I missed a couple of weeklies. It’s not that things have been terrible, but many days felt repetitive, mundane, and often without any accomplishments I could feel good about. That culminated in a short depressive episode last week. Y’all don’t want Depressed Dmitri in your feed!
We finally had some luck in the housing search, which is now over! It took almost exactly three months. We’ll be moving to the east end of Toronto in September. I do think it came down to luck, because most good places go in a day, and we were able to snatch one of the few viewing time slots on day 1 and send in our application the same day. It still hasn’t fully sunk in, but the other day it felt a bit more real as I was turning off all the new-listing alerts and catching myself not thinking about which weekday would be least disruptive to take off from work for viewings. I’m giving myself a few days to bask in this accomplishment before starting to stress about all the moving logistics and the necessary lifestyle changes to afford Toronto rent.
Found out the hard way about a bylaw in Barrie about how tall your front yard’s lawn can be. It’s silly amount of inches long, because who cares c’mon. It just a warning, but with a threat to fine if not fixed within two days. While it was motivating for me to finally catch up with yard work, I also feel empathy and disdain in equal parts towards the city inspector who insisted on congratulating us in person on cutting it down by the date in the notice. Thank you for making the world a better place, Kevin.
‘Tis the season for early morning running, because any other time of day is inimical to life. I’ve been pushing 11-12km and noticed that around the 10k mark I’d very much like to have a sip of water now thankyouverymuch (and also a nap). I can’t handle any solid food in my belly in the morning if I’m gonna be agitating it for an hour like a load of laundry. So, I tried out a few things: energy gels (Gu), running with a squeeze bottle that can be strapped down to my hand (so I don’t have to actually always be holding it; this one), and Nuun tablets.
The gels are a neat invention. I kinda wonder about the packaging waste for the amount of calorie goo you get, though. I see they have some TerraCycle recycling partner thing on their site, but that’s probably US-only. Gotta look into that more. I don’t think I really need them for my current distance, anyway. I’ve tried the S’more and the Lemon Sublime flavours so far, and they taste … kinda how I expected, which is to say sorta like pudding unless you’ve just burned all your energy reserves and are now starving and willing to eat grass, then they taste like caviar.
I didn’t like running with the hand-bottle initially. I sweat a lot; the bottle is plastic; I hate how sweaty plastic feels. But I hate withering from dehydration more, so I’m getting used to the sweatbottle. It also makes it awkward to get my phone out of my pocket for all my obnoxious Strava selfies. For now, the simplicity of a bottle still beats the freedom of movement that a vest hydration pack provides (which I love, until I have to clean it).
The Nuun energy tablets’ flavour also grew on me in yet another example of my taste buds re-calibrating themselves out of desperation. I think the electrolytes really do help, too. I haven’t been crashing as hard in the second half of my runs, and—maybe I’m imagining it—the recovery has been quicker. The two-year old in me also loves watching the bubbles! :D
I got everything at a local MEC. Apart from the above I also replaced my old biking backpack (which I should’ve done years ago after it took the brunt of a nasty fall wherein I slid on my back for at least a full second), got some new running shoes (Altra Experience Flow, my first pair of this brand) and socks, including toe socks that I’m excited to try in hopes that they’ll prevent blisters. Here’s the whole hoard!
All in all, I kinda miss running in the winter, but I’m enjoying figuring out how to make this silly hobby work year-round.
Flying Monkeys, a local brewery, has a catchy tagline: Normal is weird. And what came out of this IPA can sure wasn’t normal.
Spoiler: it was one of their seltzers. Stay weird, Barrie.
Misc:
- I tried out an e-bike! I’m here for the hype. Went from the climbing gym to the pub in summer weather without breaking a sweat (broke the bank with those bikeshare fees, though; no regrets).
- We Are Lady Parts. C binged it ahead of me and then watched it again with me. I enjoyed every second of it and want Season 3 now. It’s too bad the only legal way of watching it in Canada right now is via Prime+Stack, which have a high-FPS version that looks like it was shot with a handheld camera.
- After years of resisting it as a fad I’m now squarely in the camp of Vertical External Monitor. I regret my past thoughts and behaviours. This is the way.