#273 - Pride and Nowhere To Go

My determination to sleep in was realised this morning.

It felt great to have nowhere to go and no one to see. Robyn was up earlier, getting herself ready for breakfast with her lady friends, followed by a walk in the woods.

I finally gave up sleeping when the doorbell came kept going off when the girls arrived. And although I was up, I wasn’t about. And I had no desire to be about. The camera buzzed my phone again as kiddo #1 left to pick up her ladies. They are heading to the Pride Parade in Toronto later this afternoon after they get all Prided-up at our house.

I put on some YouTube videos and just relaxed in bed. Whatever I did to my lower back muscles yesterday while applying the homemade weed killer is still with me. It hurts to get out of bed, a chair and to walk. Waking does eventually loosen up the muscles, but my intital steps are slow and careful and involve a lot of grunting.

I watched a YouTuber that I forgot I liked who goes by the handle Prestongoes. He has a very entertaining channel where he attempts to build things to achieve some objective. The one I watched today was an old Welsch miners slide board that they used to descend the tracks after along day of work.

He recreated the board and took it to Hawaii where there is an old WWII army track going up a mountain that is now a tourist attraction.

He adds humour to his videos by adding in funny songs that he sings and writes, possibly by using AI, that crack me up. A more serios person might find him to ridiculous to watch, but he amuses me.

I watched a second video where he buys an 8x8 amphibious machine, sails it across a lake and then attempts to climb the mountain in the all wheel vehicle to plant his flag at the top. It’s a silly premise. I know. But I can’t help but be entertained. Some of these YouTubers know more about telling a good story than some of the writers of our modern entertainment. They could learn a thing or two.

I finally got hungry and thirty enough to leave our room. What a shame to stay inside on such a beautiful weekend, but I needed the recovery more than anything else. I headed downstairs and ran into the kiddos and their friends, were applying all kinds of make up and sparkles to their faces and bodies. I guess you can’t attend Pride without plastering gallons of multicolored makeup all over yourself.

They were very focused on creating their Pride personas so I left them to it and made myself a tea and one of those microwavable breakfast bowls. They aren’t too bad all things considered. I headed back upstairs content to watch more videos. Some were about writing and the rest were silly videos that simply entertained.

Robyn returned to the house with one of her friends and shortly afterwards the kids made a beeline for the door and Kiddo#1 drove them to the Go Station, heading for downtown Toronto.

The friend hung out on our back deck with us for a little while before heading home. After saying our goodbyes, I remembered I hadn’t finished cutting the back lawn yesterday because the battery had run out of charge. I grabbed the battery and polished of the lawn in moments, feeling better now that the job was done.

We stayed out on the deck reading and enjoying the nice weather. And after finishing a short story by Mick Herron, I stretched out on the sofa and took a nap, enjoying the sound of the wind blowing through the trees, only slightly marred by the hum of all the air conditioners struggling to keep the neighbourhood cool.

Eventually, Robyn went upstairs to take a nap before her support worker job started and I elected to stay on the deck, at first napping and then puttering around the garden. I took a break and sat on the grass with my legs crisscrossed to try to stretch my hips out. I ate a nice bowl of French vanilla ice cream as I did so.

I finally felt like it was time to do some writing. I had more than five thousand words to get done today and then the same for the following two days. That’s a big chunk of words to write over three days, but I have had to do more than this in the previous month.

I am trying to break it up into 1000 words increments to make it less brutal.

Hampering my progress today it the back pain from yesterday that gets worse the longer I sit in one position.

I keep taking breaks to try and stretch the area out, but I’m not sure if it’s doing anything at all.

One thing that seems to be working in my favour today is the new laptop case with sunshade built in. It’s great for writing on the deck and lets me use a lower screen brightness than I would normally need to see out here. And that means the battery life will be extended during the outdoor portions of my writing I could just plug it in, but I like the freedom of being truly wireless.

This new shade is going to work great when I write in the car as a passenger or if I take my scooter out to a writing location like a park. It also adds a bit of privacy to the screen.

If it had a downside it would say, it makes people more curious about what you are doing and the top cover could have been made from something a little more rigid. I may replace the cardstock that it in there with a 1mm sheet of carbon fiber. We’ll see how much it bugs me in the future.

For now, it works just fine.

I saw recently that the last season of Apple TV’s Silo was airing on July 3^rd. I have read all the books and stories by Hugh Howie that the show is based on and am looking forward to the conclusion of the series.

