Melissa reminded me that this weekend last year, we were camping. I looked out at the snow outside my window and huddled deeper into my fleece bathrobe and typed back, but Easter must have been later last year. Because, you see, even though it's been a long long time of no camping, I am not so much wishing I was sitting outside shivering right now. Not when I have a kettle and a box of tea and all that.
Next, I took a wander through my own archives, to prove my point that if we went camping on Easter, Easter must have been later (Melissa, I should note, had long since lost interest in this discussion and was no longer hitting reply). And yes, yes it was later, *but*, this time last year, I *was* paddling on Lake Ontario. Which means that one of the following is happening: a) spring was warmer last year; or b) I am wimpier than I was one year ago. And while I can look up the weather record for a year ago, sure, it takes even less time to remember that the day we paddled on Lake Ontario, I was wearing my fleece-lined pogies and when we stopped for lunch I was bitterly cold because I did not have mittens (though I did have *two* toques on). Also, last spring, I went for an involuntary swim out of a canoe while it was snowing. And I happily bobbed (in drypants and drytop) in pretty cold water during rescue practice at the Snakes. Thus I can only conclude that increasing age = increasing wimpiness, at least where I'm concerned.
Harumph. This is the first instance in months that I haven't thought, things are better right now than they were one year ago. Because, despite the long silence, things in my world really *are* better than they were a year ago (and they didn't suck then either). Compared to this time a year ago, I'm in much better control of my finances, I am way more on top of my favourite project at work, I have way less nasty stuff hanging over me, I am fitter, I am slightly less fat, I see more of my sister, and I now own a fleece bathrobe.
But I'm wimpier. Crap. And I suspect Melissa would not be upset to know that I have realized this. Probably she would simply remind me that the adventure race she's doing would be a perfect way to get over that. And here is where the wimply really gets going: what if it's too cold? what if racing is not fun? Because, really: I can bike for 20km. I can paddle for 10km. I can run for 5km. I can likely do all of that in one day. I know I could brag endlessly about having completed an "adventure race". It sounds so hard core, like I would then get to write in one of the outdoorsy magazines. I could start sentences with "this one time, during an adventure race..."
Except, of course, for the "race" part of it. I *don't* race. I just... don't. Even rowing, I hated the regattas part of the whole thing, I just liked practicing hard and pushing. Entering squash tournaments was one of the contributing factors to just getting tired of that sport (well, always *losing* in squash tournaments might have had something to do with it, and playing in the bottom spot on the team all the time might have made me feel like I was not legitimately a part of the whole thing, perhaps...) The whole thought of a race takes me back to elementary school and the Canada Fitness Tests, where I could never, ever get above a silver badge because I just couldn't do more than about a second on the flexed arm hang. That flexed arm hang is the one I remember vividly (I don't remember being traumatized by the shuttle run or the sit-ups, and if there were more categories of the test, they were so non-eventful that I've already forgotten them), but that damn flexed arm hang made me hate phys ed because a bronze or a silver badge, no matter how hard you tried, made it obvious that you weren't any good. Not only that, but you could sew no good on your sleeve, like the kids with their gold and red (I don't rememer what the red was, but it was better than gold) badges had their sleeves ornamented. (In my elementary school world, you also got badges for perfect attendance and one labelled "academic" for the highest grades in your class. I got those a lot, but catch me putting *those* on my sleeve. I already had an uphill battle! I also wanted one of those two-colour knitted sweaters the other kids had in figure skating, so I could get my mother to sew the nine or ten badges I'd earned there on it, but the sweater never materialized and then I quit anyway. I would have had to do a "solo", and it was expected that you would enter said solo in competitions or at the very least do it in the recital-show-thingy the club did every year. This was nothing like hiding on the precision team, so I was out of there.)
Goody, a childhood trauma story: Johanna was bad at sports. You can rest assured that I got over my hatred of all things gym related. But! what if an adventure "race" then makes me all, oh no, I suck at adventure! No, really! I know I'm all grown up now, and there are no "loser at adventure race" badges that you either must wear or be noticed by their absence.
Clearly, I need to get over it. Maybe the solution is to re-instate a system of badges again, except on my terms. I would like a badge for being able to load my almost 18' kayak onto my car by myself without scratching kayak or car. And one for every city where the dominant language is not English and I particpate in public transportation. One for hemming pants on my own (I haven't even *started* on all the ways sewing traumatized me during my adolescence!), because that's one of the things I did today. And I'm going to want one for eliminating all of my debt within 12 months of the last month I ever paid tuition for (not there yet, but I have a pretty good shot at achieving this one). Really, just give me badges for living my life! And there is no "adventure race" badge *in* this system!
Because I am a wimp.
(For the record, if, at any point during my high school life - and if we actually had those sorts of votes - there had been a choice between "most likely to compete in an adventure race" and "most likely to get a ph.d.", I can assure you with 100% confidence that everyone I ever knew would have chosen the latter.)
Hi! How have you been?
I'm not so great with this blogging thing of late, though I don't feel bad about that. Even in the beginning, I never *wanted* a blog! I wanted to do what I was doing - talking about places I was going and stuff I was doing - but with a content management system. I wanted updating and archiving and indexing to be less painful. I liked the idea of comments. So I tried to install the then-current version of Movable Type onto my server (and screwed up, and got help from Markus and Chris Lawson to make it work). I futzed around with templates and style sheets, because I like to play with stuff like that even though I have no natural aptitude for it. I liked what I ended up with, enough to contemplate reworking the formatting on all of the older trip reports to use the same style sheets and maybe even index them using the CMS. I didn't find that so interesting, so I didn't go very far with this.
I like talking about my weekend trips. My day to day existence is filled with things and people that don't really care to hear about yet another campsite, or my progress with ski waxing, or similar. That's not a complaint, and it's not like I don't have people who are interested in all of that in my life (and you've seen many of them on these pages). I *like* it this way. I like how my life has different categories, and mostly, I don't like to talk about any category other than what I did on my goof-off time here. I have, on occasion, ranted about topics near my heart that tangentially overlap with work, but mostly, I even stay away from discussing those on-line.
So lately I've been quiet. I *have* been doing stuff outside, but not a lot. It just means that this particular part of my life is on hiatus (not for long! oh no!), and all those other things - work and interpersonal relationships and navel-gazing - they're not part of this blog. Nothing bad has been happening. I'm not sitting in some deep dark hole of depression. I'm just kind of busy. And once you get out of the habit of uploading stuff, it just seems like *so* much work, you know?
Also, there are not very many hours in the day to goof off, when it comes right down to it. My goof-off time has primarily been devoted to getting my money's worth out of my gym membership. Gyms would not make much profit if everyone got as many hours per dollar out of them (in the past three months, I'm probably at 0.75 hours / 1$ membership fee), but that will change the second it's nice enough to play outside. I think the gym is boring, and even more boring to talk about. It's just something to do to make the not-boring stuff more fun, because the things I like to do are more fun when you're fit.
Now go look at the cuteness that is my nephew, his page gets updated every day (I make two guest appearances last weekend). I'm not into babies, generally, but given how my sister is wonderful and great, it's no surprise that her baby is too (and he has a cool papa too). But Sebbie did give me this horrible cold that stole my weekend (but left me with time to update my own blog), so it's not like he's *perfect*.