2026/07/20: Rabies shots for everyone today! My vet friend came here to help me out, but I couldn't for the life of me find Chica's hiding spot, and we trapped Minnie inside the cat's room and she just exploded the cat door, blasting through it lol. I gave their shots myself later when they calmed down. We are months late for it, we gave their multivalent shot in April, but because of the amount of pets we have, we are paying in installments, and we had other expenses, and last month we ended…
They say that you can get stuck in the past if you keep looking back too much. However, I’ve recently learned that looking back to the past can help you move forward in life! Last night I looked up from the hot tub and stared at the Big Dipper, which immediately transported me back to Alaska. It was the state flag of Alaska in the sky, staring back at me. Thirty years after I took a chance and opened up a Sea Kayaking expedition business in Alaska, I look back and thank my younger self for that…
Resuming a regular practice of public reflection With the return of the Pika Pulse, I return to blogging, and ultimately, return to the act of public reflection. This differs from private reflection (typically, journalling) not so much as in the obvious nature of the audience but rather the form that the reflection itself takes. Private reflection is essential and the ultimate source of self-growth and realization, but for anyone dealing with conflict of any kind it seems to inevitably turn…
Firstly, thank you all for your get well wishes. The aches and pains has gone, to be replaced by itchiness. I take this as a good sign. The dressings have been changed daily, and the nurses seemed pleased, saying the wound ‘is very dry’. My appointment with the surgeon was to Friday, and he seemed pleased too. The dressing will now be changed every other day, and I am allowed to wash my hair. I can even get it cut, if the hairdresser is comfortable with it. Additionally, the surgeon didn’t a…
This post dedicated to the lovely Zmia Garinia. A continuation from this post, this time focused solely on the Barony itself. Baronials farm in sustainable and out-of-focus ways, because I don't know much about farming. The Barony is fairly sparsely populated compared to its neighbours, and its food requirements are not centrally organised. The Baroness takes a great interest in the possibilities of modernising this system, and imposing better state information-gathering and direct taxation and…
I shot these first, of the two post's worth, but they ended-up as the second post for reasons I've already forgotten, half the bagged/carded stuff, and a bit of detritus at the end, but all good stuff! Sorpresa . . . Italian for Sobre, Spanish for surprise! And Natale Luigi (NL) is a new one for the Tag list. I remember ten lira being about half-a-p in 1977, so it's not going to break
As usual, these kind of places are great but the experience is a test of patience. A reminder to avoid tours in tourist places 100% with no exception.At least everything is a pleasure in Thailand. Good (and tropical) atmosphere and nice feeling is a constant layer which brings happiness.
Summer is my very favorite season. The days are long and I am the absolute best version of myself . As you can tell by the sporadic posting, I’m deep in a writer’s block funk, so here’s a quick catch-up of the Summer of Forced Fun so far… Homemade vanilla syrup The older I get the more I dig a quality vanilla. I bought vanilla beans from Amazon a month ago and made my own vanilla coffee syrup! On my first try, the sugar re-solidified (I boiled too much moisture away), but the second attempt…
I attended a concert by highly accomplished students and teachers from a music camp nearby, and I was awestruck by their skill. And envious of their world of music. And grateful too, that I’d had some experience through my voice studies of what it’s like to settle deeper and deeper into a piece of music, to gain levels of intimacy with the music, the composer’s intentions, and with the other musicians on stage. I loved the process of the awkward first encounters with a piece, all angles and…
It was another busy weekend, with a baptism at church and lots of preparation, but I thought that I needed a morning out, so joined the Dawes bus to the Chatham show. A very pleasant morning, and a pretty good show. No layouts with a massive ‘wow’ factor, but a lot of very good ones. Perhaps too many OO roundy-roundys, running out of the box stock – but that’s a matter of personal taste, and I do prefer small, finescale layouts. After previous years fights with the in-house catering, we made…
Let's cut the chase* – oh dear, it's as I feared. Here is an update about the renovation of this marvellous example of 1960's architecture.It used to look like this, giving luxury airport vibes:In my previous post I had written that I had been told that the orange letters (Eurostile/Microgramma with gilded outlines and recessed centres) would be reinstated. Er. No. A few weeks ago I noticed that much of the scaffolding had been removed. I snapped this image:Here we can see that he orange…
