• Sunday, 30 Jul 2023 8:00 pm

  Weeknotes 24 July

  I kicked off the week by taking Ghyll out for a couple of runs and going to a Striders speed practice. My dogs were barking to wake up the neighbours the morning after. Probably not a great way to get back into the swing of things after a triathlon. Since then, I've not felt quite myself: slightly sore, slightly achey, nose running a bit more than it usually does. I can't tell if I'm ill or just tired or if this is just what life feels like now.

  The malaise usually passes by like 11 am, depending on how many hot drinks I have in the morning.

  In Leeds

  Suitably rested (or not), I headed down to Leeds on Thursday morning for a work-related event sponsored by Salesforce. I've never been to one of these before. The novelty of receiving a little tote bag full of branded goodies excited me, and the room service carts of sweets that they rolled into the room at precisely 9:45 got the better of me for a solid 90 minutes before I could no longer look at a fizzy cola bottle, let alone consider another handful down the gullet. The workshops were interesting and the free rein that Salesforce gave us with their API-building tools encouraged hackery and exploration.

  

  Afterwards we all headed down to the Head of Steam, where a tab had been graciously opened for us. I proceeded to down pint after pint of the highest-ABV Trappist ales the Head had in their tall refrigerated cabinets. I played shuffleboard with a colleague and, however improbably, met another McGill grad. It was a fantastic day and a fantastic evening, and I wasn't even much worse for wear the following day.

  At home

  By the time the weekend arrived I'd finally built up the courage to tackle the neglected chores that had been accumulating throughout the week. In the midst thereof, I knuckled down on a project to mount Sam's bike on the wall and clear up a little space in the garage, cribbing extravagantly from our bike-repairman neighbour from a couple weeks ago.

  

  In Durham

  Sunday, Sam and I ran (well, I ran and Sam rode her bike) down to the iron railway bridge in Hart—a solid 20km round trip—to try and tire Ghyll out ahead of a date night we'd planned in Durham. We've left him for a few hours on his own before, so we knew he could take it.¹

  Ghyll tucked in and snoozing away, we stole into Durham for dinner and a show at the Durham Fringe Festival. The show was a play called Chance, about a kid growing up in crushing poverty and the ways that he tries to cope with it. Dinner was at Zen, an Asian fusion place with Thai-inspired curries right up my alley.

  

  Stray observations

  On the train to Leeds on Thursday, I finished Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger, and it was: alright. B+ material, I think. A proper book report is forthcoming.

  I also watched this video by Van Neistat (learning, only just now, that the brothers Neistat have a bit of a homebrew online empire) and was swept away by his sanguine vision of organisation at work. I've resolved to go out and buy myself a bunch of hooks and shelves.

  I'm generally pretty suspicious of characters like Neistat (any of em) who sell a lifestyle to a particular genre of white man, and I'm certainly not going to pull a Van and start writing my blog drafts on a typewriter (I left that period of my life back at uni!), but there's a certain comfort in having someone else definite your value system for you—especially when that imported value system looks so cool on YouTube!
  

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  1. Heck, the last time we left him on his own, he wasn't even at home! ↩︎

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  Chance at Durham Fringe

  A short drama at the Durham Fringe Festival about poverty in the forgotten corners of the United Kingdom hits home.

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