It’s better than molten lava pouring down the streets.
It makes things ever so slightly quieter outside, creating a pseudo-small town ambience.
There’s no chance of it piling up between May and August (note: this may change in a few decades).
Provides opportunity to build cool forts at no cost (cool forts–get it?!)
As far as we know, snow doesn’t cause cancer.
The current forecast calls for 3-7 cm of snow on Saturday. This qualifies as a moderate amount of snow. Sunday’s forecast is 22 mm of rain, turning the freshly fallen snow into less-than-fresh piles of slush. Fortunately (?) the rest of the week looks wet enough (and above freezing) that it should wash away whatever remnants of the white stuff that survives the weekend.
Running on Sunday is looking a tad dicey, though. I’ve never run in slush and it’s not something that makes my socks roll up and down in excitement, either.
It’s been snowing most of the day and into the evening. This is the most snow we’ve had since the Great Snow of 2008. I expect it to end in giant lakes of slush, as is the tradition of big Vancouver snowfalls.
After a week of near or just-below freezing temperatures it’s finally starting to get a little cool in the condo. Without turning the heat on it plunges down to…22ºC.
I like tacos.
I missed my second drawing for December. I should probably have picked a day to do them (eg. every Monday) instead of a date (eg. the first day of the month, then one week later, then another week later, etc.). I’ll draw something on the weekend. A blizzard, maybe.
I’m seriously thinking about buying an electric razor because I’ve come to loathe using a razor blade and shaving cream. I want to shave and go as quickly as possible so I have more time to write lists of random thoughts.
I completed my Goodreads Book Challenge for 2016, reading 32 of 32 books. I’ve since read #33 and am working on #34 now. This is the one perk of a long commute.
Why does the SkyTrain run slow in the snow when there is no actual snow on the rails?
The Goretex jacket is paying off.
Next week I start on the road back to 150 again after a month and a half of backsliding due to a) usual level of snacking combined with b) no lunchtime walks c) lunch and d) a lot less running.
(Ignore for a moment that you can’t actually see music, unless it’s on a sheet.)
Nostalgia is fun, but sometimes it’s best to remember what was and not what might be.
A new Pink Floyd album featuring the Waters, Gilmour, Mason and Wright line-up. This won’t happen because Rick Wright is dead, for one, David Gilmour would never agree to it for another, and even if all four were around and agreed, I doubt they could recapture their best work. The dream is gone. I have become comfortably numb.
A new Alan Parson Project album. Not one of Parsons’ solo efforts, but a reunion between Parsons and his co-creator of the Project, Eric Woolfson. Woolfson died a few years ago and the closest the two came to working together again was when Parsons remastered their entire catalog. Given the time apart to each do what each wanted (Parsons toured with a live band, Woolfson staged original musicals), I think they might have produced something decent with a one-time reunion.
R.E.M. with the original Berry, Buck, Mills and Stipe. line-up. R.E.M. produced some great material after Berry quit but they also produced some of their most uninspired music, too and it was obvious at the end that Mills and Stipe were glad to leave it all behind. A one-off album with no obligations between the four of them, something that would be a fusion of their original sound–jangly Byrds-style rock–with the best of their more sophisticated later work would likely be a worthy listen.
An album of original material featuring the vocals of Barbra Streisand but written by a strong songwriter, not someone who would write timid or predictable pop schlock. Streisand has an amazing, powerful voice but her rare forays into pop music (Guilty, etc.) are undermined by material that is often pedestrian. I can’t actually think of a good fit here right now because I’m out of touch with much of the contemporary music scene, so insert your favorite songwriter here.
Another Simon and Garfunkel reunion. Just kidding. I would like to see some sort of Simon and Garfunkel-esque collaboration, though. For one half of this duo I nominate Mike Mills, former bassist of R.E.M.
I’m not sure I’d actually like to see this, but it would at least be interesting to behold what Billy Joel would have to say with 23 years having lapsed since his last album, 1993’s River of Dreams. Would he be an angry old man or merely cranky?
Here’s a list of six more things I like. The original six can be found here.
Pizza. It can be sweet, savory, crunchy, hot, cold. You can have it delivered to your door. It’s the perfect food.
Chai tea
Lazing in the grass on a warm summer day
Reading a page-turner (defined as “I can’t wait to stop [name of activity] so I can get back to this book!”)
Mechanical keyboards, especially with blue switches. Clack clack clack!
