Castles, Cats and Charging Up

The word of the week is temperate.

Mar 7 – Sleepless by Choice

Pets of any description can be a challenge sometimes.

With cats, apart from the usual hairballs, scratching and( hopefully not! )litterbox accidents, one has to bear in mind that they're very hard to break bad habits.

Last night, I was awake from 2am to 6am, trying to get the resident cat to form new habits that didn't involve yelling for food constantly from 12 AM to dawn.

Overall, I managed to get about 30 minutes of total sleep, with two hours before that and about an hour after dawn, for a total of three hours’ sleep that night. Needless to say, I was rather wiped out in the morning, but I think I was successful in enforcing the fact that 1) I wouldn't feed him any wet food matter how much he cried and 2) every time he cried, I put it back in his bed, for a total of three dozen times, by the end of which he was actually staying put for a while.

Success can be measured in small steps, and this was necessary major first one, well worth the loss of sleep my part as it kept the cat occupied but unfed. Considering that my sister has had consistently terrible sleep due to the cat's nocturnal noise for over year, this is something that's long overdue and she's not able to do what I just did or will again later in the week as necessary.

I consider it a minor superpower of mine, in that I can go with very little sleep every once in a while and still function at almost 100% the next day. It got me through a few difficult times during high school and university and I was pleased to see that my superpower was still effective to date.

On the flipside of the dead-tired coin, I had a great story idea today, inspired in part by one of Wil Wheaton's FBook posts - who knew? A nice bonus on top of the difficult night I spent.

Mar 8 – Bye-Bye Beer?

My anxiety seems to be leaving me in stages.

I haven't had any anxious episodes this week and I've been checking my heart rate far less of a day then I have in the past month, which I also take as a good sign. I haven't needed to focus on my breathing nearly as much and in general I've been getting on with my activities each day without anxious distraction.

Unfortunately, I seem to have developed a tic in my left eye as a side effect of my nerves, which I've had before( on and off )over the years.

It comes and goes at times and seems to be related to my anxiety, in that if I'm thinking too much or too hard, it appears for a few minutes. I don't think that it's anything serious at all and will eventually disappear the less I think about.

Beer also seems to be disagreeing with me these days, which is shocking. I've never been one to have a lot of alcohol hanging around in my place, chilled or otherwise, but there's usually at least one can of beer languishing at the back of the fridge for a few weeks at a time.

Yet of late, the usual beers I've had( Guinness or Dark Matter or Chocolate Porter )have all made me feel somewhat queasy, with even one making me feel as though I've had one too many. It's an odd sensation that I recognize, in that my body is rejecting the alcohol and I suppose that's because I really don't drink much at all anymore; a beer week is probably overestimating my consumption.

But it's for the best I suppose: if drinking makes me feel like crap, I should probably consider stopping altogether. I certainly don't need to trigger headache with a beer at the wrong time or put myself off by adding insult to injury when I am feeling nauseous - that just doesn't make sense.

I may just cut back, reducing my one beer from a pint to sleeve and sipping it to keep my body from rejecting it all together. I certainly won't be having more than two beers of an evening at this rate, the way that they've been making me feel lately.

It's a pity though: there's a lot of tasty beers out there.

Mar 9 – Shelter

It's the elephant in my room, so to speak: homelessness.

Having been through so many ups and downs in my life, I feel a little bit more qualified than some to speak about one of my chief worries over the years: homelessness. It's been something that's been in the back of my mind, like a shadow sometimes seen from the corner of your eye, and that too often.

Having had to walk away from the house I thought my family would be living in for many years to come due to financial stresses, I've had to find a place for my sister and I to live on short notice. And again a few years later when circumstances didn't work for where we were, and again when that too didn't work out. I ended up finding a place that was almost perfect to stand for over seven years after the last housing debacle, and then we all headed out to BC

I thought things would be different here in Victoria, but again difficulties arose due to finances and housing, to the point where I had to step in with my own savings to make ends meet or we'd have ended up on the street.

That was a low point, to be sure.

Victoria Tent City      Left: before    Right: last week

So sitting here, safe as houses all the wind and rain howl outside, I'm all too well aware of how fragile ones sense of security can be. Part of my anxiety of late has been my unavoidable knowledge that my funds, despite my current employment, would run low at the end of 2016 despite all my efforts. Then I would have to make some hard choices or potentially end up having to find a new place to live, one that would compromise heavily on space and comfort in the name of affordability.

