The rain falls in June
I know the sun will return
Burn my arms again
Which is true. No matter what I do I always end up with some degree of sunburn on my arms, it’s like one of the laws of the universe. This year I’m using sunblock to see if my body is actually resistant to active sunburn prevention.
I will provide photographic evidence as needed in the near future to demonstrate the outcome of this.
Actually, Canada, I just like riffing on “French Kissing in the USA” whenever possible, because it’s a goofy little song.
It’s been awhile since I’ve done any real brainstorming, but I love lists, I have a brain and it’s often stormy in these parts, so I have all the ingredients in place.
The goal here is to plant a few (dozen) seeds and see if any of them grow into big beautiful stories or writing exercises while I ponder other projects.
Here we go.
The next task: pick one of these and turn it into a lovingly handcrafted tale of thrills and adventure that tugs at the heartstrings (which sounds pretty unhealthy when you think about it).
I was in Metrotown this past weekend and as always it is a bewildering experience, as there are about five thousand stores and a hundred times as many people buzzing through the mall between them.
I did get a pair of glasses and prescription sunglasses at Lenscrafters, though. The experience was surprisingly easy, the woman who helped me was knowledgeable and a couple of promotions made the two pairs (eight eyes, lol!!) decently affordable. The only downside is they won’t be ready until I am partway through vacation. My own fault for waiting so long to get my prescription updated.
While there I spotted an outlet that is Coming Soon® and did a double-take, because it seemed more like something you’d see in an Onion story than an actual retail store. But no, it is real:
I especially like the guy on the left looking like he is about to plow into some meter-high pink monster cone.
It turns out Sweet Jesus is a chain that started out east and is only just starting to open locations out west, like the one above in Metrotown. Their menu seems to be based primarily around frozen treats containing 32,000 calories each. I’m not necessarily objecting.
It’s kind of a ballsy name, though. Do Christians feel good about going there for sundaes? Is it sacrilegious or sacrilicious?
I’ll find out this summer, because I’m definitely going to try…something.
You know someone somewhere is already starting their shopping.
As per the title:
(Technically this is not paving, but pouring concrete.)
Here’s something you sometimes see in cities or any urban area that has decent foot traffic. For the most part people walk along sidewalks and stick to them because the alternatives are unattractive for varying reasons–trespassing in someone’s yard and getting eaten by a dog, walking into the street and being run over by a bus, and so on–but sometimes there are routes off a sidewalk people will take, when that route is more direct and without risk of dogs, buses or other obstacles.
This is the sidewalk in front of the Burnaby Public Library on Central Boulevard.
There are a pair of roundabouts here that bisect the sidewalk. Here’s an image from Google Maps that shows both of them (the one in the photo I took above is on the right):
A decision was made to have the sidewalk in front of the library not line up directly along the street, as would normally be the case. As you can see especially from the photo, people who come from either intersection, where the sidewalk does align next to the street, continue to walk in a straight line, ignoring the sidewalk directly in front of the library altogether.
The unnatural foot path (so to speak) becomes quite muddy and slick in winter, but it’s perfectly fine for most of the year, provided you’re not especially susceptible to tripping on small, exposed tree roots.
Anyone who understands human behavior should have anticipated the development of this foot path when looking at the plans for this block. Sidewalks that deliberately steer you away from getting from Point A to Point B are bad design. People will always take the shortest route if it’s easier and safe to do so.
The fix here would be to add a stretch of sidewalk where the existing foot path lies. The tree roots complicate things, so that may never happen, but the roots will eventually get ground down by the traffic on them, anyway.
Sometimes this bad design, while not anticipated, is still fixed later. Such is the case in Thornton Park in Vancouver. When the park was rehabilitated as part of the redesign of the nearby Main Street SkyTrain station, several pedestrian-made paths were converted into permanent sidewalks. It’s always nice to see recognition of real-life usage and adapting the environment to it where it makes sense.
A utility box on Columbia Street, cropped to only show the foxy cop illustration on it:
A seagull resting and pondering who to later fly over and poop on, along the boardwalk at Westminster quay. He seems to be saying, “Yeah, it’s gonna be you.” (It did cry fiercely when I later walked by again, but was too lazy to actually get up and do more than that.)
And at the bottom of the stairs on the south side of my condo building, leading to Allen Street, a strange collection of stuff, including personal photographs, that appeared today. There’s no doubt an interesting story behind this, but I’m not sure I want to hear it because the story is also very likely sad/horrifying. I expect all of this to be gone by tomorrow.
One of the consequences of having the world’s tiniest bladder is often needing to pee when there is no convenient place to do so.
This happened yesterday as I walked to Lougheed Town Centre. Fortunately, much of the walk is along trails and I diverged off the main route to find an out-of-the-way spot to relieve the aforementioned tiny bladder. After I finished I noticed this a short distance away, just a few steps from a nearby creek. It’s a collection of painted stones, inscribed with positive words and phrases like “Believe”, “Keep your head up!” and “Let your path take flight.” Colorful, unexpected and entirely unexpected.
I also took a shot of this flower bed a few minutes before finding the stones, and rather like the way the perspective makes the flowers appear to go on endlessly. The lone white lily poking out is cute, too. The flower bed is located at Griffin House, a printing business on Cariboo Road. Kudos to the company for the color it adds to the area.