Low travel keyboards because sometimes I prefer the immediate feedback and not waking the dead with my typing
New pillows
The list is seven items since I mentioned keyboards twice. I could probably make a list entirely of keyboards I like. It’s a little weird (as I look around I can see five keyboards for two computers. There’s a sixth keyboard in another room).
I just had a bath and am infused with a warm feeling and I also smell good. I mean, even better than normal. I smell fantastic.
Because I am in such a soothed frame of mind and smell so great, here’s a list of small but positive things to end the month on:
the weather is very nice today. Sunny and warm, with a light breeze. Weather Underground is reporting 19.3ºC at 6:15 p.m. and is predicting a high of 24 for tomorrow.
they finally re-opened the north exit at the Lougheed Town Centre SkyTrain station. It’s been closed for a few years, with an awkward and slippery-when-wet wooden staircase serving as an alternate route in the interim. The remodeled exit has that “new exit” look to it. You know what I mean.
I shaved today and it is probably the closest, smoothest shave I’ve had in years. I can’t keep my hands off this incredibly smooth, sexy face of mine.
I got my replacement Hoka Speedgoats, yay! I’ll talk more about them in a separate post, because I need to pad things out tonight.
I had a chicken bowl. These are especially satisfying after walking for an hour.
I’m below 164 pounds and getting within sight of my weight loss goal. That much less to carry when running.
I finished my taxes and should get around $450 back. Better than a kick in the pants, as Grandpa used to say.
I am not aware of any beloved celebrities dying suddenly in the last 24 hours
* I have no idea if either of my grandfathers said this, but I’m sure someone’s grandfather did
Back in the pre-Internet days, how did people come up with pithy quotes to pop into conversations, magazine articles and books? Did they memorize a bunch they liked, waiting for a chance to use them? Were quotes so often repeated that you’d find yourself finishing a quote someone else started quoting? Did people buy books of quotations and study them with the fervor of a student the night before a big exam? I wonder because now with the Internet it is trivially easy to find quotes said by anyone about anything.
Why have personal computers evolved so little in 40 years? In 1976 the first Apple computer was being built by Jobs and Wozniak. Five years later the IBM PC debuted. Look inside one and then look inside a PC from 2016 and they are immediately identifiable as being the same thing. There’s a motherboard, there’s ram and drives and cables and all of it is put together in a clunky kind of way that seems designed to draw blood should you have reason to tinker inside one. Actually, this is probably due to computers largely being commodity items. There’s little reason to innovate or improve on the low end, so it’s inertia and the steady improvement of technology combined with reduced costs that lead to things like the 5.25 inch floppy drive giving way to the 3.5 inch floppy drive and so on. Where pricing is more at a premium, like in the ultrabook market, you do see much nicer machines. Sure, they can’t be as easily expanded as a typical PC box but in exchange you get machines that are fast, light and far less likely to make you bleed. Okay, this turned out to be kind of an obvious question.
Why do people like to complain? Does it release a specific pleasure-inducing chemical? I could look the answer up but I’m lazy and I kind of like clinging to the mystery.
Why do so many dog owners let their dogs off-leash in areas that are clearly not off-leash?
How do countries evolve to have driving on the left or right side of the road?
Related: Do countries follow the same rules for which side of an escalator to stand/walk on?
Why do we still find violence the go-to solution for so many problems when it almost never actually solves anything?
Related: Why do so many politicians believe you can bomb an ideology out of existence?
Which is more likely to be real: aliens, the Loch Ness monster or Bigfoot?
Who would win in a fight, aliens, the Loch Ness monster or Bigfoot?
Why do I have literally hundreds of games but only ever play WoW and a Mahjong game on my iPad?
How do I make myself write fiction again? Are truly passionate people rare or am I just easily distracted?
Why do crowds of people move so inefficiently?
Is Social Media Widget a good band name?
How long will it take for humans to evolve past the need for sleep?
If I could remember all of my dreams in exact detail, would I want to?
If you get into an argument in a conflict resolution training course, do you pass or fail?
Seriously, what was Lovecraft thinking when he named his cat Nigger Man and then used the same name in a story?
Daylight Savings Time resumes on March 13. Goodbye, leaving for work and getting home when it’s still dark, how I shall not miss thee.
Being able to jog after work because of the aforementioned DST
In slightly over four months it will officially be summer and warm and sunny and men will walk around with their shirts off
Tomorrow is a statutory holiday and the high is forecast to be an unusually balmy 15ºC
I’m reasonably confident I will finally be over this #$@%^ hellcold
Completing the second draft of my novel, Road Closed. It could happen!
