Hills and bumps and a roadtrip to Orangeville

We did a lot of riding this Civic holiday weekend. We went to Stratford, to Guelph, to Listowel. We drove through the most Mennonite of Mennonite areas, where entire country blocks don't have utility poles. We got too much sun, too much food, and a great deal of our errands accomplished.

Fort Oak

We have an old chair in the living room.¹

A challenge: How to save money by looking at your utility meter

Some backstory, for those who don't know what I do for a living: I work for Noesis Energy, a company that has a website dedicated to tracking energy usage for large buildings, and assisting businesses and industry to find energy savings, as well as the funds to  implement those savings. I'm a software tester, and my job is to help make sure that the site is working correctly, and iron out the bugs before new features are put out in public.

May and health

Clearpath Chiropractic in Guelph has an annual health event in May called, appropriately enough, May Health. You choose a challenge, you do it for 31 days, and hopefully you have a habit built afterwards that you can keep up - or not - as you will.

Revelations

Life is full of questions.

Some are simple. Like why if you decide to put a lid on a pot of beans to make it boil faster, it will inevitably boil over at the exact moment you've stepped away from the stove and can't hear the pot boiling over and by the time you think to question the strange smell you have a good half hour of scrubbing ahead of you? (Answer: Murphy's Law.)

Updates and other things

I've been bad at the blogging recently, but things here have been a bit hectic.

The Dangers of the Internet

I've discovered an obsession with the French Revolution.

Major Victories

This week I did something pretty epic and amazing. I bought myself a bicycle.

UDF

My husband owns a Ural. That's not a mountain, it's a motorbike. This bike comes from Russia, still looks like the 1930s BMW it was originally based on, and has a sidecar.

26

2013 is the second year that I've made it a goal to read 26 books in a year.

Lessons from a cat nap

I've been feeling a bit rough recently. Mid-winter does that for a lot of people I think. I love winter. I don't wish it gone, really. But there's still that feeling of interminable dark and cold that drags along the soul and makes one long for more sun and warmth and a green landscape.

The Great No Shampoo Experiment

Just over a month ago I made a decision to do something I had been thinking about for a while: stop using shampoo on my hair.

WWBD?

I am what is normally called an introvert.

Winter, Canada style.

There's a saying in Southern Ontario: if you don't like the weather at your front door,  look out your back door instead.

Recently this saying has become more and more apt. So far in 2013 we've had days of +14C, and days of -20C. In fact, those two temperatures happened within a week or so of each other. There's been ice, snow, rain, and lots of sun.

Friday we saw a foot of snow in under 24 hours. Everything shut down Friday as stories of cars in ditches and snow ploughs getting stuck circulated on Twitter.¹

Canadians are usually a hardy bunch when it comes to winter weather. We may not always like it, but we can lace up our boots, hitch up our scarves, and continue on with life as normal. This is a bit more complicated when we can't figure out if we should even be wearing boots.

Fortunately we have another saying: "Layer. Layer. Layer." If in doubt, wear three shirts and two pairs of socks, and remove some if necessary throughout the day. Or, conversely, pack some extra clothing if the temperature will be doing that crazy drop like a rock as the day passes routine.  It may not be the most attractive or practical option, but it's way better than spending a week in bed with pneumonia.

Tomorrow morning some of that foot of snow will melt as we see rain in the morning. We will then see flurries in the afternoon, if the meteorologists are right.

If you don't like the weather on one side of the house, feel free to check the other. At some point, you may actually catch a glimpse of something that you've had the good luck to be dressed for.

---

¹ Also, photos of Tauntons and At-Ats superimposed on snowy images of Toronto. If life hands us a crazy massive snow dump, Canadians will make Hoth jokes like there's no tomorrow.<sup>2

2</sup> This level of snow is known in some circles as "Snowmaggedon", and in others as "winter".

Newspapers and Paradox

I just realised that while I had written a blog post in Evernote last week, I didn't actually post it. This writing a post every week might take a little more getting used to, and a lot more double checking to make sure that I've done what I thought I've done. 

To keep things fair, I am not going to just use last week's effort and post it now, I'm going to write a new post and do this right. Although I don't think I can fairly call a write up that didn't get posted as a success. 

On to this week's post…

Getting back into writing shape

I've been trying to get back into shape recently. Like a few people I know, I used to be active. Then life gets in the way, and suddenly (or not so suddenly) we find ourselves older, out of shape, and unsure how to get back to where we were physically.

Surrounding myself with people who can help has gone far. I had a year of physio after a car accident, and many of the exercises I still do are based on the regime I had to get past my injuries. My chiropractor is great for offering help and instruction when I need it. I also have several friends who are very physically active and have learned some lessons along the way.  Slowly and carefully I'm getting better, although I'm still far from my peak shape.

I'm feeling the same way about writing stories. I used to write a lot. It was so simple and effortless. I'd have an idea, sit in front of a notebook or typewriter or computer keyboard, and the words would just be there. I took it for granted, and then I let it go.

Because of this, my writing muscles are as out of shape as my physical muscles. Probably more so after three years of strength exercises since that accident. Writing in that time has been reduced to technical writing in software manuals, some text for the company website, and Tweets. Lots and lots of Tweets.

I'm not as sure of where I can find help to strengthen my writing. I know there are websites, but I don't know which ones are worth my time. There are books, but I need to hunt them down and find ones that suit what I'd like to write.

During NaNoWriMo I had the feeling that what I was writing was getting repetitive, even within that short window of time. I struggled with ideas, and with the form and style of my stories.

Everything atrophies if you don't use it. This blog is going to let me stretch my writing muscles, get them working again, and back into shape. It may be painful to start, but I know I can get there if I just keep exercising.

A Story: Unexpected Joe

Joe was the last person on Earth I expected to do that.