This post is dedicated to the lovely Purple. The Forest of Worms stretches off endlessly into the east at the border of cleared Baronial territory. It houses the worms themselves, in their teeming, uncounted millions, and the roaming bands of Little Birds, and for these reasons is commonly acknowledged as impassable. This has not stopped people from trying it. In the ancient days of the pre-Imperial Barony there were great heroes, ten feet tall, fifteen feet, in monstrous bronze harness and…
29-06-26 A couple of days later and I decided to do a favourite route; Longniddry to Gullane off the NB train. Partly because nothing else called out for attention, partly because there might be a few DGFs lurking about the dunes near the golf course between Aberlady and Gullane. First obvious mistake was the wind. Why was mother nature blowing so hard and spoiling it for those who would have preferred less; the butterflies, the birds, the photographers. Oh well. At least the kite surfers were…
The link. The paragraph: This was the first time when I thought: has science gone too far? Has non-alcoholic Helles been optimised so much in an attempt to make it as clean-tasting as possible, that it has actually lost some of its character as a beer? It still tastes like a beer, don’t get me wrong, but I do wonder whether the non-alcoholic version could just be a bit more characterful. I also wonder whether this is simply down to the base beer, and I don’t know whether this is just a…
In a reply to my post Blank blogging counts too, Scholarch describes my writing as banal, repetitive, redundant, and a bunch of other words. I get it, and I'm honestly a bit surprised no one's brought it up before now (or maybe some have, but I just haven't seen it). There's one word that's not included in the list of adjectives used to describe my writing: contradictory. It earns a place too. An early version of my blog even had an introduction that read something like "Welcome to my world of…
Brittany G. writes,"A friend got a promotion a while back, so his team ordered a cake and asked the baker to draw a ladder with a stick figure climbing it, which said 'Moving On Up.'"Instead, they got this: "One Wreck El Grande for... Brick Bee? Is there a 'brick bee' here?"*Part of me reeeeally wishes there were little lattes drawn on the side. Also, gotta love that "one two punch" of a color combo, am I right? SO APPETIZING. *That joke was for you, Alice. And please tell Phteven we said…
My wife went out of town Thursday so the back half of the week was devoted to Me Time stuff: video games podcasting building the LEGO DeLorean Reading Biking Baseball game Watched Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (it's the 40th anniversary this year!) Probably other things I'm not thinking of. The weather has turned out a lot nicer this week, although we are dealing with smoke—wildfires from both Northern Quebec & Northwestern Ontario. Most exciting this week was finding an Akaso Brave 7 LE on…
I have been a little quiet on here for a while. The reason is (… does reason have anything to do with it?) I’ve been caught up in painting/decorating. Ugh. We found this lovely paint, no smell, good pigment, friendly to pets and people alike.And this colour, Forest Green, very welcoming, relaxing.Ok, we said, we could with some more of that. We needed to finish off a wall, and touch up the inevitable bits. The first batches we had we bought in 1 litre pouches. There was a little window so you…
This past weekend, I watched Saoirse Ronan’s (sure, there were some other actors too) See How They Run and there was one scene that specifically made me giggle a bit as a notes geek. In the scene, Inspector Stoppard (on left, played by Sam Rockwell) and Constable Stalker (played by Saoirse Ronan) are sitting in a car and Stalker, a young constable is making notes. Stoppard: Tell me, do you write everything down in that little notebook? Stalker: Only if it's important, sir. Stoppard: How do you…
As grown as I amI am equally childlikeand immature at times,and hence, I can see this clearly nowand more clearly than beforebecause, of course;due to the benefits of hindsight, my hindsight shows me how my flawscan degrade meand worsemy actions can be humiliatingif I am being honest. . . Why?Why do we fight?Why argue?Why do we fight so hard and lead with our strong handinstead of showing patienceand why can’t we choose to be happyinstead of fighting harder to be right? And so, if we love…
We have some new kitchen bins and it’s wonderful. The old pedal bin has been broken for ages and it was too big anyway, now I have wall-mounted ones that take up far less space and it’s bringing me more joy than is reasonable. I asked the building WhatsApp if anyone did catsitting and my direct next-door-neighbour responded. She popped round to meet the lads and it’s gonna be so useful having someone so close able to pop in. The downside is that she’s moving out in a month. Others volunteered…
When I did a few CDRs called The Sound of Young Java, I had considered calling the series The Sound of Young Bandung. The impressive amount of quality bands coming from that city in Indonesia has always surprised me. How come they produce that? I must visit Bandung some day. I hope. And try to answer that question. In the meantime I thought about showcasing a band that deserves more love, Clubwater. When they were around it was way past the days I was releasing CDRs. Also way past the time I…
A cute pair of ceramic earrings I got at Trans Pride.
