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Sunday, May 20th, 2012

entry || posted at 8:45am

It's 8:30, and I've already gone for my run, had breakfast, and done my daily French lesson. Sometimes I wonder who I am and what I've done with cow; turning into a ~morning person~ over the last year or two has been quite a surprise. Really, what it is is that I've taken to rising with the sun. My bedroom is the 3rd-floor loft, and it has giant east-facing window/sunroof things built into the slope of the roof, and I really love waking up to a pile of sunlight. So right now, that means I've been getting up around 6:15. In the winter, I get up more like 8:00. Haven't posted much lately, other than the travel stuff, because a lot of my life is this way. I'm doing a lot of really neat stuff, but none of it is the sort of stuff that makes for a great blog post. I guess that'll be changing more and more as we get into summer? And also, I need to dump the 200 or so photos from my camera and see if any make a good photopost. But first, more coffee.

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entry || posted at 11:25am

A bit of a trip update: I've got the first two sections booked. (Air Canada doesn't charge any different cost for one-way versus round trip, and prices are Going Up Rapidly, so I booked the flight *to* Vancouver, at least.) I'll be arriving Vancouver late in the evening of Sunday, the 20th of May. It looks like I'll be staying with isomorphisms there (she's in the vicinity of Commercial Drive) through Thursday, at which point I will head south to Seattle. I'll be in Seattle May 24-31; I've found a really fair deal on a nice place on Capitol Hill (19th and John, to be specific; me and the 43 bus will be bff once again), so I'll be there. I've had a few places offered, and I appreciate that, but given the short trip and the number of things I want to do and people I want to see, it seemed having somewhere central was worth the cost. Some logistics issues have come up re: the farm thing, so that may or may not be happening; we're discussing them and I'm trying to work around problems. So either May 31 I'll be heading back to Toronto or down to Olympia. But I wanted to announce the firmly-booked sections now so that Plans Can Be Made. What's wild is that I'm leaving for Vancouver in just over 3 weeks. Where on earth did the first third of the year go?!

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entry || posted at 8:59am

Hi, intermoo! So I'll be heading west in a few weeks for about a month. Exciting! The main part of this is that I'll be housesitting--and, more specifically, goat-and-peacock-and-other-bird-sitting--for caladri and corivax. Which is going to be really interesting, and I'm looking forward to it, both for animal time and for vacation/resting time. But I'll also be taking a week in Seattle! Currently thinking I'll spend the week before--24-31 May, give or take a day--in Seattle, then be down on the farm from 31 May-16 June, then back to Toronto. This also means I'll be there for Memorial Day weekend, which hopefully means more social time! (I'm on American holidays again, so I, too, have it off.) Then, back to Toronto on the 16th, and then over to Detroit (if I have the energy) because my mom's church is organizing a 5K through her exurban neighbourhood on the 24th, and my mom, sister, and I are all hoping to do it, which sounds fun. (Basically it's Romeo Plank north from 21 to 24 Mile, if you know the area at all, which is unlikely, but.) Then, back to Toronto because I've been asked to be a volunteer co-ordinator again for The 519's Pride celebrations. Last year we had 400 volunteers and 44,000 attendees in our tiny park, and sold $375,000 in booze alone. It's probably the most exhausting thing I do all year, but it funds all of the awesome programming we do--the city only funds the building and keeping the lights on, and while the federal government kicks in money for our queer refugee programs, most of what else we do (homeless and underhoused drop-in meals, queer parenting classes and oh-my-i-need-adult-time-while-the-kids-play programs, trans sex worker drop-in meals, counseling, income tax and free legal service clinics, etc.) gets funded through donations and through events like Pride. So I need to be there. And then I'm going to sleep for like a week. :3

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entry || posted at 12:00am

(courtesy cumaeansibyl, via Tumblr) I'm pretty sure this is just an edited caption, BUT STILL. ♥ ♥ And it did cause me to learn that Pokémon Black has a battle subway, where you ride trains and battle Pokémon. I really got that whole thing out of my system with French FireRed last year, so I don't really feel the need to play it. But...battle subway! (Speaking of old games, JET SET RADIO HD REMAKE ON XBLM THIS SUMMER. WITH ALL THE ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK THAT MATTERED.)

