Here’s an incomplete list of things that sucked in January 2017:
snow on New Year’s Eve that added to existing snow and has persisted through the entire month on the trails where I run, making jogging possible only if I include slipping, falling and fracturing bones
the mailbox in the building got broken into (on a Sunday when there’s the least amount of mail to steal) and it’s been out of commission for real mail (they’re still delivering junk mail, yay) for a few weeks, with replacement locks that may not be installed until as late as mid-February
I only lost 1.7 pounds. Better than gaining but still a bit disappointing
everything Donald Trump did in his first 11 days in office. After only eight days he had a negative approval rating and has lived up to every sensible person’s worst fears. A thoroughly awful person and a terrible, awful president. Shame on everyone who cast a vote for this vile excuse for a man
This year I set a weight goal of 145 pounds. On January 1st I weighed 165.9 pounds, meaning I have nearly 21 pounds to lose. Yikes. Here’s where I’m at after the first month:
January 1: 165.9 pounds
January 31: 164.2 pounds
Weight loss: -1.7 pounds
Not bad but I’d technically miss my goal–at this pace, I’d be 145.5 pounds by December. Clearly, I need to step up the exercise, cut down the snacking or ideally both. I am making progress, though not being able to jog outside yet is cramping my exercise style. I only had two donuts the entire month, though! My goal for February is to go donut-free. And lose more than two pounds.
Here is the current 10-day weather forecast in convenient screenshot format:
Do you know what’s wrong with this picture? Of course you do.
Damn snow.
If this forecast was accurate, and thankfully it will probably be at least a little wrong, we could be getting up to 35 cm of new snow. This would push back being able to jog outdoors to sometime in 2018.
We should be wearing t-shirts in two weeks, not parkas. Well, maybe not t-shirts but we have had trees flowering by mid-February. That seems…unlikely this year.
I’ve adjusted the logo of the site to include Super Spud, my comic creation from a hundred or so years ago. I made did the illustration and coloring while the shading was done by an online friend, jackrabbit.
I don’t quite like the way Super Spud is aligned (he’s a little too close to the edge, though not in the Donald Trump way–zing!) so consider this a work in progress that will be tweaked in the days ahead.
Still, it’s something and it’s not my ugly mug, so there’s that.
Gallup poll: Trump approval rating, January 28, 2017
62 million Americans voted for this terrible man. Shame on all of them. He didn’t disguise any of his misogyny, racism, narcissism or terrible policies during the campaign. They knew what they were getting and they voted for him, anyway. And now people are genuinely starting to suffer because of their ignorance–and his. The best we can hope for is these profoundly ignorant, gullible idiots never vote again.
Trump has enacted an execute order that has banned all Syrian refugees from entering the U.S. and for 90 days has also halted all immigration from seven Muslim-dominant countries. None of the 9/11 hijackers came from these seven countries. Coincidentally, Trump doesn’t have any business interests in any of these countries, either.
Trump is a craven, simple-minded racist who, through this action, has actually made America less safe and less secure. He is literally playing into the hands of terrorists and their sympathizers by making the U.S. appear “evil” and uncaring.
I went to my second The Oher 11 Months write-in today and was better prepared for the weather, which was very wet (I say yes to this as I hope it can eradicate the last of the damn snow).
Once inside I asked for the same Chai tea I had last time. Every time I go to a coffee place and order a tea I always get asked if I want a tea latte and have to say no, just tea, with a teabag, in hot water, like people have enjoyed for thousands of years. If I wanted a tea latte I would order a tea latte, not a tea. But still they ask.
They asked again today. I confirmed I wanted tea, not a tea latte, but the girl at the counter was confused by my request for Chai, acting as if it never existed. Rather than go on about how I got it with no fuss last week, I just ordered English Breakfast and pretended I was in London.
When I went into the meeting room, a discussion took place over the various size cups we had, with the conclusion being that although only two sizes are listed on the menu (Regular and ‘Waves’–how twee) there are in fact more sizes and their purpose is to sow confusion, because we couldn’t come up with anything better.
When I settled in and opened the lid of my MacBook Pro I discovered the battery was at 68%. This was odd as I had left it plugged in and charging and I’m pretty sure the ten minutes to get to Waves would not drain 32% of the battery. I then remembered I had applied a hefty update and in moving the Mac to its usual spot I may have jiggled the USB-C cable just loose enough to have it stop feeding power. Even so, having it lose 32% of its battery over three days is not very reassuring. I easily got through the writing session, though, as the three hours only consumes about 25% battery.
I’m still not sold on the new low-travel keyboard, either. I’m close to saying Apple made a flat-out mistake with it. It’s simply not that comfortable to type on. It feels like banging your fingers on a table because there’s so little give. And it’s noisy for a laptop keyboard. Apple’s obsession with thin is starting to bump up against keeping things comfortable and practical.
As for my actual writing, I did a repeat of last week, bouncing between projects, re-reading and tweaking and moving a few more into Ulysses. I then wanted to look at the corkboard I made for Rainy Day. This is a feature of Scrivener, so I downloaded the program and was pleasantly surprised that it automatically registered and activated itself (kind of spooky, really). The pleasant surprise was replaced by an unpleasant one when the program kept repeatedly crashing, making it utterly useless. I didn’t want to waste my time troubleshooting at the write-in so I just left it.
