#183 - Sniffing My Dill Fronds

I was able to get a bit of extra sleep; Robyn took the kiddo to school so he could return the film equipment. That gave me a much needed extra two hours of slumber.

There were three meetings in my calendar for today, which meant less time for getting things done, but they are necessary.

I did some approvals today and then jumped on my own painting when time allowed.

The other bathroom organizational pieces arrived today: two parts to mount my toothbrush and toothpaste to the inside of a cabinet door. The countertop is now neat and tidy, and all my bathroom junk is stowed away properly. Not sure why it took so long to do this.

I purchased a straining spoon as well and it should arrive in time for my first attempt to make Ruby Chicken. I am missing two ingredients, black cardamom seeds and pomegranate seeds, but I had everything to get the marinade started on the chicken. I’ll let that marinate for twenty-four hours before I start making the Makhani sauce. I need the black cardamom seeds to start that sauce.

We took a walk at lunchtime, and the weather was perfect. It felt like a warm day. I thoroughly enjoyed being outside as much as was possible. A neighbour stopped to say how nice our house looked while I was out fussing with the tulips. It’s always nice to know your hard work is making other people’s days brighter.

Robyn had some online interviews today for a job to help people with Down syndrome. From what I could overhear, it went really well. I’m really excited for her.

I printed out my new story, one to give to my first reader, John, and one for me to read over and look for errors. I am sure there are going to be many, and that’s before my mentor has torn it apart.

If I failed anywhere in that story, it was in character descriptions, and maybe the validation at the end could have included more. But overall, minus the stress of the deadline, it was fun to write.

I watched an interview with author Andy Weir (The Martian and The Hail Mary Project), and The Critical Drinker about Andy’s book being turned into a movie. He quoted another person when they were talking about Starfleet Academy, who said, “Star Trek has influenced almost all science fiction except for the new Star Trek.” I burst out laughing at this because it’s so true, and funny. And sad.

I have about six thousand five hundred words left to write between tonight and tomorrow to meet my word challenge goals. It’s a completely doable task. About three hours of writing per day. This means writing on the train is going to be a must tomorrow as a ride into work. We are expecting a massive volume of rain for the next three days, the days I am expected to go into work, naturally.

There is a chance I get to do some writing during the lunch hour again. I’m really hoping that will happen; however, I suspect that our animation team may be n studio tomorrow and people may want to have some lunch with me.

And since I haven’t seen many of them for months, it might be nice to sit with them. If they aren’t in the studio tomorrow, I will be writing my butt off because it really removes the pressure and burden of a thirty-five hundred word writing day.

I’ll try to get as much written tonight as possible to mitigate that as well. There is a real sense of relief when I meet the word quota for the month and the counter resets for the next month. I get a bit of a breather.

This will occur on Wednesday, April 1^st, the same day that I get my mentor feedback and the next assignment. So, it might not be as much as a breather as usual.

I heard on the news a CN train derailed in St. Catharines. It sounds like no one was hurt and there weren’t any toxic substances being transported. It doesn’t sound like it has affected the Go Train service today, or will it affect my ride in. So far.

Seems like there have been a few train derailments over the last few months. Not sure why that would be. Hopefully, it’s not deliberate sabotage. Then again, I hope it’s not lack of maintenance either. It will be interesting to hear what they say is the cause of the accident.

I got a laugh today to see all the new sculptures artists are placing in front of the White House to protest the president. One was a golden toilet with a marble wall with a plaque saying that during difficult times the president found time to redecorate a White House bathroom.

Another was one of Trump frolicking hand in hand with Epstein. Apparently, the White House had that statue taken down even though the artist had a permit.

There was another sculpture of a giant orange fist crushing the head of Lady Liberty.

On ‘This Week Tonight’ they had a bit that talked about Trump putting his face on the National Park pass. Traditionally, is has been a nature image, the winner of a photo contest that graced the pass. People have started making stickers and sleeves to cover his face.

So, the people at the show made a bunch of free funny images of their own for people to download. There were options to replace the president’s face with a bear and various mascots from the show. They even had some of the artwork they have purchased from previous seasons including erotic rat paintings. Kind of an ongoing joke for the show.

Maybe you had to be there to see it, but it was damn funny.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I have spent the last month achieving the 2026 words a day challenge. Most of the words came from writing this blog. And that’s something I want to change in April. My goal is to write fifty percent of the challenge as blog posts and the other as fiction. This means writing about a thousand word of the blog and the same of fiction.

Another thing I plan on changing is the order in which i write the two things. Right now, I usually start with the blog post because I know it’s something I can do and there is less cognitive strain to get it done. For the moment it is mostly reporting on my day and the occasional thought about this or that.

