These Kinvara 14s…
Hurt.
The accidental Kinvara 11 pair I was wearing before this hurt the top of my feet constantly except when I was running. When I was running, the 11s were amazing.
These 14s don’t hurt the top of my feet, but the right one is grinding into the base of my outer ankle and it feels like someone is stabbing it with a row of needles.
Not a fun feeling.
Also, they already feel really worn down, as if I’ve already gone 500+ miles in them. Especially when running.
Sooooooo yeah. Not a fan.
The Kinvara 15s are out on the Saucony website, but the Running Room doesn’t have them yet. And though my sizing has been consistent for like the past eight iterations, I don’t want to risk ordering a pair of 15s without trying them on first to be sure of the size.
So I guess we’ll have to deal with pain for a bit.
No pain no gain, though, right?
Me: “I DON’T NEED NO PURSE!”
Also me:
It’s basically a purse.
From “Lost” to “Beta”
As you may have been able to tell from some of my blog posts, social generations and social generational differences are things that really interest me. I love the idea of looking at social, political, technological, and global changes through the lens of subsets of the population based on when they were born, raised, and started families.
Thus, I was very excited to stumble upon the “Generationology” subreddit a few days ago. This subreddit contains a wide variety of posts regarding different social generations, including nostalgia-based posts, discussions about differing attitudes across generations, divisions within generations (e.g., early-, mid-, and late-Millennials), different generational vibes or “cores” (e.g., “Millennial core”), ponderings about future generations, etc.
It’s super interesting, though I’d love if there were to be a survey to see what generations are most represented by the posters in the subreddit (there’s probably been one of these in the past, but I can’t find it).
Check it out!
It’s AQUARIUS SEASON
Run, bitches.
So I’m Dumb
(title states something that is obvious and well-known by everyone who knows me)
A month or so ago, I finally ran out of my stockpile of Kinvara 13s, which have been – by FAR – the best-fitting versions of the Kinvaras that I have ever worn (and I’ve been wearing them since the Kinvara 3s).
I had bought one pair of Kinvara 14s a while back and had been saving them until I ran out of the 13s. So last month, when my last 13s died, I reached into my pile of shoeboxes and pulled out the one box containing a pair of shoes, put them on, and went about my nonsense.
I’d assumed that I was wearing the 14s, which was super disappointing to me, because these shoes were TERRIBLE. The tongue was way thicker than it was on the 13s and the laces (no matter how loosely or tightly I laced them) really hurt the tops of my feet. Like, to the point I had to sit with them unlaced for the first week or so until I really broke them in. They felt amazing when I was running, but if I was just wearing them or if I was walking in them, they felt like garbage.
But I have hunted the 13s out of existence, so once that pair of shoes started to wear out a week or so ago, I decided I’d just have to get another pair of the 14s and suffer through them (and possibly future pairs as well) until the 15s came out.
So on to Amazon I went and bought some 14s with a gift card my mom-in-law gave me for Christmas ($40 for shoes? YAY!).
Well, I finally had to switch out the first pair of 14s today because they had 500+ miles on them. So I open the Amazon box and, upon taking out the shoes, noticed that they looked really different than the 14s I’d been wearing. Different tread, different tongue, different laces, those kinds of things.
I was like what the hell, did I accidentally buy the Kinvara Pros (a supposedly better and definitely more expensive Kinvara)? But I checked the box and it just said Kinvara 14 with the correct size and everything.
Then I went back into my pile of shoeboxes and hunted for my original Kinvara 14 box.
To my surprise, that box still contained a pair of shoes.
So what had I done? Well, several years ago, I had bought a single pair of the Kinvara 11 shoes but never wore them because I also had a stockpile of Kinvara 10s. Once I worked through all the 10s, the Kinvara 12s were already out, so I decided to keep that one pair of Kinvara 11s as an “emergency pair” and just jumped right to the 12s.
