K, I’m Out.
Same, blue bin. Same.
Another hailstorm? This blue bin was like “Nope. Bye y’all, good luck with the rest of this year.”🤣 #yyc #yycstorm #abstorm
@cityofcalgary, this should give the Waste & Recycling folks a good chuckle!
Originally tweeted by Mary Kirk (@iamMaryKirk) on July 23, 2020.
(Are smiley fries a thing in the States?)
That one friend who’s always cold:
Y’all.
If I was an eccentric billionaire, this thing would be my ride.
Like, just the cab. I wouldn’t attach a trailer to it or anything; I’d just zooma-zoom around town in that cab. I mean, look at it:
Doesn’t that just look like something I’d drive around in? That freaking windshield wiper propeller is so totally me.
Edit: if I was an eccentric billionaire, I’d actually probably still walk everywhere. I’d drive this to go get groceries every week or something.
Edit 2: I could attach a trailer, fill the trailer with groceries, and then drop off the groceries to like homeless shelters and stuff.
I miss malls
Thanks to COVID, I haven’t been in a mall since I got my hair cut at Market Mall right at the start of all this (mid-February I think). And man…I miss malls.
That might seem like the most frivolous thing to say, I know. People are sick, people are dying, people are losing their jobs and businesses, and I miss malls?
Yes.
Malls aren’t just OMFG SHOPPIGN!!!!!!!!1!1! for me. They represent normality in a lot of different ways. My dad and I always went to the Palouse Mall on Saturdays. He’d give me $20 and an hour to go wander off and spend it before we met up again and went home. When I moved to Vancouver, I made malls my destinations on my walks (which started my “Canadian Mall” series on my blog) and would always take the bus back home. In Calgary, malls have still been a common destination on my walks, especially North Hill, Brentwood, and Market Mall. And, of course, walking to Westbrook Mall is my absolute favorite walk in the whole city.
So yeah. Malls have always been a big part of my life, and not just for the shopping aspect (in fact, most of the “shopping” I do at malls is at the grocery stores, haha).
So I guess when I say “I miss malls” I’m really just saying that I miss normality. But saying “I miss malls” makes it more concrete.
‘Berta Skies
ALOHA so I think I’d like to make either a Twitter account or an Instagram account dedicated to all the cool clouds, weather, and skies we see up here in Calgary (and Alberta in general). I have a lot of cool cloud and storm pictures and I think it’d be cool to put them all in one place.
Maybe I’ll do it! Maybe not. Who knows.
HAHAHA THANKS WEATHER I TOTALLY WANTED TO GET ABSOLUTELY DRENCHED TODAY
So Nate’s down visiting his family but I’m still in Calgary ‘cause I’m a fart but at least karma got me back in the form of the BIGGEST TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR I’VE EVER WALKED IN.*
I decided to walk up to the northeast part of Calgary (mistake #1). Basically, I go up about 7.5 miles to the UPS/FedEx buildings past Deefoot Mall and then go back the same way I go up.
Simple, right?
It was pretty hot today, also, so by the time I was about a mile away from turning around, I was happy that it was starting to get cloudy. Then I happened to look behind me and saw that it was getting REALLY cloudy. Like, dark death clouds.
Like summer storm clouds.
I keep walking, though, because I don’t want to shelter in the mall (COVID, obviously) and figure if I get rained on, it won’t be too bad.
I WAS WRONG OH MY WAS I WRONG.
I got freaking DRENCHED. It was insanely rainy and windy for a good ten minutes and there was nowhere I could take shelter – that part of Calgary looks like this…
…and the sparse buildings up there are like “LOL what are eaves?”
I remember that the FedEx building has a small overhang in front of its main entrance, so I finally make it up there and take shelter for a bit.
(Not that it matters at this point; I am SUPER wet.)
Another ten minutes or so and the storm finally passes. And it’s sunny and warm out again.
Here’s a video of the dramatic change in sky as I pan from west to east (after those clouds in the east had tried to drown me).
And here’s a cool shot of the dark sky behind a sunlit field.
Adventures on the Canadian prairies, am I right?
*This was NOT, however, the wettest I’ve ever gotten on a walk. That honor goes to a walk I did a few years ago where I spent the whole 15 miles in a very steady downpour. Absolutely soaked. I hated it.
Petition:
Make Quentin Tarantino temporarily change his name to Pent-In Quarantino during the COVID quarantine and have him make pandemic-related movies. Who’s with me?
Hail Mary!
So a huge storm system moved through here a few days ago. All we got where we live was a little bit of wind and hail, but holy hell, look what other parts of the city (mainly the northwest quadrant) had to deal with:
Holy crapples. I’m glad I didn’t get stuck walking in that.
Edit: Apparently this is now the 4th most expensive natural disaster in Canadian history, beating out the 2013 Calgary floods. Wild.
Holey Shirt!
I am notoriously hard on my walking clothes. As an example, here is my walking shirt that I’ve had for a few years:
Yes, those are holes. Yes, they go completely through the fabric. My hand is there for scale. The holes are at/near my lower back due to my backpack rubbing there for 15+ miles almost every day.
My summer walking pants are also really falling apart at the moment. This might be their last season if they can make it through. Then I’ll have to get new ones.
Super exciting, huh?
