This should really be a Facebook non-content post but I only post on FB every six months or so as the mood strikes.
I have a cold and I don’t get colds very often but they still do indeed suck. The stuffy head, the lack of energy, the desire to nap at non-napping times, the urge to do a lot of nothing.
As I said to someone, I feel like a kitten — weak and fuzzy, but cute. More scruffy than cute at the moment. Maybe more of a tomcat kitten than an adorable one, perhaps.
Back in October I espied a strange sight at my old jogging grounds at China Creek Park. It was this sitting on the northeast baseball diamond:
At long last (and with summer long gone) the city had decided to bring in fresh bark to spread over the badly-deteriorated trail at China Creek. Hooray!
We then move forward to November 19th. With summer even more long gone than before, I noticed that the number of bark piles had shrunk:
Apparently more bark had been delivered and various people had in turn spread it around the trail at the park. This created a visual effect not unlike that of a burrowing Bugs Bunny. It also made the trail entirely unusable:
Not to be deterred, the jogger below simply chose to run inside the trail, with the added bonus of making each lap a tiny bit shorter. Also note her colorful attire. Not many people can successfully pull off combining green, blue, black, pink and turquoise. Actually, I’m pretty sure no one can.
I will be strolling by China Creek in the next few days and will be curious to see what the state of the bark is. For the sake of the joggers, the walkers and even the misinformed dog owners, I hope it’s all nicely spread out. Well, moreso than it is now.
Yes, it’s been one glorious month of not-running. My weight at its low while running was 143 (that’s pounds, not kilograms — weight in kilograms as it applies to the human body is one of those things I could never quite wrap my brain around. It’s like a kilogram is too big so I could never properly relate it to what I learned using pounds). Today I weight 155 and I am fairly certain the extra weight is not from newly-developed washboard abs. Let me check. Nope, definitely not from washboard abs. In fact I have been quite naughty on my diet but have been taking steps to correct this of late. I’m hoping to avoid my peak non-running weight from earlier this year (157), so we shall see.
Thanks again, stupid ankle.
With no money for a bike helmet I am really hoping the friend of Jeff’s helmet can be found soon™ as riding is a way I can keep in shape without hurting my apparently delicate lower legs. There is still swimming to consider but I would still need to actually learn how to do it. I already know how to ride a bike and I’ve been assured my years of collective wisdom that one does not forget how to ride a bike. I would hope I am not the embarrassing exception to the rule.
I am still entertaining the idea that I might be able to run after two months, so I am planing on giving my ankle a good talking-to, followed by poking and prodding come mid-December. If all goes well I will try a short run. By then we may be knee-deep in snow but I’ll just consider that a bonus if I get tired and need to collapse, as a nice cushy snow drift would work well for that.
Today I decided to buy some groceries out near Lougheed Town Centre late in the afternoon. This was a bad idea because I knew I would be caught in the rush hour traffic coming back. Sure enough, at the Lougheed SkyTrain station the first train pulled in and it was packed not unlike a sardine can. What amazed me, though, is how the car in front of me began disgorging passengers and after a good 10 or 15 seconds was still disgorging passengers. Ten or fifteen seconds may not sound very long but for a SkyTrain car this is a very long time indeed. And yet for as many people that improbably kept streaming out of the car, a good number remained in. The car had barely started to load passengers from th platform when the ‘clear out, this sucker is moving’ chime sounded and the doors tried to close.
My speculation is a wormhole developed in that particular car and it was letting out passengers from other cars all across the three SkyTrain lines in the Lower Mainland. That’s the only reasonable explanation, really.
Has it already been four weeks since I last ran? Yes, yes it has.
And I hates it.
My weight has been slowly creeping up as I lose all discipline and self-control. I am becoming soft and squishy yet I know the ankle is not ready, so I must continue to bide my time and ignore those sweet, scrumptious donuts.
Tonight I went bowling for the first time in a million years. Jeff, Jason and I went to Dell Lanes in Surrey (whose slogan sounds like a parody — “The future starts here”). Dell Lanes is part of the Dell Shopping Centre and features Dollar Giant, Al’s Vacuum Superstore and a check-cashing outlet among its retail jewels. Like most bowling alleys, Dell Lanes is below ground where the sound of pins being constantly knocked down will not upset the neighbors.
