months? Longer? I’m not sure I’d want someone to tell me the answer now, if they knew.
I also took a few pics of things not related to COVID-19 while I was out. These will be posted separately, so they don’t get infected by this post.
I got a notification on my watch and like any well-trained modern technology user, I checked it out, to find this:
Nice indeed! There are a few issues with this, though:
I do not own an elliptical
I was sitting in my chair at the computer doing pretty much the opposite of burning calories. How many calories are consumed by using your eyes to read text off a screen? I’m assuming not many.
This raises the question of how the Fitbit Inspire HR, which was in my pocket at the time, somehow decided I not only did an impossible workout, but did it for 19 minutes. Normally there would be some semi-plausible explanation, like I was moving back and forth from one room to another, and it was misinterpreting that as exercise, but no, I was sitting still in a chair.
Now, I have tricked my Apple watch into thinking I did a few minutes of exercise by vigorously singing along to music with the headphones on, but that’s one of those semi-plausible things. With the Fitbit the only way I could have been less active is if I was sleeping.
It is a mystery, then, and a reminder that while technology can be great, it can also fall flat on its shiny metal face.
There is no sugar-coating this month’s report, though it might seem accurate to say everything in the report was coated in sugar, then eaten by me.
I am up 3.9 pounds for the year to date. This is not good, as I had been trending down. Looking at the calendar, I see that I impressively gained five pounds in the ten days from March 21-31.
What happened? Cookies, and plenty of them.
But also the global pandemic, which is actually connected to the cookies. While others were hoarding toilet paper, I was hoarding food, specifically hoarding it in my mouth and then in my belly. More than any other time in recent memory the stuff I ate was comfort food. I apparently needed a lot of comfort.
It’s not a coincidence that I started working from home on March 18.
For April I simply vow to improve. The cookies are gone, I’m going to resume regular workouts, and just generally try to do better on what I eat. At least I didn’t have any donuts.
The fat-filled stats:
March 1: 169.8 pounds March 31: 175.7 pounds (up 5.9 pounds)
Year to date: From 171.8 to 175.7 pounds (up 3.9 pounds)
And the body fat:
March 1: 22% (37.3 pounds of fat) March 31: 22.4% (39.4 pounds of fat) (up 2.1 pounds)
If I go back all the way to the start of the year–you know, three months ago–I had probably heard about the coronavirus that was starting to appear in China, but it was otherwise just another news story in the background, like so many others.
Today, two days from April, I am in my third week of working from home, the place I work is all but locked down, businesses that aren’t “essential services” are closed, transit is ghost trains and empty buses, and it’s still ridiculously difficult to buy toilet paper, which is a fitting epitaph for this species if we manage to extinguish ourselves–maybe not with this virus, but perhaps with another.
For the first time I am keenly aware of sharing the sidewalk with others. Walks are now solitary affairs, with wide berths given to others. Runs have become stressful exercises (ho ho) in avoidance. Visiting friends has gone virtual. I look at Facebook almost every day (ew).
It’s awful. But enough about Facebook.
The news coverage of COVID-19 is constant and ever-present. You can’t do anything without seeing or hearing the effects of the virus (as I write this, 16 stories on the CBC News website are about COVID-19. That’s all of the stories, by the way). I wonder how long I’ll be working from home; through April seems like a safe bet (UPDATE, September 30: lol as the kids say. I was mega-wrong here. The college I work at is sticking with online courses for most classes, until April…of 2021. By then work from home will have lasted over one full year). Beyond that, it all depends on how under control the virus is. This is the first global pandemic in the age of social media and easy, world-spanning travel, so we are in a very real sense in uncharted territory now.
Some things haven’t changed. I get up in the morning and have my usual breakfast. I work out on the treadmill. I write on this blog. But even the regular things have that undercurrent of unreality to them because I know these normal routines are set against a world that is operating dramatically differently than it was a couple of months ago.
I’m curious about what sort of blog post I’ll be making in June, as we reach the middle of the year and the start of summer. Will things be starting to return to normal, or will we be settling in for longer, more permanent changes to how our whole society works? I don’t know. I’m not even sure I want to know.
But we’ll see in three months. Until then, interesting times.
Today started out pretty nice–the temperature got up to around 12 degrees, it was mostly sunny. A beautiful day to go for a walk or, in my case, a run.
I planned to go to Burnaby Lake, and was set to run clockwise, starting on the south side of the lake.
There were a lot of people on the river trail as I made my way to the lake. I feared the worst, but pressed on. At the lake so many people were crowding on the top of the dam that I actually stood back and waited a few minutes for them to clear out before making my way across.
I had to pee. The Jiffy John was, naturally, occupied.
I came out and there were groups of people on the trail near the parking lot (families and such), so I thought I’d walk to the road and actually start my run there, allowing me to go directly onto the Avalon Trail, which is wider and can more readily accommodate more people and the social distancing that is the vogue in these plague-filled days.
