A couple of weeks ago we had a heat wave for several days. It reached 38°C and stayed there – without breeze, cloud, or shower of rain. The cooler nights were barely cooler, adding to the present discomfort and that of the next over-heated day, too. I find it very sad that more forest fires are burning than ever before, and hotter to boot. Lytton, BC is 90% gone now due to a sweeping forest fire. This week, beginning today, is said to be just as hot. What do you do to take refuge from this dry deluge? I stuff my feet in a plastic tub of cold water and read on the edge of the tub. I go for bike rides and use the heat to my advantage, not bulking up with protective clothing. The pounds / stone / kg that I put on during COVID is something to try to sweat off this year. We keep the house windows closed all morning which adds to maintaining our cool (in the house). Later in the evening, we might have 1~3 hours of A/C on. Nice & cool, relatively.
a week without coffee
No coffee for one week now. The last coffee I had was 1/3 Folgers, 1/3 Starbucks house blend, and 1/3 nothing but empty space. The second-to-last was one spoon of Folgers and the rest Starbucks house blend. Before that, nothing but straight high-test espresso beans steamed in a mocha pot. But all that’s history now.
I had a couple of days where I ate enough Tylenols and ibuprofens to kill a good sized horse, but I’m pretty much in the clear now. Only 2 ibuprofens. So what are the side effects of quitting almost cold-turkey? Headaches, a couple of backaches, sleepiness, and, believe it or not, sore hips. Yes, three nights in a row I woke up during the night with sore hips. I never would have imagined. Yes, it could be from something else, but I don’t believe so.
So – will I ever drink coffee again? Hmm. I once went 346 days without coffee overseas. I walked by a Starbucks on Jungang Ro (Street) and had a triple Americano. I remember the euphoric rush of caffeine wash over me as I sat at my little round table with a copy of the IHT. Utter and complete bliss.
All that is a distant memory now.
Heinz Hot Dog Pact
Holy cow. The world is being turned upside-down.
Now Heinz wants to even out thing on hot dog related.
It’s about time, I say. The hot dog-eating-world has put up with this injustice long enough! I personally think they should be sold by the dozen as that has how things have always been done! Dammit!
Can you tell I have nothing better to do today than rant and rave about nothingness?
40°C, global heatwave
Pretty worrying. The entire northern hemisphere on the glob is in a heatwave. For the past few days, we’ve seen temperatures hovering around 40°C. Lytton, BC, has stolen the North American “hot spot” from Nevada. Lytton, unfortunately, is now gone. The fire season has started already. Fire ripped through the town, and 150 people evacuated. No one injured, so they think.
quitting coffee
I’m quitting coffee!!! No more!
Actually, I ran out of beans. We’ll see how long it lasts.
50-min. commute
It took me 50 minutes to get home today. 43rd Street was closed due to an accident.
37 degrees
Today was hot. It reached up to 37 degrees today.
When I left work today, the van said “22”. I knew that must have been in the shade. On the drive home, I watched the reading quickly go up and stop at 37.
Mom passed away
Mom has passed away. It happened last night about 11:30pm.
heart scare
I woke up at 3:30am to a fire alarm.
Okay, so it wasn’t a fire alarm but, rather, an alarm clock. It was F‘s. He’d had it for several years but no longer wanted it. It’s one of those folding travel clocks, wind-up, of course. Because I collect old pre-antique things (vintage, you might say), it was a nice addition to my collection of clocks and other such devices. I had no idea I had set it for 3:30am.
the nuts-and-bolts of life (or, waste naught, want naught)
As mundane a task this is, I’m sorting through Father’s bizarre method of consumable hardware storage. He, presumably like most of the population, just threw a machine screw, washer, or nut into a coffee can until which time, days, months, or years later, he would fish through the container to find the right size, material, thread type, and grade of hardware.
My way of dealing with his legacy is “fixing” it. No, I don’t mean that in a terrible way. Just that, to gain independence from our parents, we have to sort through stuff and make determinations of what they want to keep or abandon of the legacy left to them. This is not just physical things, but ideals, habits, beliefs, etc.
My belief is that I should walk up to a container of organized smaller containers that are organized further until they become unique and usable items. I should be able to stretch out my arm, read a label (mach 1/4″ med or quarter-inch, medium thread machine screws) and pick the length I want. In the same bin, I want to pick a nut that is the right size to fit it.
I do not want to sit there in a shop, dump a bucket of rusted shit onto a table, and sort through it all to find that something doesn’t exist. That’s horse shit. As Trevan Wong would say, Remember the Seven Ps – Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.
So, this is my statement to the Old Man – thanks for leaving your shit for me to clean up. I will continue to be my father’s son and do those duties. The Book itself says to honour your parents. And that’s damn well what I’m going to do! This is my version of it.