Strange Revelations, Spacey Suits, Small Sailors and Upscale Swimming

The word of the week is haggard.

April 30 ­- On Not Being Happy

Whoa there, keep reading: this isn't a depressing entry... though it talks about depression, but not in a way you'd think.

While I've been depressed in the past, not to mention anxious to the point of panic attacks( last year )it's not something that's stuck with me regularly, so I've been of the mind that I'm not 'officially' a depressed person, or even the odd rare duck who's Functionally-Happy-But-Still-Clinically-Depressed - the Smiling Depressed, if you will. Mental illness is a taboo topic even today, seen by too many people as a sign of weakness, even by those who suffer from it.

This week though, I read a post by Wil Wheaton on the topic that opened my eyes to the wide spectrum of depression, and it hit home that some of the telltales that he mentions are ones I've directly experienced over the years - have a read here.

Now, I've had a good deal to be depressed about in my life( and to some degree, still do ), some of which I've talked about in this very blog... but I've never been diagnosed as depressed, or taken medication for it, though I was on St. John's Wort on and off for a few years until I realized it was no longer doing anything positive for me, so I stopped a year ago, with no ill effects to my emotional stability. Good choice.

Things have been going okay in terms of my 'Happy Levels' of a day, so that's good... but back to Wil's article - the points below touched a nerve for me, as they're things I've done all my life without ever consciously thinking about why, because I thought that everyone did these things:

I've done those things, regularly: I've created little obsessive idiosyncratic routines around my daily activities to 'ensure' things go well, though they've( mostly )faded away over the last ten years or so. Which still left me with worry: I've obsessed about the 'What Ifs?' in my life to the point of distraction, worrying about things over which I had no control but yet I still tried to find solutions.

Yet, here I am, writing about these things, floored to know that Wil Wheaton could speak of them just as intimately, and honestly... and could have the courage to move forward to talk about how depression isn't as simple as just 'feeling sad':

His blog post is worth reading at least twice, and I'm so glad that I came across it at this point in my life, as it tells me that my recurring depressing thoughts aren't a messy jumble of wish-wash, but more likely have a seat in deeper currents running through me from my various trials over the years. I'd thought I had dealt with most of my issues, but thanks to Wil's post this week I've recognized that there's still things in my psyche dragging at me that I haven't recognized previously.

Now that I know, I can do something about them. Thank-you, Wil... the world needs more people like you.

May 1 - Swimming In Style

I'm moving up in my morning-swim world!

For this and next week, the pool at the Parkside Hotel is undergoing maintenance, so it's closed for use... but I still swam this morning before work as usual. How, you might ask?

Because the Parkside graciously allowed its members to swim at The Empress! Meaning I got to splash around in this glorious marble-walled five-star beauty... and I get to do it again next week too, at no charge:

Marble walls and big windows, but it's still kinda dark inside...

It's quite a chic operation, with the impeccably-equipped health club upstairs and the pool changerooms downstairs just shouting "You need to pay us a ton of cash each month to belong here" though hotel guests( with their pricey rooms )get complimentary access during their stay - just look at the changeroom pictures:

Fancy digs, no? They have cupboards with slippers and bathrobes!

Yep: dark panelled wood and fluffy white towels cost a bunch, donchaknow... but I'm in no way complaining, as it's amazing that I'm able to enjoy such a place for NO additional cost for a few weeks... and it's even LESS crowded than the Parkside, as the pool opens at 5am instead of the Parkside's 7am! 

No Extra Charge is a pretty sweet deal, for a 5-star, private, heated indoor pool!

May 2 - Sailing The Seas By Satellite?

Holy moly, somebody took a childhood toy-dream of mine and realized it!

Two young lads from Scotland, with the assistance of their parents, launched a toy Playmobile Pirate Ship named Adventure into the ocean, with the hope that it might make a fairly long journey. Equipped with a satellite tracker and some small modifications to make it seaworthy, it was sent out last fall... and what a journey it's had since! 

After being picked up by kind strangers, thanks to the note included on the ship, Adventure was repaired and set out to continue its ocean trek from Africa. It's covered over 3100km across the Atlantic and is approaching Barbados, but the battery is down to 5% and there's a good chance it won't make it to the islands, though some local sailors are organizing to search for and find the boat if they can:

Thanks to GPS, you can track the journey of the Adventure in real-time here, and the lads have a public Facebook page, where they update people on how they're doing with a list of 500 'adventures and challenges' they're working on - incredible!

May 3 - Get Myself A Gita?

I really, really want a Gita...

Given that I walk( and not bike or bus or drive )most of the time around town, it only makes sense that I be able to carry more than just what my backpack would allow, especially if I'm grocery shopping. I've strained my muscles before trying to carry too much back from the store, and since I'm someone who refuses to pay out for a taxi every time I go shopping, I keep hunting for a better way.

I think the Gita is that way.

Darn it, they were giving away $20 Amazon cards, NOT a Gita!

Piaggio Fast Forward, one of the leading transportation companies on the planet and inventors of the famed Vespa scooter, has been working on new concepts for urban mobility for many years now... and the Gita is at the forefront of those.