My situation is not a dire one, compared to what so many people are dealing with when it comes to housing. I see people on the street here every day, trying to get on with their lives however they can while surviving with so little. My own stress, real as it is, pales in comparison to what they must endure every day and night.

Solutions are out there for homelessness, and I'll talk about them again soon. For now, I'm just going to remind myself yet again that while I may be able to see the abyss, it's not that much closer and there's many ways of going around it still.

Mar 10 – The Murricane

A while ago, I picked up a fantastic book but forgot to write about it here in the blog until now. Feast your eyes on this:

The Big Bad Book Of Bill Murray is something that I spotted in a local bookstore and immediately grabbed before anybody else could possibly purchase it! Ostensibly, it's an unofficial biography of the famous actor, listing all of his projects in alphabetical order as well as rating them on two separate scales: each of the future films in the book is rated for overall quality and a four-star Scale as well as including a Murray rating which creates each moving according to Murray's performance and its importance within his cinematic portfolio.

The book is a treat to read, considering that there's nothing else like it out there: there's no official biography and Murray's own 1999 autobiography Cinderella Story is hardly a comprehensive work. Sure, I could spend hours on the Internet scouring places like IMDB and filmography sites, but this gorgeous full-color book collects everything Murray in one place - what's not to love about it?

It's finding unexpected treasures like this that makes me believe that bookstores will never truly go away, despite the modern naysayers who insist that ebooks will dominate the literary scene in the near future. That's not an argument that I wish to get into, as I think each book format has its merits, which I myself have come to appreciate over the years. My recent attempts to get a larger tablet on which to read my e-books is a perfect example: I can take potentially thousands of books with me with almost no space needed, as long as I have an Internet connection or have downloaded them already to my device.

It's a brave new world out there, both for the old and for the new.

Mar 11 – Earned Day Off

What do you do with your days off?

My current( amazing! )job allows me to have every other Friday off, which is an amazing thing considering how many holidays and weekends I've worked at other jobs over the years. Not to mention the overtime, unpaid overtime and evenings, but I digress: it's great to have a set day off it's not a weekend.

It allows me to get things done, for one. I drove around today with my dad, spending time with him while we went to various places that both he and I needed to go to. I picked up a couple of packages containing materials( found on the cheap, thank-you internet! )for my costume, which I'd have otherwise been forced to take the bus to pick up, which would have been awkward all around.

Given my age and the age my parents, we don't spend nearly as much time as we used to together as a family, so any excuse to get together is welcome. My dad's semi-retired, in that he's still working while his pension has arrived, for which I'm quite grateful: I don't need to worry about him or my mom financially anymore. They're off doing their own thing free and clear here in Victoria, living the life they had dreamed of for so long in the city which they've grown to love and also where both their children reside for easy visiting.

But back to my days off: it's great that I could work longer on each of my other regular workdays and so 'earn' a full day off, free and clear, every two weeks. It's also worth noting that I was able to switch my EDO from a Tuesday to a Friday late in 2015: thanks to my seniority at my current workplace, I was given a choice of whatever day I wanted. Most people with seniority choose a Monday, but I actually like the idea of my weekend starting early, so a Friday was my pick.

There's just something about being able to go and do things on a workday when most people can't that appeals to me greatly. It also means that I can go places and do things at off-peak times( weekend crowds suck! )which is a bonus.

Mar 12 – Castle Visit

I went on a field trip today!

My girlfriend and I were looking to do something different today, so we headed out to Langford for breakfast while talking about possibilities. After a brief stroll around where I used to not go all that often, we decided to visit Royal Roads University, which is renowned for containing the historic Hatley Castle as part of its functioning campus, housing the administrative staff.

