Water, Water…Everywhere!
Calgary’s water…HAS RETURNED!
I guess it’s better that all of this nonsense happened in the summer rather than in -40 degree snowy hell.
I mean, I guess it could happen in -40 degree snowy hell, but maybe these repairs will hold.
FOR NOW.
Edit: we actually did a decent job of conserving during this time. It’d be nice if we could conserve like that all the time, though…
Water Main Shutdown COMMENCE
Here we go again!
It sounds like this repair (these repairs?) are going to take a while; we’ll see if the city complies or if people will start rebelling, haha.
The city did do a pretty bad job of getting the word out about this second shutdown, though. You’d think with something as critical as not running out of potable water would warrant, I don’t know, at least like a pamphlet in the mail. Or they could do like they did with the original water main break and send out an emergency alert. Just so that people know what’s going on.
Bah. Who knows. We’ll see.
The Great 2024 Calgary Water Main Break Saga: An Update
So the water’s still off, but it sounds like they’re at the stage where they’ve repaired everything they can see and are going to start flushing the pipes and then test the water quality. If the water quality is good, they can start running the water properly. So we’ll see how that goes!
Here are some fun pictures from around the Parkdale and Montgomery neighborhoods:
Keep conserving, Calgary!
And go spend some money at the businesses in Bowness; they’re losing a lot of business due to the road closures.
A big section of the bike/walking paths are blocked off due to the flushing/testing.
Signs on the fence around the flushing/testing.
A shot through the fence of the part of the pathway that got washed away by the initial break.
Party time!
Well, hell.
So apparently the water main break is bad enough that they’re expecting it to take anywhere between three and five weeks to completely repair.
I don’t know if the city can maintain this level of water usage restriction for that long.
I guess we’ll have to see, though, huh?
Ugh.
Ugh. PEOPLE.
Regarding the water main break: the number of comments I’ve seen from people who are like “THIS IS ALL A GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY, I’M GOING TO TAKE A FIVE HOUR SHOWER AND WATER MY LAWN FOR A DAY AND A HALF JUST OUT OF SPITE” is absolutely disgusting.
Like, even if this whole thing was a government conspiracy, that doesn’t change the fact that the city will run out of potable water if we don’t conserve it for the next week or so. And how angry will you “government conspiracy” idiots be when you turn on the tap and nothing comes out? Believe whatever dumbass theory you want, but don’t allow your belief to make this worse for the rest of us.
I don’t know if it’s my imagination or not, but it seems like people’s ability to have empathy and compassion for others (or even just making a small sacrifice to help out others) has greatly decreased as of late. It’s pretty distressing. Anyone else notice that?
Edit: somewhat related. Where is the responsibility? Where is the common sense? Y’all go to a concert where everyone is screaming their lungs out for three hours and then go all “surprised Pikachu face” when you get COVID? UGH.
Edit 2: people laughed at my “water hoarding” in my office, but WHO’S LAUGHING NOW????
OH SHIT
So as I was browsing the Calgary subreddit last night, there was a post about how the neighborhoods of Bowness, Montgomery, and Parkdale (Parkdale being the neighborhood at the bottom of our big hill) had either no water or very little water pressure in their taps. Turns out a water main broke on 16th Ave. and crews were having a hell of a time shutting the water off before finally getting the gushing to stop. After reading this post, I checked our water pressure and it seemed fine, but I decided to fill up the five or so water bottles I had lying around the house just in case.
Fast forward to this morning. I’d forgotten about the broken water main until mile 2 of my run, at which time I got an emergency alert message on my phone saying that the water main break was a critical one, Bowness was under boil water advisories, and that everyone was being advised to conserve water.
I didn’t know quite how bad things were by this point, but in another five minutes or so I hit the part of the river path that goes behind all the athletic fields in Montgomery. The path, the parking lot next to the path, and the road going through the athletic fields were all taped off.
So I had to switch my route around and run up Home St. to see if I could get around the blocked area. Turns out they had a whole section of 16th Ave. blocked off – where the water main break happened, of course – and were already trying to fix things. I was able to run my regular route through Bowness and read more about the main break once I got home.
Turns out it’s pretty serious.
Hopefully they can get it fixed within a week.
Edit: HAHA NOPE (see June 14th’s blog post)
Nope, Not Dead
So much to everyone’s disappointment (especially mine), the poop water from Saturday didn’t kill me and I’m still here.
