Month: October 2022

On Thanksgiving Monday I went for a walk in the afternoon. According to the thermometer in my apartment it was around 22 degrees Celsius when I left my apartment. The sun was shining and there were just a few clouds in the sky. It was quite the pleasant day.

I decided to wear a t-shirt and shorts for my walk. In the direct sun, I started to sweat a bit. I actually applied sunscreen to my face and arms before I left and as I felt the heat of the sun on my skin, I was glad I did. It felt like a nice late-spring day.

Now I have worn shorts and a t-shirt in October before but it wasn’t truly shorts and t-shirt weather. There have been times when I tried to play tennis in October and just because the sun was out, it didn’t mean it was actually warm out. Indeed, the air was crisp and cold, and I was better off wearing jogging pants at least. Monday was not like that at all. Shorts were perfectly fine and judging by all the summer gear I saw people wearing, others agreed with me as well.

I heard some families were able to hold their Thanksgiving dinners outside this weekend. Normally this isn’t something that happens in Vancouver unless your balcony or patio is heated. So I guess this is the type of thing people living in Los Angeles or San Diego get to experience every single year, throughout the year.

In the short-term, this is great and all but long-term, this is definitely not normal and a sign that something is wrong.

I have five and a half hours of meetings tomorrow and they start at 7am. What a terrible way to start a new week, especially after a long weekend.

A few years ago, less than four, Best Buy had some sorta door crasher sale to celebrate the opening of a new store. One of the online deals was a 27″ monitor for $97. That was a good deal back then and hell, it’s still a good deal now. The monitor wasn’t top of the line but it wasn’t terrible either.

Not needing another monitor, I didn’t really know where to put it. I eventually set it up in my living room, on top of a lower bookshelf. It was visible from my dining room table where I usually have my laptop set up. It became my second monitor for my laptop and at 27″ it could be a few feet away and still be usable. I mainly used that monitor to play videos while I did reading or other things on the laptop screen.

About a month ago, I had to upgrade my Mom’s computer and I discovered the two monitors that she was using with her old computer only had ancient VGA inputs. Her new computer had only HDMI outputs, so these monitors were useless. As a solution, I decided to bring my 27″ monitor over to my parents’ place and let her use it. She went from crappy 20″ VGA monitors to a single 27″ monitor. The larger size also allowed me to increase the font size in Windows 11 so that she never needs to use glasses while on the computer now.

What I soon realized though is that I miss my second monitor for my laptop. Somewhere in my storage closet is an old 24″ monitor from 2008 with dim brightness and washed out colours. I really don’t want to bring that out. I should just recycle it. So instead, I’ve been looking at online retailers for a new 27″ monitor. The most basic ones are still around $170-200. I am being cheap and haven’t bought one yet. Amazon Prime Days are next week, so I’m hoping I can find a deal there.

I was really tired around 8pm this evening and I knew I had stuff to do later. I could barely keep my eyes closed and going with the flow, I crawled into bed and decided to nap. Now, I knew not to sleep too much as that would ruin my night, so I endeavoured to only nap for 30 minutes or less.

It didn’t take much for me to fall asleep and about 30 minutes later, I woke up feeling refreshed. This allowed me to finish my evening activities like watching TV and eating chocolate with a renewed exuberance. Unfortunately, it is now my traditional bedtime and I am wide awake.

I will now go back to my bed and watch YouTube videos and hopefully I can fall asleep in short order.

On Sunday, I received an invitation from the provincial government to get my second booster vaccination shot. I was lucky enough to get an appointment the next day at a local and independent pharmacy. I received my first booster in January, so it’s been quite a while since my last shot.

When I arrived at the pharmacy, I was given the choice of two types of boosters. The first was the Pfizer booster, which is exactly the same one I received about nine months ago. This one does not target any variants and is not the same bivalent booster that is currently available in the United States. The second option is Moderna’s bivalent booster which targets the Omnicron (BA.1) variant, plus the original strain. For Canada, this is the only available bivalent vaccine at the time of this writing.

I’m not sure who would willingly choose the Pfizer booster if they understood what each booster does. The Moderna booster offers better protection against the variants that are the ones who are making the majority of the people ill who do wind up catching COVID-19. Without hesitation, I chose the Moderna booster.

I encountered very little side effects to the shot, which was administered around noon. For the rest of the day, my arm was slightly sore. During the evening, I felt more tired than usual, which made me go to bed a bit early. I woke up this morning with a very faint headache which went away as the morning progressed.

I’m happy I got the booster now but I am aware that some people are playing a waiting game. Health Canada is currently reviewing bivalent boosters that target the BA.4 and BA.5 strains, which are the ones causing the most chaos right now. It’s possible that in two months those updated boosters will be available instead. Could I have waited for the latest and greatest? Yes, I could have but there’s nothing to stop me from getting those boosters six months from now.

In the meantime, I remain diligent in trying to prevent myself from being sick.

I’ve been watching Shawn Woods’ videos for a while now and he usually posts videos of him catching mice or rats using traps. In the video above, however, he acquires a wasp or hornets nest and proceeds to cook and eat the larva he finds inside the nest. Fascinating.

At one point on this Sunday afternoon, the first weekend of October, the temperature reached 23 degrees Celsius in my bedroom. I did not have the heat on and all my windows were open. I can’t remember the last time it was this balmy in October.

Next weekend is Thanksgiving and if you look above at the forecast, you’ll see what kind of weather we’ll be having during the week as we approach the long weekend. The highs will be around 20 but that’s only by the water, if you live inland, the highs could reach the mid-20s. So most of the great Vancouver area will experiencing shorts and t-shirts weather with sunny skies as people are prepping for their turkey dinners. Also, if you notice, the lows will still be in the double-digits during the evenings.

This is not normal weather for October if you live in Vancouver. I do remember a few Octobers where there were sunny days but temperatures were much lower, in the single digits, and the air would feel crisp and cool. The traditional Vancouver October weather is usually rain and showers with gray skies. This September was unusually dry this year, with very little rain.

In the moment, this type of weather is great. The ability to wear shorts in October is such a novelty. The clear and sunny skies have made for wonderful, orange sunsets almost daily. In the long term though, this type of weather is concerning. Weather records keep breaking. Vancouver keeps experiencing dryer and hotter weather each year. This cannot be good long term.