The "Before I Die I Want to . . ." Wall

Despite having half-shot hips and knees, I kept to my commitment of making the distance mandated by my running programme yesterday morning (I’m aching terribly from it today). It was a lovely day, and getting hot. I started out a little bit later than I really should have. More people than usual were circulating and amassing along the trails and the banks of the river to watch the Dragon Boat races that were taking place that day.

For my longer runs, I often pick a route that passes along the trail cutting through River Landing, but yesterday was the first time I noticed a special feature put on the vertical face of the north bank pylon of the Sid Buckwold Bridge as I ran under it. I don’t know when it appeared but it must have been recent, and out of all of Saskatoon’s bridges this is the only one I saw it on. If it was up there for very long, I’m embarrassed to admit how oblivious I've been to it for all this time. It would be due to me usually having eyes front focused or tunnel vision when I’m exerting myself. However, this time I was stopped in my tracks because the message of it was very bold, striking, and profound. It was sort of a public message board that we as citizens could contribute to, with a very distinctive theme. It was simply a ruled blackboard with an open ended, fill-in-the-blank statement . . .

 

Curiosity led me to stop and linger around there for a while to see what was listed there. It’s interesting what people will dare to put there when they can do it in anonymity. There was no chalk around to make my contribution though. I wondered if this is a feature unique to our city, or if this is part of some grander movement around the country, or globally. If it is national or global, I’d be quite interested to see what differences and similarities there are in the types of wishes people write out.

In a sociological perspective, if this is a genuinely accurate sample of what goes on in the heads of people in this city, from what I could judge from the collective wish statements made on there, I must say that generally the people of Saskatoon are:

·         Not too materialistic, which is nice to see. There weren’t many, if any, wishes for wealth, cars and mansions, or owning other such finery. I saw one statement about winning a lottery but that was about all that struck me. The luxuries our citizens mostly listed was about freedoms and experiences that they wanted to have, like traveling abroad, “to retire”. There were lots of intangible things up there too, like “to fall in love”, “find my soulmate”,

·         There weren’t as many vulgar, low-brow scribblings up there as I expected. In such a public place with a node of contact with a high property crime/economically disadvantaged area, I thought there would be a lot more content on there that would be there more the sake of defacing it rather than serving to expound good intent. One example of the low-brow stuff was “get stoned with Snoop Dog”, but for every one stupid statement like that, it was countered by a lot more noble stuff, like “learn another language”, “get my Ph.D.”, “starting a business”, “to see my great grandchildren”, etc.

·         I was expecting more levity and humour like, “see the Toronto Maple Leafs win a Stanley Cup”, but that wasn’t the mood of this monument of our city’s residents. It was more serious, but a positive sort of seriousness. There were very few messages of desperation (maybe the Leafs comment counts as one though). The only one that stuck out for me was “to stop living in Hell!”

·         Lots of wishes and pleas for grander designs of positive social/environmental change, like “to be free from fossil fuels”, “see the end of global poverty”

I don’t know if this wall of wishes gets periodically washed down, recovering and renewing space for other people to add more things. There is a comfort in knowing that there is a lot there already that I have in common with some other souls out there. With facing my own mortality some while ago, its big message gives me pause for thought about it. There is a lot that is left that’s undone. I am left to wonder what I have that is not on there, and is unique for me.

I do know that I will be running by there more often to read it and to see if there are any more additions and changes. Perhaps I’ll make it a point to run over there with my own piece of chalk next time.

Holiday Planning (Plan B)

Well, any plans to go up North for a brief sabbatical have gone up in smoke, quite literally. The last entry I made about the fire risk situation was purely speculative. The reality of it happened the day after I posted it. I hate that I'm not only right in seeing the chain of cause and effect of disaster scenarios a little too vividly, but the severity of the situation is hitting too close to home, even though the real action is happening 400 kilometres away. The next day, I woke up that morning to find this whole city enshrouded with smoke that drifted in from forest fires around Lac La Ronge and area. Weather maps are showing the smoke extending and drifting right down to the US border. The air quality is bad here, and undoubtedly gets worse as one heads northward. This is the worst I’ve ever seen it around here for smoke accumulation from northern wildfires in all the years I've lived in the province. It’s so thick that I can’t even see the river valley from my place anymore; which is only a block and a half away. The weird, mad scientist, side of me was wondering and curious to know how long it would take for a slab of pork belly to cure and turn into a side of bacon if I hung one on my balcony. I better just keep writing before I start following up on an impulse to experiment with such crazy ideas.