Yaaaaaay.
Adventures in Running: Ultra Marathon, Non-Potable Water, and Waiting to Die
Ha.
So.
Today I went for a run. Nothing unusual there. I was aiming for at least 29 miles, but was hoping to do another 50k because it’s been a while and I REALLY need to get my mileage up for the 60k coming in May/June.
The run was really nice. Not too hot, not too cold, not too many people out, and I was deliberately trying to take it a bit slower than normal so that I wouldn’t completely burn out if I decided to go for the 50. Also, rather than run through the icy/slushy/wet hell that is Sue Higgins Park (a dog park), I took Nate’s advice and crossed the river to run on the other side.
I also did this because there were public bathrooms there that I was sure I had gotten water from last summer (we had walked down there with my mom).
So all was going well. The other side of the river was WAY nicer than the dog park side, and when I got to 14.5 miles, I turned around to head back home with the intention of stopping at the public bathroom (mile…18?) to grab some water with my little collapsible silicone cup.
Luckily there was no one in there, so I just held my breath (Covid fears…yes, I know, I know…), filled up the cup all the way, and went back outside to drink it.
Tasted kinda off, but not too bad.
Went back in to get some more just to wash out my mouth a little.
And when doing so, I noticed the big sign on the wall: “DO NOT DRINK THE WATER”
Sooooo…yeah. Apparently I’d just drank non-potable water.
(Which is weird, because I’m sure that I drank from that sink last year, hence my not even considering there was a “don’t drink the poop water” sign anywhere)
So I spent the rest of my run wondering if/when I’d experience any negative side effects from that.
I did do 50k, though, and was actually able to run up our hill at the end of the distance, which is not something I thought I’d be able to do at mile 30.5.
So maybe the poop water gave me extra power?
We’ll see if I die in the next few days, haha.
(One can only hope.)
What kind of SCAM…?
The key features are great.
- “Meticulously calibrated magnets in the base mimic the magnetic field of the Earth’s core”
This is why the dinosaurs died out, guys. THEY DIDN’T MAGNETIZE THEIR WATER. - “Multi-functional offering 3 cycles to align with your daily rhythms.”
Is this referring to the three eight-hour cycles of our circadian rhythm? If so, WHY DOES MY WATER NEED TO SYNC WITH THAT? - “Chromotherapy features radiating a choice of colours”
Take it to a rave party! Be the envy of all those fools who didn’t spend $500 on a water vessel. - “Sleek design for a lightweight and ergonomic experience”
Put your H2O in a Nalgene bottle, goddammit! It’s cheaper and has this same feature.
Again, people are weird.
Last night I dreamt about fire
I never dream about fire.
It was a lot of fire, too; like half of the University of Idaho buildings were ablaze and about to come crashing down. I was in one of them, but I was totally calm. It was like I knew I was either going to be rescued or be killed, and I didn’t really care which.
(I got rescued.)
It kind of weirds me out. Seriously, I never, ever dream about fire. If I’m going to dream about an element, it’s going to be water. Though come to think of it, I haven’t had a water-related dream in quite some time, so who knows what that’s about. I’ve always heard that water in dreams is supposed to signify strong emotions—which makes a bit of sense for me, as I can remember a lot of my really intensely water-centric dreams happening during very bad emotional times—but I’ve had a lot of really strong good emotions lately and no water dreams. Maybe I get the water dreams just during the bad emotional times, not the good ones.
Ugh. Weird.
Weekly Wiki: Heavy Water
So this Weekly Wiki might not be a new concept to a lot of you guys ‘cause you all seem smart and all seem to know random facts and such, but it’s still a cool topic so it’s happening. I randomly stumbled upon the article for heavy water.
11% denser than “regular” water, heavy water is physically and chemically similar to water except for the fact that it is enriched in the hydrogen isotope deuterium. The deuterium isotope is twice as heavy as the lightest stable isotope, increasing the strength of the water’s hydrogen-oxygen bond. This increased bond is enough to cause enough of a change in how organisms can process water…to the point where higher organisms whose regular water content is replaced with enough heavy water (more than 50%), cell death and ultimately organism death results.
In one of the chemistry books I was e-texting (totally a verb) the other day actually had a picture of a glass of water with regular H2O ice floating on top and “heavy water” ice at the bottom of the glass, too heavy to float. It was pretty sweet.
Edit: found it!
