Rae Roy's Blog, page 78

Merry Monday – Demos, Movies, and Early Birthday Fun

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This weekend was fairly packed. Friday brought a lovely thunderstorm. I spent the early part of the weekend custom-painting my sword bag and watching the Harry Potter movies since it was rainy. I’ve been a little down lately and those movies always make me feel better. I’ll post a pic of the bag once it’s done. I’m really excited about it!

On Saturday, I dragged my butt out of my house to get some things to bake myself a gluten free birthday cake. I got the boxed kind because I’ve had too many bad experiences with gluten free baking in recent years and wanted something edible. The golden cake was just OK for me. Next time I’ll try a different brand, I think. I was bringing the cake to a friend’s on Sunday anyway and didn’t feel like experimenting on them. Maybe next time, though.

Oh, tomorrow is my birthday. The big 3-5. It’s been a pretty good year. Perhaps this is the age I will remain because I’m supposed to start lying about that sometime, right?

Yes, I brought my own birthday cake to a friend’s. It was our monthly B-Movie Club event and just happened to be right near my birthday. I wanted cake but didn’t want to eat a whole one myself. I’ve gained a slight bit of weight since I’ve been able to reintegrate a lot of foods back into my life. Too much pizza and ice cream lately. Man, I missed cheese. We watched 90210 Shark Attack. It was pretty awful. They needed to show every step each actor took, the dialogue was bad and delivered worse, and the plot was also predictable. But that’s the fun of B-Movies.

Oh and I should’ve known there was no point in trying to blow out candles. I failed pretty well at it during lung function testing earlier this year.

On Sunday, before movie club, my dojo did a demonstration of the martial arts we practice at the 2016 Japanese Festival. I was a little nervous as I was doing more than I normally do for this annual event.

I’ve also been taken in by Pokémon Go. I think someone else was playing at lunch today judging by our cell phone usage. We exchanged knowing glances. Gotta catch ’em all.

I’ll talk about Pokémon Go some more, later this week. Until then, don’t drive and battle.

Ciao,

R~

Fortifying Friday: Week of July 8, 2016

I cannot imagine what it is like to be a black person this week. Not in the slightest. I look around my neighbourhood and see young black men waiting for the bus to go to school and I wonder how they can muster up the courage to go outside at all. It shouldn’t be this way. They shouldn’t have to worry that a trip to the grocery store will end up in death. My black friends shouldn’t have to worry that their sons will be killed for buying diapers someday. No one should. Something has to change. I think this video needs to go viral.

The killing of people because of race or religion has to stop. Why? To quote Prime Minister Trudeau, “Because it’s 2016!”

Funky Friday is no more. I believe something different is called for. Not simply sharing of news stories, but sharing news that inspires hope for the future. I want to highlight the good things that aren’t getting enough coverage. This is in no way to diminish the seriously awful things that are happening. To quote JK Rowling, “Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”

I want more light and less dark. I hope to light a fire of good change. Let’s kaizen this world a little at a time.

Personal

My month of love poetry is going well.
I am no longer sensitive to dairy, eggs, or yeast and am eating/drinking everything but gluten and carbonated drinks.

 

Canada

Syrian girl is thankful to be in Canada.
Prime Minister Trudeau marches in Pride Parade.

 

US

Police officers buy food for a family in need.
Trucker protects stranded biker.
Powerball winners are giving back to community.
Capes made by kids for homeless children.
Boy prays with and for policemen to stay safe.

 

World

New technology allows those who can’t speak, a voice.
Aussie dogs are preventing the extinction of a certain penguin.
British children performing random acts of kindness.

 

Ciao,

R~

Thoughtful Thursday: The Power of Sharing on Social Media

This post is hosted at My Trending Stories and I’ve linked it here. I hope Thursday finds you well.

Ciao,

R~

ROW80 – 2016 Round 3

I haven’t forgotten you, ROW80. I just got too busy writing.

Goals for Round 3

Write a 10,000-word mystery story for a collection I was invited to participate in. Deadline: August 1st
Monday & Thursday blog posts for My Trending Stories. Monday and Friday posts on this blog.
Post one love poem each day for the month of July.
Add more to the novel after the results for the Half the World contest are announced.
Look for an agent?
Work on learning French daily
Practice guitar daily
Build the other garden cages to combat the squirrels so I’ll have things to harvest eventually.