It turned out to be a gorgeous day: cool but brilliantly sunny in the afternoon, which was perfect timing for us. We parked in the main lot at the top of the hill and walked down to the main campus, consisting of three sizable main buildings, with the castle making a fourth. We detoured to the west, down into a magnificent ravine, following Charlie's Trail for about an hour, which wended alongside a perfect traveling brook which originated from a magnificent waterfall at the head of the trail:

When we emerged from the ravine path, we were near the shore of the castle grounds and headed back north along a side road, beneath the shade of a row of brilliant green-leafed trees. We came upon the castle as we emerge from the trees and onto the main lawn proper, it was quite a sight:

For those of you who may not know, this castle was featured in the X-Men filmss the mansion housing Xavier's School for the Gifted, better known as the X-Men and more recently, in Deadpool!

We spent another hour walking around the grounds, enjoying the gardens, which were filled with tiny buttons in early blooms of flowers, thanks to the mild weather that Victoria enjoys this time of year. We'll be back again later in spring, as we only saw some of the massive gardens and would like to hike along Charlie's Trail when it's less muddy.

It was a wonderful day to spend with my amazing lady!

Mar 13 – In Charge

I've given up on fixing my older 10" ASUS tablet.

It had been my hope to reformat the tablet with a new ROM, to speed it up and make it like new again, but I've discovered the design is inherently unstable. According to several forums, the type of RAM chips used in the ASUS TF300T are inherently unstable: the tablet needs to be reformatted every six months( or more often! )to keep the unit performing acceptably - which I find unacceptable. So I'll have to reset it and sell it on eBay, for a fair bit less than I paid a year ago.

Fortunately, another tablet has come to me by way of my girlfriend! As it turns out, she has a smaller 7.9" Acer, which is newer and speedier then my ASUS... and she never uses it, having purchased it for work that it turns out she can do better on a laptop; dang. But her loss is my gain, and I was thrilled to spend some time this afternoon to set it up for my own use with various apps and so forth. I'm going to mainly use it for reading books( Kindle or ePub or Comics ) as well as watching videos, some email / document use, Audible and a few other tasks better suited to a tablet than a laptop. Plus it also fits in a backpack far more easily and using it means that I won't be draining my phone battery as much.

On that subject, I have been looking for a portable battery to charge my mobile devices for about a year now. To date, most of the batteries I've seen are either too expensive or unreliable or even worse, both. I've been able to purchase a couple of possibilities on Amazon, but had to return them due to poor performance, which was disappointing.

I seem to have struck gold on my latest purchase( a Lightning Sale deal, too! )however: a huge-capacity pack from RAVPower that looks to be just what I wanted. With enough juice to charge my power-hungry OnePlus One cell phone more than three times over and the ability to charge two devices simultaneously, I am now no longer tied down to power outlets wherever I go. See has a use my electronic devices quite a bit in a day, it's been frustrating to had out in the morning with a fully charged phone and have to plug it in by early afternoon with the battery in the low teens. With my latest purchase, I should be able to keep my devices running happily all day long and even go without an outlet on occasion with no worries whatsoever.

It's a g33k's paradise, I tell you...

I'm feeling much better than I was even  as of last week's blog entry, far more balanced and able to simply get on with my day. The stress is still here, but I'm managing it with the help of St. John's wort, practicing gratefulness daily and of course the support of my family and friends. I'm back on track, I think.

Timing, Topsy and Thanks

The word of the week is anticipatory.

Feb 29 – Stabilizing

I'm taking each day as it comes right now.

Some days I don't even think about being anxious, as I'm busy or otherwise feeling fine

Speaking of stabilizing, I've been searching through the millions of cyclign videos on YouTube to watch when I exercise, typically 15-25 minutes of light-resistance. I've found that the majority of the videos aren't easy for me to watch, as the cameras wobble all over the place( it's a bicycle, so this is normal ).

So I've taken to searching for stabilized videos, which are eminently more watchable. Here's a lovely example, with mountain scenery:

Watching these videos while exercise is soothing, as I easily slip into my memories of cycling around town. Except that I'm actually cycling in other cities, which is pretty cool: places I've never been but that I feel like I'm touring around in on two wheels under my own power. It's good for the body and the mind.

In a few months’ time, I hope that I'll be ready to head out on the roads again locally, once my muscles have toughened up again with regular indoor exercise. Combine that with some solid walking every day and I should be good to go cycling this spring once more.

Mar 1 – Pencil It In

It's a new month, and my calendar is clear.

All I have on my plate officially is work; my evenings are no longer filled with other things, apart from the occasional writing group commitment and even that is just for critique nights, not presentations.