I think Apple did a good job on the series and the sets, production quality and the choice of actors has been right on the money. This is how you do a book to series translation. I think Rebecca Ferguson does a great job in the role of the main character, Julliette Nichols.

I love that Apple is making show out of books and stories instead of trying to make a series from scratch. There are so many good books out there to mine and that could be brought to a larger audience using streaming as a platform.

If Apple keeps this up they could one day supplant some of the bigger streamers out there.

And in the movies, it seems like Super Girl is not doing great in it’s opwning weekend. Toy Story 5 is beating almost everything out there right now. I am shocked that the people making these movies are still oblivious to the idea that there are fans out there, and they are the ones who buy the tickets and commit their free time to watch it.

I really liked Milli Alcock in her role on House of the Dragon. I think she stole every scene she was in. But this new Super Girl seems like a character I wouldn’t want in my home. I haven’t seen the film, but I haven’t got the desire to go either.

And I could see it for free with my father’s day cineplex gift cards.

Nope, I think I’ll save those for something better.

I am bummed by this turn of events. Even Desicloure Day is not doing very well and that is a Speielberg movie. That’s two of the blockbusters that are supposed to bring us back to the theatres. And with The Odessey casting issues, maybe they don’t care if people go back to the theatre as much as I thought they did.

Kiddo#2 stolen Robyn away from me to take him to get his fake album covers for his summer film project. Hoepfully, they can find where they put them this time.

After coming up to the one-thousand-word point and then surpassing it by a few hundred words, I took a thirty-minute nap on the back deck. I made sure to set an alarm because I didn’t trust myself to get up on time.

Robyn and the kiddo returned, but I never saw them come in. I can only assume Robyn when back upstairs to resume her nap before going to work at seven.

I pulled some tuna steaks out of the freezer earlier. I thought they would make for a healthy dinner when combined with some roasted vegetable leftovers from yesterday. A tuna steak can replace a beef steak for me any day. Each of them is delicious, but the tuna is abot a third of the price right now and they tend to go on sale. Whereas beef, even if it’s on sale is still pricey. Well above my paygrade for sure. Funny how just a year or two ago I could make striploions once a week and not feel like I had to sell an appendage to pay for it.

I guess the tuna is probably better for me anyways, but I do miss a good bit of beef.

Another option is a good pork chop. If you cook it right, it has more flavour than beef and it is also much easier on the wallet. But even pork prices have increased recently. AT this rate our most affordable source of protein will be mushrooms that we will be forced to grow in our basmements.

It felt good to pick some of the cherry tomatoes right off the plant this afternoon. There is nothing quite as rewarding as eating your own produce.

We have three tomato plants this year, a hanging strawberry basket and a yellow bell pepper plant from last year that might actually do something this year.

I brought my Lemony-Lace cutting out onto the deck today. It’s first time out of the grow lights and under the sun and heat of the outdoors. It’s a member of the Elderberry species and is supposed to be a hardy plant that does well in full sun or partial shade.I only decided to propagate it because I couldn’t find anymore in my area and I wanted a second one to fill in the garden. It has a bit of green Japanese maple look to it and I like the shape of its leaves.

As I sit out on the deck writing, I can smell all the barbeques around me. Someone is making steak and another smells like BBQ chicken. The sweet smell of sauce is floating around our backyard teasing me with its sirens scented succulence.

I am sit facing my neighbour’s yard, the ones who emigrated from india last year and I can’t help but wonder how they are getting on with their Canadian RVing adventure to Algonquin Park. I never caught a glimpse of what their SUV and trailer looked like after they got it all loaded up, but I did see it before that, and it was sagging really badly. I wouldn’t have agreed to tow that thing behind my car if I was him. He’s going to need new springs and shocks when he gets back and maybe some new exhausts.

Hopefully, they have a great time experiencing a very a Canadian holiday trip. It warms my heart to see immigrants seeing what this country has to offer.

Northern Ontario is a very beautiful place to explore. I would be there more often if I could get there.

For someone who’s lived here their entire lives I have seen very little of my own country. I am hoping next year we might take some short trips on long weekends to see places we’ve never been to before.

I’d like to visit Halifax and Nova Scotia as well as British Colombia. I think those three are the top priorities on my personal list of places to see in Canada.

I really enjoyed Banff, Alberta when I was there for a week. I rode a horse up into   on trails with a tour company, soaked in a massive outdoor hot spring, and hiked as many trails as I could in the time I had. I got up to Lake Lousie for a couple of days as well but compared to Banff there wasn’t much to do there. At least nothing that I could afford.

