From today’s walk. Just a leaf.
Walk 127 and 128: Working through the laziness
Yesterday was a run day, but I didn’t run, because the weather was poop. Not literal poop, though these days I don’t entirely rule out that possibility.
I contemplated doing a workout on the treadmill, but instead I just lazed around, stuffed my face, and finally barely hit my 10,000-step goal around 9:30 p.m.
I resolved to do better today and planned a walk to at least the end of the river trail and back. I ended up going to the lake and split the walk in two, which turned out to be handy, as each leg was quite different.
The first walk was brisk, with an overall pace of just under nine minutes per km. I felt perky, but had to use the loo when I got to the lake, so I declared the first walk done at 4.02 km.
After sipping some water at the fountain by the dam (still nort packed up for the winter yet, to my surprise[though it has been pretty mild[), I started off again, but upon reaching the river trail, I found myself wanting to run and I ran most of the way back from there, coming in with what amounts to a very slow running pace of 6:50/km. I had one km of pure running that was 5:44/km–not bad for a non-run!
Overall, with the mild conditions, gentle breeze and patchy blue sky, it was nice to get out and get some exercise in. Even the river was less stinky than it has been lately.
Tomorrow, I should do a proper run.
Stats:
Walk 127
Average pace: 8:57/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Distance: 4.02 km
Time: 35:58
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 10°C
Humidity: 84%
Wind: low
BPM: 116
Weight: 167.3 pounds
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255
Total distance to date: 922.91 km
And:
Walk 128
Average pace: 6:50/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Distance: 4.03 km
Time: 27:32
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 11°C
Humidity: 82%
Wind: low
BPM: 133
Weight: 167.3 pounds
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255
Total distance to date: 922.91 km
Where will this site be in 2025?
Probably not on the moon. But never say never.
The WordPress 6.7 update got pushed out tonight, with a few new features. Normally I’d be interested, but since I’m actively trying to find a replacement for WP, not so much now.
Speaking of, I have one more major platform to try: Ghost. There will be others, but this is the main contender that’s still left.
Currently, Posthaven is looking decent, but not quite there (but maybe?) with Pika and Scribbles as lesser possibilities (I love Scribbles’ UI, but it focuses almost exclusively on text).
I’ll try to test Ghost soon™, but I have to admit I’m a little burnt out on all the options and fiddling and whatnot. I really hoped Blogstatic would be The One, but it wasn’t. They are making some changes soon, and I gave them feedback that they seemed to appreciate, so I may look at it again at some point.
UPDATE, November 18, 2024: Blogstatic has rebranded to BlogMaker and eliminated all plans in favour of one that gives you unlimited blogs. Neat! But now, instead of paying $50 per year for a single blog, you pay $25 a month for as many as you want. So if you only want a single blog, this is now six times more expensive, or a 500% increase in price, if you prefer. This putsBlogstaticBlogMaker firmly in the HELL NO category.
In the meantime, I really want to post the cat typing GIF again, but I won’t. Instead, this:
More local photos because why the heck not?
I have been out and aboot in my neighbourhood the last few days. Here are a few more shots.
Pen nostalgia
Back in my public school days, I wrote and doodled using a variety of ballpoint pens. I also really loved using fountain pens, and enjoyed the ritual of going to the local stationery store in Duncan, The Letterbox, and buying new ink cartridges for it. The idea of having and keeping a pen instead of just throwing it away when the ink ran out seemed a good one back in the ecologically-aware 1970s.
Alas, fountain pens and left-handed writing do not go great together, so some of my output would get a bit smeary. I adapted and bought faster-drying inks, while also learning to slow my writing, to further let the ink dry before my left hand would smoosh all across everything I’d just written.
Most of my writing with fountain pens was cursive, as the flow of ink from the nib just seemed to lend itself to that. But around grade six or so, I gave up on cursive (mine was fine) and went to printing everything. It was slower, but I enjoyed it more, and modesty aside, I had really nice printing. I even started doing fancy a’s.