It actually feels quite good to look at my calendar for March and not see anything, apart from the usual due dates for bills and a few social engagements. Having large swathes 'free time' means that my mental processes can juggle things into place more easily.

Should I work on the book one night? Perhaps work on the costume? Get a few small or necessary tasks around the apartment done? Plan the meals for the week, or tidy up a bit? What about just relaxing for an hour or two?

Having the flexibility to do any or all of those things, depending on my energy levels, is going to be a source of great relief to me. Especially since I am going to be attending a convention in a months’ time with thousands of other people; I really need to get my thoughts settled so that my anxiety doesn't rear its ugly head at an unfortunate time when I'm in Seattle.

I'm doing better in social situations this week: heading into a crowded restaurant or shopping area doesn't give me much in the way of heebie-jeebies, for which I'm quite grateful - a few weeks ago, that would have been a Rather Big Thing.

Besides, crowds have never bothered me before and I'm not about to let being social become a handicap to me, if I can do anything about it. The irony is that right now, this year, I need to spend a lot of nons-ocial time working on my novels, so being anxious about being social really plays right into the hands of my inner author.

However: I like being social...

Mar 2 – Old Star Wars is New Again?

Man, I love the original Star Wars films... and I'm not thrilled with how George Lucas 'improved' it with his Special Edition releases.

Apparently, neither a lot of people. A few years ago, a group of them got together to do something about it and have produced an amazing restored version of the original theatrical release this year! Frame by frame, they've gone through the entire film to remove every visible imperfection and color correct everything.

 Here's a clip of the typical cleanup process, frame by frame:

The original 2-hour Star Wars has close to 175,000 frames, so doing the math, it would take 1 person an entire year of working 8-hour days non-stop to tidy up the film!

You can follow their progress here, as they look to release

Mar 3 – Costuming

I need to pick up the pace.

Emerald City Comicon is in a month and I have yet to do more than print out a few patterns in regards to actually getting the Colonial Marine costume physically started. I have all the bits and bobs that I haven't been able to source locally on order( on the cheap! )and the remainder of them should arrive next week. I have a workstation set up, complete with a brand-new cutting mat( thank-you, Amazon: $30 vs $200 everywhere else! ) as well as all the basic tools I need. Not to mention the massive research I've done for images, parts and plans.

So I really need to get things rolling on my end.

The first order of business is to finish printing out and assembling the templates. I've been using a set of guides created in Pepakura, which is a free program that lets anyone create 3-D objects which can then be printed out on any home printer, then slide and spliced together into their final shape. Here's a picture of somebody else's work made out of tough vacuum-formed plastic:

Left = Final cosplay Middle = paper template Right = plastic parts

Once I have the templates tape together, I will check them for size on ARMeY( my mannequin )and then start cutting out the basic pieces from the foam EVA mats I purchased. From there, I will trim them up to match pictures of the actual armor from the original movie, then do a rough-fit on ARMeY using masking tape to check everything's aligned properly.

After that, it's on to painting, which will take a fair bit of time as I have to do multiple layers in order to reproduce the camouflage correctly. Then once that's been coated in a clear protective finish and has dried, I'll start assembling the clasps and webbing using a rivet gun. From there, it's just small details.

Wish me luck.

Mar 4 – It’s Good To Blog

Thanks for dropping by.

At the risk of repeating myself, I'll repeat myself: thanks, really.

Blogging is a strange thing. Coming up with something new every week is a daunting challenge sometimes, and I can't imagine how some people manage to blog / tweet / post original and unique things more than a few times a day. It's a lot of work and for those people whose lives revolve around social media platform, either personally or professionally, it really eats up your time.

It also takes time to read, which means that I'm thankful for all of you that drop by here on a semi-regular basis. As I've said in previous posts in previous years here and there, I make every effort to keep this blog light and interesting. While sometimes it dips into the deeper into the pool I make sure that I don't spend too much time down there... you tend to run out of air real fast.

When I'm feeling somewhat crunchy of the week, it helps me to know that my friends and family can keep up with what I'm up to and how I'm doing, through the simple medium. I'm able to express my thoughts and feelings plainly, for the most part here, and that does me a world of good mentally to be able to set it all down, to spell it out for you to see.