They were both very beautiful places. Banff being surrounded by mountains on all four sides was particularly scenic to my eyes. I think I have an affinity for mountainous regions over flat plains.

Just took another break to stretch my muscles. I felt like things were tightening up again, so I crept upstairs and into our room to grab the massage gun and gave a small beating to my glutes, and hips. It felt great doing it, fingers crossed that it won’t leave my aching tomorrow like I’d just done an Arnold Swartzenegger workout for the first time.

“I am not pumped up!”

I got a bit of a hankering for something, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. And then allof a sudden I thought about the pizza my brother-in-law made the other day with hot honey, jalapeños, and pepperoni.

Now, I can’t just call him up and order one of those, but I do know a place that makes one that is surprisingly similar. I jumped onto Uber eats and called up Blondies restaurant and placed a delivery order for a Cold Drink/Hot Girl pizza. Not sure why they call it that, but it has the hot honey, pickled jalapeño and pepperoni combo that I was jonesing for. They make their pizzas in the New York style with a thin crust dough made with good ingredients.

Now I am looking forward to eating supper.

Pretty sure, Robyn won’t mind either.

Although, we really like one of their other pizzas last time we were at our friends called The Twin Peaks Heartbreak, but I don’t think Robyn will protest too much at what I ordered.

It’s been a great day for the Pride Parade. I hope the kiddos are having a blast. Once again, we are grateful to see kiddo #1 hanging out with friends and having a good time. She gets so animated when she’s in a big group, it’s almost hard to forget how sheepish she was as a child.

It was cool to see her hanging out with a childhood friend, a friend she met in college and a third friend who isn’t someone I recognized. Three people from different times in her life, all gathered together to go have a great day with each other.

Love it.

I took a break as Robyn left for work and went to take a spa bubble soak to help my sore muscles out a bit. I was still soaking in the tub when the Blondies Pizza arrived at the front door. It was still warm outside, and we aren’t prone to porch pirates in our area, so I left it out there and finished my soak.

Opening the box made me feel like I’d made the right decision. It tasted sweet and spicy with a nice tang from the sauce. The dough is perfect. Crispy bits and chewy bits give it that signature New York style. It has great mouth feel and flavour.

I’m a bit of a foodie.

Then it was back to the laptop to translate more thoughts into words on a screen.

I guess Canada beat South Africa today’s world cup match. As a Canadian, I know I should be happy, but I just can’t get myself interested in sports, except for Waiting for Wrexham and Ted Lasso. Other things interest me more than people scoring goals on other people. I know that if they never played, my life would be the same.

The shows I like that revolve around soccer, have taught me a bit of why people love it so much, but I can’t just get there. I would go see a game if the opportunity arose, and the ticket price wasn’t expensive. I know being there when the game is happening carries an energy of its own.

One thing I have been invested in, is the YouTuber trying to create a desert forest in a very hard to get to area in Texas. This week he posted a video during and after a significant rainfall and it was the first time we could see as viewers the impact all the things he was been doing is having on the landscape. There were pools of water collection, some three to six feet deep. There were check damns and beaver dam equivalents all filled with water. And the dirt bathtubs all held water.

Compared to how it was when he started a few years ago, this is a major improvement. More water is now staying in his land to feed the plants, whereas before it would have sheeted across the cement-like ground and ran off the property. This should give him access to more water, one of the most important things he needs to change the quality of the soil be introducing more vegetation and plant material that will die, rot and turn into soil.

I’m not sure why I care about a desert in Texas. I guess I find the paths to terraforming the land interesting and I want the guy to succeed. Bringing life back to a dea place is a worthy cause and if enough people did it, what would that mean for the planet and all the other species we share this world with.

Because if you bring back the plant life, the insects and other animals inevitably follow. And then you haven’t just made a forest out of a desert, you’ve created a functional ecosystem.

I’m on schedule so far to finishing my quota for this evening. The write a bit, rest a bit formula seems to be working. I imagine this is how I would work if I was writing as my full time work.

And so, I took a rest to watch an episode of The Agency with Robyn when she returned from work. I’m down to a deficit of 2300 words for the day and then I’ll be done for Sunday.

I figure that will take me at least three hours of writing to get that last few thousand written. I’m sneaking in a few hundred words while Robyn is downstairs making us cups of tea. And you know how I like squeezing writing into portions of time that would otherwise be wasted.

