What day is it anyway?
Friday
Where am I?
Calgary (home)
Weather
Warm, sunny, even a bit hot at the middle of the day
What I did in my non-blogging life
Read more of The Old Ways, in which Robert Mcfarlane and a friend defy death by walking on the shining sands. Now I want to go to Foulness.
I decided to put together a Pinterest board for it, so that’s in my Pinterest drafts at the moment. I found loads of pics but some are duplicates so I need to look them over before they escape the holding pen.
To clear my head and get some exercise, and also to maintain my ephemeral lead on FitBit, I went for a walk. The original idea was to go and sketch something but I felt more like writing so I ditched the sketching bag and just went with the writing bag.
Walked for an hour, by a roundabout route, ending in a Starbucks. Near the entrance I ran into an old friend whose co-ordinates I had lost. Wonderful! I was able to catch up in person and reconnect on Facebook. Sad news is that her husband had a terrible accident a few years ago and now needs a lot of care. It’s been a huge adjustment for them, of course, but she was her usual cheerful self and he looked pretty good.
Did some writing at Starbucks and walked home by a shorter way. I was listening to BBC podcasts for most of the walk. I usually don’t listen while walking but on this walk it worked out well, a nice balance between being observant and being entertained.
I only use one earphone when listening and walking. To use two would be suicidal.
Loads of lovely gardens spotted yet again as I cruised down nearby but unfamiliar lanes. For some reason, parts of the same neighbourhoods have paved lanes and other parts, close by, don’t. I prefer the unpaved ones. They can feel like old country lanes without having to use much imagination at all.
It was sort of a Monday feeling because so many people were outside working on their projects. A lady was painting the garage while her husband crouched atop their RV sealing the joints with a big tube of something. Two men were building a fence. A young mum had her infant and 2-year-old at the swings for a bit of a play, probably hoping the 2-year-old would want a long sleep once they got home.
A lad was waving a blue thing over the fence. It turned out to be the body of a model truck he was building and he was trying to get the paint to dry faster.
Three younger boys had a lemonade stand set up near the community post box, hoping people would be thirsty after walking all that way to get their mail. From what I could see, product testing was eating into their inventory in a noticeable way.
I will have to re-listen to The Archers because it was late at night in bed when I put it on, and I fell asleep. Like every other listener, I run through cycles of being convinced Joe Grundy is about to breathe his last, but he always bounces back. This time? Not sounding so good. If his pony Bartleby should bite the dust, I think it would kill Joe. And Bartleby was out in the rain the other day.
What I did in my blogging life
I installed three Adobe Spark apps on my phone and then played around with the video one on my laptop. Before that I watched a video on the Adobe website about using video to tell stories, and though the advice isn’t new, it’s always good to have the message hammered home: be interesting or die. (Well, that’s not exactly what they said but close enough.)
Whether I will ever be interesting is an open question.
The thing I was writing at Starbucks is the same thing I was playing around with on the video app: Admiral David Beatty. His life was beyond soap opera material and well into blockbuster movie territory, but boiling it down to a short and intriguing video might have to be someone else’s challenge. I’m better with just the facts, Ma’am.
My Instagram picture was of the Hotel Vancouver, from a trip when I met some online writer friends in person for the first time, and we dropped off my friend’s dog with a dog handler. On the way back we collected the dog and all the prizes she had won in the dog show.
Vanity Plate from New Zealand: FQQ3
I hope FQQ3 doesn’t come out sounding really rude. I have no idea what this vanity plate means!
Disclosure
This is my standard form of disclosure that I am retroactively adding to all blog posts done before April 1, 2018, and will add to all new posts.
1. Is this experience open to the public?
Yes.
2. Who paid the cost of me doing this?
I did.
3. Did I get any compensation or special consideration for writing this blog post?
No.
4. Would I be as positive about this place if I had gone as a regular visitor?
Yes. I did go as a regular visitor.
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