I hope you drop by again soon. I'll be here.

Mar 5 – Saturday Mornings

I have an idea that involves nostalgia and Saturday morning cartoons, but it don't have time to do anything about it right now. I think it's a great idea, but to make it work would require a large investment of time on a regular basis and even some money, so for now all I can do is shelve it and hope nobody gets to it first.

The idea mainly has to do with your typical Saturday morning lineup from the 1980s, kind of like the intros these ones:

For most of my childhood, I knew what I was doing on Saturday mornings during the regular television season, and it was great.

And what would cartoons be without toy commercials? Here's one of my faves:

It's a shame that those days are gone now. Perhaps my idea will be able to bring them back in a way for many, but we'll see if I can get that off the ground sometime...

Mar 6 – Turvy

Blah.

That was me all day today: I felt like I had some kind of hangover, but I'm not sure why. I haven't eaten anything unusual this weekend so all I can think of is that the weather's been up and down for the last two days, with Sun and rain and sun again cycling back and forth. Typically, when the pressure changes, it affects me, so shifting back and forth fairly rapidly might be affecting my equilibrium, though I would have been surprised that I haven't had a headache at all this week.

Not knowing also adds to my anxiety, though I fight that consciously.

It's funny how so many little things can make my brain clicked over into worry mode. Am I too hot, or did I have some sugar I didn't know about so that's why I'm sweating? Am I too tired? Did I eat enough for my last meal, at the right time? Did I eat too much and so it's not digesting correctly, since I lack a gall bladder to help with larger or difficult meals? Did I walk enough today? Did I sleep well last night, comparatively? Am I stressing about something that I shouldn't be, or am I forgetting about something that I should remember?

All these things and more are always running through my head all the time, factors jumbling in juggling in a semi-conscious maelstrom of mental arithmetic that leaves me drained sometimes. I need to learn some meditative techniques in order to calm my mind down, so that I can let the small worries fall away and focus on the things I need to get done, sooner rather than later.

That's all for now.

Nothing much more to say: a new week awaits. I think I've got a handle on things now, and I should get a good number of things accomplished by the time of my next entry in a week.

Caffeine, Coping and Cosplay

The word of the week is composed.

Feb 22 – Working Out Write

Exercise of all kinds is most assuredly in the cards for me for 2016.

I've become far less active in my current job, so much so that physical things I used to take for granted are no longer at the same level of performance, which stuns me. For example, my right shoulder still hurts from playing video games for a few hours weeks ago, all from having the angle slightly off why was using the mouse. While I'm careful with my wrists, this shoulder pain comes as a complete surprise and indicates to me that my level of physical ability has dropped severely from several years ago when I was moving office supplies around on a daily basis. Not to mention biking to and from work, which was its own cardio workout in and of itself.

I have taken the first steps in purchasing and using my exercise bicycle. As of last week, I've been cycling a steady 15 minutes a day at a moderate tension setting, not pushing things as I'm keeping an eye on my heart rate - it has been holding at around 100 BPM , which is excellent for a light workout of that order.

A few more weeks and I should be up to a higher tension setting for longer, building up a sweat in the process. I'll also be doing some basic lifting exercises at home with light weights, in order to tone my arms back up to where they were; playing video games and working around the apartment shouldn't cause me pain, and once I'm done with these preliminary exercises over the coming month I'll consider the next step to take, which may involve the local gym.

In the evening, I attended my girlfriend's Craft Of Writing presentation, the 12th in her ongoing series this year as part of our local Victoria writing group. I was able to stay out of the limelight while still contributing to the group, which eased my anxiety greatly as did the uncrowded and softly-lit meeting venue at the Atrium downtown.

We talked about the process of creating a first draft of a novel or other similar works, to which I was able to contribute a fair bit of working knowledge from my own experience in the process. It was gratifying to be able to share my own information with others who found it useful and meeting went quite well while still finishing early enough for us to spend time having a late dinner at a nearby sushi spot. The Japanese art of preparing raw fish has been growing on me since last year and I am pleased to say that there's quite a few good sushi spots now in downtown Victoria, enough to give a pleasant variety to one's dining choices.

There's nothing fishy about good sushi, you know.

Feb 23 – No Tea, Less Stress?

