Superheroes, Spring and Sight

The word of the week is indicative.

Mar 21 – Spring!

Did you know that yesterday marks the earliest arrival of spring in our lifetimes?

I didn't, and I find that fascinating.

Spring is a time of rebirth, of regeneration and renewal, all things that I can relate to this year. As I've said many times in this blog since the summer past, I've got a lot to do and have to ensure that I'm not overextending myself while trying to accomplish it all. My recent anxiety hasn't helped get things done either, but I'm choosing to see it as just one more challenge that I have to overcome to accomplish what I want this year.

Seeing all the fresh life blossoming around me here in Victoria now, I can't help but feel like my spirits are buoyed... and the recent time change has certainly helped as well, ushering in later evenings and earlier mornings both to look forward to. I'll also be thinking about my friends elsewhere, how they're enjoying their spring this year and how soon I might be able to see them again.

Probably not until next spring, at the very least, depending on how this year goes.

Mar 22 – Orthokeratology?

I've had glasses for more than half my life, ever since Grade 8.

While I can see all right without them, my vision is much poorer in my right eye and I can't go too long nowadays without glasses without giving myself a headache from the focus discrepancy. At least modern glasses weigh only a few ounces and aren't anywhere near as heavy as the sliding-prone glass monstrosities I had perched on my nose decades ago.

Still, I regularly wish I could see without them.

Today I went to the eye doctor and got some test pairs of contacts. I'm thinking about getting some monthly-wear one's sometime late this year or next, simply to have the variety available. It's been over 10 years since I last were contacts, mainly because I was working in retail and constantly having to touch your eyes meant I was constantly getting sick from the transfer-germs-contact with people. All the same, it's not advisable to wear contacts at work if you're staring at a screen all day, as that can also lead to headaches and I won't even get into the fun part where the lack of oxygen to your eye( even with today's technology ) means that in the long term, the surface of your eye dies the longer you or your contacts....

But what if you were contacts that reshaped your eyes?

Such is the promise of orthokeratology, contacts that you wear at night to apply pressure to your corneas so that when you wake in the morning, your vision has been corrected - temporarily, at least.

I'm quite leery of laser eye surgery, due to the lack of long-term studies showing its full effects, so hearing about orthokeratology this week is exciting for me. I'm going to investigate it further and see what he can do for me, but I'm quite aware that it too might possibly have side effects; all the more reason to research it.

Maybe I can wear them for the next 10 years, until bionic contacts finally arrive...

Mar 23 – Bike/Car?

Do I need a car? Not really? Could I use a car, though? Well...

Apart from the expense  of owning and operating a vehicle in general, it's great to be able to be able to travel directly to a destination without needing to orchestrate a ballet of bus routes. Especially if your destination is on the other side of the city and taking your own vehicle means that you save at least half an hour trip time total by going directly there and not having to wait for a bus... etc etc.

Time is precious to me these days, so my lack of mobility has been on my mind. I've been considering some ride-share alternatives like Modo, but that requires advanced planning and also that nobody else wants the vehicle at the same time as you need it... who might reserve it first. Then there's the time it takes to walk to the nearest vehicle location, which in my case is at least 15 minutes away.

What if I could get a vehicle that's not a car, but not a scooter either? And definitely not a motorcycle... while still being an environmentally-friendly electric.

Enter the C-1( working title ).

While it looks like an enclosed motorbike, the resemblance ends there. The C-1 is designed to operate like a car, containing extremely advanced technologies like gyroscopes in order to make the driving experience as simple as possible. For someone without motorbike skills like myself, this sounds ideal, as the C-1 can carry one passenger and a small a lot of cargo, or two passengers in a pinch for up to 200 miles on a single overnight charge - perfect for city driving.

While I'm not in love with the current design of the vehicle, it's better in my mind than Smart cars, which sound like rattling refrigerators with wheels to my mind. The C-1 is something that I could park easily on the street and take me wherever I need to go at a moments notice, with no ties to expensive fuel or general maintenance necessary for gas powered vehicles.

While it's too early to tell yet if the C-1 will become a reality, its appearance perhaps heralds the arrival of the pure 'Commuter Electric Car' designed just for city driving.

Hopefully it also heralds the arrival of affordable vehicles in the same category...

Mar 24 – Guess What Arrived Today?

It's here, at last!

After months of work, a package arrived in the mail for me yesterday. After lunch, I excitedly trotted down to the post office to pick it up, lugging it back home in order to free it from its packaging. Have a look:

A little blurry, but at least you can ready the LED: 95 rounds!

Isn't she a beauty? The prop is built around a fully functional Nerf Rapidstrike that's been upgraded with some very high-power motors, meaning it can fire off the entire clip of 12 darks in under 3 seconds: three times as fast as normal! But that's not the point: it looks just like the M41A from the movie Aliens, doesn't it?

