works of wanderlust

Category: life & stuff

Generally just words and thoughts on the progress of my day-to-day.

  • weekend wrap, eleven

    Last week was a busy week. Some work-related, professional stuff occupied my days (oddly enough) and my the time Friday rolled around my head was crammed full of half-baked frustrations with the state that summer has on the speed of business. It was always my least favourite time of year to try and get things done, and this year has been no exception.

    Alas, nothing some sporadic video gaming interspersed with various parenting emergencies couldn’t distract from.

    The blur of a mid-summer weekend included:

    Friday evening was a bit of an adventure trying to sort out a lost airpod for the Kid which meant driving across town to locate it.

    I watched a movie to relax. I settled into the couch and something inclined me to put on Cast Away, you know, the old Tom Hanks on a deserted island movie, and oddly enough it boosted my spirits a little bit after a weird week.

    Saturday morning was a little lazy, but the Kid needed to catch up on paperwork (yeah, figure that one out!) and so wanted to trip over to Starbucks and do her work over a coffee. This is my life now. I joined her and did some writing while she did her stuff.

    The weather was spotty, raining mostly, so the gals decided to do a morning costco run. Saturday at costco is always a bit sketchy, and with it being summer and raining it hit the mark. We tried to find something we could all agree on to cook for dinner but failed miserably. 

    I spent a good chunk of the afternoon prone on the couch, jumping between reading and playing some cozy video games, so reporting on that is a bit of mixed bag of “yeah, I needed to chill for a couple hours” and “lazy dude sits on couch.”

    Then the adventure began.  Well, not really. The kid got roped into a summer dance performance (even tho we thought she was all done with the studio) for a local highland games. The weather was garbage and the car needed gas, so we took my truck and I drove. I sat in the parking lot reading my book until she wandered back after the show an hour and a half later and oof… dead battery in the truck.  We got a boost from one of the other adults, but in the process I noticed my last-legs battery was corroded to the point of imminent failure

    Sunday morning I met the crew for a run and coffee, as usual, and as reported on in a previous post. 

    Then I went home, got showered and changed, and headed over to the store to buy a new battery for the truck. Changing it out—time spent mostly cleaning the corrosion off the leads—took about an hour and then I went for a little drive to make sure there was a solid charge in the new battery.

    I decided it was time to put my feet up and put the hammock out in the backyard, then waded out in grass up past my ankles, and nestled into my hammock… for about seven seconds. I figured I should probably cut the grass before I relaxed completely, and promptly checked off both those items from my afternoon list.

    The making of dinner followed, and after settling in to finish off another book while I waited for the food to digest (and the community free time at the pool to end at seven) I started reading a new novel.

    I capped off the weekend with a long lane swim at the pool shortly after seven, and the kid tagged along to go to the gym. I zonked me out and I was in bed at a reasonable hour like any middle aged guy who had a busy weekend should be.

  • merrily along, two

    The internets are full of crazy these days—and if it isn’t flat out nuts, it has probably been generated by an AI chatbot—so here is a few more good news, good vibe, life isn’t all wrinkly grapes reports from my week.

    My positives this past week were…

    The weather cooperated enough that I was able to mash up a few great summertime activities, turning on some tunes on the deck with the pergola shade up and writing out in the backyard instead of a cafe. The dog sat in the grass looking super contented and I got some vibes out my back door.

    It’s berry season, and my garden is full of fruit-bearing bushes and trees. Need I write more? Saskatoons, raspberries, haskaps, and soon—very soon—a tree bursting with juicy plums are just a picking away.

    I mentioned that the Kid got a summer job, but then a couple weeks later got her first paycheque and if there was ever an example of unfiltered joy through a text message, she sent me a dozen of them that morning. And then I think she stopped and bought herself a treat to celebrate.

    I’ve mentioned in other posts that I bought myself a gym membership to the local recreation centre. Some might not look at this as anything but a kind of fitness burden that they have taken on, but having access to some drop in classes and, yeah, the swimming pool is a definite mood boosting positive addition to my days.

    I have been mucking around with electronic music on my various devices, and have reached what I’m calling the curration stage—that’s the point where I am feeling done with just mucking around and am organizing things for a more learning-centric approach to the tools. It’s hard to explain without diving trench-deep into the details, but basically I’ve been weeding and pruning my toys so that I have a cleaner slate to do more experimentation-type stuff with sounds. 

