The day to day aspects of life: what is happening around the house and in our family
We are entering the spring season here in the Kootenays, a time when the weather is supposed to be somewhat unpredictable. But this year our whole winter has been kind of strange- and our spring is setting up to be equally odd.
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My truck produced a lovely indicator a few weeks ago showing a picture of what could be interpreted as an engine. In this context, this indicator is know as the ‘Check Engine Light’ or CEL.
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I had an MRI of my lower back a week ago, and the results have come in this week. The MRI confirms that the left channel (fossae) in the L4-L5 vertebrae is compressed. This pretty much explains my sciatic nerve problems: the root cause, so to speak, of my sciatic pain is the degeneration of my lower lumbar spine.
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The last quarter of 2025 was a bit of a mess for me health-wise. It started in October with some kind of sciatic nerve disruption that left me essentially crippled and, on some days, crawling on the floor to move about. It ended with me in the Daly Pavilion for mental abnormality reasons.
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Everyone in the modern world deals with constant distractions. But one of the benefits I expected from retirement was the concept of being able to focus on a task, or to set it aside and come back to it later without nagging guilt. I was, sadly, wrong to expect this.
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I retired on May 31, 2024. That means over a year has passed and I am still happy with the decision. Irene and I have had some tough times during the past year that I’ll touch on in this post. But the absence of the pressures of work has made it a lot easier to bounce back.
But my post-retirement lifestyle is not the active and adventurous, check-off-your-bucket-list thrill that most retirement advisors seem to recommend. And I guess I’m here to say that, for me at least, that is perfectly okay.
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The first week of Blaugust is over, but I’m still feeling like I’m just starting this event up. So I’ll fall back on the writing prompts for the first week and talk about myself in this post rather than coming up with something new.
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I decided this spring that my non-stop race towards morbid obesity needed to be addressed. I have been trying vainly for a couple of years to slow the process down by gradually increasing my activity levels and making a comically unsuccessful attempt to reduce my calorie intake. But it seemed as if my own willpower was insufficient to the task: the numbers on the scale kept going up. I made the decision to try a medical intervention via the modern ‘miracle’ of GLP-1 agonists.
This is my (hopefully succinct) story.
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This has been an interesting year so far. I’ve posted some fairly lengthy diatribes expressing my thoughts and feelings. But I am just a powerless voice in the woods of western Canada, so shaking my fist at the sky is more personal therapy than any kind of action towards solving a problem.
But my life, despite its human difficulties, frustrations, and times of sadness, is actually pretty good. Every once in a while the world spins in a way that restores a bit of my tattered faith in humanity… or just brightens my day. Our Federal election results this week here in Canada are one of those positive rotational incidents.
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My days since retirement have been very relaxed. I don’t fret too much about what I do or do not do, I enjoy an afternoon nap most days, and I wake up around 8:00 am if I feel like it. I rarely feel rushed. “Mañana” is my favourite word.
But I think I have recently hit a new peak of ‘doing nothing’ behaviour. For the past week or so I’ve spent the bulk of the sunny spring days we’ve had sitting on our deck. Sometimes I feel bad about this, considering it ‘wasted’ time, but I think I need to start thinking of it as time well spent.
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