As far as The Agency goes, the shows had a few good twists and turns and who is working for who is often a bit obfuscated. But that’s exactly what you’d expect from a good spy thriller. We watched a total of two episodes of The Agency, getting us up to episode nine in the series. The season finale is all that’s left and the stakes are set for a grand finale.

I really like the writing on this show. They don’t explain everything to you and the way it is shot makes it look great. Not sure who did the set design and location scouting on this one, but they did a fantastic job. I wouldn’t be surprised if they win some awards for this show.

By ten PM I was back on the laptop getting my words in. Kiddo #1 returned from the Pride Parade around that time. She is going to be tired tomorrow when she starts her new job in the morning at an art camp for kids.

I’ll be feeling the pressure as well, as I step into the role of my supervisor while she is away. Yiu can bet your bottom dollar that things will go off the rails tomorrow, just because I am in charge. Trouble likes to find its way to me.

To be honest, I should be well prepared for most of the things that are likely to come my way, and I have the other lead to lean on as well, who is also fantastic and could easily have been the one in my position. It was likely a toss of the coin. Or maybe I’m being punished.

I kid.

But I will be under more pressure than usual as well as needing to write over five thousand words on Monday and then again on Tuesday.

I’ve a thought to get up early tomorrow and do an hour of writing before my day starts and then give myself another hour to go through things at work, review my notes and get a jump on the day before it gets one on me.

And it’s a great idea but only if I can write enough words tonight to get to bed before midnight, and that means I have to type fast. The downside is that the closer I get to my word count goal the harder it is to think of things to write about.

Some people might be tempted to use AI to accomplish this, but what would be the point. Yann Martel, the author of Life of Pi, described using AI to write like having someone else make love to your partner for you. What’s the point? Where is the joy in that or the human connection?

Maybe some freaky people out there might be into that, but here folks. Another interesting that is being brought up more often of late is the number of resources that AI uses, particularly in electricity and clean water. Many cities are now putting laws into place around data centers to limit the amount of water and electricity they can consume.

Some towns are outright banning data centers from opening in their territories.

There is another chip that may fall soon as well. If the AI companies don’t start turning a profit soon, and they need to generate billions to stay in business, the house of cards could come crashing down all around us.

I’d like to think AI will be curbed for a time. Time to let us regulate and put stops and controls in place. But some how I don’t think these companies will just let that happen. A small group of people stand to make to much money and control more and more of the world using this technology.

I can’t imagine some of the countries around the world letting themselves get behind in this sector of technology, because to do so would be the same as abdicating their sovereignty.

Can you see a country like China abandoning this area of research and development?

I can’t.

And if they aren’t going to then neither are all the other big players in the field.

So, we are likely stuck with it for at least the next fifty years in some form or another.

I do see some upsides to the AI revolution when it comes to medical research and science in general. We might see new interesting treatments, cures or new miracle materials that would have take decades or more of research to discover. I just don’t want it to make our art or being used in place of genuine human expression, like books, art, movies and images.

I saw a lot of sci-fi movies in the eighties and nineties. The sentient computer rarely works out for the humans.

Speaking of human made art. The book I picked up the other day called, the Sand Pebbles, was lying near my bed and although I am not ready to start reading it, I did peruse the first page to get a sense of the writer and the story.

The opening scene is the main character leaning against the wall staring at the gunboat he is about to board as a crew member. It’s dark and he’s just staring at it while he smokes a cigarette. That was as far as I got, but I recognized right away that this writer knew what he was doing. The cover of the book says it was on the best sellers lists for weeks.

I bet no one of my generation would even recognize the writer’s name. I sure didn’t. That always amazes me that the big writers of the time are not necessarily the ones who will be remembered long after they are gone. But I bet this guy had fun writing it and made some good cash along the way. I’d like to see if this is a pen name to, because a lot of writers, particularly the fast ones, needed multiple names so they could put out more books a year than just the single book the publishers would allow.

A quick google search tells me he used his real name and that he was also a sailor, which lends some credence to this book about a US gun boat in China. I am looking forward to giving it a read while I am at the cottage for a week. It seems like the kind of book I could spend all week dipping into between lake swims.

And it was featured on Apple TV’s For All Mankind. So, how bad can it be?

Maybe I’ll a minute to get into it on Wednesday when we get the day of for Canada Day celebrations. Although we do have plans to attend a friend’s party she has dubbed, Cottage Week. And she usually puts on an elaborate affair. And since we haven’t really seen these friends since Survivor ended it will be nice moment to catch up and say hello, raise a few adult beverages and enjoy the day.

