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)
On the way to Burnaby Lake, I took this shot of some flowering trees. Pretty!
And a bonus shot of a sign on an electrical box in Lower Hume Park, near the intersection of East Columbia Street. I have no idea what the bird thing is, other than a bird. Thing. It looks like something Picasso might have sketched. It also seems to be suggesting that if you have a key, you still shouldn’t open this. No!
“I understand it could be helpful to open this.” – Donald Trump
Nic and I went for a stroll around the southern half of Burnaby Lake today, taking pictures, enjoying nature and, of course, avoiding people.
The weather was mild, but cloudy and this probably scared a few people off. The majority of those on the trail seemed to be mindful to keep the 2 meters away, or at least as best they could manage, as much of the trail isn’t even 2 meters wide. There were a few dopes, of course, and a surprisingly large number of cyclists. The entrance to the park had a giant sandwich board in place basically saying TAKE YOUR BIKE ELSEWHERE. YES, YOU. But a lot of people are clearly ignoring these signs, perhaps because they think there is no enforcement right now–which may be true, as I did not see any park people or vehicles.
I did see greenery, water and ducks, some of which are below.
First, the standard shot of Burnaby Lake, taken from the bridge at Deer Lake Brook. You can see the baby lily pads popping up all over, as well as the general greenery filling in along the shore.
Next is the little pond adjacent to the lake with a partially sunken log that is popular with ducks. The pond is smaller than usual as we haven’t had much rain for a few months. But the ducks were still there.
This pond is nearby to the other one and nicely captures the fact that the area around the lake is marshland.
And there were a number of these signs dotting the sides of the trail reminding us that we live in COVID times. As I said above, people were generally pretty good about not getting elbow to elbow, though there’s always a few dingbats out and aboot.
Nic was using his telephoto lens to capture amazing shots of birds. Meanwhile I managed this with my iPhone 8:
If I crop as much as I dare, you can see this:
It’s not great, but at least you can tell they are birds. They preened for a bit, then took off, probably because we were standing there staring at them.
Overall, it was a nice outing and the cloudy weather likely worked to our benefit, keeping crowds down. It would have been great running weather, so I may vow yet again to try next weekend to get off the treadmill and into nature and all that.
I’ve noticed a few glitches in Firefox lately, namely it sometimes doesn’t load my pinned tab on start-up (Gmail) or my default site (this very blog). It also seems less snappy than before. It’s possible these problems are related to extensions. For example, I use FVD Speed Dial to replace the new tab page with a pile o’ thumbnails for websites I frequent. I find this works way better for me than bookmarks because I can use two distinct visual cues to quickly choose the site I want: location of the thumbnail (they don’t shift around) and the actual look of the thumbnail (usually a miniature representation of the site). But I have so many of these that Firefox actually takes what feels like a long time to load up.
So last week I decided to again try Microsoft’s Chromium-based version of Edge. It now has Collections, which are basically parts of or entire sites that you can name and group together. I thought this might make a handy substitute for the speed dials and it actually is pretty nice.
But then, while doing work (actual paid work, as I’m still working from home) I noticed in Footprints (the system we use for managing incidents) it would not link knowledge base articles to tickets, requiring me to either not link (bad) or manually generate the link and paste it in (tedious). I just gave up and stopped using Edge.
There might be a fix for this issue and I can work around it, but I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m getting tired of fixing things that don’t work for reasons unknown, and workarounds aren’t that great, either. I want things to actually function properly, without a song and dance. I don’t expect perfection, but I do expect all the basics to behave as you’d expect.
So Edge has been kicked to the curb again. It’s too bad, in a way, because it is pretty snappy, and has some unique features (like the aforementioned collections). On the other hand, though Microsoft claims to care about my privacy, they are a giant corporation and while not as loose with ethics as Google (who basically inverted their famous “Don’t be evil” motto), I’m not sure I entirely trust them, either, as ads are definitely a part of their business in a way they aren’t for Mozilla (or Apple, but Safari sucks and it’s not on PC, anyway).
I’ll probably try Edge again at some point, though. The collections idea intrigues me. And the snappiness was nice.
Side note: For some reason have highlighted products in bold, in a wacky throwback to John C. Dvorak’s old columns in PC Magazine.
EDIT: I did try Edge again, just now (the morning after) and in a CBC News story there were big gaps in a story that I assumed were ads being blocked, but no, it was Twitter embeds. I verified that Twitter is the one tracker on the site blocked by default (by Edge), so I set it to allow tracking. It still won’t show tweets. On the one hand, it’s Twitter, so what am I really losing? On the other, if I want to see tweets, it should just work if I say, “Thou shalt allow tweets.” Even the usual routine of clearing cache and cookies, disabling ad blockers, restarting thew browser etc. has no effect. Edge, you stink!
EDIT, The Sequel: I switched over to the Mac mini to do some things and on a lark decided to try Edge because I am a glutton for punishment. Two things:
Twitter embeds are working on the CBC News site. Weird, but good.
Collections, which are supposed to sync across different systems, do not appear to be syncing, so boo. It may just be syncing slowly, though (hopefully not syncing into the depths to never be seen again).
Bonus third thing: I keep trying to spend more time on the Mac, because it’s where my main writing app is, and keep failing because I can never get mice working the way I want. This tasks me as Kirk tasked Khan. I’m hoping I get a better ending (than Khan).
EDIT, The Sequel to the Sequel: Tried a bunch of typical troubleshooting steps to get Collections to appear/sync on the Mac but no go. Alas. It is hard to turn off the li’l troubleshooter in me, but I will try for now.
While I was on the Mac I also tried the Logitech MX 720 mouse again, both on Bluetooth and with the receiver, after doing a firmware update. And it’s still kind of juddery and glitchy instead of smooth, noticeably worse than the Microsoft Sculpt mouse on Bluetooth, so this does appear to be a Logitech thing. Too bad the Sculpt mouse is so basic. Also I feel a bit dirty using a mouse with a dedicated Windows key on a Mac.
I’ll try yet again next week (update: on PC, that is).
I actually took this on April 23, but didn’t post it then, so pretend I took it today. As I’ve taken photos of the many flowers blooming in the neighborhood, it seems that tulips are the most popular, as they are everywhere. I suspect it’s the variety of colors that draws a lot of people to growing them. That’s just my guess, though, I’m no flowerologist.
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.
Jeff hooked up the air conditioning today as it’s been weirdly (but nicely) warm the past few weeks or so.
It rained later in the morning.
So it’s still April.
The sun came out later and it got nice and warm again, so the weather didn’t completely mock us. And speaking of weather, I looked back at a post in February noting that it had rained 28 of 31 days in January. A little rain now does not seem so bad in comparison. (But only a little.)
I was not overly active today, so decided I better hit ye olde treadmill to make up for it. It was fine. I seemed to sweat more than usual. The stats almost look like I forgot to fix my copy and paste, but my pace and distance were in fact identical to the last workout. BPM was up a little, but not a lot, and I burned off a few more of the million calories I need to go through to get back to my usual weight.
Baby (elephant) steps…
Speed: 6.5 km/h
Incline: 10
Pace: 9:31/km (9:31 km/h)
Time: 30:04 (30:03)
Distance: 3.15 km (3.15 km)
Calories burned: 296 (284)
BPM: 141 (137)
