Martha and the Muffins is a great bad name, and also a pretty good band based out of Toronto. I remember them mainly for the above-titled song, “Echo Beach”, which was a radio hit in Canada back in 1980. It’s a great little pop song and captures a sense of longing that hits me right now. Plus sax!
There’s a decent write-up on the song on Wikipedia, where I learned that Echo Beach is a real beach, and it’s in Saskatchewan, and that the B-side to the single was a song called “Teddy the Dink.”
Enjoy! (They’re a good live band, too)
Bonus:
Echo Beach as seen on the Map application included in Windows 11:
View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Calm, cool and relatively dry.
I skipped running on Friday, not because I was lazy, but because I was tired of running in the rain. I ran in the rain on Monday and Wednesday and did not want to run in the rain again yesterday. And it rained pretty much the entire day.
But with birding called off this weekend and the weather looking somewhat dry, at least for the morning and early afternoon, I opted to run today.
Success! It did not rain during the run. It sprinkled a little on the walk back, but even that was minimal.
I wore two layers, which proved handy, as it was only 8C for most of the run, my first single digit outing of the fall. Hello November!
Despite several dogs being off-leash, there were no issues, either with the dogs or with my body. I had my usual dip in the middle, but finished strong and, curiously, with the exact same time as the previous run, 28:21 minutes. I don’t know if I could ever pull that off again. My average was somehow a second faster, though, probably due to the magical world of rounding numbers.
The river remains pretty stinky with dead salmon. I repeat, this is probably the worst mating/reproductive system in the world, with the possible exception of the male praying mantis getting his head torn off and eaten by the female after they do the dirty.
Despite the odour, it was a good outing and a nice (and mercifully dry) end to the week.
View from Cariboo Dam, looking east, with bonus heron keeping vigil over the returning salmon.
Stats:
Run 898 Average pace: 5:38/km Training status: Productive Location: Burnaby Lake (CW, short loop) Start: 1:03 p.m. Distance: 5.03 km Time: 28:21 Weather: Overcast Temp: 8-9°C Humidity: 90% Wind: light BPM: 151 Weight: 167.1 Total distance to date: 6,340 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: HOKA Speedgoat 6 (130/244/374)
Better font rendering. This surprised me, but fonts look fuller and sharper.
Faster. Everything feels snappier, especially ordinary OS things like opening/moving windows.
The file manager does not regularly crash. Or crash at all.
So much more customization for the UI.
The panel (taskbar) can go anywhere, like in Windows’ olden days.
App and OS updates are handled by a single manager, making it simpler and quicker than Windows. Also, I choose when to install them.
A better bunch of built-in apps.
A better Mastodon app (Tuba) than anything on Windows (though not quite as good as some available on Mac).
Desklets, applets and extensions add a ton of optional convenience features.
There are aspects that aren’t as polished as Windows, I haven’t replaced all equivalent apps yet, and gaming is still not quite there, but at this point, the downsides of running Linux (I am still using Mint) are considerably less than when I first started tinkering with it. This pleases me.
It’s a run day, but it is also a rain day on this, the first day of November. According to the Windows weather app, it’s rained 19 out of 30 times the past 30 years on this day. That seems about right.
I’ not actually complaining (mostly). Sometimes it’s fun to even go out in stormy weather, as I did a few weeks ago. But it is not fun to run in the rain. It’s low-key horrible, as the kids say. This IS me complaining.
With the rain expected to go all day, I look at my treadmill and ponder. I may have to take advantage of it later.
And think about going out to buy discount Halloween candy. Kidding! I am totally being good for November! Really! Haha.
Even though the story is dumb, it’s still a story and I like progressing through the different areas
It’s perversely fun to hit the space bar every time Azmodan or Scary Image of Azmodan appears and starts talking, only to get out about one word before going away. For reference, he constantly taunts the player until you kill him and every word he utters is written as channelled through a 15-year-old hardcore Diablo fan with very big ideas of what makes a cool villain, with all of those ideas being wrong and awful.
I’m actually plowing through it very quickly, so I’ll be sated soon
With today being October 31, which is to say Halloween, we witness the unique retail ritual of store managers deciding when, precisely, to start shifting over the Halloween candy to make room for the Christmas candy.
To be clear, the Christmas candy showed up weeks ago, but now that we are at HallowChristmas, there is a new tension in the store air, as managers ponder exactly when the bat-festooned Snickers must make way for the mistletoe-festooned Snickers.
Speaking of, here is a Halloween cartoon for you. It doesn’t even have a cat!
When you lose only 0.2 pounds, it’s kind of technical weight loss. This month, it’s technical weight loss in two ways:
It happened on the last day of the month–today! In fact, I started at exactly where I was on the 1st, at 166.8 pounds, then weighed myself after a trip to the loo, and dropped to the devilish weight of 166.6 pounds.
I started the month up from the previous month. I ended September at 166.0 pounds, then jumped to 166.8 on October 1st, so since September 1st, I’ve actually gained 0.6 pounds.
Fun Facts this month:
Food was a source of comfort in two ways this month, helping to explain the minimal loss. I sought refuge in food for stress relief, and also while sick (feed a fever or whatever you might have, who cares if you even have a fever?). This meant my weight loss strategy was largely abandoned for long stretches of October.
I got sick early in the month. This was both a curse (I didn’t run and could not count on the extra calories being burned) and a blessing (the night after I got sick, I dropped a whopping 2.5 pounds. I gained back 2.3 pounds of it).
Given the circumstances, it could have been worse.
I make no guesses for November, but barring a second bout of being sick, or unexpected stress or just more stress, I should…drop a little more? We’ll see!
As of today, I am down 5.7 pounds for the year, which averages out to 1.7543859649 pounds per month. I deliberately avoided rounding the number to make it look bigger.
Stats:
January 1, 2024: 172.3 pounds Current: 166.6 pounds Year to date: Down 5.7 pounds (previously down 6.3 pounds)
October 1: 166.8 pounds October 31: 166.6 pounds (down 0.2 pounds)
Body fat: October 1: 25.0% October 31: 25.0% (unchanged)
Skeletal muscle mass: October 1: 29.8% October 31: 29.7% (down 0.1%)
