Engagement Photos

Me and Lee-Anne had engagement photos done. The entire album is pretty substantial, so we narrowed it down to 17 and I posted them on my Gallery blog. Here's a link: https://gryphonsgallery.blogspot.com/2023/06/engagement-photos.html 

This is not the kind of thing I ever thought about doing. I don't even think I knew what engagement photos were before I was told that we had to book them. Now that I see the finished product, I can recognize them as something I've seen other people post on Facebook. But I just thought of them as pretty couples pics, not considering the effort that had to have been put into making them.

Going through the process of having them done, I also realize that I've definitely seen people having them taken on the Iron Horse Trail and in Victoria Park. We had ours done in a little park near where Lee-Anne's parents live, one that we've walked in a lot. It's a cute spot, but the photos make it look like paradise.

As an aside, Brampton is really good for its network of parks. It also has a huge number of community centres, generally with really good resources. The city doesn't have the best reputation, but in these two categories, it's very strong.

I didn't know how to dress for the occasion. Lee-Anne told me to pick something that wasn't too dark, to avoid something pattern-heavy, and to avoid green because I'd blend into the foliage. I tried to bring a bunch of clothes so that we would have a selection, but she told me I was going overboard. Once we got to Brampton, she wished that I'd brought one of the shirts she'd told me not to take.

So we went shopping and I got four more shirts. Of them, she said I looked best in a dark green plaid. Seemed like it went against all previous guidelines.

We took these a little after we were flooded with wildfire smoke, so I was worried that we would be working through a haze. Thankfully it had mostly cleared up by that point. The photographer said that he had been taking pics in the smoke though. Wonder what that looked like.

The photographer scoped out the place a little before our session, as he'd never been there before. He found the bridge that's in some of the better pics. It's a tiny thing, maybe only eight feet long over a creek, but he used it for all it was worth. We weren't even aware of it when we requested the location.

One of the arguments that people use for the legitimacy of AI generated art, is that when photography was invented many traditional artists opposed the technology because it was able to capture the beauty of nature, which previously could only be done by artists that had committed their lives to the craft. Over time, our legal systems decided that photography could be done in a way that used enough human creativity to be considered art, and now this is relatively unquestioned. The idea is that the outrage, followed by eventual acceptance of AI art as a valid form of human expression is inevitable.

That argument mostly just turns me off of photography, but listening to the person that did our photos and his process, there definitely was an artistry to it.

He gave us a lot of prompts. He told us how to hold hands. For the walking pics he told us to bump into each other intentionally. He had us tickle each other. He told us to tell each other our favourite date stories etc.

This picture was surprisingly uncomfortable to take, but it looks really relaxed.

In this one, she's sitting on the railing of the little wooden bridge. I'm scared of heights, and even though it really was just a slight elevation over a creek, I had to work through some nerves. She was fine though.

This one isn't in my collection of 17. Lee-Anne told him about a bridge she used to walk on with her dad when she was young, and that it had recently been renovated. So we took a detour and checked it out. The photographer felt a creative inspiration. So, because of the improvisational nature of this shoot, I really like it conceptually. I don't feel like it quite bore out in execution.

For some of these shots, he had me lean against the safety rail. Terrifying.

Here's one where she looks like she's just falling into my arms, but this actually took some muscle on my behalf. Not the way I would choose to lift her normally either. Good for visuals but not efficient on a biomechanical level.

And then I just really like this one.

Canadian Wildfires 2023

 There were a few things I wanted to blog about, but I guess I've got to talk about the wildfires.

Due to the dry weather this year, forests in Nova Scotia and Quebec have come up in flames. The fires have spread rapidly and gotten out of control. The resulting smoke has wafted into many nearby cities. In Kitchener, a haze formed over the sky and there's been a kind of campfire smell. 

Our family Whatsapp chat has been popping, with everyone exchanging notes on how bad the smoke has been in their respective areas. I have family in Toronto and New York where the air quality is said to be really bad. My New York connections have said that it is indeed as bad as the press makes out, whereas the people from Toronto say they've avoided the worst of it. I've got people in Guelph, Brampton, and Northern Ontario also saying that they've been effected.

Wildfires are not new to Canada, and indeed we had some pretty nasty ones in recent years, but this is the first time that I've experienced such a sensory impact to city living. I'm not being chased out of the city or choked out by smoke, but the effect is still unignorable.

It's interesting to see people re-adapt some of the COVID measures without being told to. A lot of people are wearing masks again to filter the air, and some people are staying home to avoid exposure. I don't think these things would have been instincts pre-pandemic. I guess this is how we respond to natural disasters now.