This was to be five-pin or sissy bowling, as I call it. I knew that such advance mockery would later come back to haunt me.
For some reason the interior of the bowling alley is done up like a disco. I mean, there are actual disco balls, colored lights, black light, everything you’d expect to see from Saturday Night Fever. And music, though not necessarily music. There was instead a digital jukebox, which looks somewhat like an old-style jukebox except it has an LCD screen, no records and probably costs a dollar a pop (I didn’t check). The maker of the jukebox was advertising on the screen to like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter. Yes, I’m going to do that straight away. It also showed popular choices and it seemed the local folks favored “Jessie’s Girl” and a whole lotta country. We got to listen to Willie Nelson and Clint Black (the latter identified by Jeff). Yee and haw.
I bowled about as expected. Some gutter balls, hooking to the left so often I ended up overcompensating and hooking to the right. I think 5-pin may actually be tougher than 10. The balls are lighter and there are fewer pins but the pins are spread apart further and it seems easier to knock over just one without convincing any of the others to follow along.
Jeff, who said beforehand that he might get one strike per game, opened with a strike. This proved not to be beginner’s luck as he went on to amass an impressive score of 187 in the first game. I managed 110 and Jason was right behind with 108. I should point out that Jason is eight years old. Yes, I was almost beaten by someone who was born the same year Iraq was invaded.
First game scores:
Jeff – 187
Me – 110
Jason – 108
Jeff and Jason cooled off for round 2 while I improved a statistically insignificant amount:
Jeff – 153
Me – 116
Jason – 33
Once the official games were over, Jason improved remarkably, getting several strikes. He nearly threw the ball about a half dozen times while the pins were being reset, though. To his credit, his reflexes were fast enough to stop (except once, but the speed of the ball was just right, so the pins reset just as it arrived).
Jeff, meanwhile, seemed to favor a ‘launch the ball into the air and let it crash onto the alley’ approach. It actually seemed to work, too. None of us managed to go down the alley with ball in hand, so I consider the evening an overall success.
The pizza was entirely decent, too.
I’d like to think I’d do better at ten-pin (more stuff to knock over) but I know I’d probably goof up on that as much as with the 5-pin. No matter, bowling is silly and fun and that’s all that matters.
I am nearly but not officially ready to admit defeat with this year’s National Novel Writing Month. With 12 days to go, I have failed to light a spark on any of my attempts to write a novel. Part of it is poor planning, part of it is various distractions (health, work, fun stuff like that) and part of it is fear of over-committing to a complicated story that couldn’t be reasonably delivered in 30 days.
But as I said, I’ve not given up quite yet. I’ll have more to say in about a week’s time.
The Province is a newspaper that essentially makes fun of itself or perhaps a better way to describe it is to think of the editors as trolling the people of BC.
I espied this headline while walking past a pair of newspaper boxes. The box on the left was The Vancouver Sun and featured the headline Goodwill gone at Occupy: VPD chief. The Province carried the same story on its front page but with the headline that can be seen below.
Let me explain. Occupy Vancouver is a tent city at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the people gathered there railing against various societal ills, primarily how the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and something about 9/11 being a conspiracy for good measure. The city has been agitating for them to move and after a fatal drug overdose on the grounds started the legal paperwork to get the occupiers out. This has led to what some might term a tense situation. The Province headline has cleverly played on this by using the word ‘tents’ in the headline instead of ‘tense’ because it sounds just the same (that’s a homonym; relax, Province readers, it has nothing to do with homosexuality). See? Tents standoff. Ho ho.
It starts here, indeed.
I actually think this pun is an improvement over their usual front page stories, most of which are about assault victims, the headlines of which are written in the first person and usually along the lines of I thought I was going to die and he laughed like Hitler.
So, good work, The Province. You are slightly less deplorable on this day!
The HMV store at the corner of Burrard and Robson is sporting some new signs lately, as seen in this photo I took the other day. Compare the small sign on the left to the rather large one on the right.
I guess they need someone to help unload those Everybody Loves Raymond DVD sets at 50% off. And if you get fed up with the job, no problem, you won’t have it for very long, anyway!