The rain that was supposed to come today to help settle this didn’t come. I suppose I just have to comfort and placate myself with thoughts that align with “it could be worse”. As in: it could be worse . . . I could have reserved and made a financial commitment for a campsite up there earlier this year, and not be able to use it, or went up there earlier before this happened only to be forced back with an immediate evacuation, or it could be worse . . . I could be like the poor devils who are stranded up there losing their homes or property. As much as I’m complaining and agonizing about making a decision as whether or not to get away from here for my leisure, I’m at least not in a place where I have no choice but to evacuate, and forced to leave my home and all my possessions behind, with the sense of dread and uncertainty as to whether or not I’ll ever see them again. I would suppose that’s naturally what’s happening to the people in any one of the communities located near where any one of the hundreds of wildfires have been burning now in this province during this season.

So, my holiday plans have changed again; it’s not like any were set in stone anyway. Every place within all the corners of the “land of the living skies” is now fully immersed in a gagging, sun-blocking, dull, grey, haze. So, now it is pointless to go anywhere for a driving daytrip if this doesn’t clear up soon, because it is now all encompassing and there is just no way to escape it. After all this enduring and working through it, I’ve just nicely started regaining the full use of my lungs after struggling for six and a half months. I’m not going to now start sabotaging myself or foolishly sacrificing all that time of my progress by spending extra time outside camping and downscaling my shelter by tenting around and inhaling unbreathable air, alone at a place far away from medical aid. The risk versus the reward scenario kind of sours onto the side of the negative. It looks like it might be a staycation after all*. The onus is on me to try to somehow find those moments, make them count, and make things fun and interesting.

I almost forgot that I keep other lists and notes of ideas for times like these, and dug through stuff I wrote out on paper and digitally. My bit of recreational therapy theory is this: to get the most out of the time off, one has to directly substitute one’s typical work shift hours during the course of a day with only leisure activity, no exceptions! Since I work evenings, that relegates me to maximize my leisure time between 3:00 PM and 11:00 PM. I suppose it’s an opportunity to have some sort of social life like everyone else. That alone is both enough of a novelty and culture shock for me nowadays. Like being air dropped into the middle of some country where you don't speak the language, naked and without any money, and being expected to make something of yourself. 

It might be a good time too to try out something that I’ve never really adjusted well to: being pampered. Living alone, training with a soldier’s discipline and a monk’s patience with running, enduring and dealing with afflictions and injuries alone, constantly working to achieve self-sufficiency and independence, and being the sole provider for oneself with a sort of hunter-gatherer/survivalist mentality: it kind of sways and steers one far and clear away from that opposite end of the spectrum where anything involving “getting pampered” is found**. I’m sure it would be like a weird and alien experience for me.  I don’t know yet what that would even specifically entail the context of a vacation or holiday (which I could speak candidly about).

After reviewing, here’s what I’m thinking to do for myself thus far:

·         Continue with following my running and cross training program in the mornings

·         Do absolutely nothing that looks like work or chores after 3:00 PM

·         Book a massage, just for the sake of preventive measures (as opposed to opting to get one after getting physically buggered up)

·         Make a theme with an objective, for example, trying out the craft beers in all the brewpubs in this town

·         Take some kind of daytrip once the smoke clears, and hightail it out of town like I was on a jailbreak

·         Make no further effort to blog or post about the experiences along the way. Be less concerned about using precious time for writing, recording, and composing, and try just living for a change. This stuff will be just for me.

*- It does seem a little clearer now, and I smell less smoke; I wonder though if it’s because it is actually dissipating, or if my olfactory nerves have just become so saturated than I can’t detect it anymore.

