Part-time prevaricator
Like Vonnegut said, “So it goes.” Poo-too-weet!
But I guess 155mm of rain in a single day—honestly, in about 6 hours—and then another, what, 30mm in about half an hour a couple days later will do that.
Taken on a 20km bike ride on Canada Day.
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The white lines in the image above show roughly where the water should be.
Another weekend, another 25-km ride with my camera. I found lilacs, country roads, and an angel in a graveyard for you.
Want prints? Let me know, we can work something out.
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I shot the lilacs with a polarizing lens, which can add drama to the sky. Which one do you like better? I’m partial to the darker sky, which makes the flowers really stand out.
I went on campus yesterday for the first time in a month, and took a few minutes to check just how empty the Knowles Douglas/Student Union complex was. No lights were on; it was all lit, softly, by the sun.
Above is the corridor that connects the Student Union building to the KD space, where the bookstore and the coffee shop are. Below is a view of the closed coffee shop.
And, as a bonus, today I saw a robin in the yard. I snapped a few photos at a high zoom through the screen and window. I think the lines of the screen contribute to the slightly surreal look of the photo.
Photos from today’s bike ride: the once and perhaps future Eleanor Kidd gardens, and the weir on the river near First Street.
There’s some evidence that the city (or someone) has plans to renovate the gardens—there’s a rough road alongside the space, where before there was nothing, and some dirt piles nearby. I mostly hope something gets done. It was a lovely space, back when it was cared for. I went to a wedding there, and it was full of flowers of all colours and scents.
(The part of me that finds beauty in decay likes it how it is. Well, except maybe for the spray-painted penis on one of the pillars.)
I rode my bike about 4.29 km today. It was lovely. The weather was nice, the roads and trails were (mostly) dry-ish, and the people that I saw seemed happy to be outside.
Header photo: screenshot from MapMyRide.
For a while now I’ve wondered just how necessary it is for me to be on campus. I live about five minutes’ walking distance away; when I bike to work, it takes about as long to lock up my bike and walk to my office as it does for me to get to the University.
Now that the official word is “work from home if you can”, I’ve got my laptop at home. Today I grabbed one of my two external monitors, too, so that I can code on one screen and view the results on another.
(Laptop wallpaper: The Fountain of Indolence by J. M. W. Turner; external monitor wallpaper: my photo of the Milky Way from summer 2019.)
Also, it turns out that a book on mythology is integral to my setup; without it, the external monitor isn’t up high enough.
(My ISP’s upload speed is pretty abominable, but that’s a problem for another day, I think.)
…and I really don’t miss wearing glasses all day every day.
(On St. Patrick’s Day, 2018, I got my eyes lasered into proper shape by these fine people, and went from a 20/400 prescription in my good eye to a 20/16 in both.)
Sometimes, when I’m feeling a little dopey in the morning, I’ll still reach for them. (And find the readers on the nightstand, and put them on, and wonder why everything’s a little blurred…)
That reminds me, though, it’s probably time to schedule an eye appointment…
(That’s still not my eyeball. Photo by Vanessa Bumbeers on Unsplash)
…a contract and a rejection. So it goes.
The contract is for a Prairie SF short story, one with a CanCon title and an unreliable 3rd-person POV.
The rejection is for a sub-200-word flash piece, and I’m about to send it to its next destination.
Wish me luck!
At the coffee shop this grey Monday morning, the young woman behind me asked if I used to work at the research station. I said no, I’ve worked at the university for 25 years¹.
“You look familiar, though,” she said. “Maybe it’s just that you’ve got a friendly face.”
It’s good to know that my Monday face wasn’t a scowl.
¹ !
Happy New Year. Let’s make the best of it, shall we?
