I think I could have built a robot in less time than it took me to draw one. How can simple things take so long? Anyway, I call this, “How giant robots built the pyramids, on the next Ancient Aliens.”
Inktober 2019 #4: Freeze
“Freeze” might seem easy, but my mind, er, froze, when trying to come up with something. I finally managed this abominable snowmugging.
Inktober 2019 #3: Bait
I wasn’t really sure what to do for this prompt and finally settled on bashing Facebook in a weird, oblique way. But I got to draw a cool shark.
Inktober 2019 #2: Mindless
With a bit of color this time. Is this against the rules? Pink doesn’t cost extra in digital ink.
Inktober 2019 #1: Ring
I tried drawing a ring, like the kind you wear on your finger. It’s harder than you think. Harder for me, anyway. Then I thought of showing a phone ringing, but phones are hard to draw, too. I thought, “What is really easy to draw that also rings? A stick man!”
Well, actually, stick men don’t ring. So I improvised. Here’s my first entry in Inktober 2019, a stick men hanging over a pit of spikes on an exercise ring. Ironically, the one part I cheated on by using a shape is the ring itself.
This is actually one of several drawings I made. I spent a long time working on something else and it sucked corn dogs. Such is art.
Tools used:
- Procreate (for the overall sketch) using the Studio Pen brush
- iPad Pro 10.5 inch
- Apple Pencil (the first one, which is approximately five meters long)
- Affinity Photo for adding the ring (Windows version)
Photo of the Day, September 30, 2019
Cheating slightly, as I took this yesterday. The weather was about the same, though! This is looking toward Burnaby Lake from atop Cariboo Dam. As you might guess, it’s not a very tall dam.
I’m doing Inktober 2019!
No, really. I’m going to do an ink drawing (digitally on my iPad) every day, using the prompts, which are as follows:
I’m going with the “do whatever I can in five minutes” approach, so there’s no huge commitment. Will it result in magic or madness? We’ll find out starting tomorrow!
And just so I don’t forget, here are the official rules from the Inktober site:
- Make a drawing in ink (you can do a pencil under-drawing if you want)
- Post it
- Hashtag it with #inktober and #inktober2019
- Repeat
September 2019: Good, bad, not really ugly
September 2019 in list form:
- The last day of the month was sunny and pleasant. Yay!
- The days are getting noticeably shorter. Boo.
- I ran a 10K…twice! Yay.
- My fiction writing remains MIA
- I read a little more than in August
- At least I’m not turning into a couch potato
- Early fall colors are pretty
- It hasn’t really rained that much, all told
- 30 days, just like every other September
- I didn’t go out to see any movies
- On the above point, I also don’t feel like I missed anything
- Did I draw? I did not draw.
- On to October!
Amusing cat image, September 2019 edition
Carefully timed.
September 2019 weight loss report: Up 1.8 pounds
September started off with an unusual and dramatic weight drop down to 162.5 right on the first day of the month. This lead me to believe I would break below 160 pounds for the first time this year before the month was out.
I was wrong.
And fat.
Well, fatter…a little.
I was actually doing quite well for the first half of the month, dropping further to 162, but then the weight started to see-saw up and down and by the third week I was peaking at a devilish 166.6 pounds. Not good. Evil, one might say.
In the final week the trend resumed heading downward, but not in time to undo all the damage, so I ended the month at 164.3 pounds, up 1.8 on the month, but still down overall on the year to date.
Body fat remained virtually unchanged, so that’s good. Maybe I was just adding muscle thanks to all the running. Yeah, that seems plausible, sort of.
Given that I’ve only lost 3.2 pounds since January, I’m not going to venture a prediction for October, but I’m still shooting for sub-160. My goal of hitting 150 pounds seems unlikely to happen unless I get super-strict with my diet and keep exercising a whole bunch. This could happen, but so could world peace.