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entry || posted at 8:30am

Topic two for today! randomdreams asked me to talk about running, and getting into it. I've been at it for about four weeks now, and it's really starting to pay off. The first, and strongest, piece of advice I can give you is to take it slow and be patient with yourself. ...It also helps when your city suddenly gets a fake-summer when it would normally still be below 0. It's going to be 26 degrees and sunny today; it's been in the 20s for about a week. This makes everything easier. But I got started in mid-February, and I had a couple of sub-zero wind-in-your-face runs. It's a doable thing, if not necessarily a fun thing. Many of the running guides I've seen talk about distance--'today, run 2.5 km'--but don't talk about pace. Even the one I'm using, which is one of the RunKeeper FitnessClass things--will just say 'slow', 'moderate', or 'fast'. It's very tempting to go faster, to push yourself harder--but actually, this ends up counterproductive. If I run at the pace I feel I should be running at (not that I should be running at, but that my illogical side thinks I should do), I poop out at about 1.3 kilometres at this point. But on Tuesday, I forced myself to go super slow--almost painfully so--and did a 6.1-kilometre run, without breaking running stride once. (Have I mentioned how much I love being a short walk from the lake, all these amazing beaches, and the boardwalk? Have I mentioned it like a billion times? Okay, then.) I even had enough energy at the end to run back up from the beach to Queen Street, which is an 18 metre climb. That pretty much took the last out of me, though. Right now, the training plan is roughly to run every other day on an 8-day cycle. Runs 1 and 3 (days 1 and 5) are to go at a more moderate pace for a shorter distance; today is one of those days, and I'm aiming for 3.25 km today. Run 2 (day 3) is interval training; run at full throttle for a bit, then jog/walk a bit, repeat several times. The last one of these was [60 sec hard run, 90 sec slow], repeat 8 times; during the hard runs, I aimed for a sub-6min/km pace, which just feels good. Run 4 (day 7) is to go at a slow, almost jogging pace, but just run for as long as you possibly can. Each of these stretches a different bit of muscle and cardio. The moderate-pace runs really push what you want to aim for in a race, and give you a good sense of where you're at; it also works on cardio a lot. Intervals training is for strength; it's a lot like weight lifting. The slow, but long-distance, runs are all about stamina. (That, and confidence. I can look at that run I did on Tuesday and say to myself: look, I already can run the 5K I want to do in five weeks. Everything from here to there is just working on pace.) The last piece of advice is to find friends who also run. Sadly, none of my Toronto friends do, but both my boss and my sorta-boss are way into it, as are some of my friends elsewhere; we've got each other added on RunKeeper, so we see what each other are doing, cheer each other on, share tips, that sort of thing. The community really makes it easier, especially on bad days. You will have bad days. Don't let them stop you. (Also, don't be afraid to say, it's just not working today, I give up today...but come back the next time and try again.) I have to say, though, I'm amazed at how good it feels. When I finished my last round of intervals, I was completely drained and sore, but full of delicious endorphins. After the run on Tuesday, I still felt okay...right up until I stopped running and switched to walking, at which point everything from my lower back down felt like rubber and I sort of wobbled through my 5-minute cooldown to get to the streetcar stop. But I also was like YEAH! I DID IT! YEAAAAAH!. It's a bit hard to explain, since it's all in that intangible emotional space, but it's far more addicting than I expected.

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entry || posted at 8:29am

I made a hat! }:D ... but I couldn't get a decent picture of it, so, there's that. It's from this Knitty pattern, so you can see better pictures of it there. :3 I actually made two of them; the first is much smaller, since I needed to teach myself knitting in the round and cabling and such, and so I did that as a proof of concept. This is really the first thing I've knitted that wasn't just a rectangle or square. Very cool. :3 Miko, one of the owners of/awesome people at my neighbourhood yarn shop, next recommended a fingerless glove pattern that also does a bit of cabling, since I was curious what to try next. (I'm not feeling quite ready to branch out into more interesting yarns; the hat is made with Cascade 220, as are the gloves. Maybe my next project.) (sonatine has requested a hat like this, too, but in this colour; the Purl was sold out, making this my first Yarn Special Order™. :3)