    We have been more conscious about buying “Canadian” stuff lately, reorienting our spending, and have been finding lots of treasures in the form of better coffees, better beers, better fruit, and even better vibes.

    We were able to make a full salad last night for dinner from just stuff that came out of the garden in our backyard. Lettuce, beets, berries! Yum.

    We went for lunch in the Highlands neighbourhood this past weekend and I ate one of the best burgers I’ve had in a year atop the rooftop patio of a little place over there. Add to that a tasty sour beer and garlic fries and it was a divine meal worth reporting here again.

  • weekend wrap, ten

    I spent this past weekend either prone on the couch entering a vegetative state whilst playing video games, or scouting out the north side of the city for various barely-connected reasons. The weather was hot enough to be uncomfortable, but not so hot to be an excuse, and the smattering of rain here and there only helped me avoid mowing the lawn and feel guilty about spending time in front of the screens.

    All that laziness aside, we did accomplish a few things this past weekend…

    After a chill Friday evening, Saturday picked up considerably.

    The Kid had a party to go to across town, so we dropped her off and headed up to the north side, a part of town we only rarely visit and only rarely because it is just a pain to drive all over town when the only big difference is the names on the restaurants. But we were over there, so we went for burgers at a place called Fox Burger up in the Highlands and sat out on the rooftop patio sipping beers and enjoying the sun.

    A little stroll around the area brought us back to where we had parked and then we made a kind of backwards trek to our own party to hang out with friends who were having a board game gathering.

    That was short-lived however, and we only stayed long enough to play one round of a mediocre and what seemed to be a pretty unbalanced chaos game called Dragon and Flagon—which I lost miserably at, which may have clouded my impressions.

    We skipped out before they ordered dinner and went back home to spend some quality time with the dog before we were off again to the theatre. The touring production of The Lion King was in town and we have had tickets for about a year—and Saturday was the night.

    After the show we took another meandering detour to the northside, skirting around a literal detour on the bridge where the cops had it shut down with a “forensics” investigation—ugh—and picked up the Kid from her party before she turned into a pumpkin at midnight.

    Sunday morning a got a little shafted running again. Everyone was off in the mountains doing or working the big Sinister 7 ultramarathon, so it was either run solo again or change into my swimming gear and do laps. I chose the latter.

    After drying off and scarfing some lunch we went shopping for clothes. I have been stumbling into some professional efforts lately and needed some fresh work-appropriate threads. This took us on an adventure to West Edmonton Mall where I found a great pair of dress pants but the colour I wanted was in the wrong size and the size I wanted was in the wrong colour. Back to the northside we went where the store staff had checked inventory and sent us up to Londonderry Mall, the mall that time forgot, where my new digs were waiting.

    The Kid and I took a pair of dogs for a walk, one of them being ours and the other being a favour.

    Then we cooked a nice bit of salmon for dinner on the barbecue and settled back in for the evening.

    Not bad for a lazy weekend in July.

  • weekend wrap, nine

    Somehow I missed a couple weeks in a row of weekend wraps, which is particularly flustering because one of those weekends was a long weekend, and the Canada Day long weekend to boot. I blame the distraction on that my weekend actually ended on Wednesday, so my headspace was a little out of sync with reality.

    Excuses, excuses.

    So, all that is to say that while I didn’t give updates on the various outings and barbecues and chores that were accomplished, I’m sure you’ll get the sense that a couple busy weeks transpired and what we were left with was our first full weekend in July …and it was kinda mellow.

    This weekend we…

    Reunioned. The Kid has been housesitting and so it was a big deal that we picked her up after work on Friday and went out for vermicelli bowls for dinner. A week out of the house and it already kinda feels like she moved out, even though by this time next week she’ll be back to being underfoot and in my kitchen making a mess again.

    I was tired, and the air had just enough of a hint of firesmoke that I shut myself up in the house and spent my Friday evening reading. Very exciting, huh?

    Saturday was by far more eventful. We were out of the house by eigh-thirty in the morning and scooted down to the Italian market to pick up our lunch in the form of a big ole spicy italian sandwich.