Sign at entrance to Burnaby Lake
The idea of maintaining 2 meters on a park trail is largely a fantasy because the trails are often barely that wide to begin with, and people aren’t terribly likely to traipse through the skunk cabbage just to comply. But still, it’s possible to at least spread out and do your best. Besides, Burnaby Lake isn’t exactly the seawall at Stanley Park in terms of popularity.
Except today it kind of was. I looked down the road to the Avalon Trail and it was packed full of people–more than I’ve ever seen, groups moving in both directions, with more feeding in from the trail connecting to it from the parking lot.
And the parking lot? Normally in late March, even on a nice day, the lot would have maybe a half dozen vehicles in it. Today they were parking in the middle, the lot nearly full.
Avalon parking lot. Some of these cars are not maintaining social distance.
The lot is rarely this full during the peak of summer.
Now, I get annoyed at having a lot of people on the trail when I’m running when there isn’t a pandemic. But during one? It’s dumb. These people are basically doing the opposite of what they should be. Instead of staying home, they are going out. That itself is fine. They are going to a park. Also fine.
They are all going to the same park and jamming the trails with huge crowds of people. This is not fine. This is, in fact, how you spread the virus.
Metro Vancouver is partly to blame here. In the city of Vancouver the Parks Board has shut all of the parking lots for parks and beaches. While that won’t stop everyone, you can see by the above photo that it may have stopped dozens.
I was initially looking forward to heading out because the forecast was for rain showers and while some would still be out no matter what the weather, a lot would have stayed inside and watched Frozen with their kids for the billionth time. But the weather changed and instead we got a mix of sun and clouds.
I left without running. The stress of having to push through the crowds was too much. I wouldn’t have enjoyed the experience. Ironically, partway on the walk back it did start to shower a bit, but too little, too late.
My next outdoor run will only happen if it’s raining even before I step outside.
I didn’t even realize I was on an egg quest until I went shopping for eggs.
Of course, in this time of panic-buying and hoarding, the grocery store had no eggs. Like, none at all, not even the most expensive, free range “the chickens that laid these live better lives than you do” eggs.
I went across the street to Shoppers Drug Mart as they have a few aisles devoted to groceries. I wasn’t expecting them to have any eggs, but lo, they did! I grabbed a dozen (I didn’t see any signs indicating limits but I’m not a panic-filled hoarder) and went to the checkout…where the cashier was standing behind a giant plexiglass partition. It had a cutout in the bottom for me to slide the eggs through so he could scan them. He did so and placed the eggs and the receipt at the end of the till, away from his body.
It was a bit weird.
But now I can have eggs for breakfast for at least six days.
I normally don’t post political cartoons, but I’m making an exception here because I think this one perfectly captures the essence of a person entirely unfit for the position he holds and his real priority–himself.
For future generations (if any): This refers to the COVID-19 global pandemic of 2020
Closures continue, though we’re not in full stay-at-home mode yet like California, where its population of 40 million people (more than all of Canada) are literally being asked to stay home and not go anywhere unless it is for an essential service.
Here’s the latest bunch of things I can’t do:
Go out for dinner (all restaurants are closed except for take out and delivery)
Get a coffee (Starbucks is closed. Technically, I still can go because they are keeping stores close to emergency services open and there is one a few blocks from Royal Columbian hospital that’s open, so if society begins to totally collapse and I want a final oat fudge bar, I’m set. For now.)
Go to a playground in Vancouver (the ones in New West are still open for the time being, with signs basically telling kids not to play together which…uh, good luck with that?)
Go to work (work from home started on Wednesday; staff are only going in on an as-needed basis)
Buy groceries between 7-8 a.m. (reserved for seniors and those at risk, though I’d only shop this early if I was doing it in a dream, anyway)
Go to The Other 11 Months local NaNoWriMo weekly writing group (postponed indefinitely for obvious reasons, though I haven’t gone for quite awhile due to my extended writing slump)
But to not go all Negative Nellie, here are things I can do:
Grab a bunch of free games from services ranging from Apple’s App Store to gog.com
Buy Serif’s line of excellent Affinity software for 50% off
Go outside, provided I practice social distancing (as a bonus, the weather has finally been sunny and mild this week)
Ride the bus for free and enter through the rear doors (to promote social distancing)
Purchase a Nintendo Switch (just kidding, this thing is sold out everywhere)
Buy the new iPad Pro with LIDAR! Why would I want an iPad with LIDAR? I do not know.
The next phase of this pandemic will be interesting. Everyone will adjust to the restrictions and the novelty of it will keep things interesting for a few weeks. But I suspect a lot of people think it will also be over in a few weeks and if it’s not…what next? People lived through years of war, but in our hyper social media-dominated world, will we as a society have what it takes to keep it together if all of this starts stretching past weeks and into months?