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entry || posted at 9:32am

Good morning, intermoo! Today I am off on what is an entirely ridiculous mini-adventure, using VIARail as a commuter rail system, I suppose. I have Premier status, their highest-level elite status, because trains are awesome. But in order to keep it, you have to spend a certain amount on train tickets per year, with a year defined as 1 April to 31 March. Including the amount I'm spending on the one trip I have planned in March, I am some very triflingly small number of dollars shy of that threshold for the year. To the point that buying a round-trip ticket to somewhere nearby is actually a savings, since the benefits of renewing far outweigh the cost of that ticket. So, in a couple of hours, I'm off to Brantford, Ontario, for the afternoon, where I'll be having lunch at their idea of a gastropub, spending a sunny afternoon walking along the riverfront, and then early this evening getting back on a train to Toronto. Well, it's better than sitting around the house again. :3 In other randomness, miscellanny (is it strange that I auto-typed your former LJ name, and then had to look up the new one?) sent along some questions, so here are some answers: ( Why Cow? )( What will you never forget? )( What do you think when you look in a mirror? )( Which skill would you like to perfect? )( What could you bring to the post-apocalyptic table? )( Who is your hero? )( If your life was played backwards, what would the secret message be? )

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entry || posted at 10:13pm

Home! Yay! ADVENTURE STORY TIME When I left Boston, I left a beautiful sunny and warm day. We spent the morning and early afternoon wandering around the town, eating breakfast at the café on Main Street, and walking the railway-converted-to-a-trail through town. And then I got on a plane. And... Despite the best efforts of Toronto, I made it home tonight. Flight took off a few minutes early, even, but somehow we ended up on a flight path that caused us to be late arriving. This seemed odd until we started landing and the plane started rocking like a boat in a storm. Not standard turbulence--the plane was pitching left and right rapidly, and it really did feel like one was on the sea. Then we landed, and we landed on snow and ice. Oh. And then they wouldn't let us off the plane because they had to set up a special connector (this was a tiny plane, and normally it lets out onto the tarmac in the 200-section of Pearson) because there were 90-110 km/h winds and blowing ice pellets outside--thus the pitching plane and the difficult stop on the runway. Oh, indeed. So, happy just to be safely on the ground, I NEXUS'd my way past the 75-minute Customs backup, and made it curbside to the bus platform at 18:50. Now, for decades, Toronto has argued about a fixed-rail link to the airport, and what form it will take--it has been, at times, planned as a subway extension, a TTC LRT, and a heavy rail commuter line operated by GO. No ground has been broken on any of these options. And tonight, that was really unfortunate, because the police had to close the highway entrance/exit the airport bus uses to get to the airport. Ended up taking a 58/Malton, which does local service all the way to a different subway line entirely (Lawrence West on the Yonge/University/Spadina line). This 25-minute trip took 75, as the road was in many places completely covered in black ice. We gently rode along at 5-10 km/h past a number of spun out cars and buses (!!), and giant SUVs who were going 60 km/h and couldn't stop kept buzzing us and almost hitting us. At one point, the bus driver stopped the bus and told us we all had to get on the bus behind him, as he was an hour and a half late (the bus starts far west of the airport) and he had been told he had to leave. So we get on the next 58, and one stop later, he also gets a call. (Previous to this, a third bus had unloaded onto our bus and short turned.) From the conversation, they were telling him to do the same, except there wasn't a fourth 58, and the driver knew we'd already been through this shuffle a few times. So he told them to let him have overtime so he could get us to the station. (Awesome driver. Unbelievably patient, even when he was over hours on the day. On Monday I am so writing a note to the TTC.) Upon finally arriving at the station (after one more super-exciting patch of black ice) I got on the Yonge line and went to transfer to the Bloor-Danforth line at St George. This is where I became even happier for jumping on the 58 instead of waiting for the 192--which a lot of people I was waiting with chose to do, figuring it would even itself out eventually. Turns out Something Bad (I don't know what) happened at Bathurst Station, two to the west of my transfer point, and all service was turning back westbound at Ossington and eastbound at St George while police and medical were on the scene. These stops are not close to each other. Had I finally made my way to Kipling on the 192, I would have rode east .. to then be stuck at Ossington and having to find a workaround. But that didn't happen! So instead I made it to Greenwood Station, onto a waiting 31, and was given a ride to the neighbourhood Pizza Pizza, where a frazzled and extra-hungry (having not eaten since breakfast) cow picked up dinner and walked the last three blocks home. Total time, not including the time waiting for pizza: 2 hours, 25 minutes. BUT I got home safe, and that was in no way an assured thing having watched all the bad times along Dixon and Lawrence. ...Other than that, the Boston trip was a blast. Extra special huge thanks to maellenkleth and siestabear for putting me up and showing me around their town (and the city). It was wonderful to finally meet onebrightroad, and I hope we get to do so again many times! And it was also awesome meeting lyonesse and spiderine, who I also hope I get to see again soon. (There were others at dinner, too, but I was down in a corner and didn't really get to talk to anyone else! Sorry about that.) Even my boss drove out from Hartford so that we could spend a day working together in person--from MIT building E53, the social sciences and management library. All in all, an awesome trip capped off by an, um, exciting adventure.