    Then we drove east. I will now, likely to the objection of the dozens of people who live there but who will never read this, decribe the vague are east of the city as the middle of the middle of nowhere. Yes, there are a scattering of smallish towns and barely cities and other rural things to see dotted across the prairies, but essentially there is very little between here and Saskatoon six hours drive down the arrow-straight highway.  We went two hours east, and then north for a bit, and found ourselves in the middle of the middle of the middle of nowhere where on the one hundred and fifteen year old remains of the family farm we had a little family reunion. The dog was not amused.

    We were back on the road home and back into cell service range again by about seven that evening and home by nine, after which there was not much to do besides chill for a bit and then go to bed.

    I woke to rain. Pouring rain. And a determination of a sort to get in a run come hell or high water, the latter seeming a real possibility. I showed up for run club and ended up plodding out a not quite seven klick run drenched and solo.

    I stayed to for coffee and to warm up after.

    Karin and I did the grocery shopping and then I parked myself in the basement as the rain continued to watch some Netflicks before working myself up to start prepping dinner.

    In the meantime, Karin went to pick up the Kid because they had show tix for downtown on Sunday evening and the Kid had not brought any going out clothes to her housesitting gig. The pair of them ate then disappeared for the evening and I had the house to myself to practice my Japanese and my music, in roughly that order. The dog continued to be unamused.

  • merrily along, one

    I routinely find that I have a hundred little often-good things that I want to post about but (a) I don’t want to post a whole article about and yet (b) I don’t want to lose them in this rambling, barely-read record of our little life here which can so easily drift into complaining or rambling.

    With world events swirling in such frustrating ways it really is easy to get lost in the negativity and yet a piece of me is realizing with crystal clarity that the hopelessness being drilled into us day after day by the media, by the fascists, and by the universe itself is a feature (for them) not an accidental byproduct.  

    “How dare we celebrate the positives while they’re busy burning down the world?” I have been told in maybe not so literal a phrase… but the meaning has always been the same: despair you fool, and now pay us our due.

    So. I want to start a new ‘series’ on this site where I just reflect on some good things that have been going on in our lives.

    Like.

    The Kid got a summer job. I won’t tell you where or necessarily what she is doing, but she is currently getting paid a decent union wage to spend her summer outside with kids and helping the community. The only days I won’t be jealous is when the mosquitos finally come out.

    One of my longer-serving running friends is getting married today. It’s one of those tiny, family only weddings, but we took him for drinks last week and sometime today, atop a streetcar crossing the river he’ll get hitched to his long-time girlfriend, soon-to-be wife. 

    I’ve been reading more. You may have noticed from the review-count on this site, but I’ve read more in the last three months than I have in the last three years, it seems, and losing my patience with the written word while I was trying to write more was a point of distress for me lately. Digging into words as a consumer is a huge positive shift for me.

    Oh, and I finally fixed our television box last night. Two hours it took to figure out that the problem we’ve been having for months and months, the set top box resetting and inexplicable technical fails was in fact a borked power brick. The don’t tell you this but they basically put little computers inside those little power blocks now and become another point of failure. The Wife gets to watch her shows in peace now.

    The dates are secret for obvious reasons, but we booked our trip to Japan later this year. That’s about all I have to share on that for now, except to say that we have flights and hotels scheduled to spend over two weeks in Asia later this year with plans to go to Tokyo Disney, the Ghibli park, and eat a lot of tasty Japanese food. Sorry, we’ll do Korea next time.

    Lately, I’ve been making music. I mean, playing a lot and learning a lot and loving sound for the raw enjoyment of it in my own ears with no expectation of sharing it beyond headphones or my living room walls. The act of learning and honing enough skill on the piano has allowed me to flex musically beyond tinking keys and the exploration of synth sounds is a deep art form.

    Of course, finally, I can’t neglect to tell you that I get free bread all summer. Well, kinda. I stumbled on a (potentially in error) crazy deal at the grocery store where I traded in some of my loyalty points for three bags of bread flour. I think there was likely a zero missing on the redemption value, but everyone gets a break once in a while and me, I have nearly twenty kilos of bread flour thanks to my acute mathing skills in the grocery aisle. 

    See? Good stuff all around.