I’m not sure how long Round 3 is, so I’m guessing this is sufficient because it’s also summer.

Ciao,

R~

Merry Monday: Canada Day Weekend

 

It’s Monday again!

On Canada Day, I decided to go geocaching. Out of three attempts, I found one cache. My friend, who has hundreds, assures me that it will get easier and that finding any at all was pretty good. Between cache one and two, there was a Bridgehead that was open and had delicious watermelon rooibos iced tea. It was a welcome refreshment on the warm summer day. Cache number three seemed like it should be easy, but I couldn’t get to the coordinates for some reason. I’ll try again soon. Cache number two is very close to CSIS and it feels weird to be climbing through bushes and whatnot with their cameras pointing at me. I don’t really want to have to explain that I’m urban treasure hunting. But I’ll probably get up the courage eventually. I should get some high DEET bug spray so I’m not worried about ticks in the long grasses. After that, I finished my one garden box but the new roll of chicken wire pinched my fingers so I couldn’t start the others and switched to writing my MTS blog post and working on a short story for a Hallowe’en collection. You’ll hear more about that in the months to come. In the evening, I watched a shark-themed B-movie with some friends in honour of shark week. I also kicked off a month of love poems on my site and finished my first garden cage. You can read my view of staple guns here.

 

The first line in squirrel defense!

 

Saturday morning, I watched the cutest group of martial artists. My friend’s toddler is in the class and they’re too adorable to be scared of them. Saturday evening, I cleaned up the mess from drilling and stapling the cage. No more sawdust and failed staples littering the floor. Then I listened to some new-to-me records (The La Bamba Soundtrack and Simon & Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits) that I got for $2 each. I also have Man of LaMancha and a Neil Diamond album, which I’m not sure about, but for $2 I thought I’d try as I do like Sweet Caroline. I also bought a few trumpet, trombone, saxophone, and marching band albums. I never went to band camp but I was a band geek in my younger days.

At iaido on Sunday, I was the senior student and had to pretend like I knew what I was doing as we demonstrated Tachi Uchi No Kurai. I hope I was convincing. In my mind, I could hear someone reminding me that as a lowly shodan, “I know nothing”. Or maybe that was the finale of Game of Thrones lingering… There were a couple of newbies and they’re always cute rather like the Taekwondo toddlers.

I’ve had to put together a schedule to keep track of everything I have going on as far as writing goes and ensure I have time for other things like learning French and practicing guitar. I’m learning the art of putting a hard stop on my writing time and trying to stick to specific writing times because I was burning myself out.

As far as French goes, I’m working my way through L’Etrange Vie de Nobody Owens by Neil Gaiman in comic book format. The pictures help fill in the gaps and I’m enjoying the story, which is quite silly in a lot of ways. It’s about a little boy who is raised by the ghosts in a cemetery and one vampire who goes out at night to get him food.

I’m currently working on a short story involving one of the characters from The Page & The Magician. It’s a mystery and I suppose it’s also a fantasy/romance. I’m aiming for 10,000 words and I’m on a deadline. About 9,000 words to go!

My first post at My Trending Stories (MTS) is up. You can read it here.

Ciao,

R~

 

Funky Friday: Week of July 1st

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I made it through another week! Sadly, not everyone that began this week did.

Personal

Excited: Now that it is July, one month of love poems begins on this blog! I’ll warn you now, some are from my high school days and could be terrible. My view of love in those days was very “love conquers all”, “all’s fair in love and war”, “my other half”, and “all you need is love.” As the month wears on, you can expect to see how my view has changed and grown, also when I was challenged by its end.
Emotional: I’ve been invited to contribute on another site a couple of times per week and after some deliberation, I’ve accepted. As of this coming week, I will be decommissioning Wonder Wednesday and it will be replaced with Thoughtful Thursday. It will be hosted on another blog and linked or reblogged to this one. The content will remain philosophical in nature. Funky Friday will remain as is. Merry Monday might be briefer as I’ve accepted another opportunity and need to get my butt in the chair to write for that too. Life is getting busy but heading in a promising direction[image error]