**- There is about a 7% chance that Ella might fetch me one of my socks for me while I’m dressing if I ask her to. That’s about as good as pampering gets for me in my place.

Post Summer Solstice Holiday Planning

It is Saturday evening of the first weekend after the Summer Solstice. The Jazz Fest is on, but 12 kilometres of running in today’s heat left me a bit too weary to check it out tonight. It’s still too hot to sleep, so I’ve been sitting outside trying to cool down with a refreshing libation, and doing some self-assessing. It finally feels like I’m at least approaching the threshold of my fitter self. I’ve made a stronger commitment to train for running and to eat better since this month began. Maybe I don’t yet look it, but I’m finally starting to feel leaner and a bit lighter. I was comparing notes of the way I was close to this time in the season last year in another entry with how I’ve been feeling now, and I suppose also to find and remind myself of some motivators (Re-Motivating for More Clicks). By their comparisons, I still have some more healing and work to do.

As it is now, one small thing of novelty that I’m enjoying, and that is motivating me while I run, is a new set of Bluetooth wireless headphones. I love them. I bought them with a gift card I won in a draw. Knowing that I got them for free also puts a spring in my step. Listening to my progress stats, podcasts, and music without a bothersome cord dangling and tangling all around me admittedly is a nice liberating convenience. The only other bothersome thing to lose that’s flipping and flopping in front of me is whatever gut and man-boobs that I have left that were starting to sprout up after such a miserably idle and crippling winter/spring. Sorry for that tidbit of TMI, but in another couple weeks at this pace they’ll hopefully be absent as well. The more pressing need now is the conditioning and improvement of performance of my lungs and heart. If I don’t get those back, all else is in vain. They do seem to be getting better though, thankfully.

My other technical indulgence that I’ve been really liking is my new tablet computer, which I’ve been noodling around with and using to write this entry. I don’t know why I didn’t think of getting something like this sooner. It’s weird that my non-tech-savvy parents have had one of these long before I did. It is that perfect thing for times when lugging around a laptop is too cumbersome, or when a smart-phone app seems too miniscule and straining to my eyes. I also really hate typing with my thumbs. The touchscreen stylus mode it has is quicker and easier for me to interface than typing. When I get too bogged down by the wretched task using of my hunt and peck style of typing it limits and impairs my flow of thought and natural expression. I’m amazed to see that this thing can even decipher my chicken scratch! I’ve tested it to the degree of trying to fool it with using special characters [$, €, ¢, £,] and it seems to know its shit. What it doesn’t register very well though is accent marks, like umlauts and various others (á, ä, å, â, etc.). It is exactly the gizmo I’d want to have with me should I ever wish to commit to exploring the other grand things I’ve been scheming.

The scheming I’m referring to is a result of a harsh realization. Last week, on a day reserved for cross-training, I took a long walk up to Nutana, and made time to rendezvous with my friend for coffee. The last thing she asked me about in our conversation was how I was going to spend my holiday time for the year. I honestly had no answer for her about that. I was embarrassed to admit that I had already cancelled some vacation time I had booked off to attend some other Union affairs. I started to get uneasy thinking about it. The whole downhill slide with my health has been no doubt due to a failure to look after my own interests and needs. Constantly sacrificing my personal holiday time and energy for fixing problems and other things I see as bigger than me, or not making an effort to do anything meaningful with time off is all part of the same pattern. I realize that even after a serious brush with something nearly fatal months ago hasn’t really smartened me up to make better choices and use of my free time. I suppose (know) I was trapped in a malaise of not feeling my personal best to really find energy and stamina to do other such things beyond work, but now as this is starting to change; so is my attitude. I already snuck into a couple travel agencies to piece together some sort of package for stuff related to the sorts of things I noted in The Dream Circuits entry. That’s for a long term plan; right now I’m trying to plan on something more immediate for a getaway.

Canada Day is coming soon, and I have a week off for holidays. Both instinct and desperation are telling me to hit the road for a while, even if it’s just a daytrip to some place novel, now that my car is fixed and more roadworthy. As tempted as I am to stay put and save up more money for a proper flyaway vacation, I realize that’s just another way of squandering away precious time.