Occasionally, I wanted to use different colours of ink to better emphasize certain words or phrases, and this is when I discovered the Bic four-colour pen, which offered:
- Black
- Blue
- Green
- Red
All in the same pen!
It was great. I loved it and kept buying them for years, until I finally just started typing out everything on computers instead.
But a few weeks ago I saw one in the stationery aisle of a drugstore and I had to buy it. And I did!
I still don’t have much need to write things by hand, but I do keep a notepad by my keyboard, and this pen sits next to it, ready to jot down things in four different colours. Sometimes I just click through the colours, like it’s secretly a fidget toy. Maybe it is a fidget toy.
I’m just glad to have one again. I am easily pleased, sometimes.
Leaves leaves leaves
Leaves.
Leaves.
Leaves.
Drawing: Night probe
This is riffing on Chris Silverman’s work, which you can see here: notes.art
I tried to decide if the probe thingie should be drifting over:
- Mountains
- Trees
- Water
- Urban scenery
I went with my original pick (trees), but I struggled to get the trees looking like they fit the rest of the drawing. I also futzed with the probe a lot. Overall, I think it’s not bad. If I keep doing these, my own style will eventually emerge. Probably with Gum Gum People.
For reference, the brushes I used in Procreate were:
- Artistic Crayon (mainly the probe)
- 6B pencil (mostly for the highlights)
- Dry Ink (fill)
- Technical pen (fill, some outlines)
Bonus! Here’s a second version, with tweaks to the moon and with the starry backdrop greatly simplified. I think the ideal might be a cross between the two, but I’ll probably leave this for now and move onto something else.
Building bridges
A few days ago I took my camera to Sapperton Landing and fought with it for an hour. I also took some photos.
Here’s one of the new Pattullo Bridge under construction. It’s scheduled to open in 2025.
This is (I think?) the first time I’ve edited and posted an image from Linux. I used the Pix image editor, which comes pre-installed with Linux Mint. It seems to work okay.
Run 901: My way or the freeway (trail)
The 10-day forecast can be surmised as: rain, with additional rain.
However, today–Sunday–we have a window of a few hours when it’s both mild and dry. I seized upon it and ran today, putting up with the extra people, their dogs and such in order to avoid getting drenched.
To further the goal of avoiding all other people and their pets, I ran clockwise, and chose to take the Freeway Trail, running on it until I got to the 2.7 km mark, where I turned back onto the main loop around the lake. This added variety, but also slowed me down a bit as the freeway trail has more hills than the lake loop and also I just seem to run slower on it. Maybe the nearby din of the highway traffic slightly unnerves me or something.
That said, I still had a very good overall pace of 5:34/km, and experienced no issues, other than having to pause for a few moments to step over a fallen tree on the final km. I would have taken a picture, but it was too far to go back post-run, and I was also paranoid about the weather ganging up on me.
The dogs on the trail were well-behaved, but the Weekend People™ had pretty much all dogs off-leash on the still-stinky river trail. Still, no incidents of note, just disapproving glances (from me).
Overall, a good way to end or start the week, depending on your perspective.
Stats:
Run 901
Average pace: 5:34/km
Training status: Productive
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW, short loop)
Start: 11:49 a.m.
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 27:58
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 12-13°C
Humidity: 80%
Wind: light
BPM: 151
Weight: 167.4
Total distance to date: 6,355 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: HOKA Speedgoat 6 (145/269/414)
Mood
Out for a walk on a misty November day.
Run 900: 900 runs later and I am still bad at math
My only real goal today was to run and get back home before The Rains started. On that count, success!
As for the math, I decided to start my route at the dam, skip the side trails, then turn onto the Piper Mill Trail on my return and take the other side trails on my way back, finishing the run exactly where I started.