Ottawa

Indifferent: With President Obama’s visit to the region, a lot of our roads were closed off. This made it difficult for many to get their flights or to get to work. It didn’t affect me, so I’m indifferent about it but I know a lot of people who were very angry about it. Things are different in Canada, though. No matter how many threats were probably given to Harper, I don’t think anyone actually tried to shoot him. Indeed, Canadian prime ministers are usually not targeted like that except for Jean Chretien. But American presidents? You betcha. So far all Canadian prime ministers have died of health issues or old age. Contrast that with the United States. So I don’t think it’s out of line to take extra precautions when the U.S. president visits.
Unsure: I don’t know enough about the implications of the different potential hospital sites to fully weigh in on the issue, but I’m sure there are a lot of reasons for and against each. At least it seems like they want to make the decision carefully. I think they should consider putting it in an area that currently doesn’t have a hospital to increase the odds of survival for someone who is in an emergency situation and to service more of the population.

Ontario

Mystified: There was a home explosion in Mississauga and some disturbing letters were found. Mystery one is what caused the explosion. Mystery two is who wrote the letters. Mystery three is whether or not the letters are in any way connected to the explosion.

Canada

HAPPY CANADA DAY!!! BONNE FÊTE DU CANADA!!!

I haven’t completely decided what I will do to celebrate. I’m heavily leaning toward geocaching, writing, and vodka, but I may take in a museum too. I hope everyone has a fantastic Canada Day despite whatever else may be going on in your life. We have to take in these happy moments in order to endure the awful ones.

World

Sad & Angry: As I mentioned earlier, there are many who didn’t come out of this week alive. There was an attack at a Turkish airport. An airport, which you may think has nothing to do with you. Several of my friends have traveled the area in the past year or so. It could easily have been one of them. When will this shit end? People should not have to live in situations like this!
Impressed: The U.S. is converting one of its most well-known highways to a solar road.

Ciao,

R~

Review: Staple Guns and Tiny Me

For my garden, I’m building a simple cage for protecting my plants from rodents. This cage features thin framing screwed together with chicken wire stapled to it. Pretty standard. I’ve gone through three staple guns.

The first one I bought was the Stanley TR35 Light Duty Tacker. The fit was perfect fit my child sized hands and it was easy to squeeze. For some reason, it jammed to the point of complete blockage and could not fire a thing.

Next, I tried the Stanley TR110 Heavy Duty Staple Gun. I got about 4 staples in and couldn’t work with it any longer. It took my entire weight and both hands to squeeze the trigger and more often than not the staples would misfire.

Finally, I went to home depot with the intention of buying a specific Dewalt one, the Dewalt Heavy Duty Stapler. Trying the handle it was too hard to squeeze and so I tried the others in the area. I considered the Powershot by Arrow as I used to own one of those (ex got to keep that), but it felt harder to press than I remembered.

In the end, I chose the Dewalt 5-in-1 Multi-Tacker. It fits my hand nicely, isn’t too hard to squeeze, and works well.

I now have hope to finish these cages in a reasonable amount of time to grow food.

Ciao,

R~

Wonder Wednesday: Am I too sensitive?

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Today’s Wonder Wednesday may be a little morbid or upsetting for some. If you’re the sensitive type, feel free to skip this one.

Something I saw during my commute home upset me and made me think about the ghosts that haunt my past.

 

 

 

The bird was brown and yellow.

A bird. Caught in the hinge of the trunk of the car in front of me. Its lifeless wing flaps in the wind. It hurts me to look at it but I can’t avoid it. I want to scream at the driver to free the poor thing. I want to ask them how they could be so oblivious.

Is it that they don’t care about the world around them? Are they too engrossed in their own problems to notice anything else? Is the life of another creature worthless to them?

Or am I too sensitive? Too observant?

For a time, I lived that way. Oblivious. I had made myself numb. First, I let someone convince me I was too sensitive. Then, I drank to kill the pain I felt at noticing such things. It was easier to acquiesce than to admit that there was nothing wrong with me. Because that meant it was the relationship that was the problem. And who was I without my relationship?

I became quite ill. In 2010, I was diagnosed with Narcolepsy. In 2012, I began reacting to most things I ate. In 2013, my first vitamin deficiencies appeared.

I almost lost myself completely.

But I woke up one day and realized what was really going on.

If I couldn’t be myself, it wasn’t healthy for either of us. Indeed, we were growing to hate each other and counselling did nothing to help the situation. We were just too different on too many levels and deep down I think we both knew it. I knew changing things would add more hurt before we could both have a chance at being happy. But I also knew it was necessary.