The LED counter on the right-hand side is something I'm especially proud of as I managed to find a pair of them for sale on eBay after waiting nearly a year for one the pop-up. There's a fellow on there by the name of Majenko who very occasionally puts up three or four for sale, which go damn fast, but I snagged a couple through persistence and luck. The counters are designed to exactly mimic the function of the M41A as it fires and then is reloaded in the movie, as shown in this test clips sent by the engineer who put my prop together:



Needless to say, I'm extremely pleased with the results and to be honest, a little scared that I still have such a long way to go with my costume before the convention in a couple weeks. While I wasn't able to budget having this prop wired for sound, part of my specifications were that it be pre-wired to allow such an upgrade in the future should I so choose.

For now, I'll just have to make some pew-pew sounds when I fire it...

Mar 25 – Bat vs Cape

It was movie night tonight: Batman versus Superman!

-SPOILERS BELOW-

Going in, I'll admit that I deliberately didn't find out much about this film, but not for the reasons you might think. Batman certainly ranks highly in my lists of best superheroes, for many reasons that I won't get into here( apart from being a normal guy without superpowers and the super genius part ). As for Superman, well... he's just the idolized version of what every superhero really should be: a boy scout, with lots of cool powers including flight.

So let's get these two fighting on-screen, and that'll be cool, right?

Sad Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman

Well...

Let's start with the visuals: BvS looks great and doesn't suffer from too much SFX overkill like Man Of Steel did( many parts of which were still cool-looking ) as much of the effects budget has gone to serve the story instead of just putting things on the screen to look good.

Speaking of looking good: what about Wonder Woman? Perfect casting! She's underplayed subtly by Gasl Godot, with powers far surpassing that of Lynda Carter's iconic iteration from the 1970s television show, all done in a solid performance that really sells the character while moving it forward significantly.

But back to the title match: it eventually happens, and it's a letdown.

Why? One word: story.

Quite honestly, while I enjoyed the biff-bang-boom action parts of the film, the rest of it was a major letdown, as the story has obviously been cobbled together in order to get these two heroes to fight one another. There's a whole lot of things that don't make sense in the film( 19 of them, in fact! )and in the end I just had to turn off my brain to enjoy watching the film, which looks great in IMAX.

Bottom line Guardians of the Galaxy was much, much better.

Mar 26 – USCM Progress!

Today was mostly spent working on my costume.

My girlfriend had an extremely busy week, so much so that we decided to forgo getting together today so she could just rest, which I can totally understand.

So, I was essentially handed the rest of the day to do with what I pleased, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to make some significant progress on my Colonial Marine cosplay. It also helped that it was extremely sunny here this afternoon, so working at the table by the window with all my paraphernalia was great for both light and fresh air.

Most of the secondary parts, excluding the helmet, chest and back plates. You can see on the left a complete shin guard vs one that's just been cut out

The main material on using for the costume is EVA foam, cut from large 8ft x 4ft antifatigue mats: I managed to get two of them for the budget price of $40 total from Canadian Tire on sale a few months ago! There's enough material for me to make a lot of mistakes and still end up with four suits, so I'm pretty happy about that.

While the cutting out of the parts isn't all that complicated, it does require a strong arm and the dense foam dulls blades at a frightening pace. As you can see from the image above, today I managed to cut out all the major and minor pieces, including the leg sections and I even got a few of them shaped with the help of some hot glue. Note to self: hot glue is HOT, so you shouldn't grab any freshly glued parts when you're not looking where your fingers are going...

The biggest challenge for me in the next few weeks, apart from finishing, is going to be the painting of the foam: the finish is key, and foam isn't smooth when you paint it with standard paints. I'll have to pick up some latex paint on the cheap ( from Canadian tire again )this week, so I can have time to do multiple layers while they dry for a day or so in between. It's going to be a challenge to keep them in my apartment while they dry without stinking the place up, I have to say.

Even with all the above challenges, I'm excited to be creating something so cool!

Mar 27 – Resting

I took a bit of a break today from the costuming, only cutting out a few replacement parts to substitute for ones that I've managed to screw up in some way. Plus I needed to get my arm a rest from all the cutting.

My girlfriend and I spent the morning and early afternoon together, taking a walk around and enjoying the flowers blooming everywhere in Victoria:

I took these on our walk today in Beacon Hill Park

I also caught up on a few more episodes of the wonderful Netflix-original anime TV series Knights of Sidonia, which is a scifi feast! in a nutshell: some of the last survivors of earth have fled the ravages of an alien species they don't understand it is still trying to destroy the seedship Sidonia as it travels to what the humans hope is a new world to begin again:

The premise is excellent and the science surprisingly sound for show with giant mecha in the traditional Japanese style. The story centers around pilots of the Gardes, which is what the Mac are called, and their defense of Sedonia from the Guana, which are the aliens. While the writing isn't stellar, and it's rather heavy on too-many-names and too-many-interpersonal-relationship stories, the overall plot has been engaging and I'm looking forward to learning more about the universe that's been created in which the story is set.

