Month: September 2023

As the summer draws to a close, a lot of people are doing what I’m doing and that is taking stock of how many times we’ve all almost pooped our pants during these sunny months.

I’ve had IBS for about half my life and I’m lucky in that I have a fairly mild version of it. There are a whole host of bad things that you feel or experience when you suffer from IBS but for me, it surfaces as a sudden urge to poop out of nowhere. The issue is that when the urge strikes, I may not be in an ideal situation to poop.

While sometimes there seems to be no reason why the urge is triggered, over the years I have discovered some of them. One is simply drinking some water. Sometimes it feels like the water just travels through my system way too quickly and then winds up in a place that makes my body want to poop and poop badly. This trigger doesn’t happen if I’m eating or had something substantial to eat before the water. If enough times passes though, the trigger can happen… or it might not.

One sunny Sunday, I decided to take a nice walk out to a local park but I was probably at least fifteen minutes away from my apartment when I was feeling parched. It was super hot that day and I was sweating a lot. I took a sip from my water bottle. A few minutes later, I felt some rumblings and gurglings down below. Things were shifting and moving inside me. Even before the urge was felt, I knew I was in trouble. Sure enough, a few seconds later, I needed to poop bad.

I was at least fifteen minutes away from my apartment and there were no facilities closer that I felt like I wanted to use. I always have this debate in my head about where I want to poop (at home) versus where you logically should just poop (anywhere acceptable). For better or for worse, I decided that I could hold it long enough to get home. I recognize sometimes that just doesn’t make sense. I was probably a ten minute walk to a park washroom but I decided I could make it home instead. So, I began the brisk walk home.

I gotta admit, there were parts of the walk home that I needed to clench some muscles pretty badly to keep things in place. It was an awful feeling and I honestly thought this was gonna be the day where I just explosively poop my shorts out in public. Somehow, I mustered up the intestinal fortitude to keep it all together and made it all the way home. The worst part when you get nearly home is the wait for the elevator and then the elevator ride up. My body knows I’m so close to my own bathroom but it needs to wait like just another sixty seconds or so. I’m surprised I even knew how to use my key in the lock, as I’m fumbling around to get my front door open. Once I get through the door, it was a straight-shot to the bathroom, shoes still on, and right onto the toilet. Words can’t describe the relief once I painted the bowl with all that ugliness.

Believe it or not, this scenario happened to me again this summer. I was walking to a nearby shopping district to get a gift for a friend. Halfway there, the urge surprised me like a tiger coming out of the grass. I knew I could either soldier on and try to find a washroom at the mall or I could turn around and go poop at home. I decided to turn around and go home. Again, I almost didn’t make it and very nearly pooped on the sidewalk for the first time. Somehow I stumbled my way home with clean shorts.

Alright, summer memories are fun!

I am on my second month of minimalist approach to subscribed streaming services. As you might recall, I’m down to being subscribed to only two streaming services at any given time.

About a month ago, I cancelled everything except for Amazon Prime and then, because I wanted to watch Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, I subscribed to Paramount+ (on a monthly basis). Over the course of four weeks, I watched enough SNW to get to the end of season 2. It’s an excellent show by the way, and if you’re curious about it at all, please give it a watch. Anyways, since season 3 isn’t coming anytime soon, I decided to cancel my Paramount+ subscription once the month was over. I did hesitate slightly before cancelling because the service also has Picard which I am not caught up on, the Twisted Metal series based on the PlayStation video game series, and also Top Gun: Maverick which I have yet to see. Another month of that would have been fine with me.

In the end, I decided to cancel because I wanted to watch Ahsoka on Disney+. Now interestingly, when I went through the cancellation flow on Paramount+, they tried to stop me by offering me a discounted price for the next three months. This is interesting because this means that even if you want to continue your subscription, you should try to cancel because there’s a chance you might be offered a discount to prevent you from leaving. If the algorithm decides to not give you a last chance discount, you can just back out of the cancellation flow. So yeah, the next time you’re near the end of month for your subscription, at least for Paramount+, just trying cancelling to see what happens.

I decided to push through and cancelled entirely because I wanted to have access to Disney+ for the next month. Now I’m not sure if this was just random luck but just today, I saw a Disney+ ad on Twitter that was offering $1.99 per month deals for three months to new subscribers and returning subscribers. The normal price is $14.99 a month, so this is a great deal. I signed up immediately, so I’m all set for the next three months. The odds that I’ll continue to be subscribed to Disney+ beyond the three months is very low. I will have most likely consumed all the content I want by then and I don’t want to pay $14.99.

The lesson to be learned from all of this is that if I had been subscribed to Disney+ and Paramount+ this entire time and was just content to be continually subscribed, those services would be happy to take my money and exert no effort in giving me discounts.

The act of cancelling or being a lapsed subscriber forces these services to entice you to continue or come back to them. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t changed my spending habits as a consumer. Cancel the services that you don’t have time for or aren’t giving you the content you want to consume. Make them work to get your money and only jump back in if they can give you a deal. Don’t just blindly give them your money every month or every year (if you go annually).

I have to work tomorrow but I can barely remember what I was doing on Friday. This was just a three-day long weekend but it sure seemed longer than that. I didn’t even do all that much this weekend but it seemed more like a five-day weekend.

This is an important week for work because there is some stuff that I absolutely need to get done this week. Other engineers are waiting for something I need to complete first before they can do their work, so if I screw it all up and delay it, that means they’re delayed as well.

I don’t think I’ll need to put in any extra hours but it does mean that I really need to be focused for most of the week and deflect any distractions that might come my way.

As we’re now into September, I feel a sense of confidence in knowing that I can probably put away my air-conditioner unit until next summer. My patio doors are still blocked off, so by the time they’re unblocked, the weather will most likely be cool enough that AC won’t be required.

I recognize that last year had a very warm end to the summer and beginning of autumn. It was probably warm enough to wear shorts near Thanksgiving. If it that happens again this year, it won’t be warm enough to need the AC.

My apartment is a mess, so I’ll be spending most of my Labour Day Monday cleaning and organizing my apartment. I’ll probably put away my AC then as well.

It’s always good to see these two cool cats together again.