Caffeine is not something in my diet right now.

Given that I'm still suffering from anxiety, it only makes sense to cut out anything food-wise that can contribute to stress levels. That includes caffeine, which is well known as a stimulant that can increase a person's heart rate, which is exactly the opposite of what I need right now.

As of last week, I've gone from having cut back to a half a pot of tea a day to only a single cup of tea in the late afternoon before heading home from work.

It seems to be working. I have been naturally waking up around 7 AM for the last few months for work anyway, usually without any real grogginess unless the cats been keeping us awake( which he has this week - last night I got four hours of sleep total )so that's an indicator that I don't need caffeine in the morning unless absolutely necessary.

This also has the benefit of not contributing to an acidic stomach, which I've been known to suffer from if I have too much tea to drink in a day. Even a full pot of tea, made with just one teabag, is too acidic for me, though I have been known to let the teabag steep for too long sometimes when I'm getting ready for work in the morning.

Keeping an eye on this sort of thing is necessary, as I want to be able to fall asleep naturally and wake up in the morning feeling rested without any sort of stimulants taking too much of a role in my daily life. We all drank coffee or tea and have a lot of sugar in our diets, so cutting all those out of mine should make a big difference in the near future.

For now, I just have to get used to feeling out of sorts - until I don't anymore.

Feb 24 – STRESS

Today did not end well.

My parents insisted on picking me up from work today, so that I could help them configure their new Samsung S6 phones that they'd just spent the afternoon purchasing. I had advised them on the purchase a few days ago and they did a little research before committing to another contract today, upgrading from their older HTC M7 phones to the slick new Samsung models - a good choice, and my eyes.

What wasn't a good choice was to have me work on them tonight.

The process of setting up their phones was not done by Telus, unfortunately, so I had to do things like configure there are Wi-Fi settings, install a few favorite apps and get other things working with their Google account.

These things by themselves would have been stressful, but technology isn't a strong suit of my parents and their frustration with the need for remembering passwords or configuring other apps began to show itself in their behavior. It wasn't their fault and I did the best I could, but it's always been this way with them - hence the need for me to assist with new technology as needed.

Within an hour, I was a nervous, frustrated wreck and I barely got them out the door before I had to sit down to get a hold of myself before a full-blown panic attack could manifest. I spent the rest of the evening practicing breathing and meditation techniques as well as taking calming herbs( and herbal tea )to try and calm myself.

While I succeeded, it was a complete waste of an evening that I had planned to use for other things, including writing. I ended up sending a polite but firm e-mail to my parents explaining the situation and I don't believe this sort of thing will ever happen again; they're wonderful people and wouldn't intentionally upset me.

The silliest part was that I realized I hadn't really got to play with the new phones all that much, which was a shame.

Feb 25 – Show N'Tell

I hosted my first writing group evening tonight in many months.

Heading out to the meeting tonight, I was somewhat anxious, as I'd be in a busy place with mostly strangers at the table and given how stressed I was yesterday, I wasn't sure how things would go. Would I need to step away from the table in order to calm myself?

I needn't have worried.

Experience is a lovely thing. A AI was in charge of the evening, the role took over and evening proceeded apace. There were about eight people in total, myself included and tonight was all about sharing one's written work, a short 500-word piece per person( except for me, as I was the host ).

We had six new people, including one lady who has sold quite a few of the nearly 2 dozen self-published novels that she's written to date; impressive! There were a few nervous people among them, but surprisingly I found it quite easy to keep everyone on the level despite my own worries about stressing out, which turned out to be unfounded.

It was an excellent evening overall, where everyone who shared their written pieces received excellent feedback and there were smiles all around. In fact, the same woman who had published so many books of her own wrote me after the meeting, to thank me for providing such excellent feedback on her current story piece that she was working on. It was extremely gratifying to know that I was able to be so constructively critical despite my current personal imbalances and to assist another writer so ably with making their work better.

What a great night~!

Feb 26 – Bee Aware

What's going on with the bees lately?

For over a decade now, scientists have been aware of declining bee populations globally, but little progress has been made in determining how to reverse this deadly trend. Bees are necessary for pollination in over 75% of the world's crops, so the loss loss of their population will be keenly felt by humans quite quickly. Several different man-made causes of population decline have been pinpointed recently, which is vital to discovering the next step to take to save the bees.