MAY LISTIN’
- Want a good remix of Eiffel 65’s Blue? Here ya go! It should go without saying, but this sounds fantastic on the Sennheisers.
- My arm eruptions have calmed down as of late. My skin must have “hardened” against the UV light. If so, then it did so faster than it did last year. I remember still having problems in mid-June last year.
- Hahaha.
- Hahaha, oh my god:
AAAAAAAAAAAA GOOD NEWS
So I got some good news today (which is surprisingly not work-related news), but I still don’t want to say exactly what it is until November, since the thingy in question is not going to actually happen in November and I’m afraid if I mention it I’ll curse it into not happening.
‘Cause that’s how I am.
BUT YAY
Q: What happens when they give the amateur architect the tallest building in Calgary’s Northwest quadrant?
A: This freaking thing.
The hell are those windows doing? Why don’t they line up? What in the fricking frack?
(I took this pic in April; there’s currently no snow on the ground, thank farts.)
Edit: apparently it’s bugging others, too.
Edit 2: apparently it’s supposed to look like that? Here’s the concept art of what it will look like eventually. I still don’t like it.
Edit 3: you can see this abomination from like everywhere in the northwest. Thanks, I hate it.
C-Train. C-Train run. Run, Train, Run.
If I have to take public transit, it’s usually the bus, just because I love the busses and some of them get me closer to home than any of the C-Train stations do. But when Nate and I have been out walking, we’ve taken our fair share of C-Train rides.
But ever since the pandemic hit, we’ve been really limited in our walks due to 1) no public bathrooms being open, 2) being afraid of malls, which were our primary stopping points, and 3) being wary of public transportation (even though, in my opinion, it’s probably safer now than it ever has been due to the fact that there are so few people utilizing it).
So we haven’t had a C-Train ride in a while.
But I just found these two videos of both the Red and Blue C-Train lines, so I shall use them to travel the city vicariously.
Enjoy.
Eigenblogger Turns 14!
AHOY, PEOPLE!
So today marks my 14th year of blogging. That’s 14 years of daily nonsense.
That’s a lot of nonsense. 5,115 days’ worth, to be exact.
Thanks to those of you who still read this on occasion. I don’t understand why you do it, but thank you. I’m not going to do anything special for this anniversary because who freaking cares, but 15 is coming up next year and we all know I like numbers divisible by 5, so there will be something big for that one.
YAY!
Has spring finally come to Calgary???
Maybe?????????
I was able to go running/walking without a jacket today, which was a fantastic feeling. I actually ran nine miles ‘cause it just felt so nice out and it was so much more enjoyable than the cold hell that it’s been up here all year.
Also, the skin on my arms didn’t erupt, which is good, but I remember that it took a little bit of time (and sun exposure) for that to happen last year, so we’ll see.
Maybe it won’t even happen again.
Edit: today was the warmest it’s been since September last year. That’s too freaking long for the temperatures to be lower than they were today, holy hell.
Pout…pout…LET IT ALL OUT! This is the weather we complain about, come on…
I love how every other day this week has been sunny/warm/both, but today was cloudy/windy/cold. Because Nate and I wanted to walk together.
But we walked together anyway, because it feels like we’ve only gotten like three weekends to actually do that so far this week.
And then we came home and I found a very relevant little map:
I love how Calgary’s in its own personal hell in Alberta (it’s riiiight under the title in that pink region). “You bitches are going to get a snowy April and you’re going to like it.”
Edit: goddammit, Calgary!
7,000,000,000
This video seems highly relevant nowadays.
Sorry, I actually posted this video in a blog way back in 2010*, but I’ve been thinking about it recently. Can’t imagine why…
*It was around the time you came to visit me in Vancouver, Maddie; let’s see if I can get the correct date…March 16, 2010? *checks* Fucking nailed it. Why do I have this kind of memory for stupid things like specific dates and entire movie dialogues but can’t remember if I had dinner last night?
LOOK AT THIS GARBAGE WEATHER
LOOK AT IT.
I hate it.
At least I have my treadmill now, so I used that for the first time today instead of having to trudge through like four inches of snow.
Thank you to my wonderful husband for a) helping me haul it up the stairs to our condo and b) helping me put it together once we got it up here.
Yay.
TREADMILL OMFG
So it didn’t end up coming yesterday, but IT’S HERE NOW!
AND IT’S HUGE!
AND IT’S DOWN IN THE MAIN LOBBY, MEANING NATE AND I WILL HAVE TO HAUL IT UP A FEW FLIGHTS OF STAIRS TONIGHT!
EDIT: Turns out the first workout involving the treadmill was an arm workout. There was no way I could have done that without Nate. But here’s the ‘mill all set up (from a few days later):
Poof-da-woof
MY TREADMILL IS SUPPOSED TO BE HERE TOMORROW LASDJFLSDJFLASFJ
In other news, it’s still the dead of winter here, temperature-wise. Today the “feels like” temperature was 5 when I started my walk.
F I V E.
It is A P R I L.
And it’s supposed to snow like five days out of the next two weeks.
I reiterate: A P R I L.
It was also cloudy and dreary as hell today, which kills my motivation to do anything. I am solar-powered, yo. I needs da sun.
Bye.
Look at this adorable girl
She loves to grind her teeth and chin on my toes. And purr incessantly while she does so.
That is all.
Eigenblogger 