In 2020, Australia dealt with some really destructive fires, and in the following years the Southern US had the same issue. I guess it's our turn.

I used to think that climate change would turn Canada into a tropical paradise before it burned us up, since so many places are warmer than we are and they're able to sustain life. It would obviously be bad globally, and people would migrate away from the more impacted areas creating issues of population density. Canada would eventually suffer the same as everywhere else, but I thought it would take us a while to get there.

I suppose the difference is that those warmer places had a much longer time for their environments to adapt to that climate, whereas the ecosystem here is equipped for colder temperatures and it can't keep up with the speed at which we're warming.

Despite having a low population compared to our size, Canada hasn't done great in terms of environmentalism. I've heard that we're heating up twice as fast as the global average, and that we were the worst in terms of emissions among the G7. This is partly due to the fact that we're such a vast and sprawling country, so things need to be travelled over longer distances, and we're also a major oil producing nation.

I'm getting some mortal pangs, similar to the feelings of early COVID. In a way this is even worse, since the pandemic was a threat to humanity, whereas this is a threat to all life on Earth. 

We live on a planet that is home to the only carbon-based life in the Universe that we know of. Our proximity to the sun and our abundance of water is nothing short of miraculous. We consider ourselves the most sophisticated animals for our self-awareness, compassion, and innovation, but while almost every lifeform contributes to the ecosystem, humans are the only species that inhibit it. If we cause the end of the miracle that sustains all life as we know it, think what losers we'd be.

Gardening 2023

 Last week was the Victoria Day weekend, which is the traditional time for Canadians to start gardening. Our neighbours gave us some more backyard space so we're getting a little more ambitious with our planting. They're trying to grow a few things as well.

We live in the basement and have upstairs neighbours, so our first summer we felt it was still too early for us to ask for some space, although by the summer we felt comfortable enough to ask if we could plant some flower bulbs in the front yard. Both households walk by the front yard, so it felt more shared, compared to the backyard which their apartment opens into but ours doesn't. 

Last year, we asked for a bit of space to grow a sunflower patch. I planted 60 seeds and wound up with three flowers with five blossoms total. We also got some pots and tried growing some other stuff in those, but they didn't have any holes in the bottom so we wound up drowning the seeds.

We haven't really taken any more land, but we pounded holes in our pots and got three more planters. So we have three pots, three planters, and a patch of land for sunflowers. We're trying to grow cucumbers, tomatoes, peas, radishes, lettuce, and sunflowers. We've become ambitious enough that if we have a little success, I think we can call what we have a garden.

I dug out last year's sunflower patch. I'd tried to pull out the gravel and I mixed the dirt with potting soil. This year I fully dug it out and replaced the dirt with potting soil, so hopefully that helps.

Our upstairs neighbour told us that he learned from someone else in the neighbourhood, that the reason the backyard is so gravelly is because the previous owner of the house had a dog. I don't really see the sense in that though. Would it be to discourage the dog from digging? Did they actually mix gravel into the soil? Seems like that would be a lot of work.

Unfortunately, the day after we'd planted the sunflowers, we found holes in our patch and seeds had been pulled up and shelled. It was very difficult to determine how much damage had been done, so we just replanted in full. We asked Lee-Anne's mom for tips and she said to put cayenne pepper on the ground, because apparently squirrels avoid it.

It felt funny seasoning the ground. Lee-Anne brought red pepper flakes as well and it felt like I was cooking for the squirrels. We also put a mesh that I got from the dollar store over them, and so far it seems like they haven't been disturbed again.

I don't know if raccoons eat seeds as well, but it might be that instead. I've sighted a raccoon twice this year, but I've failed to get a picture. Now I know why people have so much trouble taking pictures of Bigfoot. In lieu of a raccoon pic, please accept this picture of a heron that I managed to get this year.

Lee-Anne finds it funny how excited I get about seeing the raccoon. She's from Brampton, and apparently they're really common there. My memory may not be totally comprehensive, but off the top of my head, the only times I've seen raccoons were when I was at Camp Impeesa for the EaF Summer Program and I saw a family of them in the dumpster, and in Brampton at her parents place where I saw one on the roof. So in the past week I've doubled my raccoon sightings, and in a much more concentrated period of time.

I've also seen a dead one on the sidewalk near where we live. Pretty sure I've seen roadkill too. I think I've seen more dead raccoons than living.