I just took my sleep-aids, and that’s me showing some confidence that I will finish all my word count by the time they really start to kick in. It now eleven PM and I am still aiming to be done all the writing by midnight. And with a good night’s rest I should be able to get up at seen and have a few extra hours available to me to use for work and writing.

That’s the plan anyways and we all know how plans usually turn out!

I finished reading another of the Mick Herron short stories today while I was out on the deck. It was another Joe and Zoe story. They are a married couple that don’t seem to like each other very much, and they also happen to run a detective agency. Joe is a bit of a dreamer while Zoe is the practical one who usually knows what really going on while Joe lives in fantasy world of his own making. There are some parallels to his bumbling agents in Slow Horses. Joe would fight right in with that lot.

In the Joe and Zoe stories, Joe usually gets hired to do a job and it’s Zoe who figures it all out. Often there is some kind of switcheroo as they both recount to the case back to each other. It’s a neat little trick to end a story at the spot you want to or maybe even a good way to get the word count for an editor who is fussy about story lengths.

I’ve enjoyed all the stories in Dolphin Junction book so far and I will keep reading until they run out!

The racoon removal and prevention guy is set to come round for an appraisal tomorrow afternoon. And it can’t come soon enough. I think we have had enough of the pesky little critters and it will feel good to know they won’t be breaking into the attic space anytime again when the new heavy-duty soffits are installed.

While I was lying on the sofa on the deck, I could see a pair of squirrels lounging on the high branches of our silver birch tree. They were lying with their four paws dangling like they were at a five-star resort. Just loving being lazy.

At least they weren’t chewing on our electrical wires for a change.

I surmised that it must be too hot for them to be scurrying around and they were just conserving their energy so they could cause havoc at a later date and time.

The older couple that lived a few houses down the street have moved out an put their house up for sale. Their kids were in the last week cleaning it out and painting it to get it ready for sale. It’s just apart of life, I guess. We will all have to go through it if we live long enough.

I do wonder what kind of people will move into the house when it is eventually sold. I have noticed that the Muslim real-estate agents often only sell to other Muslims. So, I’d expect another Muslim family to move in there.

Not that I care about someone’s religion, it’s something I have noticed. As long as they are good people, I don’t really care. And to be honest, I like most of my neighbours, at least the ones I’ve met so far. Some of them are a bit reclusive and keep to themselves. Hard to get to know the ones who stay inside all the time.

The two Advil I took earlier have kicked in. My lower back is not hurting as bad at the moment, but we’ll see how hard it is to get out of bed in the morning.

I’ll do some stretches in the morning to try and loosen things up before I spend the day sitting. In fact, it might be a good idea to raise the desk into the standing position in the morning and sit down later to give my muscles the best chance to recover.

I was just reading about the movie The Odessey and the role that Elliot Page is playing, a character that was not in the book, and one that has a minor role in the film. I think people were worried he would be playing on of the tall buff Greek warriors.

The damage that has been done when the casting news was released early on my have damaged moviegoers’ enthusiasm for the film. The costumes and the use of modern language has also been flagged as a problem with the film.

Will it be the big box office draw it was meant to be? Only time can tell now.

I am starting to feel the pull of my sleep-aids. And it is eleven forty-five. It’s getting late for this old guy. Robyn borrowed my sleep mask to block the light from my laptop as I write in bed. She was surprised at how well it worked to block out the light and then was even more suprpised to feel how comfortable it was to wear.

This isn’t your grandfather’s sleep mask!

These new ones are padded well and have a space for your eyes, so your eyelashes don’t hit the fabric all night. And the one I have isn’t even the best version. If you’re willing to pay the money there are masks that are even more comfortable and even have built-Bluetooth speakers.

I was too cheap to pay that much for my pair, so I got the budget friendly ones without any of the fancy electronics. They work well enough for what I need them for.

Well, this weekend flew by as they often seem to. I am grateful to have an extra day off this week on Wednesday and if I am able, I’d like to use it to have lots of fun. Who couldn’t use a bit more joy in their lives, right?

Planning to have more joy in your life is something I need to add to my daily to-do list.

Having said that I am going to go to bed and get the joy that only a good night’s sleep can offer. I hope you all had a great weekend and did all the things you wanted to.

As always…

Until Tomorrow my friends!