As for now, my compass needle is still spinning. I still don’t know where it is that I’ll be heading to; I do know I won’t be crossing the border to the states. It also seems senseless to plan to do any camping up North with the fire bans and random evacuation warnings happening because of the wildfires. There is still no rain in the forecast for that week, so the risks are just increasing as it gets drier. There are plenty of other crazy little sight-seeing objectives to target within the province that I haven’t seen yet. However, they are scattered all about. So, it’s unlikely that I’ll know what my tour plan will be until the last second before I leave.

On the bright side, spontaneity always makes things interesting.

The Marathon Itch

Since the end of April, I’ve been trying to exercise again, but I’ve been hit with more stumbling blocks. I’m at least cycling again to a normal speed and pace, but my endurance is still lacking. I’m guessing that my lungs give out at around 75% of what their normal past efficiency was. Damned pulmonary scar tissues are still being a nuisance to me. Cycling has been the only hardcore physical cardio activity I’ve been able to tolerate throughout the month, as there is less shock from it. Back pain due to a pinched nerve for the past few weeks has limited me to just that. Of course, this impedance restricted my ability to run. However, I’m finally feeling like I’ve recovered from that. All this while, it has been aching me to see so many people out there running, yet I couldn’t be among them.

I went to the Saskatchewan Marathon Expo yesterday. I wasn’t registered, but I was collecting a race package for someone who was. When I arrived at the Expo and reached the bike valet station, I was given a ticket with the big bold number of 007. It was a reminder that I had the smarts, discipline, and resilience before to adopt the “Bond” attitude before, and I’m sure I could put myself back in that place again. As I was cycling back home the downtown, I was lost in thought about what it will take to put me back into the shape my former self was in, and what kind of time and energy I could devote to it. I now have a goal, but I needed real science and numbers and figures to help guide me. So, like James Bond, I decided to scope out some of the course of the Saskatchewan Marathon, and covertly follow and use some real people as targets to assess some realistic metrics and information to fashion some running hacks.
I could hear the ruckus and commotion of the setting up of the Marathon all the way from the Exhibition grounds where the race starts this morning. The dog and I walked towards the starting gate, and I used the GPS on my phone and the stopwatch to get some data. Here is what I tracked down and found:

·         The stretch along St. Henry Avenue between the corners of Ruth and Hilliard is 0.211 km: that’s exactly 1/100^th of the distance of a half marathon (1/200^th of a full one). That’s convenient and useful for making a quick mental tachymeter calculation when I’m running through that section of street.

·         I found a target guy amongst the runners who was about my height, age, weight and build. I timed him and followed him between those two points. (1’ 52.62”, or 112.62 seconds)

·         Voila, I have what I need to determine realistic average target pace, at least initially.

·         Now, calculate that time and distance to a time/km figure for my slowest LDR pace (8’ 53.4”/km), and then go for a run try to hold that pace, and see how far I can get before pulmonary fatigue kicks in to get a baseline. I use that to work on extending my distance beyond that, progressively working up to the 21.1 km mark, and try and not to get too hung up on going faster.

I went for a trial run later after breakfast, which took me through some of the Marathon course. It was great to use the open road for a course way, and even though I wasn’t part of the race, the cheering bystanders were very motivating.

Siesta Fiesta (Part 2: Having a Fit)

I'm so glad for the 180 degree change in weather status since the weekend. It allowed me to move my

An exploded view of my
joinery system

mass of lumber and dirty business outside and continue on with my initial project in the sunshine. The hammock stand project has gone through a few dozen mental revisions, and I've had enough slight mishaps and mistakes occur to educate me a little better, nothing so serious that couldn't be corrected with a little innovation. In fact, some were welcome; they helped make me see a clearer vision of a version that would satisfy my earlier stated objectives. It actually made me see how I could make a convertible setup with just a changing some parts which can make two versions of a frame setup. They are:

Version #1 – The original double-mast version. The one made for being used for camping and the like. It's the form I'm working on now. So far, all the segments I cut can fit in the trunk of the car; so I reached the second objective.