What can we really do about it though?

New strategies are being tried all around the world, including a few old ones. Diversity is the key in many places where 'monocropping' has eliminated far too many of the wildflowers and other plants that bees used to use as staging areas: giant fields of the same crop are like deserts to them if there aren't places to stop along the way.

This fascinating article talks about how farmers are going back to the old ways of doing things in India, Mexico and Tanzania. Ancient hive management practices are being revived in order to nurture declining bee populations and ensure that local farmers are all plugged into the need to protect this vital biological resource.

In Toronto, bees are high on the everyone's priority list. There is a healthy community of urban beekeepers in the city, helping to keep a thriving pollinator population alive and well:

I think what scares me about bee loss is that too few people are where the problem and even fewer are aware of how critical they are to life on our planet.

Feb 27 – The Skinny on Cable

I've not had cable for six months, and I'm really enjoying it.

To be honest, I have a ton of movies and TV on DVD and Blu-ray( not to mention NetFlix, AmazonTV and other streaming sites online ) so I'm not hurting for entertainment, that's for sure.

But for those folks who haven't cut the cable yet, good news is in the pipe coming next month: skinny cable.

The CRTC has mandated that all cable providers in Canada must have basic cable TV channel grouping packages at 'reasonable cost'as of March 1, 2016. This grouping must have all the channels on the CRTC's mandatory distribution list, which includes CBC, Global and CTV, as well as public interest stations like APTN and minority French or English language channels.

All for $25 - or less.

Considering I couldn't get my combination cable TV / Internet bill to total less than $100 before I pulled the plug, that's really interesting news and wallets across the country will welcome it with open arms.

The cable companies, less so.

Skinny cable still won't entice me to head back to cable TV land, not when I'm paying $45/month for Internet service that gives me all the access to the world that I need. Though I still do get several broadcast TV channels over the air, I've missed out on watching favorites like the new X-files or New Girl, simply because I don't have the time or even the means of recording them.

I'll get around to seeing them eventually, which is part of the beauty of modern entertainment: you can buy, rent or record whatever you want, whenever you want and right now, that's reserved for when I have the time to spare.

Feb 28 – ARMeY and Prep

Slowly but surely, my Aliens Colonial Marine costume is coming together.

It's been a real challenge to both figure out what parts I need and how to source them cheaply; my budget is minimal, both monetarily and timewise. I have about a month left to pull it all together, including fabrication and painting, which is going to be cutting it close - but I think I can do it, even with the delay caused by the last few weeks of my emotional yo-yo state.

I've been relying on online forums for ideas on what materials to use, as well as to get the proper patterns and other resources I need to create the costume. The original armor props were created by Terry English out of aluminum, and he still making them today, though a fully-painted costume will set you back around $5000 Canadian – way, way out of my budget. This is what I'm trying to achieve, or at least an 80%-level copy:

The materials I'll be using include EVA foam mats, the kind that you stand on for comfort for long hours at a time. I did also managed to locate a Canadian source online for webbing and the buckles to make the armour straps, which was a great find as shipping items from the states is costly given the current crappy exchange rate. At  least I can find paints that will be a close match to the on-screen colours locally, and I can make everything myself in my apartment for the most part: I've put together two sheets of plywood to convert my bed into a makeshift workbench as needed. Taking over the bathroom for prop-making in a shared apartment isn't really in the cards.

This week I also scored a huge find: a mannequin! It's most impressive:

I've named him ARMeY, for obvious reasons and he was real find for a mere $50 from a local seller - her last one! He looks like he's never been used and is in perfect condition, complete with an adjustable stand and he's exactly my size, torso-wise! So I'll be able to use ARMeY o help me fit all the armour pieces together properly from all angles, far more easily than I would be able to if I had to work on them without a display mannequin.

Given my lack of costuming skills, I need all the advantages I can get this coming month.

I think the worst of the anxiety is behind me. Barring this week's unexpected evening episode born of frustration, I think I've been doing fairly well in being able to keep an even keel both at work and at home. I've been able to concentrate on my tasks and not feel trapped in mental loops on any particular topic, which is a change from the previous week. Slow but steady improvement is the order of the day, I think, for the coming weeks.