IN URSULA LE GUIN’s Always Coming Home, which takes place in what might be far future California, the people of the Valley tell stories about the “backward-heads.” These are people who literally have their heads on backward, and are said to lurk in the poisoned lands where human people can no longer live. Stories of backward-heads are among the most frightening and ghoulish ghost stories told in the Valley: a child would run screaming if they imagined seeing one, and an actor merely turning to…
Thanks to Sean Bowen and Jordan Helzer, who sent me this link to a Facebook post from the Railway Museum of Eastern Ontario in May. Ottawa 696, the oldest double-truck car from that city in preservation, has been moved to a new location. It has moved from its longtime home in an OC Transpo bus garage to the Railway Museum of Eastern Ontario in Smiths Falls, which is an organization new to PNAERC. RMEO has a small collection of steam-road equipment clustered around the town's rather impressive…
The 2026 World Cup ended last night with a 1–0 win for Spain against the champions Argentina. It was certainly one of the finals of all time and probably the most one-sided match I’ve ever seen (and by design). It took 117 minutes for Argentina to get a shot at goal and despite it all, they had a decent chance to bring the match level after Ferran Torres only goal in extra time. It wasn’t a pretty sight and for me at least neither was the tournament as a whole. I enjoyed individual moments:…
Daffodils along West Cove Road, McLemore Cove, Walker County, Georgia. Do you look deeply at your photographs after you've made them to see what they are truly about? I'm not talking about things like composition, exposure, focus, and such, although those are necessary and important. I'm talking about meaning and message. Those elements are often not evident at first glance. We may have to live with a picture for a while to understand its full meaning. There may be much more there than we saw…
We have had a stretch of farm stand eating. You may say, "Of course--it's July--it's how we're all eating." But I spent 24 years in South Florida, where summer is not a growing season, where growing any sort of vegetable during any month takes planning and good fortune and is likely to end in tears.One summer, I wanted peach cobbler in the worst way, a homesickness that was wrapped up in missing my elders that had died, missing friends far away. I stood by a display of overpriced peaches, not…
We’re just slightly past the halfway point in this year’s 20 Books of Summer challenge and our host, Annabel, has suggested that we look back at our reading so far in the form of a summer road trip: Take a look at the books you’ve read so far and plan a road trip around them: put them in an order that makes sense – use locations, author nationalities, landmarks, key words – whatever works. Feel free to wax lyrical about how you’re travelling, your transport. Then thinking ahead, to books you’re…
The most frustrating part about delivering mail is that, while delivering mail, I can’t do anything else. Not safely anyway. I’m either driving or walking. Neither of those activities can be paired with writing or sketching. At my previous jobs I had some time when I could make notes or do a quick drawing for a project that I would work on when I got home. Not this job. My brain still insists on giving me ideas. I try to appease it by texting myself very simple notes and that helps a little but…
