Last Sunday there was a raging snowstorm outside and inside the Waves Coffee boardroom on Columbia Street, we were jammed in elbow-to-elbow for The Other 11 Months Write-in.
Today it was sunny and a balmy 10ºC (as it should be in mid-February) and only six showed up and two left early. On the one hand, fewer people is a bit of a bummer. On the other hand, I had plenty of room to stretch out in all directions. And did!
It was also a very quiet group, with church-like silence for nearly the entire three hours, save for a burst of chatter at the start and the tapping of keys throughout. At the end, several agreed it had been quite productive for them, so yay for silence.
I again continued to work through old, unfinished material, focusing today on Weirdsmith, The Mean Mind and Road Closed. Most of the work was done on Road Closed, as I fully converted it over to Ulysses, breaking each scene out into a separate sheet.
At this point, I’m pretty much done prepping my unfinished projects and have one of two choices for the next write-in:
Pick a project and resume working on it (that is, start producing new material–you know, actual writing)
Start something entirely new.
Bonus: Do neither of the above and just tinker for three hours again.
#3 is going to be tempting but I really need to commit to moving forward on something. Maybe I can conduct a self-poll. Or write a story about indecision. Or both. So many decisions.
Run 479 Average pace: 6:28/km
Location: Canada Games Pool (treadmill)
Distance: 4.56 km
Time: 29:33
Weather: n/a
Temp: n/a
Wind: n/a
BPM: 161
Stride: n/a
Weight: 165.7 pounds
Total distance to date: 3785 km
Devices/apps: Apple Watch, iPhone (for music) and Matrix treadmill (for running)
It’s been 25 days since my last treadmill run and I can’t say I’ve missed the treadmill because I hate it. But tonight it seemed time to renew my passion for disliking it.
The run went without incident, save for forgetting to turn the fan on at the start. I’m not sure why anyone would leave the fan off, the whole place is incredibly humid, which is not really conducive to a comfortable workout, so every little bit helps. Maybe some people are fanophobes. One might say they’re not fans…of fans. Ho ho.
Anyway, I did remember my water bottle and this compensated somewhat. I still felt slow and sluggish (reflected in my pace) and curiously for the first ten minutes or so my ankles were sore, something that never bothers me when running. Odd, and another reason to hate treadmills. Once I warmed up they were fine and they feel fine now, but still, weird. And unpleasant.
I chose the “fat burn” setting and this apparently increases the elevation periodically, which would explain why the run would become much harder at seemingly random intervals. I ramped the incline down a couple of times but kept the speed mostly at 6 and leaning more toward 5.5 in the last stretch. It’s still hard to adjust settings to my natural pace. I find it works bets if I go all Zen and don’t look at the numbers and concentrate on how my legs feel. Too slow, nudge the speed up. Too fast, nudge it down. It worked a little better tonight than previously.
Overall, though, I’m really itching to run outside again. The heavy rain and mild temperatures have caused the new snow to melt fairly rapidly. The hard crusty snow underneath will take longer so I’m still not expecting anything before March, but hope, like repeated snowstorms, springs eternal.
As the ancient prophecies foretold, the forecast of snow/freezing rain/rain unfolded on schedule and for a time there were seas of slush on the streets and lapping up onto sidewalks. But the rain was initially so relentless that it obliterated the seas of slush in short order. The following day was mild with only a few sprinkles, allowing the excess water to dry up and safely drain away. We are still left with copious amounts of snow on lawns, fields, trails and the sidewalks of Bad People.
The forecast ahead looks mild and mostly wet, so pretty normal for this time of year. The remaining snow should be gone in a few weeks, perhaps less.
THEN IT MUST NOT SNOW AGAIN THIS WINTER.
Also, no cheating by waiting until it is technically spring, either (late March). I walked past the Brunette River trail today. I predict it will be snow-free when it is technically spring (late March). I wish I was engaging in hyperbole but there’s no way in the entire universe I could be wrong about this.
Also also, my next post will not be weather-related.
The forecast overnight is what you’d come up with if you asked yourself, “What’s the worst combination of weather Vancouverites would fear to see in winter?”
snow starting in the afternoon, ranging from 10-40 cm depending on location
snow changing to freezing rain overnight or becoming the even more delightful-sounding “ice pellets”
as temperatures rise the freezing rain changes to regular rain (with 10-40 cm of fresh snow on top of a huge dump of existing snow)
oh, and winds up to 70 km/h
To be followed by a slushpocalypse, local flooding and general despair over whether we will see sunny, warm days ever again.
Still, if this is the last of the winter weather, I’ll grit my teeth and makes plans for running at Burnaby Lake sometime in March. If it snows in March I will be very cross.