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entry || posted at 11:16pm

Hello from Massachusetts! I'm about an hour and 15 minutes by commuter rail, and then a 30-minute walk up a hill, northwest of Boston. I'm here for a few days, staying in a lovely old farmhouse at the wonderful invitation of maellenkleth and siestabear. Lest anyone doubt the truth of the 'old farmhouse' thing--a fine place for Cow to vacation, no?--here is a picture of the barn, from the back window: (Pictures of the actual farmhouse would be, well, a bit too privacy-invading in a town as small as this, and serve no real purpose. :) ) How well do my hosts know me? Not only did they stock up on local microbrew, but, well: ...it's so awesome it even led to a new icon. That is one pleasantly drunk cow. She is all HAAAAY FRIENDS. <3 It was actually really tasty beer, too! The trip so far: got to see a de-icing facility from the plane window for the first time ever (we were just about to leave when the ice pellets started raining from the sky); got my US phone reactivated, with a Detroit-based number this time; met lyonesse over sushi, after many years of overlapping yet never-colliding orbits; rode an MBTA commuter rail, which began with the wonderfully pleasant conductor setting his bag up on the rack and yelling "HEY, MAKE SURE THE WHISKY DON'T FALL OUT, WOULD YA?"; spent today quietly working from the farmhouse, with a break to go walk into town and have the kind of amazing grinder one can only get in New England; taught siestabear how to cast on for knitting (she knew how to knit, just not how to get started); had lovely Italian food and conversation, which led to further conversation; and am now writing this post before bed. Tomorrow: my boss is driving up from Connecticut, and we'll be spending the day working together on the MIT campus. Then, I'll be meeting up with the above-mentioned names, plus finally getting to meet onebrightroad. Saturday is sleeping in, brunch, and then my flight back home. It's lovely, getting out of the city for a few days. I don't think I'm anywhere near ready to leave it for a much longer term than that, but I do hope to be back here at some point in the future.

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entry || posted at 10:59am

Next month, my oldest sister turns 37, and I turn 30. That combined with some Business I need to attend to in Detroit means I'm planning another trip over there. But Mom runs a daycare out of the house, now, so I don't really want to try to work from there... The solution: I'm going to work from here: Screw Starbucks. That's how to do 'cafe with wi-fi' in Detroit. And I'll be taking this to get to/from there: Yup, Detroit has a SkyTrain. (Same technology as Vancouver's--and the Scarborough RT in Toronto.) There's a part of me that loves that there's this huge, awesome city that no one even knows exists because they just picture some kind of Blade Runner set. That said, it's really neat to watch my birth city slowly get back together. (Well, okay. I'll be taking the People Mover from there. As always, I'll be taking this to get to Detroit, after I get off the VIARail: The only way to get between Windsor/Detroit without a car. Sadly, there is no such thing at the Sarnia/Port Huron bridge, and there's no train or bus to Sombra for the Sombra/Marine City passenger ferry. But Windsor Transit has a tunnel bus and it's awesome! Also, on both sides of that border, the tunnel bus area has the friendliest border guards I've ever run across.)