This is far from the first time I’ve had issues with Scrivener and it’s not been platform-specific, either, as problems have happened in Windows and macOS, even when keeping the projects relegated to one platform to reduce the chance of error. I’m pretty close to being done with it. It’s a nice tool but seems in need of a complete rewrite (which sounds like it may be coming, more or less, though when is another question).
In the end I probably read more than I wrote and it’s been a bit frustrating to not fully commit to one thing to work on–a three-hour block is a huge amount of time to get a lot done–but I will keep going and hopefully something will stick. My goal in the next week is to resume doing prompts to help grease the writing wheels.
I did not get a single visit to my blog yesterday, January 26. This calls for a sad face.
In other unrelated sad news, I walked along the Brunette River trail today to see if it was ready for running. Behold!
A little mucky in spots but completely clear and perfectly suitable for jogging. Hooray!
But you are saying to yourself, “Why is this sad? Is it because he has grown fat and lazy and it is sad that the trail is now free of snow but the desire to run has itself run away?”
The answer can be seen in the next photo. I emphasize that this photo was taken at the same time on the same two km stretch of trail along the river.
If you look carefully in the above shot you can see another completely clear patch of trail near the top. These two pictures cover the extremes as most of the trail is somewhere between the two, with a mix of snowy and clear patches that would work for limited running, provided you had nimble, gazelle-like reflexes to constantly alter course between the snow and no-snow spots.
It has been almost four weeks since the last snowfall. Given that the weather over the next ten days looks to be pretty similar to the last few weeks I am revising my estimate on being able to run outdoors again from early February to late February–a month from now and, incredibly, close to three months since my last outdoor run on December 4, 2016, or as I like to call it, the BS (Before Snow) era.
And to think I once found snow delightful. Delightful!
In the third week of January, a lot of people will have left their resolutions for the new year in tatters or more specifically, in the crumpled wrapper of a bacon cheeseburger. It is because of this that I want to celebrate another achievement as I work toward my goal of hitting 145 pounds this year: I have again dodged copious numbers of donuts.
Yesterday boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts were left in the kitchen area at work. I already had a small advantage in that I don’t like Krispy Kreme donuts–they are light but also almost sickly sweet with a heavy and kind of gross glaze. Still, in times past I would have gobbled up one or two without any thought. Coworkers were chowing down up to three (or more) each.
But I had none.
I was later informed that there were also boxes of the fancy ones, filled with jelly and such and probably 500 calories each. Those would have been more tempting but I’m pretty sure I would have resisted.
Next week I’m going to cut out all gratuitous snacking. Almost all snacking is gratuitous. I’ve done this before and I think this, with regular exercise, is essential to the weight loss.
I’ll probably be on the treadmill again this weekend but there is perhaps a slim hope that the last of the snow will be gone from the trails around Burnaby Lake. But I doubt it.
My weight on January 1 was 165.9 pounds. Today it’s 164.2 pounds. Losing 1.7 pounds in 24 days isn’t exactly wasting away, but it’s a start. I will continue to dodge donuts.
Yesterday I did something I would have done during National Novel Writing Month if my novel hadn’t stalled out after 10,000 words. I took part in a write-in, specifically one set up as an offshoot of the local NaNoWriMo group where people are invited during the NaNo off-months to write at Waves Coffee in New Westminster every Sunday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
There’s a reserved from at the back that conveniently has a door that can be closed, allowing writerly types to scribe with little interference from outside. Eight had officially signed up on the Facebook page but a total of 11 made it, which resulted in a rather crowded table. I almost felt like I was co-authoring the projects of those to my left and right through osmosis.
Still, it was useful to have that three-hour block of (mostly) quiet concentration and focus. While I didn’t work on a single project, I successfully bounced around several, including:
new material on my 2014 NaNo novel, Road Closed
going over 2016’s stalled project and fixing most of the tense problems (specifically I started writing in the present tense then switched to the past tense without consciously meaning to. I have managed to fix all but the final section of writing to align everything to the present tense).
I was hoping to do some work on the short story “The Box on the Bench” but am still mulling over how best to approach it. I’ll write more on the revival of this ten-year-old (!) project soon.
Apart from a slight crick in my neck, I found the experience useful and refreshing. I’ll definitely be returning. If I actually write straight through next time I should be able to get quite a bit done, a novel (ho ho) change from my progress of late.
There’s not much to say about working out on an elliptical because the environment and machine never changes. I suppose if the machine magically came to life and galloped outside with me hanging on for dear life it would be different but so far that hasn’t happened.
Tonight I started with 14/12 on incline/resistance and eventually dropped the resistance to 10 before bumping it back up slightly to 11. At one point I felt muscles in my legs actually burning. Not literally on fire, just really feeling them stretching and such.
I also brought a water bottle tonight. It helped, though the cup holder is designed for righties. Prejudice!
I began to feel pretty tired near the end but finished with 350 calories burned on the machine and 364 according to the Apple watch (I let it run about a minute long before remembering to end the workout).
I will likely do a treadmill run (bleah) next as I’d like to keep alternating. Plus the treadmills at least have dual cupholders so I don’t have to test my rightie hand-eye coordination when going for a sip.
