The Un-Blogged Winter

Someone asked me recently why I blog. I guess I have always interested in writing a diary/journal and have a bunch of half filled books where I recorded ideas and thoughts by hand.  It is just easier to keep track of this stuff online and you can edit and add graphics. I am also using it as an exercise in creative writing. I have a back-burner interest in writing novels, although the recent developments in machine learning are making some of my science fiction plots obsolete. I think the fact that it is public makes me take it a bit more seriously. I think it also makes me a better person, as I wonder what people would think of me if I wrote about what I was doing here. I don't need everyone to like me (luckily!) and I don't always do the right thing (I do try) but I want to live my life without hiding my actions or feelings.

There has been a gap in the blog this Winter. I have had a hard time finding the mental energy over the last few months. My professional work suffered as well, at least the research I had to motivate myself. I am just coming out of that funk now. Sometimes it is hard to recognize your own inner workings, but in this case it is pretty simple: the divorce was finalized this past November. Although the relationship was clearly dead quite a few years ago, and everyone is happier now, and I have a relationship with my son again, and a new and quite wonderful romance... having a 30+ year partnership end is something that takes some time to wrap your head around. I was with her most of my adult life. I guess I am just coming to terms with it now, or trying to.

But I did have some things this winter worth blogging about and I will collect them in this post. I made some pottery at UBC (left) and at the class I often take at Britannia (right). This was in the Fall, I kind of lost my way for a few months in there and then picked up again just a few weeks ago.

       

Over Christmas I visited my Dad in Kamloops. He was 90, 91 now, still healthy and sharp. I was glad to spend the time with him. He lives in a townhouse complex in the Aberdeen neighbourhood. If you walk up the hill from his complex there is a wonderful walking trail loop. I thought these frost covered stalks were worth taking a picture of.

I took up cross-country skiing. Well, that was the plan. I went once and tried and failed to get lessons and ended up falling and hurting myself. I went back and did show-shoeing instead, with no falling. This was all at Cypress Mountain in North Vancouver, which is easy to get to from our apartment. I went a second time with Veronica.

    




The beautiful hat is from the time I went on my own. This is the hat that made Veronica remark, "I could never sleep with a man that wore that hat".  I hope it is OK that I wore it but she didn't see.

For Veronica's birthday her daughter organized a trip to an Escape Room. As it was described to me (a room full of puzzles you solve with a time limit) I wasn't really into it, but went along because it was the right thing to do. Anyway, it was really fun. The one we went to (in International Village) had a magic/time-travel aspect so that really hit my buttons. We didn't finish but got through some puzzles. Veronica's daughter was our power player.

One of the most exciting things to happen was that Veronica's daughter had her own daughter just a few weeks ago. She and her husband live in the same building as us, so Veronica gets to spend a lot of time with the new baby and is pretty happy about it. Veronica is a grandmother now, but a sexy grandmother.