Walking at the pool and the effect of heavy rain

We went to the Canada Games Pool twice on the weekend, around 5 p.m. on Saturday and today (Sunday) around 1 p.m.

Saturday it was pretty quiet, most likely because it was around dinner time and people go out to party on Saturday night, not exercise.

Today was the opposite. The pool was packed. The swirl pool looked like one of those rocks that has a thousand sea lions on it. The other pools were bustling. Every treadmill, elliptical and all but two exercise bikes were in use. I had to wait my turn (though only a minute or so) to use an elliptical. I chalk this up to the earlier time of day, it being Sunday (“I must now work off my sins”) and the fact that it was not merely raining, it was a downpour, making any outdoor activities doomed to extreme sogginess.

I also really noticed for the first time that most people walk on the treadmills. I did see one guy actually running and felt a little bad for him, as (I have recounted before) running on treadmills feels alien and wrong. This isn’t a huge observation, I’m just not sure why I never really noticed before. And a surprising (?) number of people leave their stuff in the lockers without actually locking them (the key costs a quarter). Maybe the only thing they leave in the lockers are smelly clothes. I’d be a bit nervous if I had anything more valuable than some stinky socks in there, though. There’s nothing to stop someone from pretending a locker is theirs, plundering anything of value, then sliding over to the next one, providing a “whoops, haha, that wasn’t my locker” shrug to anyone who might glance their way.

Then again, most of the guys in the change room are in various stages of undress and eye contact, while not frowned upon per se, rarely happens because guys get nervous around other guys, especially when in various stages of undress. For both right and wrong reasons.

Anyway, I had a nice workout. The new training shoes work well and look spiffy, so I’m stylin’ while I’m sweatin’.

Complaint-free me, Day 15: Observations, not complaints

It rained a lot today. It was monsoon-like. Did I complain?

YES.

Just kidding.

I don’t mind running in the rain but running in a downpour is frankly no fun, but I wanted to exercise, so I suggested we go to the pool and we did. I got a good 30-minute workout on the elliptical trainer that, combined with the same yesterday, equaled the effort of doing the 10K I missed out on…all while keeping completely dry.

Behold the power of positive thinking. Or thinking, at least.

Jeff is catching himself more often now and trying to put a more positive spin on things, even if the spin is a wee bit sarcastic. It’s cute! I appreciate the effort, though. Every time someone complains to me I am still fighting the impulse to agree or complain back. Each day the impulse weakens, so I cling tenaciously to that.

Six days to go and will I keep wearing this blue elastic band that I have yet to replace with a proper bracelet? Heck no. If I think I’ll still need that after 21 days I’ll consider my effort a failure and reset to Day 1.

But I may replace it with a proper bracelet, anyway, because sometimes I just do stuff like that.

Complaint-free me, Day 14: Two weeks and nothing to complain about

That’s a bald-faced lie, of course. Just tonight I saw things that I would have impulsively complained about before. They wouldn’t have been serious, soul-destroying complaints, but complaints all the same. And as I thought of these complaints, the follow-up thought was always the same: Would verbalizing this complaint achieve anything positive or useful? The answer was (and is) always no.

The old saw about not sweating the small stuff works well when applied to daily life complaints. It’s just not worth mustering the negative energy to make the complaints. You maybe get a small, temporary boost when someone affirms your complaint (“Yeah, that brown wallpaper is hideous. There oughtta be a law!”) but it is fleeting, almost ephemeral, and wouldn’t you feel better focusing on something positive instead, or even just keeping quiet and thinking Zen-like thoughts? I don’t have too many Zen-like thoughts, but passing on the complaint has never felt like the wrong thing to do.

Anyway, onto Day 15 and the third and final week. I may still blow it, but I’m confident now that if it happens it will be the result of a genuine minor slip and not just being a crankypants in a foul mood.

One billion websites and on January 26, 2018…

No one visited this site.

When you look at it that way, though, it seems perfectly reasonable. I don’t visit a billion websites. I hardly look at more than ten. I’m an internet underachiever and even the internet overachievers aren’t going to visit a billion sites. Or a million. Or a thousand.

They’re just going to amazon to buy stuff then going to Facebook to post about the stuff they just bought on amazon.

Or watching cat videos on YouTube.

(I was curious how many sites are out there and learned here that about 75% of all sites are just parked domains or something similar, so the number of actual, active sites is much lower…but still inconceivably high for the average person to consider visiting. If you visited one active website every second, it would take you 2,030 days or 5.5 years to get through all of them. Also your mouse would have exploded from all the clicking.)