Version #2- The deck version. A version that saves even more deck space, and requires the need of

The above pieces put together to make
a bracing point at one end of the frame

only a single mast point. The plan I have in mind still conforms to my first constraint of having no permanent attachment to the exterior of the building. This version technically requires even less material than that of my original plan, thus passes the imperative of approaching the goal of using dMass (I may have to borrow that spare wood to make corrections).

My greatest successes at this point are:

• Minimum of actual numerical measurement – I've only used my measuring tape about nine times. That was mostly just to get a rough overall assessment of how large it was going to be. The actual fabrication was done mostly by using a bevel gauge, a marking gauge, the straight edges of a roofing/combination square, and edges of the cut wood itself. This yielded for me . . .
• Making the snuggest, tightest tenons that I've ever made using soft wood. I'm impressed that I've worked myself up to having this sort of skill with mere hand tools
• Except for carabiners and eye screws attached to the hammock, it still no nails or fasteners holding the frame structure together
• Inclusion of a middle extender piece, to adjust by replacement of only one section of wood to account for the hammock fabric getting stretched, or if the hammock itself gets damaged and needs to be replaced entirely
• Only one cut/splinter so far*

The mishaps and failures so far are:

• Making the snuggest, tightest tenons that I've ever made with soft wood. I'm concerned about them being so tight that the extra strain may cause splitting and cracking around some critical pressure points on the frame. I have yet to test it out. The super-tight joints and mortises also keep my objective of an easily collapsible system (with a couple whacks of a hammer) for the sake of storage from being realized.
• A rapidly dulling ryoba saw that is finding too many knots in the wood. I noticed too late that some sections between some larger knots have looser wood fibre and would have an easier tendency to crack. I may have to dip into my reserve and buy some extra lumber to correct for these defects.
• I made my mast tenons perhaps too narrow. I think I need to fashion some sort of reinforcement struts as a correction. So much for the idea of tensegrity
• I made a poor choice for the kind of joint to use to bind a middle extender segment. This "bird's mouth" with locking pin set up wasn't a good idea, plus a loose knot I exposed now makes it inadequate. It is at least correctable, and there is enough of an end to spare to fashion another more stronger configuration
• 
  

  

  One of my boo-boo's

  I actually needed a power tool; specifically, a drill to bore some pilot holes for eye screws. I'm thankful that I have a kind neighbour who allowed me to borrow his.

So, I'm still stuck with doing these revisions and corrections piecemeal, and I'm not finished this yet. I guess there will be a part three . . .

What it will look like once finished.
Ella is in the background, awaiting the
chance to test this thing out.

*- I've discovered the hard way that while on blood-thinners, a simple brush with one small saw tooth on a fingertip can make the place look like a murder scene. I hope to be off these things by this month.

Siesta Fiesta (Part 1)

The weather has taken a despicable turn, with the arrival of an awful 20 centimeter dump of wet snow for the weekend that is plastering up everything. Even though the radical change in the scenery outside makes it look like a perfect weekend for people to want to start decorating their own necks with tight nooses, it has not deterred me from starting a project related to anticipating and enjoying a warmer and more temperate season. . . if it ever comes. My place is getting festooned with stray wood chips and sawdust anyway, so the remaining spring cleaning can wait.

On my first attempt at it (an exercise of futility in retrospect) a week ago, I began poking through some forgotten corners of my storage nooks in my home, and then dared to check outside though the chaotic mess in one spot of my deck space where other bulky and dirty random stuff is stowed. Another past eight months of neglect over the winter didn't make it look any prettier. There is over 1.5 hectoliters* of nutrient depleted, possibly blight and mold spore contaminated potting soil and peat moss to get rid of, along with various other miscellaneous useless implements. It's all stuff that no longer serves me well here. Four consecutive seasons of attempting container gardening up here, all of them yielding disappointing and fruitless results, is enough. Ridding myself of the clutter would free up between three and four cubic meters of space. Now, I'm just trying to figure out what to keep and possibly re-purpose, and what to pitch out as trash.