Winning millions of dollars in the 6/49. I know I’ve written about winning the lottery before. I’m fairly sure if you write about it when a bunch of planets are in alignment and while also suffering a hellcold and having just eaten some Triscuit crackers, it totally happens. $10 million would by a lot of decongestant.
In 1970 I was six years old. Candy bars cost ten cents and I had a monster green tricycle that could easily have been featured in a kids horror movie. Maybe any horror movie. It was a terror to behold and to ride.
But for all the nostalgia I have for those formative years from age six to sixteen, there are a few things I’m happy to have left behind:
the 8-track tape. I’ve written about this before so suffice to say that as a music format it was terrible.
long hair. What was I thinking? I was not thinking.
It doesn’t seem like the Christmas/holiday ads have started any earlier this year. A small mercy.
Curiously, I have seen numerous ads for licensed products for the new Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, but none for the actual movie itself. You can buy Stars Wars cosmetics. I don’t know why. But you can.
The controversy over the Starbucks holiday cups is dumb. The initial impulse is perhaps to despair over how many people seem upset over this non-issue but there’s always been people like this, we just have the Internet to insure every one of their voices now gets heard. Hooray for technology.
Our late fall weather has been cold and dry with random violent storms sweeping through every few weeks or so. This is probably due to El Niño, which is also responsible for the warmest October on record (it was pretty mild, which is nice for here, less so where it means ice caps melting/climate change doom).
I had my yearly egg nog.
Apple spice candles smell nice.
I do not want a white Christmas.
The Black Friday nonsense seems to be on the wane, though that may be partly related to the U.S. Thanksgiving coming so late this year. I’ll take what I can get.
We’re putting up a tree this year. AND DECORATING IT WITH STARBUCKS HOLIDAY CUPS.
Am I as old as dirt? I’m old as some dirt, not as old as other dirt.
These are things I remember as a kid:
Rotary dial telephones. People still talk about dialing a number on their smartphones, though there is a gradual shift toward using “calling” over “dialing.” With rotary phones you hated people who had lots of 8s or 9s in their phone number. If your finger slipped on the last number you had to start dialing over from the beginning.
Party lines. Picking up the phone and hearing others talking would be a plot for a horror movie now. Back in the early 70s it meant you were on a party line shared by others or your sister was gabbing to her boyfriend on the upstairs extension. “Get off the phone, I can hear you!”
The 8-track cassette. I’ve written about this before. It was the worst format for music ever, even if switching tracks was kind of neat. Like all terrible things, there is a small subset of people who love the 8-track cassette.
Black and white TV. We got a color set in 1975 and I discovered that Gilligan’s Island had color episodes.
The vinyl album. I guess that meant I grew up with a generation of audiophiles or something.
Typewriters. There was a room in the library at the Langara campus of Vancouver Community College that was filled with typewriters. It had a door that automatically closed for reasons that were obvious to anyone who entered the room when class assignments were due. I had my own portable Smith Corona and the only thing better than using it to write my own trashy stories (I did a lot more of that than actual assignments) was mashing as many keys at once. Why this was so entertaining I can’t precisely say.
Disco. The rise and fall and slight rise again.
The energy crisis. The first one.
The following stores: Eaton’s, Woodward’s, Woolworths, Woolco.
Video game arcades. Yes, these still exist in some form but I’m talking about the classic arcades of yore, with rows of games you paid 25 cents (50 cents if new) a shot to play. Duncan had a surprising number of arcades given its size. I spent most of my quarters in one adorably called The Saucy Dragon. I got my first full time job at an arcade at the age of 19, just as laser disc games became a very brief fad. I loved that job. I wrote my first novel working at that place. Handing out quarters was not exactly a demanding task.
Roller skates. You know, the kind that had four wheels, two in the front and two in the back.
Pong. Yes, I remember when Pong was new and futuristic. We’d drive the horseless carriage to the local pizzeria and play the cocktail table version, mesmerized by the bouncing phosphor dot.
The constant lurking fear of nuclear war. I was pretty sure my hometown wouldn’t get nuked but it was scary to think about all the same.
“How It’s Made” is like comfort food for my brain. There’s something about watching the assembly of mundane, everyday items I find soothing. Sure, I don’t need to know how fig newtons are made or what goes into putting together a model train car but dang it, I like it.
Here are five items you probably won’t see featured on “How It’s Made”:
Electric chairs
Vibrators
Bedpans*
Money shots
Anthrax
* there’s an outside chance they could actually do this one