For the first time in a little over two weeks, I finally returned to the Canada Games Pool and did a half hour workout on the elliptical. Or rather I did a 27-minute workout, reached out with my right hand to adjust something or other, snagged it on the cord of my iPhone earbuds and whipped the phone out of the holder of the elliptical. It landed on the right foot pad, next to my right foot.
I immediately pressed the handy pause button on the machine, reassembled phone and earbuds and then hit the pause button again–you know, to unpause (resume) the workout. Instead, it started it over. Was I supposed to hit OK? Just start going again? (My hunch is the latter is the correct answer, as that’s how you normally begin a workout). I had about eight minutes left so started a manual workout and kept going until the watch dinged at 325 calories burned, my overall goal. I suffered no other clumsy incidents for the remainder.
I had the elliptical set to 14/12 and actually kept it at 14 the entire time, adjusting the resistance from 12 to 10 for the manual restart.
I sweated a lot and forgot my water bottle. These things are related.
It was nice to be active again. Now I must resist eating an entire cake as a reward for doing so.
Turnout for this week’s writing group was surprisingly high given the snowy conditions (the latest dump started midway through the writing session). As we gathered elbow to elbow around the conference table we settled into a mostly quiet session, punctuated by a few bursts of chatter over pitches for books and random advice.
One person had an iPad mini hooked up to a full-size PC keyboard. That was a little weird. The person to my left had a MacBook. I could tell just by closing my eyes and hearing how the keyboard clicked when she was typing.
For the third week in a row I bounced between projects, spending the bulk of my time converting The Mean Mind from Scrivener to Ulysses format and reading along as I went. To my surprise, it held up fairly well.
Soon I need to commit to finishing an existing project or starting a new one. When I think about trying to choose one thing to focus on I actually feel a certain level of anxiety, almost the beginning of a stress headache. Probably not a good thing.
Aides confer in the dark because they cannot figure out how to operate the light switches in the cabinet room.
Help, let me out!
Visitors conclude their meetings and then wander around, testing doorknobs until finding one that leads to an exit.
Who needs official reports and intelligence when you have [fake] cable news?
For a sense of what is happening outside, he watches cable, both at night and during the day — too much in the eyes of some aides — often offering a bitter play-by-play of critics like CNN’s Don Lemon.
“Hey, you think we should let Donald in on the creation of Executive Orders?” “It’ll just bore him, but okay.”
[t]he president, for whom chains of command and policy minutiae rarely meant much, was demanding that Mr. Priebus begin to put in effect a much more conventional White House protocol that had been taken for granted in previous administrations: From now on, Mr. Trump would be looped in on the drafting of executive orders much earlier in the process.
What happens if Trump signs an Executive Order offering his own resignation and naming Bannon his successor? It, apparently, could happen!
But for the moment, Mr. Bannon remains the president’s dominant adviser, despite Mr. Trump’s anger that he was not fully briefed on details of the executive order he signed giving his chief strategist a seat on the National Security Council, a greater source of frustration to the president than the fallout from the travel ban.
Has there ever been such an inept yet vile set of buffoons in The White House? It’s hard to imagine any administration outdoing the incompetence of Trump and his aides. I remind you, too, that we are three weeks into his presidency. THREE WEEKS.
Clearly, this is the winter of my discontent, at least when it comes to running. I wasn’t really expecting to run this weekend because the pace of the snow melting on the trails suggested it would be at least a few more weeks at minimum.
That was before yesterday when we got yet more snow. And today when yet more snow was met by its cousin, still more snow.
I’m now not really expecting to run at Burnaby Lake or along the Brunette River this month. I suppose it could suddenly warm up dramatically and torrential rains might sweep in, flushing the snow away, but it seems unlikely.
For now, here is a tour of my trip to Lougheed Town Centre today, highlighted by snow and snow.
The first part of the walk is three blocks down Fader Street, toward Hume Park. Surprisingly most of the sidewalks were cleared, including several that weren’t cleared after the last snow on New Year’s Eve. Several houses still had unneighborly snow-filled sidewalks and they shall get a virtual raspberry from me. The streets at this point are unplowed and a bit messy but the snow is still fresh enough that it hasn’t turned into a slush apocalypse–yet.
The sidewalks in Hume Park were shoveled. The park was pretty. And pretty abandoned. I suspect most people–even kids–are well beyond the novelty of snow by now.
I first opted to avoid taking the stairs down to Lower Hume Park, thinking they would be snow-clogged, then changed my mind and figured the fresh snow would provide good traction. I was right on both counts. There was one complication, though.