This is my favorite frame design I found on Pintrest so far:
I wish I were so talented to carve a ship's figurehead like this
one. Once I finish mine, I believe I shall christen it . . .
The S.S. Lazy Ass . . .  S.S. as in "siesta sling" 

What I did recover from probing around in my inside storage was the nice handcrafted hammock that I bought over 15 years ago when I traveled in South America. I almost forgot I still had this. For all this time, I never had the right living space nor found the time to hang it up right and use it. The trees in the back yard of my last dwelling were too far apart for a rope rigged system, and I never troubled myself to find or make a decent frame for it. Now, I decided not to let this fine hammock go to waste; so after a bit of cleaning up and space reclamation, I thought I might actually be able to set it up outside on my deck now. I can't get ready for the siesta just yet. There is some work to do. I just need a proper frame for it; hence my new carpentry project. Because of my particular spatial constraints and limitations, it has to be custom built. Pinterest and other sites gave me ideas, but nothing I found was 100% satisfactory for my needs. I have the following considerations to abide by, plus some other objectives that I want to aim for:

• It can neither be physically mounted onto the exterior of the building, nor to the support beams of the deck above me (condominium regulations)
• It has to be portable and as compact as physically possible, such that when disassembled all the components could easily fit into the trunk of my car, or stored in my closet over winter.
• Easy to (dis)assemble at a moment's notice, simply with just a couple of taps of a hammer if possible; thus . . .
• No fasteners like nails, screws, nuts, or bolts**: instead I'll opt to creatively use mortises and tenons, notching and other special tricks with custom joinery.
• The use of the principle of dMass***: the most minimal use of material that achieves an optimal amount of support to hold the weight of me (and the dog)
• Usage of tensegrity***, i.e. the dispersion of stress put on one part of the system, that can be used to provide support within it. So in theory, adding more weight to the hammock would actually make the frame structurally stronger (aside from the strain of what the weakest points of the material used can handle).
• Using local Canadian homegrown lumber, and other such material
• Just as an added special challenge, to stay within a budget of . . . $40.00 ****

It also has to be feasible to make with the tools I already have, which are all hand tools. I have

The only tools I've needed thus far.

nothing against using power tools; I just don't covet them. Hand tools are cheaper, they are relatively easier to control. They are more compact; lending to less bulkiness to store. Plus, they work everywhere, whereas power tools are useless when working in a spot without an electrical outlet (or a bulky, fuel-slurping generator). I see no sense or justification in spending extra hundreds of dollars on things that rob me of more of my space, and when I only have enough time to commit to one or two small projects in a year. My respect for hand tool craftsmanship goes back to the days of working as a cataloguer in a museum, and seeing specimens and the variety of examples of antique furniture made long before the advent of electricity and power tools; things that can be accomplished and produced with the mindful use of just a simple hand saw, a square, a plane, and a hammer and chisel. Another thing that I'm utterly enthralled with is the craft of traditional Japanese carpentry: more specifically, their discipline and techniques of forming joinery. It has a splendid geometrical precision; yet isn't

My best hand-crafted mortis and tenon so far using soft wood,
I don't think I could have done this well by using power tools. 

primarily based on taking numeral measurements. It stems more from following and forming on the character of the wood being worked with itself. Carpenters of their tradition have fashioned some of the oldest wooden structures still in existence, some temples and other historical buildings being over a thousand years old, lasting in a country with a high frequency of earthquakes; their support structures all built without using nails or other metal fasteners.

I took a long enough break to examine and rethink my process. More to come later. . .

*- That's 150 liters, or 5.3 cubic feet for the benefit of you non-metric Neanderthals.
** - Actually, I lied. I'll need a couple of eye screws, along with a couple of quick release carabiners for each mast point. I could do the same job with rope or heavy cord, but the carabiners would allow me to pack things up quickly if it starts raining instead of wasting time untying fancy hitches and knots. This weekend's snow was the prompt for this decision.
***- Do yourself a favour: read up on the work of the visionary, R. Buckminster Fuller.
****- Just because it is a sum of money I already saved as change from my SARCAN returns since the beginning of spring. It was $30.00 initially, but I included allowing myself ten bucks to spare to buy some extra "boo-boo boards", just because I know I'll have a high likelihood of having a mishap or making a mistake. Watching a passive collection of waste getting transformed into an energy-event/resource of exploitable value is a beautiful thing to see happen.

