random thoughts

That’s kind of how I feel today–like taffy. Twisted, stretched, but still sweet.

I think I’d rather be a cupcake.

Technically I had “lunch” in the form of a Clif bar, but I didn’t actually take a break, I just kept working. In part it was due to the weather turning wet and making a walk unpalatable, as I have no umbrella nor the desire to spend the afternoon working in soggy clothes. I was also partway through a large task and didn’t want to lose momentum.

Unfortunately I had not slept well last night so the combination left me feeling tired and gross by the end of the afternoon. I feel a little better now, just in time to go to bed and try sleeping all over again.

Tomorrow I am taking that break. Kids, don’t skip your breaks! If the mean supervisor tells you to march straight back into that coal mine, you tell him you have rights and you’ll work that much harder if you get your break first. Also, you probably shouldn’t work in a coal mine if you’re a kid. Or human. Those places are dangerous.

I did not sweep, do laundry or buy toothpaste today. You may wonder then, what did I do? Did I simply laze around on my second day of vacation? Did I join the 500,000 or so downtown at the Pride parade (featuring Justin Trudeau’s third appearance but first as prime minster–the first time in the parade’s 36 year history that a sitting prime minster has taken part. Kind of sad when you think about it)?

The answer to these questions is no, I did not. Instead I went shopping and bought nothing.

Determined to get this consumerism stuff right, I went out again and this time bought several bags of groceries. I have eaten some of them since then. The groceries, not the bags.

By early evening my watch was telling me I’d only hit about 50% of my move goal. I wanted to hit 100% because those stupid numbers really do motivate me, especially when I have a streak going. So I went for an 8K walk, in part around Burnaby Lake. As reward I got bit three times, once on my left hand and twice on the back of my right calf. I applied chamomile lotion to the bites and within minutes found a reason to wash my hands and immediately had to re-apply the lotion. The itching could be worse so I guess I’m a little thankful that these were baby bugs or bugs in training or something.

And then I did laze around, part of which was spent pondering how I have yet again failed to write a post per day for another month, though I’ve come closer in July than the last few months. Onward to August!

On the first day of my vacation the weather was sunny and warm, just like summer is supposed to be, so hooray for that.

I spent the day sweeping, doing laundry and buying toothpaste. I also went for a walk, which ended with buying toothpaste. You may think this is not the most exciting way to spend a vacation and you would be correct. In fact, what I did was follow my usual Saturday routine (my Saturdays are not very exciting, though I should point out I don’t buy toothpaste every Saturday because I would have a closet filled with toothpaste by now if I did).

To cap off the day, I chose once again to not go to the annual fireworks display at English Bay. Every time I’ve gone I’ve enjoyed the actual show and quietly hated everything else, especially the large crowds and the incredible (slow) journey getting home on a transit system that is completely overtaxed. I can imagine pretty fireworks in my head or install a fireworks screensaver or watch lousy YouTube videos from 1999 and that’s good enough for me.

And that concludes the zany adventure that was my first day of vacation.

No, not really. But I am posting from one. Eventually, I’ll have a whole series of blog posts made from increasingly improbable devices. Macs and PCs are perfectly probable devices to post from, so they don’t count. An iPad also works surprisingly well and has the bonus of letting me post while in bed, something that would prove awkward with a PC, monitor and keyboard/mouse combo spread out over the sheets. This 27″ iMac would just plain crush me. Then I’d have to write a haiku about being crushed in bed by an iMac. And I don’t want to do that.

I figure with this whole Internet of Things (or internet of things, I suppose) the ultimate quest here would be to make a post from a toaster or something. I have confidence that the future promises such a thing.

(The iMac is on loan from work for professional development. I’ve already mastered the critical skill of muting that hellishly annoying start-up sound. And I still kind of hate the Finder and persistent menu bar at the top of the desktop. It feels very 90s. But the display is nice!)

Elon Musk’s privately-funded SpaceX made history yesterday by being the first group to successfully land a rocket on a platform out at sea. This is not an easy thing to do (the first four tries failed). In the footage you can see whitecaps, so this was even more challenging than it might have been.

The Verge has a story on this (here). Currently on their front page they have, in fact, 15 stories about SpaceX. Some of these are different angles on the rocket landing (reader discussion, photo galleries and so on) but still…15 stories on the main page. Some sites don’t even have 15 stories total. It seems a little crazy. Maybe this is just the way The Verge rolls, though. I am pretty unhip so it’s quite possible I am out of the (hyper)loop.

I am mostly posting this to help force that animated cat image down the page so it’s no longer the first thing I immediately see when the site loads. I mean, it’s funny and all but it’s also kind of weird and more importantly, testimony to my complete inability to write anything, even lousy things, over the past week or so.

There, two paragraphs of text should help. I could also pad this post out even more by inserting a picture…say, an animated cat image…

With the recent addition of Family Day in February, we’ve got statutory holidays in pretty much every month:

• January: New Year’s Day
• February: Family Day
• March: Easter
• April: um, sometimes Easter is here instead of March
• May: Victoria Day
• June: ???
• July: Canada Day
• August: BC Day
• September: Labor Day
• October: Thanksgiving
• November: Remembrance Day
• December: Christmas

What we need is a new holiday for June to help smooth over the gap between Victoria Day and Canada Day. Let’s take a look at how the holidays currently break down:

• Honoring the country/province/monarchy: 3
• Being grateful for what we have/what others have sacrificed: 2
• Religious: 2
• Honoring workers: 1
• What the hell, let’s just slap a holiday in here: 1
• Honoring family: 1

The clear favorite is a holiday honoring some kind of government. This is perhaps not surprising since it’s the government that gets to make the holidays. We already have holidays for the country, province and the Queen. That means we’d probably have to go macro (the world) or micro (the city). City Day probably wouldn’t fly so let’s go with World Day. It sounds grand, almost important. We can say it’s all about remembering how we’re all in this together.

But if that doesn’t fly, we need a backup. Adding more religious holidays would be too controversial, even if Christmas is just a bunch of gift-giving and crass commercialism, and just as many people associate Easter with a magical bunny that delivers candy eggs as they do the resurrection of the son of God. So religion is out.

Family and workers have holidays so it’s highly unlikely another could be squeezed in. Honoring/remembering is also covered adequately with Thanksgiving and Remembrance Day. This really only leaves the “What the hell, let’s slap a holiday in here” category, currently represented by New Year’s Day (come on, what makes the first day of the calendar so important it requires an official holiday? As discussed in the previous post, our calendar doesn’t even work properly).

June is the month in which summer begins, so maybe we could do Summer Day. Except that’s kind of lame. No one would buy that.

Maybe it could be a celebration of some group everyone likes or even loves. Like babies. Baby Day. Except that comes a bit close to Family Day, so probably a no-go. Most people like doctors. Doctor Day. It even has some nice alliteration. On the other hand, a lot of people view doctors as overpaid rich folk that also happen to cure sickness and save lives, so there may not be enough of a groundswell to support Doctor Day.

We need something that all Canadians love and cherish. Framing it that way, the choice is obvious: Hockey Day.

But Hockey Day in June makes no sense, even if the Stanley Cup Playoffs absurdly drag into that month.

Canadians also generally love maple syrup, poutine, moose, beavers, snow and being nice, at least as far as most Americans think (those who realize Canada is not actually part of the US, that is). Unfortunately, these are all too weak to put forth as official holidays.

Well, I give up. I say we just declare some Monday or Friday in June as statutory holiday and it can be whatever anyone wants it to be. We’ll call it National Holiday Day. There, done.