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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.

I’m about to head to bed but it’s currently 27 degrees Celsius in my apartment. That is not comfortable. My patio doors are still being blocked off, so I only have 4″ of ventilation in my living room and my bedroom. There’s not a lot of fresh air moving into my apartment, so the whole thing just sucks.

I have not been given a timeline how long my patio doors will still be blocked off. I’ve vaguely heard about a week but that seems to be just rumour and no one has actually said when your week starts. The dudes applied another coat of sealant on during the week but I have no clue if they’re gonna do another coat, two more coats, or no more coats.

I’m gonna publicly call them out here but the people in charge of this operation, JLK Projects have been terrible with their communication. Why is that I don’t know when this will be all done? Why am I wondering what is actually happening with my balcony? Why am clueless about if they’re gonna apply another coat of sealant this week or next? I paid $6k for these repairs and you’d think for that amount of money, I’d have some answers about what’s going on.

Anyways, I recognize that I’m not the first person to pay a contracting company big bucks and not be pleased. I’m not sure how long our civilization will last (by the looks of it, not long) but I am sure, however, as long as it continues contractors will be pissing people off right up to the end.

Nearly two months after I was informed they would be starting work on my balcony, they finally applied the new waterproof membrane today. The time in between when they power-washed my balcony and when this membrane got applied is about two months as well. I’m not sure how clean the surface needs to be but I can tell you in two months, my balcony got pretty dirty again.

As you can see, an unlucky and giant bug had the misfortune of landing on the membrane while it was still wet. He’ll be stuck on my balcony forever. I have no idea if they need to apply this in several coats or not. I hope not because that would be a pain in the ass.

I can tell you the membrane emits an odour while it dries and it’s the type of smell that makes you think it’s not exactly healthy to be breathing it in. I am fortunate that if I have my front door propped open to the hallway, the positive pressure blows air out the 4″ gaps in my patio doors. So none of the outside air enters into my apartment and that’s the stinky air with the membrane gases. What is unfortunate, however, is that I can’t prop my front door open all night while I’m sleeping. I don’t have a chain or anything to keep it ajar and yet secure. Once the front door closes, the air pressure changes and the outside air starts to rush in instead. I could just close all my patio doors completely but then I’d get no ventilation whatsoever into my apartment and CO2 levels would rise steeply while I slept. I’d probably wind up feeling pretty terrible in the morning. I guess I could just crack open the patio doors slightly, just enough to get fresh air and limit the membrane gases from coming in.

I’ve been told that it takes at least a week for the membrane to dry, so my patio doors remain stuck for that long. Once it finishes drying, they’ll unblock my patio doors and I can put all my stupid patio furniture back on the patio, instead of lying in a pile in my living room.

I have an “electric” toothbrush and I’ve owned it for several years now. Last week, for some reason, it’s intensity of vibration ramped up to a level that I have not experienced before. It got super loud and the vibration was very strong.

I checked the settings and nothing had changed. It was at nearly full battery but I’ve had the toothbrush at full battery before and it wasn’t this intense.

I’m really puzzled at why it got super-powered all of a sudden. I know that when you initially turn on the toothbrush out of the box, it vibrates at a lower intensity for the first ten cleanings or so, so you can get used to this type of toothbrush. That was years ago for me though. Did the firmware get installed incorrectly? Was I at the low intensity for first 1000 cleanings instead?

Another theory is that I’m using “generic” toothbrush heads for my toothbrush. The authentic ones cost like $20 each and they supposedly have a microchip embedded in them so the toothbrush can talk to it. The generic ones cost me like 20 for like $24, so it’s a way better deal. I’m pretty sure they don’t have the embedded microchip though. Could that be causing this spike in power?

At the end of the day, this increased cleaning power doesn’t make the tooth brushing process any less pleasant. I just deal with and get the job done but I do apply a bit less pressure on my teeth and gums.

So I received notice today that on Monday they’ll block my patio doors again. This is despite the weather forecast indicating the hot temperatures will continue to roll into next week and beyond.

This is really frustrating since the 4″ gap they leave me makes it impossible to hook up my AC. That one evening where my doors were blocked off was very uncomfortable. I’m considering perhaps relocating to my parents place for a while. Who knows, we’ll see what happens next week.

As I’ve written about in many posts, there is an ongoing construction project affecting all the apartments in my building. They re-applying some sorta membrane on all our balconies.

Last week I got written notice they were gonna start the next phase of the project for my balcony. This was going to involve restricting access to my balcony and only allowing my patio doors to slide open a maximum of 4″. Since it’s me, I noticed the day there were going to do this coincided with a heat wave, serious enough to for the government to warn people about it. I’ll never have enough of that good luck to win a lottery but if something can happen at the worst time, I’ll be lucky enough to have that happen.

Anyways, on Monday, near the end of the workday, I hear two workers hop onto my balcony from the swing stage. Their day is about to end and the sun is about to shine directly into my apartment, which is the hottest part of the day for me. I open up my patio door and ask them if they are really going to block off my patio doors at the beginning of this heat wave. They say yes because of liability. What liability? One guy mentions kids. I still don’t know what that means.

They then proceed to block off both my patio doors with pieces of wood. And they leave and don’t do anything else. It boggles my mind why they wouldn’t just wait until tomorrow morning to do this. So now, I barely have any ventilation for the whole evening for no reason.

The sun begins to shine directly into my apartment now and temperatures begin to rise. A 4″ gap makes it impossible for me to use my AC because my exhaust hose is too big to fit in the gap. I have fans on but they don’t do much. My apartment reaches a high of 29 degrees Celsius at one point and the air feels stagnant. I open my front door, just to get some air in from the hallway.

As you might imagine, I did not get a lot of sleep that night as the heat made it very uncomfortable. Morning arrives and I see no workers on my balcony. They’ve blocked off my patio doors and nothing is happening out there. Again, it makes no sense why they did that.

Lunchtime rolls around and I decide to head downstairs to get some lunch. In the elevator, I see a sign from strata and the building manager. It states that due to the heat wave, balcony access will no longer be blocked and that we should be patient as it may take a few hours before all apartments can be unblocked.

I was immediately thankful that some sense of sanity was used to come to this decision. On the other hand, how did no one see this coming from a mile away? Environment Canada issued the heat wave warning on the weekend, days before the start of the work week. Did no one think, “it’s going to be hot enough that the government is warning us about potential health concerns, yeah… let’s restrict the amount of ventilation these people have for the entire week and beyond”?

Anyways, I guess I should be thankful they came to their senses in the first place. Sometime in the late afternoon, the same two dudes who blocked off my patio doors the day before went and remove the wooden blocks. I was home when this happened and I poked my head out and thanked them for not trying to kill me again with heat.

I spent most of this evening sitting in my air-conditioned bedroom, thankful that I could use my AC again. I also have been told, they won’t be blocking balcony access anymore but we need to promise we won’t go out there while the work is being done and while the membrane cures and dries. I already promised I wouldn’t go out there several weeks ago and even proposed to the strata manager that my word would be good. That dude wasn’t having any of it, in a rather non-professional manner too. Now we’re just doing what I proposed in the first place. So stupid all around.