Well, that “emergency pair” was actually the pair I had been wearing. Yes, I had grabbed the Kinvara 11s instead of the Kinvara 14s from my shoebox pile.
LIKE AN IDIOT.
In my defense, the two pairs were almost identical in color, so I think that when I grabbed that box, all I really noticed was that it was full of shoes and just assumed it was the 14s box and not the 11s box, since I thought I’d tucked the 11s box far away from all my others.
But I guess I didn’t.
The upside? I will never have to wear the horrible 11s again because they don’t exist anymore, and the new actual 14s are really comfortable.
So…
Yeah.
Good job, moron.
FRENCH
I know nobody cares, but I signed up for French 3 like a day ago or so and we had our first class tonight. Our instructor is definitely very French, haha. It sounds like we’re really going to be focusing on listening skills a lot this semester, which is exactly what I need.
Nervous!
Interesting.
Depressing, but interesting.
The only time I really have to read is when I’m using the treadmill (walking, not running, haha), but I can get through a short book within a single walk (about four hours) and bigger books within, say, three or four walks.
I like to read and I can read for long periods of time, but I’ve never really considered myself an “avid reader” mainly because it’s not my go-to activity if there’s something else I can do. Does that make me a bad person?
Heads Up…
A new generation starts this year! According to McCrindle, Generation Beta will supposedly consist of people born from 2025 to 2039.
I wonder how we’re going to mess them up.
Blah.
That is all.
I AM HYPER
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
(Quality blog post.)
LAST DAY OF CLASSES
This semester has been…ugh.
Not bad, just…ugh.
This whole year has been ugh.
That is all.
Duo Summo
This will be my…second full year using Duo? I think that’s right. I started in May 2022 I believe.
Anyway, end-of-year stats because I have nothing else today.
It’s GUTTER CARNAGE
(Get it? Instead of utter carnage it’s gutter okay I’ll stop.)
So one of the gutters on our condo building is a problem child and consistently looks like this once it gets cold and then warms up so that things start to melt:
What a monstrosity.
Anyway, I got home tonight and found this:
Mega Icicle had crashed to the ground, taking the whole gutter with it.
There were actually huge chunks of ice like halfway across the parking lot. Someone had already taken the broken piece of gutter and put it in the snow next to the dumpster, haha.
Calgary: if the cold doesn’t kill you, the ice sure will!
Huit cents
I’ve been doing Duolingo for 800 days, yo! That’s a long time.
I’m glad it got me into taking actual French courses. It’s pretty good for building vocabulary, but a lot of the grammatical nuances aren’t mentioned or explained. That’s where the classes have been super helpful (and I’m glad I’d done some Duo before taking that first class; I feel like the extra vocab buildup really helped make that class much easier).
Anyway.
Snow Duck Army
So there’s a guy at the U of C who has a little rubber duck mold and goes around covering campus (mainly behind the Math building) with little snow ducks in the winter. Observe some of his work:
That is all.
52!
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: humans have a hard time with scale, either at the very large end or the very small end.
Example: 52!. How incomprehensibly large is that value? Here’s a video demonstrating what 52! seconds would be:
That’s insane. Insane.
Oh God, Here We Go
Edit from later in the day:
OH GOD, HERE WE GO
I guess it will be treadmill time for a while. It’s cold and they’re not going to get all this cleared super fast.
Help, I’ve fallen down the Wikipedia hole of brutalist architecture in Canada and I can’t get out
Brutalist architecture emerged as an architectural style in the UK in the 1950s and is characterized by structures that showcase raw building material (like unpainted concrete, steel, and timber), monochrome colors, and angular shapes. I stumbled upon this style when looking up Edmonton’s equivalent of Calgary’s Central Library.
Recall that the Central Library looks like this:
Beautiful, huh? But not brutalist (it’s modernist). Compare it to this thing, Edmonton’s Stanley Milner Library:
I’m pretty sure that’s a tank. Or a cruise ship? Whatever it is, it’s an example of brutalist architecture.