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entry || posted at 7:26pm

Hello intermoo! Following up on last week's punk rock squirrel, the Sights of Toronto Winter series continues with: Highland cow chic. ♥ ♥ I saw this in my neighbourhood while walking to the library today. I kinda love that hood; that's awesome. Otherwise: winter continues! The latter half of this week, I'll be in Boston, taking advantage of my ability to work from anywhere; I'll be staying with friends outside the city, but heading into town for the work days. My boss is also driving over one of the days, so that should be neat. onebrightroad, rumour has it we're supposed to get lunch or after-work drinks or something? We should. }:D And (as mentioned previous) if anyone else wants to get a meal or a something in Boston, let me know. I'm also debating what to do for my ~30th birthday~. Might just go to my mom's for the weekend and have Copious Drinks and Card Games there, since more distant travel plans have fallen through. (I might also just stay in Toronto. Don't know.) I have this idea of spending a week or two outside Montreal this summer--possibly in Chambly, which I really quite liked--and taking a few days in the middle to go down to Burlington, Vermont. We'll see if any of that happens; right now I just want to dream of sunny, warm evenings on a lake somewhere. Books: Read Kunstler's World Made by Hand for this quarter's installment of my work book club. I, uh, didn't care for it. Next on the stack is historical fiction about the filles du roi, which looks very promising. Crafts: I'm halfway through four weeks of knitting classes at my awesome neighbourhood yarn shop, picking up new tactics. I've been practicing in between by making little squares of different fabrics so as to get a better sense of how different combinations of stitches feel after you make them. So I have one of garter stitch, one of stockinette stitch, and one of [knit 2 stitches, purl 2 stitches, repeat until it's time to bind off]. I need to stop neglecting my sewing machine and take it out, too, as there is mending to be done... Games: I've been playing through ilomilo, at arjache's recommendation; the music alone is worth the points it cost to download, but everything about this silly little puzzler is fantastic. Also, Dragon Age: Origins is a frustrating mix of a better-than-average RPG with a solid story and a great cast of characters...and simply the worst UI/UX of any RPG I can ever remember playing. So I want to keep going, but I just want to stab a developer in the face while doing so. All in all, a good winter. The house is still awesome, and it's been nice having a bit of a break over the last few weeks to enjoy it before everything winds up again (which is starting, um, this week).

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entry || posted at 9:12am

We had our first real snowfall of the year Thursday night into Friday morning (and much of Friday). There'd been little bits of it, but for the most part, this winter has been mild--rarely below freezing, rainier than usual, etc. But we're now in a more normal pattern where snow fell and now it's gloriously sunny, clear skies, and cold. (Back to rain and 8 Monday. Weird.) But this wasn't really meant to be a weather report. That was more background data for this, taken in the trees in my front yard yesterday morning: Punk rawk squirrel! \m/. I love the mohawk. Also, he was just very irritated with the whole world. Some snow fell off a higher branch, and he glared at that, and almost dropped his food, recovered, and glared at that, then started eating faster, as if to say, I'LL SHOW YOU, FOOD! AUGH, BAH, GRAVITY. <3 Lazy weekend. Trying to finish the book I've been slowly working on for a while. I need to go to the grocery and a couple other errands, and tomorrow morning I have knitting class 2 of 4, but otherwise, no real plans. Which, after the last few months, is rather lovely.

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entry || posted at 10:49pm

On a much lighter note, I picked up a used 360 (and got a surprisingly good deal on it), as well as a few games. I mostly game only in the winter, but .. it's winter, so here we are. Which means I got to spend more than half an hour SOME TIME, OKAY? creating an avatar. This is version one: Nice and wintry! I will probably play with that again in the spring. Also, apparently I get to have a UFO floating around in about four more hours of gameplay. ♥ If you would like to add me, my gamer tag is (of course) Criacow. If your name isn't something I'm going to obviously recognize, it would be much appreciated if you commented here or e-mailed me so I knew who was adding me. First thoughts: Assassin's Creed is beautiful. I don't know yet whether I'm going to have fun actually playing the game, but I could walk around the medina alone for hours, or even the cool ruins of the tutorial. Dragon Age: Origins is interesting, but so incredibly depressing, and might end up only played with tea and chocolate. The first hour of Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is probably the most fun I've had on a game in years, and it, too, is just stunning--the art styling on this is staggering, and it's all executed so very well, especially for a cheap downloadable game.

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