Time and Lifestyle Revision

Making an entry just before, during, or shortly after the Spring Equinox rolls around has become an annual habit for me. However, I have nothing exceptionally notable to speak of about it though, because winter continues to domineer, pushing spring out of the picture. The only significant thing going on with me since my last entry is adapting to new rigours and cycles of a full-time position line. New freedoms, gains, and openings for opportunities are countered with just as many new restrictions, disadvantages, and losses. The positives and negatives have been balancing themselves out to a zero sum after putting weight to them. I can't get too comfortable with this because it seems that things are in the works where I'll have to make more re-adjustments to my life on account of a new schedule coming to play. Any previous plans and changes I made to organize my own calendar for the rest of the year have all been in vain. I'm stuck now with the dilemma of trying to decide which new line would best suit me, and what I'll have to book off just for the sake of bargaining in the near future. I'm not going to comment anymore about it. My comments and criticisms about my job stay at my job. I can only say that I'm trying my best to not allow what is bad to become worse. My writing time here is for honing my lexical sword; to clear my head and escape from work related stuff rather than get more absorbed in it.

I drift now to being thankful for any schedule stability, and to the subject of "time" in general. I reflect on how hellishly complicated it was back in the day of tracking of my part-time/casual activity: to formulate and re-formulate equations that calculate time for automating the schedules in a spreadsheet, and how lucky I am for not to get swamped with dealing with that situation again. Even with a substantial set of intricate pre-formatted functions to use in Excel, it still is tricky business that totally warps the mind, with all the multi-variable base unit/numeral conversions, fourth and fifth degree nested conditionals, and other weird and sloppy things involving Boolean algebra that I formulated, all for the sake of it having some veneer of something customized that looks outwardly "simple". I confess, I've had several brushes of coming close to buying a one way ticket to Loonyville while trying to program such a thing. It was like the modern equivalent of handling that legendary ancient book of secrets in alchemy which supposedly drives a person irreversibly crazy if one attempts to read more than one page of it at one sitting while trying to pursue such intellectual prowess.

One remnant of eccentric appreciation I gained after doing such a feat was thinking about alternative ways to measure time. Working at unconventional hours already prompts me to think about time in stranger metrics by default, but messing around with various time calculations accentuated it. I worked in a scheduling office, where I was responsible for overseeing multiple streams of time. I frequently ponder time-related thought experiments perhaps more than most: some realistic, some nonsensical, involving time zones, especially while I travel on long trips. Time travel science fiction intrigues me. Although I rarely choose to wear a watch, I've become an amateur virtual horologist: a mental collector of watches*. I developed a fancy for those with unique dials, settings, complications, and readouts. Maybe it stems from an inherited taste for such things, as one of my Dad's hobbies is making clocks. However, he just prefers to work on the casings rather than dealing with the instrumentation. My own obsession with time has been further provoked with the will to start running again, and with my own recent trial of fixing my own battered sports watch by cannibalizing pieces from another of the same make. ** I'm also one of those weirdos who has an instinctual practical understanding of how the tachymeter dial actually works on the bezel of a high end timepiece, beyond it just being decorative. Of course, such a feature is rendered now obsolete with GPS-equipped cellphones and sports watches. Given that digital chronometric precision is getting cheaper, and with the functionality and multi-tasking of what a wristwatch, like the new Apple watch, can do today, it makes opting to wear an analog watch seem as anachronistic as wearing a top hat and spats.***