And now I’ve found the Wiki page all about buildings in Canada with this architecture style and I have feelings.
THE BUILDINGS HAVE EYES
(Allan I. Carswell Astronomical Observatory)
Why does a center for the arts look like a place where you’d go to get lobotomized?
(Confederation Centre of the Arts)
Why does an apartment complex look like a place you’d go to live after you get lobotomized at the center for the arts?
(The Crossways)
What in the MC Escher fever dream is this?
(Habitat 67)
Edit: OH JESUS CHRIST IT’S HUGE
LOBOTOMY SCHOOOOOOOOOOL
(Stephen Leacock Collegiate Institute)
“Build a standard-looking hotel”
“Okay.”
“Now put an alien spaceship on top.”
“…What?”
“Alien spaceship. Just throw it up there. Fuck it.”
“Bu—”
“DO YOU WANT TO GET LOBOTOMIZED?? ‘CAUSE I KNOW A GUY!!!”
(Westin Harbour Castle Hotel)
So, what drugs are y’all on?
You know, the ones that make you feel like this year has gone by quickly.
Because for me, this has been the LONGEST FREAKING YEAR EVER.
I don’t know if it’s my brain finally remembering how time works after these past three-ish COVID years or what, but OH MY GOD this year seems like it’s been dragging on for so long.
Like, remember the Paris Olympics? Don’t those seem like they were like three years ago?
Or those amazing auroras in May? That doesn’t seem like it happened in the same year we’re currently in.
I don’t know if every year is going to go back to feeling this slow or if it’ll start feeling more normal. Hell, maybe it seems so slow because 2021-2023 felt like one huge blur of…man, I don’t even know. Unhealthy coping mechanisms, maybe?
Peh.
THREE THINGS TODAY IN ORDER OF OCCURRENCE
Thing The One: it’s nice to know I can crap out 50k without having to build up to it past the marathon distance (probably because I run a marathon almost every week).
Thing The Deuce: my Fitly water running pack finally bit it today. It didn’t break during my run, fortunately, but once I got home and was unzipping one of the front pockets to get my key, the little fabric/plastic holder for one of the shoulder straps broke. It’s not actually fabric so I don’t think I can sew it, and I don’t know if I’d trust glue on it given I usually take that thing on 4+ hour runs.
Thing The Three: my mom is here for a week!
Yayz.
King Coin
IT’S US ELECTION HELLFEST 2024!!!!!!
R U READY??????
(Nobody is.)
Anyway.
Completely unrelated, but check this out:
It’s the first money I’ve seen up here that has King Charles on it instead of Queen Elizabeth. Wild!
Leak Now or Forever Hold Your Pee
This guy is Vinh Giang. He makes videos on YouTube about communication, public speaking, and confidence, and they are super interesting (and very useful for someone like me who speaks in front of a lot of students).
This was the first vid of his I saw:
That “don’t end on a high pitch” thing is something I really need to work on when I teach.
I stare down interrupters in class, hahaha. It gets super awkward and it usually stops the interruptions pretty quickly.
Check him out, especially if you do any public speaking.
Mo Bounce
Did any of you ever have one of these as a kid? I had the Hop! 66 at some point when I was younger, but I don’t remember exactly when. I loved it, though.
Edit: the weight limits on the 55 and 66 are 200 pounds; I could TOTALLY GET ONE
*random screeching due to panic and despair*
Are you having fun? ‘CAUSE I’M NOT!
Extra Masking Bonus Hour
A bonus to masking (in addition to, you know, protecting myself from Covid and all the other nonsense out there) is that no one can see how ugly I am.
Well, I mean, they can still see that I’m ugly, but the main portion of my ugly-ass face is covered up, and that’s better than nothing.
Honestly. I’ve got so much more confidence about my appearance with a mask on.
Eigenblogger 