Friday, 25 August 2023

To the Moon!

 


I barely pay attention to the news now, with everything seeming so depressing and apocalyptic, but recent lunar-related stories have me very excited.

In the last week, I've read about a Russian rocket crashing on the Moon, India's Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft successfully landing on the Moon's south pole and deploying an exploratory rover, and a NASA mission, planned for next year, to have a team of astronauts (including a Canadian!) circle the Moon for the first time in fifty years.

Add to this everything from the last couple years about SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic*, and I thinks it's so amazing to be in an age of so much space exploration! 

Cheers!

*For the record, I get people's opinions about guys like Musk, Bezos, and Branson (and I somewhat agree), but I still find it all pretty fascinating regardless.

Signs of Spooky Season

 


One the one hand, the weather is getting cooler and evening news is beginning to talk about flu season. On the other, better, hand, television networks are starting to announce their yearly lineups of spooky programming, and I saw the first Spirit Halloween store on the way home from work yesterday.

My favourite time of the year is fastly approaching!

Sad to see Summer end, but looking forward to all those Fall spices, plenty of blogging during Joubert syndrome Awareness Month, AMC Fearfest marathons, and Hal-Con just before the end of October!

Cheers


A Mega Movie with the Mother

 


The end of last week, I enjoyed a pretty impromptu movie day with my mother after work to see The Meg 2: The Trench.

We'd both been planning this for about a week or so prior to, but schedules kept getting in the way. The movie was a fun, kind-of corny creature feature, with lots of action, one-liners, and few explosions and jump scares. Very much Jurassic Park meets Sharknado, and very enjoyable!

We did a few rentals over the pandemic, but my Mom and I haven't had a good movie day together since before I started working, so this was nice. 

Expendables 4, a favourite of both of ours, comes out later next month, so we're already excited for that.

Cheers!

Friday, 4 August 2023

Solo Survival Story

 

Thankfully, it never came to this.

Major achievement post.

I, quite successfully, just spent the majority of a month on my own!

The end of June, my parents and sister traveled to Nova Scotia for some time with our family. Because of a couple appointments early in July, which I had already rescheduled a few times, I was unable to go with them. So, that meant I was by myself. Having homecare, Para Transpo, and assistance from a neighbour if I needed it (I didn't) helped with any nervousness or reservations. 

As early as mid-May, I started to plan. I made multiple lists of what I needed to do before people left, what I wanted to do while I was alone, and even what I wanted to make for meals.

In June, with only a few weeks before everyone's departure, I made two big trips for groceries, got extra medication, topped up my account for Para Transpo, and went to one or two appointments I knew I would need assistance with. I also took advantage of the Canada Day long weekend to book some time off work and turn that first week into a solo staycation.

Before I could fully enjoy my solitude, I needed to figure out how I was going to accomplish a few regular bits of housekeeping.

One of the bigger obstacles I faced early on was the task of keeping our numerous plants alive and well. My sister was nice enough to create a calendar/chart for me to keep track of what needed to be watered and/or picked, when to do it, and how to do it properly. Extreme heat and disability-related issues made the continuous filling of water bottles a near-impossible chore, so I quickly adapted to filling what I could and soaking the lot a couple times a day. It was challenging but by the end of July, the family came home to a majority of greenery and even some vegetables. The numerous thunder storms we had through the month were a big help.

Other than that, it came down to assistance from homecare and developing routines. I started listening to music while cleaning, which made it surprisingly pleasurable.

With all that out of the way, it was vacation time!

That first long weekend, I did nothing more taxing than deciding what TV show to stream (Muppets Mayhem!) and what to order from the local pizza place.

Early that week was the appointment I had to keep, and it ended up being on the hottest day of the Summer (so far)! The appointment went well. I finished early, browsed through a nearby bookstore, and went to a coffee shop to get out of the heat, read, and wait for Para Transpo. I spent the rest of the day, and night (12 hours!), binging the final season and a half of The Flash and finishing the weekend's leftovers.

The following weekend, thinking of my grandparents, who I was missing, I planned a "TCAF-style" day for myself. I booked Para Transpo, went to a favourite bookstore to buy a couple graphic novels, went to write and read at a coffee shop for little while, before coming home and phoning various family down East to share about my day. A little later, I walked to a local pub for supper and swung by Starbucks for an iced latte on the way home.

The second week of July, my Father flew home for a week to work and keep me company for a while. We had the usual burger, then went to the cabin for part of the weekend.

He went back to Halifax earlier the next week, and I was alone again for another two weeks.

Work occupied a lot of the remaining time, though I did get in a few more outings for coffee, some socializing, and a trip to the comic shop.

My family got home at pretty much the perfect time. As much as I enjoyed being on my own, I was kind of done and starting to miss them.


It was a fun and interesting thirty-ish days, and a pretty bold experiment. There are a lot of things I know I could do differently, should I do this again, but overall I impressed myself.

Cheers!



 

Thursday, 3 August 2023

Happy Places

 

Equally breathtaking


Everyone has their happy place. Somewhere they can go physically, or in their heads, that makes them feel content and at ease. For some people, it's a beach. For others, a cabin in the woods.

I've realized recently that I have two, and they couldn't be more different.

First is downtown Toronto, specifically the areas surrounding my past comings and goings during TCAF. The heart of one of Canada's, North America's even!, biggest cities really doesn't fit the typical mold of "happy place", an urban jungle of subways, museums, major television networks, shopping malls, libraries, and sporting arenas, teaming with human activity. But, I love it! I quickly learned to love the noise, the smells, the sights, and the sensory overload. It's one of the first places I went to all on my own, and one of the first places I felt a smidge of true freedom.

Vibing


My second happy place is probably the complete opposite of the first, Horsethief Canyon in Drumheller, Alberta, part of the Badlands.  

I'm not now, nor have I ever really been, a "scenery" person. But, this place just took my breath away!


I remember being on one side of this canyon (the photo at the top of the page) and looking out, leaning on a fence, a decent breeze blowing, with no sounds at all and imagining some kind of animal, horses, bison, mammoths, or even a Tyrannosaurus, roaming at some point in time, somewhere down there, and feeling freakishly peaceful, like I could've stayed there forever. 


They're two destinations I go to in my mind often, and really, really want to return to physically some day.

Cheers