Here, the COO of Piaggio from a presentation this week introduces the company, talks briefly about their history and their vision of the future, then gets into the details of how the Gita is being positioned to change the idea of urban mobility.

On a not-so-neat note, my( right-)eyestrain has been hanging around again this week, even with the precautions I've taken at work to avoid a too-bright workspace.. darn it. I've been taking a couple of Advil each day, trying NOT to serially pop them as I used to do in the past( mainly with Tylenol )as I believe that contributed to my sensitivity to pressure-induced headaches and a subsequent proliferation of such before I moved to Victoria.

In case you didn't know...

I'll see how this week goes; I've been resting my right eye each evening with cool wet cloths atop it for added relief, and I hope a doctor's appointment in the coming weeks will result in my referral to an ophthalmologist, as my local optometrist was of little help when I saw him two months ago.

We'll see.

May 4 - 3D fun?

While waiting to accumulate the funds to pay to import my GlowForge in a month or two, I've been researching all the fun ways to make things with a laser cutter / engraver... heck, I've been doing that for several years now, truth be told.

At the same time, my interest in 3D printing has been growing because... well, because you can do some pretty cool things with it, like print out replacement parts for old toys / gadgets... or even print NEW toys and gadgets!

One of the cooler pages I've come across in a bit is Spaceman Spiff( from Calvin and Hobbes! )a guy who does exactly that: printing out miniatures and painting them. But not just any miniatures, no... he likes spaceships as well as GiJoe:

It's an interesting idea: I've always thought miniatures were rather pricey, and the time to paint them( and the expense of paints, plus the skill )made me not bother. But if you can 3D print them in a base colour, along with assorted parts in other colours, well... that seems like less work, and you can customize them, like Spiff has.

Food for future thought: printing my own collectables on the cheap!

Also, for Star Wars Day today( May The Fourth Be With You! )I present: Hardware Wars, Special Edition from 1997, an update of the 1978 parody classic!

May 5 - Legendary LEGO!

Urk... 

I spent the first half of my day reading and relaxing at home, enjoying the downtime to keep working through the massive 1000+ page tome of Peter F. Hamiltion's scifi epic( first in a huge series, too! ) of The Reality Dysfunction, and despite my eyestrain( I've been reading in gentle light, with many breaks )I've managed to get through 3/4 of it this week, on and off, as I could.

Thanks to my lady last week, I have ALL of these and more to read!

Unfortunately, a sudden sharp drop in air pressure this afternoon, coupled with my eyestrain, conspired to give me a splitting migraine, even after I'd popped an Advil as soon as I felt it coming on. I spent the rest of the evening laid out on the couch with a cold cloth over my eyes, drifting in and out of slumber while listening to soft music as I willed the pain to subside. I eventually succumbed to sleep around 8pm, which I didn't intend as it messes with my sleep cycle... and I woke up at 11pm, puttered around in the dark with a pounding head, and managed to fall asleep again around 2am for another four hours sleep - bleh.

 

The right side of my head isn't happy...

However, I did manage to stumble across something incredibly cool earlier today:

Welcome to Meggido, with a WEARABLE Lego mech suit!

Seriously, I have no words... I never imagined, even as a kid, that someone would be able to afford to privately own nearly a quarter-million Lego bricks, let alone have the time to assemble them into a staggeringly unique creation like this.

You can see a video interview by The Brothers Brick here, it's mind-boggling: 

May 6 - Sunshine Strolling

My lady's parents were visiting this weekend, so she and I had brunch with them at Vista 18, a splendid choice as the perfect weather made for spectacular views as we ate - and boy the place was hopping today, busier than we've ever seen it.

We finished close to noon, heading off to Finnerty Gardens near UVic for a walk in the golden sunshine and warm breezes. I managed to accompany them with the help of a hat to shade my eyes, as well as TWO pairs of layered sunglasses, with kept my eyes from squeezing shut in the beautiful sunshine - it's a damned shame that I've got a migraine on such a gorgeous weekend, I tell you...

As it was, I took a plethora of photos as the gardens were in full blooming glory for spring, and since I've been cutting back drastically on sugar I was actually able to smell more than a few of the flowers:

It really was stunning... I could spend hours here with a book and a beverage!

Coming home, I took a Tylenol Maximum Relief( with 500mg caffeine, which I never have any more! )instead of the semi-effective Advil I've been taking this week; interestingly I've read that Tylenol raises the threshold of pain tolerance rather than suppressing extant pain. 

It worked: my migraine pain retreated to a dull ache, permitting me to get on with some light reading and resting for the rest of the afternoon in a semi-shady living room. I could still feel my right eye wanting to 'tweak' if I looked at things wrong, so I was quite careful about wearing the right glasses, and ended up wearing an eyepatch for 30 minutes on and off for the rest of the evening to give the eye a break.

Oh, cybernetic implants, you can't get here fast enough...

While I didn't get much accomplished this week thanks to my eyestrain, I DID manage to achieve a sense of relaxation due to the enforced 'downtime' coupled with the great weather. I'm going into the coming week determined to get SOME things done though, while working around the constraints imposed by my wonky eye, which is feeling less trigger-happy now at the end of the weekend than it was last Sunday, which I hope means it's on the mend thanks to my efforts to baby it...