#193 - Evacuations and Blondie's

Today was Robyn’s first day back at the studio. We woke at seven and ready ourselves to commute into the city together.

Yesterday’s traffic issues had all but disappeared and we arrived at the station in such good time that I remarked, “Everything is coming up Brian today.”

We got out of the car, only to be immediately informed by another traveler that the station was being evacuated.

Evacuated?

We made our way to the ticket booth and asked a Go Train employee what was going on and looking frazzled told us the same again. “The station is being evacuated.”

We were told we could make our way to the next station and take a train from there. The next station was Oakville. And it isn’t known for having plenty of parking spaces in the best of times. It certainly has less spaces than the Bronte station.

We gave it a shot anyways, but it wasn’t meant to be, so we returned home to work from there instead. Just a big waste of time.

The trains are now running at a reduced capacity, and the reason is now just listed as a police investigation. Which usually means there has been some kind of fatality on the tracks or somewhere on the grounds.

Once home, my work computer needed a Windows update to version 11. Windows 10 no longer provides security updates and that is kind of important from work’s point of view. Feeling confident after upgrading my own laptop jus the other day, I made the executive decision to get it done this morning.

That meant sitting and waiting for it to do it’s thing and I took that opportunity to write this portion of the blog. Waste not want not, I say.

At lunch we were able to get in a walk. The weather was warm, but the sky started to go grey behind us. About halfway through the sky opened and started a light drizzle. Robyn stole my hoodie to keep her hair dry.

Chivalry is not dead.

The rest of the walk continued in that light drizzle, but it never got much worse than that.

After that, I returned to work and set about painting a colour zip pan, deciphering the blend modes of the designer’s photoshop files into useable artwork. A task both tedious and unrewarding for the unnecessary nature of it all.

That finally done, I was able to get back to doing some tree revisions with new improved tree treatment that we will use going forward.

My attempt to update my mini pc failed for some reason. It is now trying it again. I’ll let it run all evening in the hopes it will work itself out. My laptop was a lot smoother when getting the same updates.

We are heading out to our friends tonight for Survivor, Pizza Hot Tub. I am still feeling full from yesterday’s pre-musical feast. The idea of eating pizza is nonexistent for me right now.

My writing instructor got more responses from the same writers from the other day who wanted to know how to sell their Star Trek novel or needed help with the five years of world-building they had done. His basic response was to throw it all away and spend five years writing their own work without outlines. Writing some short stories in the world you created would be a better use of their time.

The thing they failed to understand was that everything they were doing was setting them up to fail or burn out. I’ve taken many of their courses and understand now why they tell young or inexperienced writers to do this. It’s not out of malice or an attempt to keep people from writing their own books. It comes from watching hundreds of writers go down this very death spiral, some of whom were very popular authors.

I am glad I was able to find my teachers when I did. The sad part of that, is my friend, who has been writing the same novel for almost fifteen years has fallen into that trap. And even sadder is that you can’t do anything to change their minds about it. Maybe it’s the sunken cost fallacy that keeps them from doing anything else. Maybe its pride or as my teacher posited, it’s safer to tell people you are world building when people ask how it’s going. And you need never write anything that can be judged on its merits.

The workday ended, and the weather outside had turned warm and sunny. I ordered some crazy puffs from Little Caesar's on their app this time so we wouldn’t have to wait there at the store this time. In the end, we only had to wait about five minutes.

We arrived at our friend’s house, and their order had not yet arrived. They were trying a new pizza place called Blondies Pizzas. They ordered two and as soon as the box was opened you could tell it was going to be a good pie. It has the elements of Neapolitan pizza. The crust has some rise, mostly in big flaky bubbles. The dough tastes well-fermented and had both a crispy and soft texture giving it a great mouth feel.

I think we will be ordering from there again. It has high quality ingredients and toppings. Blondie’s pizzas have all the things I loved about Justino’s and none of the things I disliked. The franchise developed out of the Leslie Street original location and is currently slowly expanding throughout Ontario. And I for one, am very happy to have one close by.

The hot tub was sorely needed this week, and I am grateful to have the opportunity to use it and to have a good friend to share it with.

Our hosts shared a chocolate whisky made by Crown Royale and it was good. Most chocolate infused alcohols are not very good in my opinion, in fact, most are undrinkable. But I would have this again for sure if offered. I don’t think it’s something I rush out and buy for myself though.