First raccoon sighting this year, we were gardening and I saw it tiptoe along our neighbours fence. Second sighting, it was morning before work and our cat Kieran got really agitated by something outside. I went to look and a big fat raccoon was slowly and seemingly aimlessly sauntering around the backyard. I was so excited that I woke up Lee-Anne to look at it, but she declined.

Anyway yeah, maybe the raccoon is messing with the seeds instead of the squirrels.

Another tip Lee-Anne's mom gave was to soak the peas overnight before planting them. I found this curious, as I've had some success growing them in the past and I've never done this.

We're growing the sunflowers, radishes, lettuce, and peas from seed, and we bought partially grown plants for the cucumbers and tomatoes. I've had some success with each of these plants in the past, except for lettuce which was a pick by Lee-Anne. I would have gotten zuchinis instead of cucumbers, but the place we went to had sad looking zuchinis, whereas the cucumbers looked more resilient and the two plants have a pretty similar growth pattern.

I've had bad luck with tomatoes developing late in the season, leaving me to make a lot of fried green tomatoes. This year we're growing Early Girls, which supposedly produce fast, and now I know that I'm supposed to "pull off the suckers", which I hadn't been doing. I hate that phrase for some reason.

I don't have a ton of faith in the potted stuff, except for maybe the radishes, but we'll see what happens. It looks like the pots are draining properly at least. 

Growing stuff in pots and planters reminds me of when I was desperately trying to get into gardening as a kid, but we lived in an apartment so I had to grow everything on the balcony.

Here are some photos of what we've done this year:

Tomatoes, lettuce, radishes, peas

Cucumbers

Sunflowers

Mother's Day, Mom's Birthday, Last Doctor Visit

This past weekend was both Mother's Day and my mom's birthday. I've probably mentioned it before, but it's pretty convenient to have a mother whose birthday lines up so neatly with Mother's Day.

Me and Lee-Anne came down to Guelph. We brought dinner and a few gifts. I got her a backpack from a military surplus store in downtown Kitchener. It's the same place that her last backpack came from. Back when I was in college, my mom was talking to a friend of her's about wanting a sturdy backpack and she mentioned this location in Kitchener, where I happened to be living.

Almost ten years later, the pack is beginning to fray around an arm strap. So they aren't invulnerable, but still have a pretty good longevity. I got a pack from the same place but mine didn't last nearly as long as Mom's. What's the longevity of a backpack supposed to be? I've heard three years with regular use. So both surpassed that length. I'll probably have to get another one for myself at that place.

Going into military surplus stores kind of sketches me out, just because I'm very disassociated from anything military. Generally, they're more "function over fashion" stores and the military grade is supposed to be a guarantee that the product will withstand whatever you require of it because it's built to survive literal war.

The shop owner was the same guy that sold to me the other two times I've been in. He's a very loud, very engaging person that involves himself in your purchases. Seems authentic enough, as one time he talked me into buying something less expensive than what I was looking at, since he thought the cheaper item would better serve my purposes. In general, I don't really appreciate "help" when I'm looking around a store. I prefer to get a lay of the land, think through what I want, and then ask for help if I need it.

We also got some stuff to put in the backpack. Mom loves Bulk Barn, but they don't live near one, so I got some spice mixes that they wouldn't be able to get from their grocery store. I got shawarma, souvlaki, Jamaican jerk, and Korean BBQ. I also put a container of homemade toum, which is garlic sauce, that I made to go with shish tawook. Put it all in a glass jar from the Bulk Barn and gave that to her too.

This past weekend strayed a little from my usual diet. I guess that's okay. I had my quarterly doctor's appointment on Wednesday. I've been having a cheat day the day after my doctor's appointments because then I have three months to correct myself before getting assessed again. My results weren't as dramatic this time around. When I was first assessed I had an A1C of 10.5. In three months it dropped to 6.9, then 5.9, and I've lost 25 pounds. This time my A1C and weight haven't changed much. 

My dietician said she suspected that I only became diabetic inside the pandemic, and that's why my body was responding so quickly to the medication. The body tries to return to what it's used to, not what's most optimally healthy. This is because it's programmed to survive to see the next day, not thirty years later, and it knows it has survived in it's "average" state for a long time. So my body probably was eager to return to its pre-pandemic state, but it's reached what it's used to, but I want it to keep changing. So I'll probably have to work harder to change the psychology of my body from here on out.

At least my C reactive proteins fixed themselves. There are a lot of numbers that go on inside the body. Last time, only two of them weren't in target. One was my C reactive proteins and I forget the other one but she didn't even test for it this time around, and if she's not worried about it neither am I. So my C reactive proteins, after not changing much in six months, decided to fully correct themselves these past three. My pulse was also lower than usual, but that must be more psychological than anything as my pulse seems to be a lot higher than my average when I'm at the doctor's office. I suspect I've just been doing this enough at this point that I've become desensitized.