By focusing on the fiction first, it ensures that I get around to it. It’s too easy to get two thousand words of blogging done and then say, “Well, I made my quota, no need to write anything else today.”

If I am going to write over seven hundred and fifty thousand words this year, I don’t want it to be all blog posts. I’d missing out so much fiction writing experience. Thre fore I will make sure I write a story a month with the idea of submitting to the Writer’s of the Future Contest every quarter. I’ll pick the story that I think has the best chance of winning.

I want to see that pile of manuscripts growing on my desk. Even though I have written almost 190 blog posts, it doesn’t give me the same sense of accomplishment that the pile of manuscripts does.

It’s going to be hard going at first, but in the end, I think it will be worth it. And as the months go on, I want to keep shifting the balance of fiction to blog post to be weighted towards the fiction side of things. The blogs could return to a shorter three hundred-to-five-hundred-word length. Plenty of words to say what I was thinking about that day.

I’ve been happily reading each evening again. Making reading a streak was a necessary evil to get me to do a thing I already wanted to do. Mythago Wood continues to draw me deeper into the story the more I read it. It really has that mystical feel the other authors who recommended this book were talking about. It’s not hard to see why they all admire it. It’s a little bit like being immersed in a fog. You can’t see everything clearly, but you get enough of a glimpse to get a sense. You know a world exists outside of the fog, but none of it seems to matter until you resurface into the light of day. And for a book that is a very impressive feat.

Speaking of feats! I have managed to remember to drink my AG1 supplement for nine days in a row as of tonight. I find it is easier to remember to drink the stuff when I am at work, because I am always looking for something to drink or wanting to take a break. Making up the AG1 is a good reason to get up from my desk for a minute.

At home I find I tend to drink the concoction later at night, because I have forgotten during the day and am only reminded when I see I haven’t ticked it off in my little notebook. The little notebook is where I track my streaks and challenges. It is responsible for many of my achievements in the last six months, and one of the reasons I bought six more of them a few weeks ago. I guess it goes back to the idea that anything that can be measured can be improved.

I used that new app, Listonic, today for a recipe. It occurred to me that for the Chicken Ruby I needed to make sure I had all the ingredients, so I added them to a list and then checked of the ones I already had. The Listonic lists allow you to add quantities and units as well so I can say how many teaspoons of lime juice I’ll need or cloves of garlic. I find it very useful for shopping for those more involved recipes.

One thing that happened at the grocery store was a little weird. The cashier, a woman I have had ring my purchases up a few times, decided she needed to sniff my dill fronds and cilantro before putting it into my bag. I found this to be very off behaviour. I am not sure where in the world she is originally, from, I can’t place the accent, but apparently sniffing other people’s food is just fine. I won’t be inviting her out for dinner anytime soon; I can tell you that much.

Not that it hurt the food in anyway or made it inedible, but if I was one of those germaphobes, I would have died inside right there in the checkout. Luckily, I made of stronger stuff than that…. Most of the time.

Last week I did a bit of writing on the train and then a bit more after my breakfast at the diner. I want to see if I can repeat that again tomorrow. Writing at the diner game me a great deal of joy for some reason, as well as writing at lunch on the staff couches.

I think it is because it represents the way I want my life to look like in the future. A future where I can make my living from the table of a diner, a train or a couch. That is something I find very intriguing. I would love to be able to travel and get my work done as I go from place to place, writing in little cafes or tables near the beach.

I will definitely be testing this out the next time we are able to take a serious vacation. The next obvious time will be in the summer up at the cottage. Writing every day has become a habit now, so I think I will get a fair bit written up there this summer.

Nasa is set to launch the Artemis II into orbit on April 1^st. I can’t help but think they could have chosen a better launch date. People these days will be calling it a hoax just because of the day they launched. It’s pretty cool that they are launching ship into space again though.

This flight will be manned by four astronauts who will circle the earth for few days to do system checks before shooting off to circumnavigate the moon, a lunar flyby as it were, before returning to earth. This is all part of a plan to put people back onto the surface of the moon. There will be three Americans and one Canadian on the flight.

The last time humans travelled this far away from earth was over fifty years ago when it was accomplished by Apollo 17. If all goes well, Nasa will go forward with another mission to land people on the moon sometime this decade.

I for one, am excited to see a return to space in a more meaningful way. Probes and satellites are all great, but getting people out there is where all the excitement is. I imagine this new push to return to the moon has more to do with mining operations and America’s new Space Force wing of the military. They are likely to want to build a base and claim some territory before other competing nations like China get there first.