(courtesy PopSci)
TWSB: Water, Water (Used) Everywhere
We all know the whole “carbon footprint” thing, right? The amount of greenhouse gas emissions caused by an individual via things like transport, food production, fuel, housing, etc.? Yeah, that.
Well today I stumbled upon a website that allows you to calculate your water footprint. Again this is exactly as it sounds and, in my opinion, is even scarier in terms of the freakish amount a single human requires.
Here is the calculator I used, and here are my results:
According to Wikipedia, the global average footprint is 1,240 cubic meters of water per person per year. That’s 1,240 metric tons, or 2,733,704 pounds of water.
That is ridiculous.
The United States, of course has the largest average water footprint in the world (2480 cubic meters), while China has the smallest at 700 cubic meters.
What’s your water footprint, ladies and gents?
This Week’s Science Blog: Water Stalagmites
My mom bought me this snazzy little silicon ice cube tray (ice flower tray, actually) from IKEA when she was up here, and I finally got around to filling it with water a few days ago. Today I opened the freezer to get something else, and got a strange little surprise from my ice cube tray:
Ice spikes! I don’t know about you guys, but I pretty much never make/use ice cubes, so this was a new phenomenon to me. So I thought, “hey, water’s weirder than hell, this probably has something to do with its special freezing properties.”*
So I Googled “Ice spikes” and what do you know—that’s actually what they’re called. Usually they’re a lot bigger and more impressive, but conditions in which they form are usually more favorable than “Claudia’s freezer.”
They form when conditions are just below freezing and arise due to a fact we all know: water expands when it freezes. When conditions are appropriate, a thin layer of ice can forms over the surface of the water. However, if the integrity of the ice layer is compromised in a certain place, the water beneath it, still in the process of freezing, can be forced up through the opening in the upper ice layer as it continues to expand. This can also happen if there’s a bubble trapped in the water.
Me being me, I’d like to see a comparison of the average size of ice spikes formed in ice cube trays made of non-expandable material (hard plastics) versus those formed in ice cube trays made of more flexible (and possibly expandable?) material like silicon.
Yeah.
*This thought was shortly followed by, “SCIENCE BLOG!”
Today’s song: UPular by Pogo
H2OH MY GOD ICE IS BADASS
Oh, water. You are an odd duck.
I remember (probably from physics?) that there were several different “phases” of ice, but I don’t remember going into nearly as much detail as this cool (GET IT?) little article does.
Why has no rapper picked up the name “Ice Ic” yet?
And Ice X would be a great action movie name.
More “ice”citement from Wiki. You just have to love sentences like “There is still debate about why ice is slippery.”
Yay.
Today’s song: Great White Bear by Dear Reade
The hell?
My dreams keep getting stranger and stranger. I’m not even going to attempt an interpretation of this, because I can’t for the life of me think of what it was that triggered this. Especially the “cubes” (you’ll see).
Onward!
In this dream, it feels like I’m not where I am. It’s like I’m watching myself on TV, but it’s not me (even though it really is). So I’m with these two guys and we’re in a helicopter that’s landing at the top of this jungle-esque landscape. Below us is this tan concrete ramp that must be about thirty feet across and leads down into this huge pool of water. Looking out, you can see that this one ramp leads into a center square (full of water, mind you) and from this square branch out several perpendicular streets, each also full of water.
We land and, like we’re on the Discovery Channel or something, we begin talking to these cameras that apparently came with us about the “natives” that live in the area and their rituals. Some other tour guy comes up to us and starts explaining, as we walk down the ramp towards the water with our pants legs rolled up, what different creatures live in the water. I’m looking down and I see these eel-like things swimming around and say, “so basically, these people live in water filled with bugs and eels?”
And the tour guy says, “yes, but only when the water’s high.”
“The higher the water, the more eels?”
“Yes.”
For some reason, by this point, we’re no longer in the water but are standing near the edges of the giant ramp. I look down and suddenly see that the square is filled with people who are treading water, all looking up at us on the ramp. Another guy, who is apparently the chief of these “natives,” is standing with us and is ready to make a sacrifice to the water. Now we’re all holding these knives. He takes his knife, takes a small girl who seems to have appeared out of nowhere, and cuts a little cube out of her shoulder.
He takes this cube and tosses it into the crowd with his knife. He then gets some other…let’s just call them “samples” of people and tosses them over to us, who are standing on the opposite side. We catch them with our knives and toss them into the crowd.
