The word of the week is inoxerable.
Apr 18 – Blocks
It's spring, and sound is in the air.
Birds, bees and bikes - no surprise at any of
those, really.
As you may well imagine, I've been looking for
another place to live for many months now, but with little success. Since we(
my sister and I )are on a month-to-month lease, we can technically move any
time but to be honest, the only thing really bothersome about this place is how
loud it gets in the summer as it's next to one of the main north-south roads
leading through to the waterfront.
Apart from the overall noise level from sheer
traffic volume, it's always a few jerks who have to 'sound off' their
tricked-out rides that spoil it for everyone else, including other riders. I was pleased to recently discover
that there are bikers on the Island who are more than considerate in keeping
their bike's noise down to acceptable levels while in urban areas:
As always, there's a mix of those who care and
those who could care less and it's the latter who managed to annoy the most
people with the least amount of effort. I completely understand that motorbikes
are a passion for many on the island and the excellent year-round weather here
means that we probably have more than our fair share of bikers on Vancouver
Island because of that fact.
Yet as a writer, I can't create with
motorcycles passing by my window almost every minute of the day during the good
weather and so I'm hoping that an upswing in the property market this year will
result in more rentals becoming available in this area. One or two blocks back
from the main street is all I ask, as it makes an incredible difference in the
sound levels, often on the order of 20 dB or more compared to the main road.
Finding a rare three-bedroom( or two plus-den )place would be ideal, as I need
a workspace at this point in order to accommodate both my writing and my home
business in the near future.
Come on property-ladder people: buy, climb on and
free up some good rentals!
Apr 19 – Forge Delayed? Good!
Sometimes you never know what will appear in your
e-mail inbox these days.
For example, I received something from the makers
of my yet-to-be-built GlowForge today, which is odd as I haven't received much
from them lately. It was a long e-mail and the second line read like this:
Due to schedule delays, we plan to ship your Glowforge by December 2016 instead of the original date of June 2016.
After a few seconds of disappointment, I suddenly
felt lighter as I realized that I had been given six additional months of
worry-free time to devote solely to my writing this coming summer and fall.
This actually really helps me, as I no longer
have to try to hurry up and get my business details solidified in the next 60
days. I can spend more time working on my website as well as other marketing
materials and plan on launching everything in early 2017, which is a far better
timeframe for me overall.
Now I can work on my novels without juggling too
much on the side. Sure, it would have been great to get things going earlier
than 2017, but in terms of priorities I'd rather be finished working on my
stories then try to fit them in around my home business... although making more
money every month is always a good thing too.
Like I said, sometimes you never know what will
happen that will improve your year!
Apr 20 –
ARMeY Storage
Tidy, tidy, tidy.
That's what I've been doing this week: putting
away everything that has been crowding my place for months, mainly due to
working on my costume for the now-past Emerald City Comicon ten days ago.
Paints, foam, brushes, templates and all the
other supplies / paraphernalia that was needed for the build went into the
storage unit down the hall instead of taking up space in my closet or even
under the bed. Combined with the cleaning-out I did last week, my place now
looks almost completely normal again.
Almost. I still didn't have room for this guy:
So after some more tidying of the storage unit,
which included drilling holes in the wooden surround for screws to hang things,
I managed to make some more space. Enough to be able to hang my costume on ARMeY
and tucked him into the storage unit with room to spare. As an added bonus,
he's 'guarding' my bike, which is securely locked to a conveniently-located
drainpipe in the ceiling.
I feel much better now that the costume is safely
stored and not getting crushed or otherwise damaged in a box. It's also nice
not to have a person-sized mannequin taking up a corner of my room, even if it
is dressed in a cool USMC outfit.
Apr 21 – Hormones?
As the cat's been a real pain of late, I've been
going to bed far earlier as I'm waking up around 6am on average, about when he
starts yowling for food.
We've managed to get him to sleep most of the night
though by purchasing something called a Feliway Diffuser, which vaporizes oils
containing natural calming hormones that cats unit when they rub their faces on
their territory. This seems to have settled him from waking myself and / or my
sister 3-5 times every sleep, due to what I suspect is a case of partial
blindness / deafness that makes him feel like he's been abandoned if things are
quiet during the night. We're both hoping that this solution( pun intended
)acts as a foundation for a few other things we are trying to modifying his
eccentric and oftentimes annoying behaviors so that we can live our lives in
our apartment with minimal annoyance when he's awake.
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| I wish they had these for humans, it'd have helped me of late... |
Waking up early at 6am most days hasn't been so bad, as I can get ready for
work without feeling like I'm rushed and even feel relaxed by the time I stroll
out the door around two hours later. It even allows me to go out for breakfast
if I feel like it, which is a nice feeling once in a while is a treat before an
anticipated busy day at work. It also means that I'm up with the cat and he
doesn't startle me out of a sound sleep, which nobody enjoys.
As well, the summer's here, meaning the dawn's
arriving a little earlier every day and the sunset's a little later as well.
This time of year I have found myself to be at my most productive creatively
and I'm hoping that this feeling will carry me through not only editing my
first novels fourth edition but getting a good head start on finishing the
second half of my second book.