I guess we finally got rid of our last mask mandate. Long after the public mandates were over, you still had to wear one when visiting medical sites. However, when I had my bloodwork done there were a handful of people not wearing masks, even one of the nurses. Going to the medical centre, my doctor and one of the nurses were wearing masks, but the people working intake and one of the nurses weren't.

The biggest lifestyle change I've made since the last time I saw my doctor is implementing a regular body weight workout. I've been trying to implement lifestyle changes between appointments. My first change was cutting out carbs and added sugars. After that I made a daily cardio goal, and now I've been trying to get back into strength training. 

My doctor was kind enough to say that even if I haven't lost weight these past three months, some of it might be coming through in muscle. This is the thing everyone trying to get into fitness while in rough shape tells themselves, but it feels a little bit less like wishful thinking when a doctor says it.

Global Health Emergency Over

COVID-19 has been deemed "no longer a global health emergency" by the World Health Organization. This doesn't mean the pandemic is over. There was discussion about whether or not it had become "endemic" and the answer was no.

When I first heard this term, I thought that "endemic" meant "the end of the pandemic". But actually, an endemic is when a disease becomes a permanent fixture in our lives with an established pattern. Examples of endemics are influenza (the flu) and the common cold. All the variants have disqualified COVID as an endemic based on its unpredictability. However, it appears that the lethality has decreased to the point that it is no longer an emergency. It could still mutate and become an emergency again though.

I've become so much of a hypocrite when it comes to mask wearing. For a long time after the mandates dropped, I was diligent in making sure that I stayed masked regardless. It always seemed a little futile, since the idea is that wearing a mask doesn't protect you from others, it protects others from you. 

Eventually my fear decreased enough that I started modifying my behaviour based on social pressure. For example, if an Uber driver was wearing a mask, I would put one on, but if they weren't, I wouldn't. At this point in time, I still mask when I'm on public transit or if I'm grocery shopping. If I run into someone I know and they're not wearing one, I might unmask to talk to them. Totally hypocritical, "I'm going to protect myself unless I'm breathing in someone's face" 

If I go to a social event and no one else is wearing a mask, I won't. But I make sure to keep one on hand in case I run into a crowd that's COVID conscious. At my work, staff are still require to mask, but members aren't. That might change in the future based on this WHO update.

I think I might be immune. It was a hot topic for awhile that the virus impacts people to vastly different degrees, and that it's pretty random. Almost everyone I know, including Lee-Anne who tested positive while in our home, has caught it at some point. I've definitely had enough exposure to catch it, but I haven't. Two other people that haven't yet caught it are my mother and brother, so maybe it's a genetic thing. The fact that I'm four vaccines in probably helps too.

Otherwise, I somehow neglected to mention in my previous update about our new clean energy transport alternative, the rentable e-scooters and bikes called the Neuron, that we're going through a bus strike right now. Our lightrail, the Ion, is still running because a different organization is in charge of it.

This means that the Neuron is getting a huge spike in use by people that would otherwise ride the bus. This tempts me to get my conspiracy hat on. The buses strike right when this new system is put into place, and all the clean energy alternatives are still serviceable. Almost seems like it's been fabricated to get more people to try these options.

I don't know if that would be a good or bad thing. On one hand, it's getting lots of people to try these systems when they wouldn't otherwise, but it's still incredibly restricting for many people who don't have it as an option. There are still plenty of people that aren't on an Ion or Neuron route, and some people don't have a vehicle because they have a mobility restriction. The strike has halted our Mobility Plus service, a system for people who can't use public transport. In these cases the Neuron is usually inaccessible for them.

I don't actually believe that the bus strike is fabricated. That would require too much consensus between the city region and every single bus driver. At least the side effect of people giving clean energy alternatives a chance is a silver lining

Neuron

 Kitchener is attempting a new transport system of rentable electric scooters and bikes called the Neuron.

Considering our lightrail is called the Ion, I guess they're going for some kind of theme. It's meant to be a clean-energy alternative to cars.

I was a heavy critic of the development of the Ion and now benefit greatly from it, so I don't want to be too much of a naysayer, but I do have a few concerns.

The helmet. I haven't needed one for a long time, but there's a lot of anxiety about lice and headgear.  With a public-access vehicle you don't know whose worn it before you. Also, I don't think helmets are one-size-fits-all, and I wonder how much protection you get from a poorly-fitted one. You could bring your own helmet, but even then it's chipping away at the convenience factor of using one of these.

