Check-In 2018-03-28

Yesterday

Health: Not much.

Writing: Not much.

Job: Put together resumé and cover letter.

BC: The job I applied to is in Kelowna. (Alas, no luck; they changed their requirements.)

Misc.: Not much.

Today

Health: Walked to store and back with a good amount of groceries.

Writing: Edited a few paragraphs and read some recent stuff to try to get back into the mindset.

Job: Not much.

BC: Not much.

Misc: Condo business.

Summary

All categories have been looked at recently. Tomorrow it'll be time to look into BC and job stuff again.

New Round of Check-Ins

Construction downtown. Well, destruction downtown.

Today is the first Monday of being back in Edmonton, and I tried to act a little bit Monday about it. I got a bunch of walking done, renewed my driver's license, did some banking, and did a little shopping.

Last time I was unemployed, I did regular check-ins, so I think I'm going to do so again. However, my mental health is really good right now, so rather than focusing on that, I'm instead going to focus on these categories, in rough order of priority:

Health - Because it's always good to take care of this.

Writing - Because that's what I'm going to try to do now, so I should do it. :)

Job - Because I need to pay the bills somehow.

BC - Because I need to figure out where I'm living this fall.

Misc - Because there's always something.

Today's report:

Health - I did a bunch of walking all afternoon!

Writing - Not yet. I will try to at least write a paragraph or two before I relax for the evening.

Job - Nothing today.

BC - This evening I'll be talking to Amber and Jason about housing out their way.

Misc - Banking, license renewal, and starting these check-ins.

So it looks like I should ideally focus on Writing and Job more tomorrow. I don't think it's feasible to try to hit all categories every day. I just want to make sure they don't get forgotten. If I fail to focus on something for multiple days in a row, I'll put a counter next to it so I can see it getting stale. Then I can still decide to focus on things however I want, but I'll be able to see when a category may need a little extra love and attention.

Well, Here I Am

I am back in Edmonton now, safe and sound.

First up, some pictures that didn't make it into last week's post about climbing the mountain:

The journey begins...

There! We go there!

This wasn't on the map!

A rest on the way up.

Worth it!

... 

Home again. Hound happy.

And there's cake!

And now, some scenes of Edmonton, including my blooming Christmas cactus:

Climbing A Mountain

I am a bit too tired to write a proper post right now, but in the meantime, here are some pictures that I took while Mark and I climbed Mount Douglas today. Most of it was more hiking than climbing, but there were some climby bits too.

Final Stretch

There's not quite as many blooming flowers so far this year due to the unusually chilly February (hahahahahahahaha) which resulted in frost and snow a couple of times. But the place is still a healthy green! Also it has warmed up recently.

Anyway, news.

Well, I may sound like a broken record at this point, but the news is mostly that I did a bunch of writing. There was a co-written email chain and another short story, plus a small amount of editing. Then I celebrated by playing a ton of Overwatch for the last day or two, though now I have some "homework" I should get caught up on, such as moving the email chain into a document. So I'll do some of that this afternoon in amongst walks.

I saw Black Panther last Friday, and enjoyed it. It was beautiful both visually and aurally. It was fun to watch it knowing that it was important to many people around the world, because it portrayed an African nation that was prosperous and advanced. It was a fun movie in its own right, but this gave the experience even more cheer.

It's getting to be the final stretch of my stay here, so I should probably think about what I want to accomplish before I go. I've just been having so much fun with the writing that I haven't focused on much else. And I'm pretty happy with how I spent my time.

Catch you next week!

Fear of Flying

So last week I was in Penticton on a gaming bender, which is why I didn't have a blog update. Above, you can see Dabu, who was helping me make the hide-a-bed by sitting in the exact center of it when I wanted to put the sheets on. Thanks, cat!

So the trip to Penticton was, as I mentioned, a gaming bender. The weather was, by southern BC standards, apocalyptically cold. Like we're talking -5C sometimes. Even -10C at night. So lovely by Edmonton standards. But this was enough for us to justify staying in and playing our game for the entire time.

The trip to the airport to leave was a bit more stressful. We planned to leave early in order to have a lot of time, and we left half an hour even before *that* but the roads were terrible. There was a lot of snow and a lot of drivers unused to snow. This caused slow traffic in Kelowna and a serious traffic jam on the highway due to a collision.

Luckily, I made it just in time, and then the plane was delayed for half an hour, which allowed me to stretch my legs after the long car ride, which was nice.

It's funny how irrational our fears can be. Later that evening, our plane experienced some mild turbulence and I was thinking, as I tend to, "This is it; the wings are about to fall off and we're all going to die." And then I remembered the collision on the highway. Based on the damage, it's almost certain that someone was hurt. The drive to the airport was much more dangerous than the flight. This helped to put things into perspective.

Anyway, I'm glad Amber and Jason got home safely. I appreciate them driving out to Kelowna so I didn't have to sit in Calgary for 4 hr layovers on my trips between Victoria and Penticton...

As for the rest of my hobbies, the writing continues. It was a bit tricky to get back into things at first, because I started a new story before my trip and then a bunch of things happened in our game, and then I had to try and pick up the threads of what I'd started. But it is done now, and we're working on a collaborative bit for the next day or two.

Overwatch just announced a new hero named Brigitte. She's a mixture of a healer and a tank. She has a small shield to help keep her alive (she's fairly robust, actually), and then she can hit people with her flail, which makes her friends nearby heal. Because flails that heal people is how Overwatch rolls. :)

She looks fun anyway. Overwatch is about the gameplay more than the immersion, and the world has a bit of a Saturday-morning-cartoon feel to it.

I took a break from writing today to walk the dog and throw the ball for her in the sunshine. Life is good.