There were a few things we knew we wanted to improve when we bought our home in Castlegar. Irene and I identified replacing the outdoor stairs to my office (the suite over the garage) as being the most ‘urgent’ of these.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like getting these stairs replaced is in the cards for 2021. But at least I have engineering diagrams!
Continue reading Stairs- maybe next year
Back in 2013 I began paying attention to my health metrics a bit when I started wearing a Fitbit Flex. I found I enjoyed ‘keeping track’ of basic data and I upgraded that to a Fitbit Charge HR in 2015 to add my heart rate to what I was collecting. None of this particularly encouraged me to ‘improve’ my health, but at least I was able to keep an eye on some basics. Along the way I started looking at the Apple Watch, but the Fitbit was working well enough for my purpose so I held off.
I started to notice some hiccups with my Charge HR this year: the battery wasn’t holding its charge very well, and there were some cracks appearing in the display. Nothing serious- it was still working fine. But I decided I’d take this as an opportunity to upgrade to the ‘next’ version of the Apple Watch. Apple shipped the Apple Watch 7 on October 15, and I got mine delivered on October 22. Now I’m drowning in data: my first impressions follow.
Continue reading Apple Watch 7: On being Quantified
My mother, Margaret Adams, passed away in early August. Her passing was not a shock- dementia had largely taken her from us several years earlier. Even so, it has taken me a while to get my thoughts in a row and post this.
Continue reading Mom
Sometimes smoke really does mean fire. And in our case, it was an ‘interface wildfire’ that came within about a kilometre of our new home on July 1 of 2021.
Continue reading Castlegar Fire- 2021I left my motorcycle behind when we moved from Langley to Castlegar. Our move was in March: that’s an impossible time to ride a bike through mountain passes. And after much thought I decided I preferred the idea of riding it to its new home versus trailering or shipping it. So into storage she went.
The conditions aligned such that I was able to take a few days off at the beginning of June to go pick up my motorcycle and ride her to the new homestead. Things went well, but not perfectly- especially not for one mid-sized grey bird, who had a really awful day.
Continue reading A Bus, a bike, and a Bird…
Irene has been sorting through a collection of paper items from the past several decades. Maybe this should have been completed before we moved. But it is surprisingly time consuming, and I don’t blame Irene for deferring it.
A lot of this material is freighted with emotion. Letters from friends and family who have died or who are estranged from us for various reasons. Cards and keepsakes… it is hard to let go of those, but for the most part we must. But we also allow ourselves the luxury of preserving a few such items. Like this hand-made card my friend Chris sent us…
Continue reading Small Treasures
Weather and climate are not the same- I get that. But I’ve been living now in the West Kootenay region for a whole six months. I listen to what the neighbours say, and I can do basic research. So I’m starting to get a handle on what the climate here is like. Sort of… maybe.
Continue reading Warm… with a side of unpredictable
Irene bugs me now and then regarding the fact that I don’t post many pictures of our animal family members here on this blog. She is right, and my rationale is thus: I post those pictures mostly on Facebook.
Why Facebook? I guess mainly because I try to use Facebook for short-form posts, and the most common of these for me is some cute pictures of our cats.
Continue reading Some of our Critters
Today I received the first of what should be two vaccinations against COVID. This has caused me to give some thought to how I got here, and what the world has gone through during this first pandemic of the 21st century.
Continue reading Covid ThoughtsI have gone several days without really enjoying the area I now live in. Work and personal errands get in the way: but really, that’s an excuse.
Continue reading Spooky Relics…