And I do believe NASA does have some affiliation with the armed forces. They are not, to my knowledge a separate entity without any obligations. I could be wrong about that of course, but I do know that NASA has launched military satellites without much or any public announcements. Which makes sense, I wouldn’t say anything either about my secret spy satellites, if I could afford to have them.

Apparently, the new rocket replaces the Saturn V rockets and also uses the same side boosters that are used on the shuttle launches. It can lift payloads of sixty thousand pounds and the rocket, fully loaded with fuel, weighs of about five and three quarters of million pounds.

Space X and other private companies are building the landers that will make the decent to the lunar polar surface, slated for some time in 2027. Not too long a wait for us space enthusiasts.

I still remember when the first space shuttle lifted of as a child. My mom called my back into the house, I was standing outside waiting to be picked up by a hcool bus, and she let me watch the liftoff. It was cool thing to experience as a child. It made me feel like the shows, like Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica were not so much fiction after all. It would be another shuttle tragically exploding on lift off that would shutter the space program for decades to come.

This is why I think books like the Martian and The Hail Mary Project are important. They make being smart cool again. They put problem solving and not giving up at the forefront of people’s imaginations. And not in the fake way that a lot of other wish fulfillment entertainments do. Many of the things in these books are real solutions to real world problems and I think that is cool.

And in this day and age of connectivity, we will be able to track this ship via our cellphones. And that can only help make space cool again.

And as I understand it, Nasa plans to land a mission on the moon once per year once things get going with the ultimate goal of getting to Mars. There is also a plan to build a a space station that orbits the moon they are calling the Lunar Gateway.

The CanadaArm3 will be instrumental in the construction of that station.

It is a great sign that the Canadian government has increased its spending in this area including a new spaceport in Nova Scotia, so our country can launch it’s own satellites.

You wouldn’t want to be on this flight though, if you are the claustrophobic type. The interior space of the command module is said to be about the same as two minivans. With four people up there, that could get a little tight. Sounds better than the earlier Apollo missions as far as space is concerned, but don’t expect very much privacy when you need to use the privy.

Another space show has just released their newest season. For All Mankind just came out the other day. I think it’s season four of five maybe? I’ve lost count. It has been a solid show so far and I’ll be interested to see what direction they take it in this time around.

Ronald D. Moore who was responsible for Battlestar Galactica, is one of the creators of For All Mankind. He seems to make really good shows and this is just another one of his many successes. Being on Apple TV has probably been a good environment for a show like this to flourish.

Can’t wait to dig into the new season.

There was a bit of set up of earth against the colonies going on last year, so I imagine they will continue on with that story line. It’s got a strong cast and good production and a stellar crew.

The kiddo offered to make me some chocolate chip cookies today. I am not going to say no to that and I am grateful that he offered. There have certainly been days where he wouldn’t have. I think at this age they start to develop a greater sense of empathy. I’n not sure if that is scientifically accurate, but it feels like it is.

I still feel like I am recovering from the all dayer and all nighter I did on Saturday. I’m getting too old for this shit. I need my beauty sleep more than the average bear. Granted last week was a bit of a marathon in general. Busier and more tiring than other weeks. Maybe its just the pile up of things that has knocjed the stuffing out of me. I have barely used my new oven. I think I used it once so far to reheat a pie and air fry some leftover fries and onion rings.

We get this Friday off for the easter weekend at least. We will be travelling to my sister’s house for the occasion. It’s my nephew’s birthdaty tomorrow, so we will be able to give him his gift when we see him.

My brother-in-law is a bit of a foodie like me, but he ahas all the gadgets. He often doesn’t make a traditional easter dinner. So, I am wondering what will be on the menu this time, I trying to think what type of food he has yet to make for us. Whatever it is it will be delicious for sure. Never had a bad meal at their house.

And sometimes it’s a learning experience as well. For both of us.

And later in the week we have our tickets to go see the Book of Mormon as well as tickets to see David Sedaris at Massey Hall. I’m looking forward to the Sedaris reading most of all, because he always enterains and I never regret spending the money. It’s always a nice way for Robyn and I to spend a night out on the town.

I haven’t had time to get any reading done today. And that sucks because I have to break that streak and start it all over again. I knew this might happen, and really it’s not a big deal to miss the odd or two. But if you miss one, then you turn around weeks later and release you’ve stop doing the thing you wanted to do. Or you didn’t achieve the thing you wanted to achieve.

The thing that is important when you break that streak is to get right back on that horse like nothing happened. And that’s exactly what I plan to do tomorrow.

It’s been another long day, I have to get up in six hours to catch a train.

So I’ll end this rather long post here and bid you a good night.

See you tomorrow all!