Category: Uncategorized

I was in two Zoom meetings today and I was wearing nothing but my underwear.

As many of you know, I live in an apartment building. I park my car in an assigned spot in the parkade. My spot is next to a concrete pillar. Someone else parks their car on the other side of me. The spot next to them has been empty. It’s been empty since before my parking neighbour lived here. In the over ten years I’ve lived in my building, no one else has ever parked a car in the spot adjacent to my parking neighbour. I have illustrated the situation in the above diagram, which is a top-down view. The black rectangles are concrete pillars, the yellow lines are the parking lines, and the black outlines are our cars.

Now the thing you have to understand is the spots in our building are not very wide. They border on being too skinny for modern cars. As such, it’s a tight fit, even for your economy cars. I didn’t draw it really well but that concrete pillar to my left is essentially right up against the left yellow parking line. I don’t have a lot of leeway to my left. So I try to park right in the middle of my spot. I try to give myself enough room to the left to avoid scraping my driver side mirror on the pillar, while not being too close to my neighbour’s car on the right.

The maddening thing is that my parking spot neighbour insists on also parking right down the middle of their spot. Why? It’s illogical. There’s no one to their right. He or she has room to park their car slightly to the right in their spot. That would leave several inches more room for them to get into their car. Instead, I can only imagine how difficult it must be to squeeze themselves between their car and mine, trying to open their car door without hitting my car.

I’ve seen other people in the parkade who take advantage of not having a car neighbour and parking their cars slightly offset in their spots so they have more room. This logic escapes my neighbour. I have never seen the person who parks the car next to me but I’m really tempted if I see them to ask why they insist on parking right down the middle of their spot. I can only imagine this person follows the rules all the time and gets nervous if they deviate even slightly from what is expected of them.

This evening I caught up to most current episode of Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, Conan’s popular podcast. At the time of this writing, that’s 168 episodes. I started listening to this podcast around the spring of 2020, so it took me well over a year to get through every episode. I listened to most episodes while doing my dishes or cleaning.

The podcast releases a new episode about every week and in between those episodes, he has a shorter episode where he talks to fans over Zoom. So even though I’m all caught up now, there’s always new material for me to listen to.

If and when I start commuting to work again, I think I’ll start listening to podcasts on the way to work.

I ordered a portable air-conditioner several weeks ago. Since then, it has arrived and I’ve set it up in my bedroom. It hasn’t got hot enough for me to need to really use it but I have turned it on twice to ensure it’s working.

We’re fast approaching August now and I know it will stay cool enough for me to not need the air-conditioner. Had I not bought the A/C, we would have experienced at least one more heat wave. It’s just how it works.

I will need it next summer though. Climate change has come far along enough that it will no longer seem odd that parts of British Columbia will be hotter than Las Vegas.

I listed my old TV on Facebook Marketplace today. It’s the first time I’ve put a listing up there. So far, in the online world, I’ve only sold items on eBay. Unfortunately, selling an 80 lb TV on eBay isn’t practical.

So far, my listing on Facebook has received one offer for 60% of the price I listed. I’ll be honest here, I’ll probably agree to this offer tomorrow morning if I get no other people biting. The fact that I’ll get any money for my old TV is just a bonus. I’m just glad someone is willing to come to my home and take it away. It’s just taking up space in my living room and it needs to go somewhere else. I’m just hoping this guy is still interested when I agree to his terms.

I had a professional painter come over to paint a wall today. This person was an expert and knew what he was doing. He painted the wall that runs the length of my apartment on the living room side.

I could have attempted to paint the wall myself and saved some money but sometimes getting a professional to do a job is worth the cost. He saved me time and any headaches involved with having to waste a weekend or more in doing my own painting.

I’ll let the wall dry and then move my furniture back along the wall to see how I like it. I painted it a nice shade of flat white. If I like what I see, I’ll consider painting the rest of my apartment the same colour.

I just spent the last two days in Victoria, the capital city of this province, and I had an interesting observation. I stayed mainly in the touristy downtown area for my two days and not once during my time there did I see a uniformed member or patrol car of the Victoria police department.

I’m not sure if that’s weird or not. On one hand, the downtown area of Victoria is full of tourists and shops, so you’d think that the city police would have some presence there. Then again, if it’s mainly tourists, maybe there’s not a lot of trouble to be had. I just keep thinking that in the downtown Vancouver area, you wouldn’t need to walk around for two days before seeing members of the Vancouver police department. Of course, downtown Vancouver and downtown Victoria are two different places with very different problems.

I’m also wondering if there were lots of plainclothes members out and about in Victoria and I just didn’t notice them. Perhaps that was the reason I didn’t think there was much of a police presence. In that case, they did an excellent job of keeping out of sight while making sure things were safe. Indeed, I felt safe during my entire short stay in Victoria, both during the day and night.

I’m headed off to Victoria, the capital of this province, for a quick two-day getaway. I’ll getting there by float plane, which will be the second time I’ve travelled by float plane and the first time I’ve been in a plane since the pandemic began.

I’ll be back with a new post on Wednesday.

So how many of you got fatter during the pandemic? I am sure lots of you had your weight go and up and down during the last year and a half. I think I was the same. I’m currently about seventeen pounds heavier than I want to be.

I’m currently trying to eat better to lose those pounds. So far, I’m removing all carbs from breakfast. It’s a start but I can do better. Gotta lose though pandemic pounds.

Over the weekend, I had a new OLED TV delivered to my home. It replaces a 12-year old plasma TV I’ve been limping along with. My new TV is amazing. As such, I’ve been watching way too much material on it. I will write more about it later.