Then after hot tubbing, they pull out a key lime pie by President’s Choice. Key lime is one of my all-time favourites and even though I was stuffed to the brim with pizza, I couldn’t refuse a slice. And it was as good as I could hope for.

They also had a new used brown leather recliner with electric adjustments. I was delighted to use the chair during our visit. It made for a very comfortable platform to do some writing, while occasionally glancing up a the TV to see what was happening on Survivor.

I have to restart the reading streak again. Last night’s musical made for a very long day, and we were exhausted by the time we returned home just after midnight. It tough to carry around a book sometimes, but I am going to have to come up with some options. Kindle books can be read on that device but also on my computer, iPad and iPhone. So, that’s an option. I am not one for ripping books apart into small sections, but apparently there are people who do.

I don’t count audio books in this streak; it must be read with my eyes.

The obvious answer is to pack a book into my bag as often as possible. There isn’t a word count or page count for the streak. I can read just a little and it would count, but the book needs to be with me to get read. Setting a time to read would help as well. Like the first fifteen minutes of a train ride or the first fifteen minutes of each day. Waiting to the end of the day certainly isn’t working.

The tribal council on tonight’s episode of Survivor is a spicy one with plenty of last-minute whispering into ears. When it gets like that, I start watching with a bit more interest than usual. And it was an entertaining one with a difficult to predict outcome.

We left our friends in good spirits, promising to get together again next week. From there, robyn and I headed to the local Walmart to pick up a few hundred dollars worth of groceries. I picked up more ingredients to make another batch of the Dishoom Ruby Chicken. Both Robyn and I really enjoyed it. I thought it would be great to premake some and freeze it to take to work for lunch. I took the time to buy some of the ingredients I’ll need to make the kiddo’s birthday tres leche cake in a couple of weeks. I’ll like to have all my ingredients on hand well before I start. There is nothing worse than having to go out and get things while you are covered in flour or cake batter.

I also picked up another golf shirt. All the summer clothing is out already, and I only seem to buy clothes when I need them which means I am always buying out of season, or at least the wrong season. It was a colour I didn’t own, and the open neck feels more comfortable for me these days. Guess I am too thick necked for even t-shirts anymore!

I get to finally sleep in tomorrow morning and boy am I excited about that. I can’t even remember the last time I got a solid eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. After the day and night, I am bound to have on Saturday, I can tell you right now I won’t be up before noon on Sunday. And I may not even leave my bed if I have it my way.

I saw that there is another season of “The Boys” on Prime. I may watch a couple of episodes on Sunday while I am recovering from the craziness of life.

While we were in the hot tub, I was asking my friend John what he thought of the last mystery short story I had sent him. He mentioned a scene at the end of the story where a male character slides his arm around a female character’s waist.

It was meant to be sweet moment, but I wrote he slid his arm around her waste.

And that has a completely different meaning!

This was a story I sent to my mentor and one of the rules is that I can’t edit the story. I send it to her just as it is and that means there are going to be plenty of errors. Mistakes like this are at least humorous.

I finally took the extra monitor my brother-in-law donated to me last Saturday. It’s been in the back of my car all week. Every time I have exited the car I had too many other things to carry in and eventually just plain forgot about it. I haven’t even seen what it looks like, but I am sure it will work great for a writing screen in the cave.

My brother-in-law bought himself a new LG curved screen and looked wide enough to replace three screens. I’m not sure if I would like one of those, but it looked cool sitting on his standing desk. I remember a while ago he as going on about his Ember smart mug and I thought they were a complete waste of money. And the I got one and don’t want to drink my tea or coffee any other way. So, I’ll keep an open mind about the giant curved screen for now.

I’ve been losing most of my chess games recently. I suspect it has to do with how tired I am and the lack of sleep. Chess is a good indicator of my mental reservoir. The last couple of days I have made some really stupid moves that have lost me the game. Mistakes I wouldn’t normally make. The best way to counteract this is to get some sleep, obviously, but also by doing some chess puzzles before I play a game. For some reason, this gets my brain back into gear.

But in this moment in time, I am going to try the get some sleep method. I’ll end this blog here tonight.

Good night all!