Except when I got to that point, I was at 4.7 km. I kept going, over the dam, past the fountain, past the 0K marker and finally hit 5K right by the Jiffy John™, which would have been convenient if I had to use the loo, but I did not.
I didn’t have as much gas in the tank for the final km, but if I had, this would have been my fastest 5K with the Garmin watch. I still had a strong pace of 5:32/km, only two seconds short of my best.
The weather was milder and the two layers were unnecessary, but I wanted to be on the safe side in case the rain moved in earlier than forecast. Somewhat unusually for a weekday, there were a fair number of people out walking, which led to a couple of bottlenecks. When you consider the overall loop is 10.3 km, any bottleneck is kind of weird. But no issues were had in navigation. All dogs were behaved.
The only incident I had was a mild bit of pain in one shin briefly along the Piper Mill Trail. It went away, and it feels fine now, so I think it’s just body weirdness.
Overall, a solid run to end the week. Now I eat gallons of ice cream! I kid, I kid. They’ll be litres, not gallons.
Note: 900 runs are official, but also inaccurate, as I didn't track my runs in the early days. I don't think I missed too many, though, so this should be reasonably close.
Stats:
Run 900
Average pace: 5:32/km
Training status: Productive
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW, short loop)
Start: 10:59 a.m.
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 27:51
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 12°C
Humidity: 81-79%
Wind: light
BPM: 151
Weight: 166.6
Total distance to date: 6,350 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: HOKA Speedgoat 6 (140/261/401)
A night of weird dreams, featuring
My REM sleep was rated Good by my Garmin Forerunner last night, and I think it may have accurately captured things, because I had dreams a-plenty. Here is what I remember of them, using four keywords when I woke up during the night to help:
- gay
- Musk
- Mom
- Tim
Gay: This seemed to be a dream about olden times, like in the 1800s, and was focused on a man who wondered if he really was a man (i.e. straight), musing aloud about the alternative possibility: “It could not be so”. I think he was sighing heavily on a couch or something. The best I can figure is this keyed off images I’ve seen on a social media account called Old Book Illustrations.
Musk: I was with a group of people outside. There was a hill and a lake or some sort of body of water and it had this weird undulating effect that didn’t seem physically possible. Even in the dream it seemed weird. This part is directly related to seeing a gull bobbing on waves on the Fraser River yesterday afternoon, which undulated in the same way.
And yes, Elon Musk was there. At one point, a bunch of helicopters (?) flew in, dropping off a bunch of random vehicles. They were all the vehicles he had owned, which was supposed to be interesting, somehow. Musk babbled on about all of this and someone by he commented on what a showman he was. I replied that he was a con man and a huckster. Even dream me ain’t impressed. This dream had a strange and somewhat poignant turn at the end, as my mom showed up and upon seeing me, she immediately turned her head in a way to get a welcoming kiss, which signalled to me that she clearly recognized me (she did not quite recognize me in April 2023 when we met in person for the last time). But then I asked her, “How are you?” and she couldn’t answer, like the question had no meaning to her. It was odd and a little sad.
Tim: But just in time to save me from the melancholy, I found myself at my old place on East 19th Avenue, where I last lived in 2011. I was apparently on top of a broken staircase outside and trying to figure out how to get down. The son of Tim, my friend and landlord, appeared at the base of the stairs and I noted how much bigger he was from the last time I’d seen him, apparently going from a toddler to maybe 8 years old? Also, the kid looked nothing like Tim’s actual son, but more like one of my brother’s kids, who is obviously now a full-grown adult. The kid seemed to acknowledge my predicament. Then Tim and Sue arrived and I feel others were with them, but I can’t recall who. Tim was completely naked, but it was OK, because they had been attending some event/ritual where being naked was part of the hippie fun. In the dream I could remember what the event was, but not now, alas. No one seemed fussed about Tim’s nakedness. I managed to climb down the back side of the stairs to get back safely to the ground.
There may have been more, but that’s what I remember. My brain is weird.