This appears to be some sort of major ritual, because after we do this, the crowd goes swimming out of the square down all the major streets, draining the water out of the center of the square with them. This creates a huge vacuum of air, and we all get sucked down into the square. Then the water comes rushing back in, creating a huge gust of air that pushes us back out and over the ramp into the jungle. Then I wake up.
I’d love to hear your interpretation, if you have one, because I certainly don’t.
A blog? Egads, why?!
Seriously. I’ve been having the strangest dreams lately, and all but the last one involved some sort of struggle and/or death. Let me illustrate:
Dream 1: in which my mom has a boyfriend and all he does is sleep
This dream involved some sort of strange scenario in which my mom was dating some guy who did nothing but sleep in this little cottage of his. I don’t remember much fro this dream (seeing as how it’s been awhile since this dream occurred) but I remember some sort of significant struggle in the rain. It was weird.
Dream 2: in which everyone I know comes into my dorm room and commits suicide
The strange thing was, I was completely calm about it. Over the course of a day I kept going in and out of my room in McConnell and found each time that one of my friends had been taken away by ambulance after attempting suicide. My mom, too. I just remember having these calm conversations regarding suicide with each person in this hallway with a lot of fountains before each person went about it. Strange.
Dream 3: in which I engage in a tremendous struggle with my alarm clock and bees
This was a few nights ago. I had this alarm clock and I couldn’t get the buzzer to turn off to save my life. I was hitting it with stuff, throwing it, stomping on it…I just couldn’t get it to turn off. Finally I dumped some water over it and it finally went off. Then, while my mom and I were standing there and these bees came up and started attacking us. I tried the water, but that didn’t subdue them. I woke up soon after that.
Dream 4: in which a hypothetical swimming pool is never found and my friends and I do weird things
Ah, now this one I can give you details on, had it last night. My mom and I are in the car, our destination being some big swimming pool/center that we had been wanting to go to for some time. We found the parking lot but it was full, so we drove down this dirt road to find a different parking lot that was not so much a parking lot but a gravel driveway under a plastic hood thing. We parked the car there and the woman running the tollbooth (for lack of a better word) told us that we could only park the car there for eight hours—any longer and there would be a $150 fine. I told my mom that we were just going swimming; we wouldn’t be parked there for more than two hours so we didn’t have to worry.
So somehow, after this, the dream transitions and I’m no longer with my mom but sitting in this kind of carnival place with Matt and a couple other people I don’t know. From what I recall, Matt was slightly pissed at everyone there because they were giving him crap about something. Then it shifted again and I was up in this huge block thing in the sky, like a giant form of one of those light bulb signs they have underneath the Best Western sign. It was this huge thing, and there were a bunch of people (including me) in it and we were apparently acting as the bulbs. I remember thinking that this was a major test of skill, and if you were to mess up you would be kicked out of the block and fall to the ground below.
Then it shifted again. I was out of the cube, and it was dark outside. Now I was in this car with Sean and a bunch of his friends. For some reason, Sean had his shirt off the whole time (ooh, racy!) and we were all at the Taco Bell drive-thru just kind of sitting in the car not doing anything. It was strange because I didn’t know any of his friends, but it was fun, too.
then finally, I end up back at the “parking lot” with my mom. It’s lighter out than it was when I was with Sean, but when I look at my watch it says 9:30, which meant that we were an hour and a half past our eight-hour limit of staying there for free. My mom was all upset about the fine, so I said without really meaning it that I would pay it. She said, “that would be nice.” I wasn’t expecting that reply.
Hmm. When I was thinking about typing this list, the prominent themes running through all of them were both water and struggle. Now I realize that each dream involved my mom. Freud would have something to say, indeed. Though I do think the water’s a prominent thing, though. It’s said that water in dreams represents strong emotions. The fact that locating said water in these dreams had become increasingly difficult must say something. Hidden or repressed emotions, perhaps?
Who knows. I should stop analyzing my own dreams.
Seven butts past November (weird dreams)
Hmm.
Okay. Lately I’ve been having weird dreams that all involve water. What’s up with that? Sometimes it’s rain, sometimes it’s a lake, and once it was a lake with a creepy monster in it (influenced obviously by a preview I saw for “Lady in the Water”).
So I looked up what dreaming about water was supposed to be about, and it all relates to emotions (extreme emotions). Makes sense…college and all. They’ve just been weird.
Eigenblogger 