Month: April 2023

It used to be that anywhere between ten minutes to an hour after waking up, I’d need to poop. I could rely on this almost like clockwork because I knew I wouldn’t normally need to poop in the afternoon or evening. I’d have my morning poop and be done with it.

A few weeks ago, I started consuming lactose-free yogurt on an almost daily basis. It offers a decent amount of protein and probiotics. I have reason to believe my yogurt consumption has altered my poop habits slightly.

While I still regularly have poops in the morning, it’s not a guarantee it’ll happen within an hour of waking up. Sometimes it’ll happen several hours into the day. Also, my morning poops have always been a bit “loose”. Things have “firmed up” slightly in the last few weeks.

There are a lot of variables at play here but I do wonder if my gut flora has changed enough to affect my poop habits. I don’t mind the change as I frequently have a lot of Zoom meetings within an hour of waking up. There have been countless times where I both had to poop and attend a Zoom meeting at the same time. There’s fewer of these conflicting needs now, so that’s good.

A long time ago, when I was a much younger person, one of the ways I knew I had stayed up way too late watching TV, was when the show ended, I’d hear the Canadian national anthem, overlaid with images of this great nation. Once the anthem was done, there would be a test pattern shown, and the channel would be off-air for many hours until the morning, when programming would resume.

For some of you younger viewers, it may come as a surprise to you that television did not broadcast 24 hours a day. Depending on the channel or the year, sometime after midnight, channels would just stop broadcasting programs. The test pattern was shown so that you could adjust your televisions at home (and also not show static for several hours).

There was no Internet or streaming services, so once it go too late and all the channels went off-air, there was very little in the way of entertainment to watch on TV. In the time before VHS players, you couldn’t even pop in a tape to keep yourself occupied. Those were simpler and obviously more boring times.

In the present day, broadcast channels really don’t go off-air daily anymore. There’s a lot of automation going on, so you can broadcast programs around the clock with very little human input. It probably makes more financial sense to broadcast throughout the night as well, as you can sell ads for more hours. Also, I’m not sure who used test patterns to calibrate their TVs back then but I’m sure no one needs to do that now. To be clear, even modern TVs need to be calibrated but I don’t think people are relying on a TV channel to help them with that.

It used to be you could rely on the test pattern to tell you go to sleep. Now you don’t have to sleep ever!

In a previous post, I wrote about how I started watching a show because they filmed a whole bunch of scenes just a few blocks away from where I live. Normally, I wouldn’t watch any show just because it filmed in Vancouver. If I did, I’d probably have a dozen shows to watch a year based on how many shows are shot here.

This show, however, shot a few scenes mere blocks from where I live, so it feels even closer to home. At first, I watched it to see how many other locations close by they used but then I started caring less about the locations and more about the show itself. It turns out the show has a certain heart to it, which is endearing. I’m almost at the end of season three. I don’t think there will be a season four but I’m just glad they even got three seasons to begin with. In Canada and the US, Loudermilk is available on Amazon Prime.

I bought a new tube of sunscreen on the weekend because the one I already had was expired. Apparently sunscreen can expire and I really don’t want to take my chances with sunscreen that has broken down enough that it doesn’t work anymore.

I’m getting old now and that means sun damage can take a toil on my skin. In my younger days, I could go in the sun, get a nice tan, and have no consequences. Now, the sun can still give me a tan but there’s also a chance it can give me spots on my skin. Being sun safe should be something you do all your life really but it’s especially important when you’re older.

Though it’s April and it’s still cold as hell, there have been a few days where it was sunny all day. The plan is to have sunscreen on sunny days where I’m out in the sun for any appreciable time.

I also bought a mineral-based sunscreen. I think I wrote this before but I’m just a bit uncertain about relying on the chemical sunscreens to do the job without having side effects. Mineral sunscreens can leave a bit of a white shade on your body but it’s a small price to pay for sun protection that’s better for your skin and the environment.

I recommend everyone to be more willing to put on sunscreen anytime you’re out in the sun, not just when you’re at beach or on vacation.

The official low tonight for Vancouver is 2 degrees Celsius but I think that’s the forecast by the water near the airport. In some areas, the low will be lower than that, so it will be barely above freezing.

We’re into April now and while for many parts of Canada, snow and freezing temperatures are familiar for April, it’s normally not this cold for Vancouver. The forecast for Tuesday evening goes even lower, predicting that we’ll hit the freezing mark for that night. In response, warming centres have been opened around the city for the next several days. I can’t remember the last time we needed these so late into the year.