Who knows what the cat thinks of all that.
Apr 22 – Facing Anxiety?
Boy, was my face red yesterday after work.
Really, it was red, and not in a good way.
As some of you may recall, this past August my
face became severely infected when I failed to moisturize after shaving before
heading out for the day - who knew that could happen? Ever since, I've been
extremely conscious of any changes in the skin of my face, and yesterday raised
some red flags - no joke intended.
All around and under my beard, skin was bright
red and painful to the touch; it felt like my face was being stretched tight whenever
I tried to smile or open my mouth wide. Ouch.
This wasn't good for my anxiety, let me tell you.
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| I'm somewhere in the middle of these examples... |
But I went through my mental checklist in order
to gauge the severity of what I was seeing, especially since it seems to have
appeared out of the blue the last two days. As far as I could recall, I haven't
used anything on my face that might cause a reaction, nor eaten anything that
could provoke the same. I thought that perhaps I have had a little more sugar
than normal this week and that may have led to an inflammation of irritated
skin on my face; it's hard to tell, even with all sorts of resources available
online.
In the end, I took a long cool shower that helped
moisturize my face, then I rubbed substantial amount of antibiotic into all the
red areas, which also seemed to help. I half hour after that I layered on
enough aloe to revive a fossilized iguana and kept a close eye on my face for
the rest of the evening, about five hours later.
By this morning, the redness was noticeably
reduced, enough so that I went to bed feeling as though I cleared a hurdle. I repeated
the same treatment process before he went to work and again after I got home,
with noticeable results by the weekend: my skin and return to its normal color
and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. While I don't know what caused it, I
don't think it was the same thing as last summer; even so, I'm quite grateful
that I managed to clear it up on my own.
I can't be too careful, considering last time
this sort of thing happened, I had to be hospitalized!
Apr 23 – Bard's Birthday, and a prize!
After spending a good part of the day getting a
whole lot of things around the apartment seen to, my lady and I went out for
the evening... to City Hall.
Why there, you may ask?
Today is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's
passing, and to mark the date tonight the city held an event called 'Waking The
Bard' to celebrate his life and accomplishments:
It was a packed house, with well over 100 people
crowding into the Council Chambers-turned-meeting hall, to the dulcet tones of
the Banquo Folk Ensemble, dressed in period garb and playing some lovely tunes
of centuries past. The event was hosted by Victoria's current poet laureate
Yvonne Blomer, who was a treat.
Four University of Victoria Fine Arts students
performed an amusing original play inspired by Shakespeare’s works, and six
guest poets created and performed
responses to Shakespearean sonnets. Joining Yvonne Blomer will be Youth
Poet Laureate Ann-Bernice Thomas and local poets Iain Higgins, Sonnet L’Abbe,
Anita Lahey and Troy Sebastian. Elizabethan music will be performed by the
Banquo Folk Ensemble. The event included complimentary cake, beverages and door
prizes donated by local businesses.
The first half of the evening was an excellent
tribute to Shakespeare, with selected poems and the play by the University art
students which was amusing and offbeat all at once.
The second half of the evening was less
successful, begun by Anita Lahey with a lackluster "I am not a fan of
Shakespeare so bear with me" preface to her poem, followed by Sonnet
L'Abbe whose work was preceded by about 20 minutes of preamble... and none
of her THREE poems had anything to do with Shakespeare. Zip. To be honest,
I found them tiresome and from the expression on Sonnet's face she saw that she
had lost most of her audience halfway through; my girlfriend felt the same way.
Thankfully, the highlight of the evening followed
immediately after, when during the door prize draws I one a spectacular
'Signature Edition' of Romeo and Juliet - yay for me! It's a gorgeous book, with laser-cut inserts that are incredible - what a prize:
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| What luck! This will be a great read... |
Apr 24 – The Good Ol' Stories
I was feeling tired today, so I just stayed in.
It was actually nice to just spend the day at
home, doing some reading and even a little writing. I even played a little bit
of MWO, which I haven't done for months and I did really well in most of the
games I played. I do like MWO, which is run by a Canadian game company, who I
am glad to see have a sense of humor that permeates their game:
 |
| Alas, poor Snow Fountain, we will miss you... |
I'll still picked up some excellent used SciFi
anthologies at Russell Books yesterday, including one that I'm quite eager to
read( time permitting )over the next little while:
Golden Age science fiction is important to me, as
it's what I grew up on as a reader: fun adventure stories in places far away,
what more could a boy with a massive imagination want? The stories contained
within the book above are exactly the kind of stories that I love and have led
me to enjoy a similar genre such as Space Opera and related speculative
fiction. Whiling away a bright sunny afternoon reading this book with the team
nearby is my idea of heaven, which could only be improved by having my lady
love with me... and a hammock, of course!
I have nothing on my docket this week whatsoever
in the evenings after work, so I can devote all my time to my writing projects.
It's this kind of simplistic focus that I work best in, free of most
distractions and time commitments that always pull at me. Now that I know I
have more than six months before I need to get back to my home business plans,
I feel much lighter inside.
