Friday Five

Sure, a prompt for some reminiscing from thefridayfive...

1) What's the furthest place you've traveled to in the last 12 months?

Likely picking up chickens from Perth-ish, 75 minutes' drive away.

2) What's the most interesting small town within driving distance?

Wakefield is pretty cool, although it's fallen on hard times since the steam train shut down due to a washout of some of the track. There's Lester B. Pearson's grave, good walking, a train turntable, and lots of good hippie food.

3) What's the coolest tourist attraction in your city?

Being in the capital region there is a lot, but in Hull proper it's probably the Canadian Museum of History, which contains the Children's Museum and an IMAX theatre, built when people thought 70mm movies were a neat idea. It's an impressive building and grounds, and has a huge variety of interesting exhibits including a lot of Indigenous content and parts of buildings brought into the space. It used to be called the Museum of Civilization but the Harper Régime found that too outward-looking or didn't like civilization or something.

4) What was your favorite road trip you took as a kid?

All the New England camping trips kind of blend together, but there was one where we were camping in a lean-to and got on well with our camping neighbours and ate jalapeño chips which left an impression.

5) How often do you feel like you've got to get away?

On some small level, I try to do that daily with a walk, run or bike ride. But I do feel due for a date, a trip, a break out of the routine...

It's May already

It's been a bit of a challenging winter and spring here, as everywhere. We're all still healthy here, employed, eating eggs from the backyard hens, so not as challenging as it could be, but still.

One of my union colleagues died last weekend. Mehran was quick to welcome me aboard when I got elected to the national Research Group executive, and quick to be friendly and to do what needed doing in general. He was also curious and open and talked happily of his love of food, dance and life in between matters of helping members and being good unionists. I'll miss him; there'll be a very empty virtual chair next weekend at the Group meeting.

Work is a bit of a slog... getting traction and coordinating people is hard and tiring sometimes, and there's a lot of staff movement and random requests going around. I might be able to make some good changes in an upcoming Lean process review, which would help me feel like I'm leaving things in good shape when I find an opportunity somewhere that fits me better. The return to virtual school for the kids, extended one week at a time since Easter, has thrown my routine and energy out of wack, even though Elizabeth has been taking the brunt of the daytime parenting. I have a fair amount of extracurricular stuff going on — Positive Space is getting more active again, union work continues with consultation and a stewarding case that might have legs. Those extras are work but they help make work more meaningful. In good pandemic news, our age slices are up for registering for a first shot next week... I'm hoping for Johnson and Johnson just so I'll be done (and apparently there are 300k doses of J&J coming into Canada now, but there are some possible bumps), but any shot in my arm is a good shot.

I've been mixing running and biking for my mental health/exercise time. I'm still shooting to run and now also bike every public street with asphalt and a name — I'm over half done on the bike and nearly two-thirds on feet. I've been varying it partly because if I run long distances too many days in a row my muscles have some concerns. But overall I'm getting pretty good at this, and seeing everywhere in the Hull sector at least twice, sometimes in different seasons, has been pretty cool. I know where our favourite tofu burgers come from because I've run past the factory in an industrial park. I can see new streets and developments go up, moving the goalposts for this whole silly game.

I'm missing seeing my Vanier loves in person — we've got our stopgaps — virtual D&D, grove rituals (happy Beltaine!), video storytime (Heather has finished the first book of Lord of the Rings with the kids) and various one-on-one chats. I used to do walk-and-talk after the kids were in bed by phone, but the 8 PM curfew has made that harder. Once the restrictions are loosened maybe walking and talking in person will be a thing again.