Yet another tree fell victim to the snowfall. It looked like it was passable on the right, so I decided to continue heading down and would skirt around it.
The gap on the right turned out to be an optical illusion. I still made it through by cleverly ducking and using my opposable thumbs to redirect branches out of my face. My coat pockets were filled with snow afterward.
The Brunette River trail was once again completely covered in snow. It looks like one vehicle had been through, creating ruts that people walked along. If it wasn’t so uneven it would actually be easier to run on this than the hard-packed snow that’s sitting underneath it (and has been there for almost two months). I did not see anyone running.
Even the trains are snow-covered. Who decided Greater Vancouver should audition for the sequel to The Day After Tomorrow, anyway?
And finally, one more tree victim. This winter has not been very environmentally friendly to trees in the area. This one even suffered the indignity of being trampled on.
Because the snow is fresh and not firmly packed down yet, the walk to the mall was actually a bit of a workout. I kept up a vigorous pace and my boots kept my feet dry, even as my jeans got thoroughly soaked almost up to the knees. Sure, I could have tucked the jeans into the boots but I’d rather suffer damp pants than commit such a fashion faux pas. I’m willing to bet they would have somehow gotten wet, anyway.
Throughout the rest of today, it continued to snow on and off and apparently it’s freezing rain now, even though it’s gotten colder. I am not surprised because all snow is hellsnow, as far as I’m concerned. I went out and enjoyed it before it could turn evil again but turning evil was always its destiny.
Act I: Long, golden locks. A rock god, even if they airbrushed my face on album photos.
Act II: I’m not losing my hair, I just like hats. No, I love hats. You touch this hat, you die.
Act III: Hair is full of germs and a symbol of the patriarchy. Yeah, that’s it. I have shaved my head in protest. Coincidentally I no longer love hats.
Bonus Act: I grew a big, bushy crazy old man beard because why not?
What would Steve Jobs think of me waiting over five years to read his biography, patiently waiting for it to go on sale? Judging from what author Walter Isaacson writes, Jobs would probably yell at me, call me a bozo, cry and then the next day tell me how smart I was for waiting.
Or something like that.
Switching back and forth between his career at Apple (and Pixar and–briefly–at NeXT) and his personal life, Isaacson uses quotes from Jobs’ family, friends and workers, along with a generous supply of quotes from Jobs himself gathered from numerous interviews to assemble a portrait of a driven, intense man who apparently had none of the inhibitions or controls that keep most people at least relatively polite. Jobs would hurl insults and blast designs, products and people alike when he saw them as lacking. He analyzed others with an unsympathetic eye and then used his relentless verbal assaults to demand what he wanted–and often got great results.
But not always.
The quest for perfect design and end-to-end control of products led him and Apple to create amazing and well-crafted consumer devices–the Macintosh, the iPod, the iPad and the iPhone. But the same forces that drove him to be so demanding also blinded him to stick with designs that didn’t work (hello, original iMac mouse), to be needlessly cruel to employees and create distance with members of his own family.
He indulged in offbeat diets–long fasts, periods of eating just a single type of fruit, while also eschewing personal hygiene, believing that the diets would keep his body clean and pure. How he could not detect his own body odor after not showering for weeks at a time is perhaps an example of the “reality distortion field” he projected, even on himself.
It was his devotion to odd diets and alternative medicine that delayed proper treatment on his cancer for nine long months and ultimately contributed to his death at 56.
Isaacson portrays Jobs as a genius but also an immensely flawed person, often correcting assertions Jobs makes in the interviews spread throughout the book. In the end, I was left with a picture of Jobs as someone who had an excellent eye for design, an almost insane drive for perfection and both the charisma and chutzpah to woo and wallop people as he saw fit (and he often wooed and walloped the same person, sometimes on the same day). Any admiration you might have is tempered by his often odious personality.
One disappointment with the biography is how it ends. There is a coda that lets Jobs speak about his legacy in his own words and a list of his achievements but, perhaps because the book was rushed to press shortly after his death, there is little that touches on his final days or the events and reactions following his death. In that sense, the biography feels a bit incomplete.
Still, this lengthy examination of Jobs’ life presents a vivid portrait of a distinct personality and how that personality forged one company into a massive success by fully engaging on his strengths. Some at Apple–notably Tim Cook–claim that the treatment of Jobs here is unfair and inaccurate and there is a sense that a certain amount of cherry-picking to highlight the narrative is taking place, but at the same time it’s clear that Isaacson is on the mark on all the major aspects of Jobs.
This is not just an amusing cat image, it’s a fitting metaphor for a certain someone’s presidency, albeit this kitten is cute and the presidency is hideous.