Run 583
Average pace: 5:33/km
Location: Brunette River trail
Start: 5:04 pm
Distance: 5:05 km
Time: 28:03
Weather: High cloud, some sun
Temp: 20ºC
Humidity: 53%
Wind: light
BPM: 168
Weight: 164.6 pounds
Total distance to date: 4495 km
Devices: Apple Watch, iPhone 8
There were a few changes for today’s run: I went on the river trail, it was significantly cooler than the last run, and I ran on a Friday, which I normally don’t do. This was my first run during the week, which means I had four days off since the last run, one day more than I’d like. But I was well-rested, at least.
High cloud effectively blotted out the sun, making the run even more comfortable than it would have been otherwise.
I had a few goals:
Happily, I accomplished every goal, though my BPM increased over Sunday’s run from 164 to 168. That was likely due to the pace. Where last Sunday I eked out a terrible 6:18/km, today–hoping for something in the 5:50ish range–I came in at a better-than-expected 5:33/km. I don’t think I’ve ever improved my pace from one run to the next by 45 seconds before.
I actually picked up the pace in the second km, going from 5:30 to 5:25 before starting to feel a bit tired during the fourth km. I slowed, but that gave me enough gas to finish the fifth km with a pace of 5:31/km, nearly matching my start.
Best of all, I felt no cramps, discomfort or anything else bothersome, other than the knees feeling a bit sore but not actively shrieking in pain for me to stop. I did watch a bug come at my face and bounce off my cheek, just below my right eye. That was a little weird.
In all, it was a tremendous relief to finally get back under the 6:00/km pace again. The previous six runs were all between 6:00-6:22/km. The last time I managed to be under was when I hit 5:49/km back on April 14, more than two months ago. Ay caramba. The last run on the river was way back on March 24 and I was a little faster then at 5:27/km.
I’m planning on running again on Sunday and will decide on whether I want to try the horror of Burnaby Lake again or stick to the river trail. The river trail is better for the ego, but the lake is more interesting. Hmm.
Last Friday, June 15, I finally went in and got my blood work done, including the world famous poop on a stick test (which you have to pay for, because people don’t like handling poop or something).
By Monday the results were in and I got a phone call from the doctor’s office. This was disconcerting because I had previously agreed that they would only call me if there was something up, that a negative report would be treated as “no news is good news” in terms of letting me know. The person told me it was “non urgent” but wanted me to come by in two days to discuss these non-urgent results.
And so I made the many-days excursion to the office in Steveston, but I only arrived just in time, so I couldn’t sight-see, despite the spiffy nice weather.
As it turned out, the doctor was behind schedule by a million years. I sat in the waiting area, plinking away on my phone, using the clinic’s spotty but free Wi-Fi for about half an hour before being let into exam room #6, where I sat for about another half hour. With little else to do, I examined the soles of my shoes and discovered they were embedded with thousands of tiny bits of gravel. I plucked them all out, as shown here:
I need better shoes. It’s on my agenda for the week.
When the doctor finally arrived, he confirmed all tests were good–except one. My kidney was apparently not quite up to snuff. When I had the kidney infection the clinic that I went to didn’t seem to update my file, as this was news to him. He admitted the infection could be responsible for the current results, though enough time had elapsed to still raise a flag. I am going to take the kidney test again in mid-July to see if things look normal or wacky. Disturbingly, the affected area has been acting up the last few days, making me wonder if the infection may have simply gone dormant. With a vacation to the north in a week and a half, the timing is awkward, to say the least.
But I’ll have some answers soon enough. Also, my poop is fine.
Here’s to the second half of 2018 being pretty please oh pretty pretty please better health-wise than the first half.
Today is the first day of summer and it also marked the abrupt end of the current heatwave, with temperatures in the high teens and cloudy skies, with even a few drops of precipitation in the morning. Yesterday it was around 30ºC and the older SkyTrain cars were like communal sweat boxes thanks to the lack of air conditioning.
So I’m not complaining, exactly. Yesterday was hot. Today I wore a jacket to work. I’d like some more sun, just not Africa Hot sun. The forecast through the end of the month is a crazy quilt of mainly sunny, light rain, cloudy, partly sunny and who knows what else. Meanwhile, the FIRE DANGER signs are in no, er, danger, of going up any time soon.
Again, not complaining. And as I type this the sun is trying to poke out from the clouds, so perhaps it’s time to step outside.
UPDATE: Later in the afternoon it became sunny, with a high of 22ºC or so. Not-a-complaint rescinded!
After chatting with a Lenovo rep, I found out my credit card had triggered an alert and their system automatically canceled the order for the ThinkPad Carbon X1, with no verification or anything else happening after the fact. It might be because the card is new and I think I only used it once before this purchase, which may have made the order look a bit shady. The rep pushed the order through again, so if everything doesn’t get nuked a second time, I should have my first full-blown Windows laptop in anywhere from a few weeks to a month (the shipping is free, not fast).
In the next few weeks I’ll do the follow-up task of logging out all appropriate accounts on my MacBook Pro, wiping its SSD, then selling it (to a buyer or back to Apple for a gift card/credit) as I have no real use for multiple laptops. I will miss typing on the MacBook Pro the same way I might miss bapping my fingers against a hard plastic surface.