The cost. You register a credit card with it and it charges based on how long you use it. $1.15 entry fee and then $0.35 a minute, so an hour would be $22.15. Unlimited three day pass is $25, weekly $33. You can also get a monthly pass with a time cap of 90 minutes per day for $89. Compare with bus and rail fare. $3.50 cash, $2.92 with a fare card per ride. $90 monthly.

Two single trips per day with fare card for three days on the bus costs $17.52 compared to the Neuron's $25 (although that's unlimited trips). The same conditions weekly would be $40.88 on the bus, $33 on the Neuron. Monthly, you can get unlimited trips on the bus for $90 a month, or 90 minutes of riding daily for $89 on the Neuron.

I think you only really pull ahead by the Neuron if you buy weekly passes and use it regularly. You're not going to get the same distance with it and it's more weather dependent. The prices are competitive but not, I would say, to the point of being considered a more affordable alternative for most people.

Parking. These are free-floating vehicles. They don't have specific approved parking spaces, so you can leave them anywhere on the routes they're meant to be used. Apparently someone goes around and collects them each night, brings them in and charges them. If the batteries are reliably loaded and the vehicles are easily located, this isn't an issue, but the lack of consistency with location seems bad for reliability. Maybe you scoot from home to a restaurant, and when you come out somebody's taken it. Or you bike to work but it's not there when you're done. You'd never be sure you have a return trip if you were going two ways. My bus fare estimates were based on an assumption that you'd need to go one way and back, as that seems a standard need.

The routes. Apparently you can't just go anywhere with these. You have to stick to bike lanes within a certain area. If you ride on sidewalk, apparently it shouts "Sidewalk detected!" If you leave the approved area, it starts to wind down and eventually locks. This is fair enough, but the available approved routes are a little limiting. Notoriously, the approved areas snake around the Iron Horse Trail, a popular paved trail and Waterloo Region's longest, on which some of the favourite modes of transport are already e-scooters and e-bikes. Just seems like a missed opportunity. Even if you're a pedestrian and find them annoying it seems inconsistent.

If I were to make suggestions, I'd say there should be designated parking stations, and I'd open up the Iron Horse Trail. The prices are actually not that bad. The helmet thing sketches me out and I don't know how to fix it.

I've been surprised to see them get as much use as they have. Seems their main demographic is students. It will be interesting to see if they maintain consistent use, or if this is just because of hype.

I do like that it's a clean energy alternative to travel, I like the attempt to make the city less car dependent, and it seems like a cool city project. If nothing else, good for them for trying.

Take The Heat Off

For all my predictions, becoming a trainer for firefighters was not on my 2023 bingo book.

As one of my side gigs, I facilitate something called Safe Management. I've talked about it before on here. It's a crisis intervention training. Most front-line social work jobs in the helping professions require employees to do something like this. Examples of similar trainings are Understanding and Managing Aggressive Behaviour, and Non-Violent Crisis Intervention.

Somehow, a firefighter caught wind of us doing Safe Management, liked what he saw and asked if we could do a "different" version, targeted for firefighters and condensed to a two hour workshop.

We didn't really know what we were doing. We figured that they may have encountered people belonging to the demographics we support, gotten non-typical responses from them and had less-than ideal outcomes. So we decided to develop our training around this assumption.

We didn't have a lot of guidance. Turns out that firefighters enjoy learning by doing, so they didn't give us much criteria or context. They just asked us to develop something that we could run through a team of seasoned workers that could help us fine-tune our material.

It's very important at this point that I emphasize that the product we presented to the firefighters was 100% original content from me and my co-facilitator. We were approached because of our background in Safe Management training but none of the material translated to the workshop we presented.

We called our workshop "Take The Heat Off", as an attempt to connect what firefighters do with the emotional state that a person might be in when they're trying to deescalate them.

During our run-through, we received a lot of good feedback specifying what they were looking for. I was positively surprised at how open they were to talking about introspective topics, and how they deferred to us as experts on emotion. I had gone in thinking that these perspectives would be a hard pitch.

One thing that surprised me was that they were interested in our expertise surrounding vulnerable people generally, not just people with developmental disabilities specifically.

Overall, they seemed encouraged by our presentation and asked us to be a part of their basic training going forward. We're currently figuring out logistics, but from the request put out before us, it looks like I'll be doing about as much Take The Heat Off as I do Safe Management, at least in the immediate future.

The person in charge of training at our organization said that it went better than he ever expected.