I'm going to add 'Figure out why Google Drive isn't uploading my pictures automatically' to my long list of Things To Do in 2016. Already on that list: fix Plex so that all the movies I copied from my DVD collection actually show up, finish scanning and organizing my book collection, check my few dozen laserdiscs for warpage... the List goes on and on, and that's not even THINKING about getting my novels completed or getting my new business running in the summer. I wonder if I can take a paid sabbatical from my day job for a few months...?

Puns, Patty Parties and Progress

The word of the week is customary .

Mar 14 – Getting There...

This was a completely normal week for me - finally.

I rarely checked my heart rate from day-to-day, depending instead on focusing on my daily tasks and not focusing nearly as much on how I was feeling from hour to hour, which was good in many senses of the word.

I'm back to just working through each of my days one at a time, with little hanging over my head, so to speak. That's the way I've always dealt with my busy schedule and it feels normal to get back to that progressive state of mind. I won't belabour the point, but suffice to say that my anxiety and I seem to have called a truce for the foreseeable future. I'm still taking two St. John's Wort a day, but that's a far cry from what I thought I'd still need by this date.

The time change yesterday has also meant that things feel lighter around here - literally. With sunset now happening well after 7pm( and later every day )it's far easier to feel energized in the evening if it's still light out.

Which is good, as I have a lot to do before the fall when the clocks go back again. Lots and lots to do...

Mar 15 – Medical Punnage

I love puns; sadly, many people don't.

Puns are a complicated matter, much like humour: it's complicated. Yet for all the effort, most folks can't be bothered to make a pun, much less appreciate them, with many ascribing the pun as being 'the lowest form of humour' and so forth.

Still, I pun, and I enjoy it, even when most other folks groan and walk away - fast. I do know when to stop, but for some pun-loving jokesters, it's non-stop.

Now, medical science has determined that there's something behind the motivation of the worst punsters: they're medically unable to stop punning.

According to this article, people who can't stop punning( or telling jokes in general )whether they're funny or not have suffered brain damage at some point in their lives - that should come as no surprise, really. The damage means that they only find their own jokes funny, including puns, and lose all inhibition regarding joke-telling as they can't determine if other people are finding the jokes funny or not. It's an unusual condition and while fairly rare, could explain the nonstop puns of the occasional jokester, it definitely doesn't explain my own penchant for puns.

Thankfully, my girlfriend appreciates the better puns that I let slip: I'm a lucky guy!

Mar 16 – Laserdisc Fixed????

After work, I picked up my Pioneer Laserdisc player from the repair shop.

I'd received a call yesterday that it was done, but that it wasn't fixed, per se as that would take specialized equipment and skills that just aren't available around here. I was lucky to find a place willing to look at it, really, and the technician who had it this last week has 40 years of experience electronics, so I trust his word when he said he tested everything, including the spare motherboard that I gave him along with the service manual. Getting it back, I resigned myself to months or even years of searching to find someone who might be able to repair it comprehensively. It's a rare Pioneer Elite unit, so it's unlikely that I'll ever find a similar or better unit that's in as good condition, even with the internal video glitch.

But, lo and behold: once I set it up again tonight, the picture was clear as crystal! No wavy coloured lines distorting things to unwatchable levels - huzzah!

According to the tech, it seems that the laserdisc I gave him to test the unit was warped significantly, which may have caused the distorted lines. I had also initially tested it with a Star Wars disc, which showed the same lines of distortion, but tonight's spending of a Babylon5 disc was apparently the charm!

I watched the Babylon5 disc for two hours solid tonight, and both sides played perfectly without any distortion whatsoever. I was able to see the excellent detail of the CGI scenes in each episode, with much greater clarity than the poorly-done DVD video transfer. I'm a happy guy!

I'll have to check my laserdisc collection for warped discs, which can be fixed using various simple methods to restore their perfectly flat shapes. It's unfortunate that age and mishandling can distort the disc, but it's to be expected given their size and even DVDs can be warped if the situation isn't good.

The irony is that I don't have a lot of time this year to sit and watch my laserdics, but as 2016 progresses, I'll be able to sneak in a few here and there, watching with a grin on my face thanks to the technician's tune-up and suggestions.

Mar 17 – Jazz Poetry!

It was an entertaining St. Patrick's Day!

I met my girlfriend and her poetry group at Hermann's Lounge for dinner, as they were having a meeting before the evening's entertainment. We talked for a few hours about Irish poetry, in honor of St. Patrick today. While I am not an official member of the group, all was able to put in quite a few cognizant observations about the poems, including one comment about combining poetic types that had everyone eagerly voicing their opinion as to how it might be accomplished - go me!