The stats:
September 1: 162.5 pounds
September 30: 164.3 pounds (up 1.8 pounds)
Year to date: From 167.5 to 164.3 pounds (down 3.2 pounds)
And the body fat:
September 1: 18.3% (29.7 pounds of fat)
September 30: 18.3% (30.1 pounds of fat) (down 1.0 pound)
Run 638: It should have rained
Run 638 Average pace: 5:36/km Location: Burnaby Lake (CW) Start: 10:54 am Distance: 10.03 km Time: 56:08 Weather: Partly cloudy, sunny Temp: 13ºC Humidity: 40% Wind: light BPM: 161 Weight: 164.2 pounds Total distance to date: 4780 km Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 8 Shoes: Saucony Switchback ISO (140 km)
I don’t mean it should have rained because I wanted it to rain, the trail was just so packed with people today that a little rain would have kept most of them at home playing Jenga, drinking beer or both. But it was mostly sunny and not too terribly cold, so there was a lot of people.
To be fair, most were quite obliging at making room for me as I passed by. There were a few occasions when a group of three would span the trail and become confused as I got close (“Which way do I turn to get out of the way? Aiieee.”) and one little kid almost tottered right into my path because dad was too busy watching something fascinating on his smartphone, but generally it was fine.
An off-leash dog (almost all were off-leash today) managed to avoid poking me with the gigantic branch it was happily carrying clamped in its jaws, so that was good, too.
As for the run itself, although I had some dips in pace, this run felt a lot more natural in terms of where I was faster or slower. Speaking of faster, I came out of the gate flying. I wasn’t really aiming for that and suspected it would catch up to me quickly (it did) but still, the opening km was 5:07/km, the closest I’ve come to dipping below the 5-minute mark in a long time. I did not experience any of the creakiness starting out as I did on Thursday, so perhaps I was excited at being able to run without restraint.
The second km my pace drooped to 5:34/km–still faster than Thursday–then further still to 5:48/km. But over the next four km my speed improved until I finally started to tire at the 8 km mark. I flagged a bit at 9K (5:55/km) but finished the last km with a pace of 5:43/km and an overall pace of 5:36/km–just one second slower than my 5K three days ago.
I was very pleased with this.
Other than feeling a bit tired around 9K, I actually felt pretty good throughout, with no discomfort or other issues. Stamina was fine. Everything was fine, really.
I chose to wore my heavier long-sleeved shirt, thinking it might be a bit cool and breezy. It was on the walk to the lake and the temperature stayed around 13ºC or so, which is actually fine for running. When the sun came out, I was a smidgen too warm, but not terribly so. The lighter long-sleeved shirt or even a regular t-shirt would have been fine.
On the river trail heading to the lake I saw what I think were the same gaggle of runners I’d seen going topless some weeks ago at the lake. None were topless this morning. The clothing was all over–most had t-shirts and shorts, but some opted for long pants or long sleeves, and one also had a jacket. The guy with the jacket was definitely overdressed. I imagine he runs in a parka in December. At the lake I saw a guy wearing a muscle shirt…and gloves. I mean, even when it’s cool, my hands warm up and start sweating in minutes. With gloves? Yuck.
Walking back from the lake I passed a large group of cyclists, which seemed to provide a kind of symmetry to the runners. I liked that. Plus none of them rode too close or cut me off or anything. Nice cyclists.
Tuesday’s forecast looks good so far. I’m wondering just how gloomy it will be by the time I finish my run. The sun sets at 6:50 p.m., which is about five minutes before I get home (and roughly five minutes before I finish my run). The days of after-work runs are drawing to a close for another year…
The heat is on
Specifically, the space heater. Yes, even though it’s still September and less than a week since summer officially ended, I’ve pulled out the space heater and aimed it at my feet because it’s a bit chilly in here.
When I was heading back home around 6 p.m. it actually felt downright cold. I wasn’t even wearing shorts. Right now my watch is telling me it’s 8ºC outside. I just checked and apparently the average low for today is 10ºC , so this isn’t as outrageous as I thought, but still. I think the change from summer to fall hits harder than any other seasonal shift, because it feels so abrupt. One day I’m wearing t-shirts and shorts and people are complaining about how hot it is, then the next day I’m curling up by a space heater and the shorts have returned to the dresser for the next six months.
Okay, my feet are now too warm and the space heater is off. Maybe I just need to put on an itchy wool sweater or something. I promise my next post will not be about the weather. Almost guaranteed!