But I still love classic watches. It's the only fashion accessory/jewelry I would bother with wearing****. I remember how getting a watch for my twelfth birthday made me feel a little more manly and mature, because it felt like I had to be more responsible with minding the time: something that a kid doesn't normally have to do. And given that I've been quite preoccupied with the subject of time as of late, I thought I would share at least one example of a watch that is in my mental inventory that I would indeed consider getting in material form; one of them that is perhaps an honest reflection of my character in both form and function. Is it a Rolex? An Omega, or a Cartier? Nope, far from it. Those ones I mentioned are nice and elegant, but I don't believe in putting on airs to display some sort of pretentious bullshit elitism. Is it the equivalent of a Swiss Army knife in terms of number of functions? Again, nope. My watch of choice is more like the AK-47 assault rifle of wrist watches*****. It is a Russian model, or to be more accurate, a Soviet model. The watch I'm talking about at first seems rather plain, but yet it is incredibly unique in looks and function. It is surprisingly very low-tech in comparison, and yet durable enough to endure the ends of the Earth . . . literally, in two different meanings.
 


A model with cities as time zone
markers. Luckily, I can read Cyrillic.

The timepiece I'm mentioning was initially especially designed for submariners, and for enduring scientific expeditions in the Arctic/Antarctic. It is unique in that the dial is a representation of the actual 24 hour day. It isn't powered by any fancy-schmancy long-life batteries, or a solar cell, or eco-drive technology. You have to physically wind it like an old time pocket watch. It sounds stupidly primitive, but it comes to be truly practical when you're stranded in a remote polar region, or stuck in a metal tube undersea for months: environments with little or no light for a solar cell. Whether you're under the ocean depths, or near one of the poles of the world, thousands of kilometers away from a convenient place to shop for a replacement battery for a more modern/digital/smart watch, this feature is seems pretty sensible. The other practical, yet ominous, advantage about having a wind-up watch, is that as a submarine crewman: someone who is responsible for either delivering, or being a target of, some big bad nuclear boom-booms, is that a battery powered watch becomes useless once it's struck by the electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) from an atomic blast, while a hand wound one doesn't. If a watch is designed to survive and work through Armageddon, it might be able to endure the rigours I can put a watch through. The unconventional 24 hour dial face also has advantages. It makes calculating differences in time zones easier to do at a glance. When one has to be responsible for tracking military activity and communications of a nation that spans across 11 time zones, or computing targets in an entire hemisphere, it's kind of an important feature to have. The polar advantage is that you don't have to pull off mitts to press buttons to get such a reading. If you are wandering around somewhere remote and then get lost, the watch can also serve as a crude compass, at least during daytime. It is conveniently configured such that the hour hand follows the sun, so point the hour hand towards there and then the 24 hour mark on the dial points to the north (the 12 noon mark points south). Given what I already said, this is exactly the kind of watch you'd want to have if you are enduring a zombie apocalypse or something.



The Submariner Model

I'm certainly not appreciative, or waxing nostalgic, about the time when Communism was a dominant force in this world and a real threat to be reckoned with; me liking this watch this isn't at all an endorsement of that. However, I am appreciative of the ways where low-tech stuff has a practical use and a place, and I'm respectful of common sense and the power of how far one can go by taking a seemingly counter-intuitive action by designing for simplicity in response to some things. Sometimes we get too caught up in the pissing contest of over-developing technology to do simple things, and to be over-reliant on it can come to the point where it becomes almost shameful and embarrassing. For example, back in the days of the space race, the Americans spent a hefty sum and used a lot of engineering manpower to develop a pen that could write in zero gravity. The Russians used their own approach to solving this writing implement problem . . . it was called, "using a pencil".

*- Watches have a short live span whenever I wear them. The one actual, non-sports watch that I do have is 14 years old and I've replaced the band on it four times already. I see no need to put them through abuse unnecessarily, and it would just be wasteful and covetous to keep hoarding them as material things. It is enough that I have a large inventory of the ones I like in my mind alone.
**- I was unsuccessful. I neither the tools, nor keen eyesight, nor steady hands for such a repair. An eleven dollar purchase from Amazon may help with this. It beats getting another $170.00 plus smart watch. Frugality rules!
***-My apologies to those who like Mr. Peanut and Scrooge McDuck.
****- Watch Pulp Fiction again to understand how important the sentimentally of a watch is for some men.
*****- A related entry, The Thing That's Too Well Built..