Still, I am always a little sad when my site gets no traffic for an entire day. Perhaps a small incentive could help drive traffic. It worked for that singing frog.

Complaint-free me, Day 13: And lucky, too

One thing I am learning to do is to talk critically about someone or something without actually complaining, by describing concerns in as neutral terms as possible, focusing on the positive, seeking solutions, and all that feel-good shit.

I’m serious, but I really wanted to use the phrase “feel-good shit,” too.

A lucky thirteen days completed, let’s see if I can officially make it to the two-thirds mark tomorrow. Excelsior!

Complaint-free me, Day 12: Fake complaints

The closest I came to complaining today was when a co-worker came in just before noon and I asked if it was still raining. He said yes and I uttered a comical  “Boo” under my breath. In reality I didn’t care because I just had lunch inside and wrote a haiku instead of going for a walk as I would have if it wasn’t raining.

But to show how on guard I am now, as soon as I uttered the “Boo” I wondered if I had broken my streak.

So then I further asked myself if I actually cared what the weather was doing. And the answer was no. It’s January, it’s gonna rain.

I wore my hat.

On to Day 13.

A farewell to donuts, now in haiku form

A haiku for my weight loss goal for 2018 which is coincidentally the same as the goal for 2017 and currently tracking about as successfully.

Donuts are yummy
But too much of a fat thing
Makes the waistline boom

I have actually remained donut-free for the first 25 days of the year. Only 340 days to go! (I have been less successful in remaining snack-free.)

Complaint-free me, Day 11: Thinking about my brain

It’s entirely possible I’ve slipped up and complained somewhere, about something, maybe something so slight it didn’t register and the person I spoke to didn’t know I had sworn off complaining and didn’t highlight the complaint to me.

Maybe, but I’m leaning more toward no, and the reason why is because, especially at work, I find when I am discussing a subject with someone and something comes up that could be easily complaint-worthy (eg. the weather) I fond myself thinking more about how I choose my words and what I say. If the other person complains, I automatically reply with something either putting a positive spin on things or I move on, I don’t nod or agree or say something like, “GOOD GOD YES WHEN WILL IT STOP RAINING? RAIN GRR!”

I can still slip up, of course–it only takes a moment and I’m back to Day 1. But I’m edging closer to believing I have a good chance of making it now to Day 21.

However it goes, I’ve made it past the halfway point at least once as of today. Woo.

Onto Day 12.

Book review: All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)

All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)All Systems Red by Martha Wells
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Can a story about a murderbot be funny, charming and even a tiny bit touching? Yes, it can.

In the short novel All Systems Red Martha Wells presents a story told from the point of view of a SecUnit–an android designed to protect humans who, in this case, are mapping out an unknown planet on behalf of their corporate masters. Events take a turn for the deadly when a neighboring habitat’s humans are found dead, victims of an unknown assault.

Despite the grim setting, Wells presents the partly-organic and sex organ-free (“If a construct has those it’s a sexbot”) android as a delightfully fretful being that really wants to protect its humans, even if it is kind of afraid of interacting with them (it prefers opaquing its helmet to avoid making eye contact).

The story, such as it is, is really just a stage for the murderbot to act on, and while it gets the opportunity to use its arm-mounted cannons, it spends most of its time consuming serials and other media it’s downloaded, and pondering what–or who–it is and what it wants to be.

It’s not as profound as it sounds. But it is consistently amusing, thanks to SecUnit’s droll telling of the tale.

My only real criticism is minor–the story ends a bit abruptly, setting up the next chapter of The Murderbot Diaries. Otherwise, very much recommended.

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Complaint-free me, Day 10: Yep

Very busy, no time to complain (also no desire to complain. Proof: Tonight the SkyTrain pulled into Nanaimo station and an announcement said the train was out of service and we’d have to get out. I was not peeved, I just got out–then quickly got back in after someone suggested they were making the announcement to the wrong train, which turned out to be true. So by being tentative and thinking positive, it all worked out. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it).

On to Day 11.

Complaint-free me, Day 9: [clever title here]

These updates will keep getting shorter and shorter until I screw up like the Hindenburg crashing onto the Titanic.

Today I was essentially too busy to complain. Plus the weather turned sunny in the afternoon and I went and sang in the fields with magic bunnies.

Okay, I just kept working, but it was still nice to see the sun out.

I can almost feel the urge to complain about things starting to submerge. It’s still there, lingering around the edges, but the immediate impulse has been subdued. For now, at least.

Onto Day 10.