After some hours of lively discussion, the evening's entertainment took the stage:

The trio played some lovely light jazz, just loud enough to cover the crowd’s conversation and laid back enough to be utterly relaxing. After the first set, the band took a break and when they came back, they were joined by a young jazz singer( whose name I didn't catch )whose dulcet tones added wondrous new dimension to the music. There was also an elderly clarinet player who sat in a chair on the stage and showed everyone what decades of musical experience could do.

What a great night!

Mar 18 – Bye-Bye Bengal

Friday night after work, I went lounging.

Not just anywhere though: I joined my sister and some of her work friends at the Bengal Lounge in the Empress Hotel, down in the heart of the harbor area of Victoria.

It's a wonderful place, the likes of which can't be found easily in Canada anymore. It's a throwback to colonial days, with potted ferns and murals depicting African safaris on the walls, and the centerpiece of the lounge is a real tigerskin - barbaric, but that's part of the charm I guess:

I've always wanted to go into the Bengal, but the prices have been so prohibitive that I never bothered - check out what a grilled cheese sandwich costs:

The food was excellent, and so was the company, but we Teft after about an hour as it was getting too loud. The lounge is always crowded, with a line waiting at the door( mostly for the renowned curry buffet ) but after this April, it won't be anything but a construction zone, so I'm glad that I got chance to eat there at least once before it closes at the end of this April.

Tiger, tiger, burning bright...

Mar 19 – Catch-Up / Podcast / Party

Today was a busy day!

I spent most of my morning and early afternoon catching up on the week, getting various things squared away around the place - the usual when I have a little time.

In the afternoon, I again took part in the final of three podcasts regarding the third in the series of Dark Crystal graphic novels, Creation Myths Vol. III. I spoke for an hour and a half long with three other fans of the dark crystal, discussing each of the chapters in the graphic novel. It was fascinating to be able to 'read along' with other fans as I did the podcast, as we all discovered things that we missed as each of us pointed out little details here and there.

Soon after I wrapped the podcast, my girlfriend and I headed out for dinner, a few hours before we had to be at a party. We chose Ithaka, a family-run Greek restaurant just down the road from where I live and somewhere where I've been a few times before( good experiences both times, I might add ). It was quite crowded when we arrived, but the host managed to find us a table by the window, which was extremely fortunate.

The small restaurant was hopping, with a dozen staff moving in a smooth flow from kitchen to tables and back again while weaving around the occasional guest. The last few times I had been here, it wasn't nearly as busy and I came to appreciate quite quickly how well-run Ithaka is: each of our food plates arrived hot and perfectly timed for us to finish the last, our server was attentive and not a single thing went wrong the entire meal. It was one of the best restaurant experiences I've had in recent years and we'll definitely be going back soon.

After dinner, it was time for party!

Specifically, we attended a post-St. Patrick's Day party at a coworker's house, with all attendees having to wear something green and bring the same in terms of a food item. My lady and I both wore green, and we managed to find some excellent mint cupcakes along the way that were perfect( bottom left ):

Everyone at the party was wearing something green, and many had gone 'the extra mile' when dressing up. There was even a table of items to 'add' to your attire, should you so wish. We took advantage of that, of course:

Having had a long day, we didn't stay too long, but it was nice to sit out on a patio for a few hours with friends, enjoying the relatively balmy weather around a patio fireplace! Ah, spring in Victoria...

Mar 20 – Armour Progress!

Sundays: sometimes you relax...

... and other times you dive right into a project! Today saw some significant steps forward in getting my cosplay ready for the Emerald City Comicon taking place in a few weeks in Seattle. I finally finished putting together the paper templates for the armor, which were extremely complex and time consuming to assemble. Getting a three-dimensional shape from two-dimensional sheets of paper meant many dozens of small fiddly bits of paper that had to be taped together on my mannequin, after being printed out from a Pepurka file - so many little bits!

Once the templates were assemble, I place them atop one of my EVA foam mats and cut carefully them out using an X-Acto knife. While rough, the soft foam shapes are easy to assemble, and look great when pinned temporarily together:

That used up a significant portion of my day, pretty much and the concentration necessary lefty feeling rather tired by evening, when it was time to write my blog. I did feel a sense of accomplishment today in getting the foam shapes cut out, as I have to now do some detail work on them this week before hopefully painting them next weekend. I will have to strengthen them internally as part of that detail work, as they'll be too flexible otherwise and might cause the paint to crack.

Lots left to do in the next few weeks, but I like a challenge!

The next two weeks will see me concentrating almost exclusively on my costume, getting it ready for its debut the first week of April in Seattle. My M41A rifle is complete and was shipped to me several days ago, so should arrive by the end of this week at the latest - exciting! So now I have to get the costume ready to go with it...

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.