The narcolepsy disappeared in 2013. That was about 6 months after ending it. Now, in 2016, my food allergies and vitamin deficiencies are almost gone. My immune system needs a little help for now but things are so vastly better that I’m not stressed about it.

But I care so very much about that little bird. It hurts more than I wish it did. And it sucks so fucking bad that I couldn’t do anything to help it.

That pain reassures me that I am me once again.

And if someone has a problem with how much I care about something, they can go fuck themselves.

Ciao,

R~

Merry Monday: Obstacles

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I’m fighting with squirrels. They are intent on eating my 3rd-floor balcony garden. This, of course, has given me ideas for the scenes in my novel that involve squirrels. To be clear, I already had squirrels in it, but the scene is better now.

And as I learned to shoot guns this weekend, those critters are lucky I live in a condo instead of the country. I’ll stick to shooting bad guys in Uncharted. For now.

I bought some wood to build cages with chicken wire so I can hope for something to harvest later this summer. Cayenne didn’t seem to help much in the squirrel war.

It was a tough day at martial arts yesterday. Early on, my quadriceps began to seize up in protest. Did I give up? No. I drank a bunch of water and switched to standing versions for a while. After a bit, my legs were fine and I could do it properly. Well, as proper as my current rank and fitness levels allow for, at any rate.

Today, I had an exercise stress test to check my heart out. That organ is a family weak spot, so it’s something to monitor now and then. They rubbed my skin with alcohol, used sandpaper on it, then stuck electrodes to me. My skin still burns. It’s rather like the burn after a tattoo only I don’t have pretty art to show for it, just damaged skin. Oh, and as my legs were already super sore from yesterday’s iaido class… Well, that was loads of fun running on a treadmill. My quadricep pain is my own fault for missing two classes, though.

Well, this week is a good one to get back onto my exercise schedule. Tonight is yoga, which will feel fantastic on my sore muscles. But first, groceries because I have almost no food in my house. Well, I have no meat I mean and I either need some of that or tofu to make a stir fry.

Ciao,

R~

 

Funky Friday: Week of June 24th

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It has been pretty quiet for me this week, so I’ve gotten a lot of things done around the house and in the virtual landscape.

Personal

Calm & Collected: On Monday morning, a screen door was installed on my balcony. I’m loving the air flow. It makes me want to go outside more. As day turned to evening and I was about leave work, the power went out. I was in the bathroom at that moment where there were no emergency lights. In the pitch blackness, I assumed a ready stance and felt my way to the sink to wash my hands. I was forced to wipe them on my skirt as the electric dryer was useless. Upon entering the hallway I heard scared voices searching for guidance. I promptly contacted someone I knew that would know what to do as the disaster plan had no useful information within its pages for this situation. Once the proper authorities were engaged, I left. I thought I had missed the storm and I love to watch a good one. They are few and far between in Ottawa. Indeed, I don’t think I’ve witnessed a really good one yet.
Frustrated: Tuesday was a scramble to get ready to take over a project for a co-worker while they’re out of the country. I don’t feel like this is going well. The dates are not making sense with what the end date is supposed to be. As I have a heart check up this afternoon, I can’t fix it lest I bring it home. No worries, just a health check due to family history. But Friday is supposed to be HIIT then video games! Co-workers. Were I a teenager I would yell that he’s ruining my life. Alas, I am an adult and this is just how it is sometimes. In the evening, whilst at the dojo, another power outage occurred. They seemed to be following me. At least we were nearly done practice and no swords ended up in bodies.
Creative: Wednesday was a quiet day at work and I attended Paint Nite in the evening. Check out my latest painting on my Instagram here.
Undaunted: Thursday had me doing work that did not require the internet as our connection went down. This was the worst time for it as it is an important week at my work given that it’s the week of the annual conference and many of our staff members need to work remotely while there. By the late afternoon, the internet was back.
Annoyed: This morning, my home internet was down. I hope it will be running when I get home. If not, my plans for this evening mainly include video games. Hopefully, this does not require a connection.
Busy: Otherwise, I’ve been hard at work producing new content for this site. I’ve also revamped quite a bit of it. I will be releasing a lot of poetry in the coming days, weeks, and all through July.

Ottawa

Peaceful: Other than people driving slower than the speed limits, I have nothing to report. If there have been things going on, no one I know is talking about them.

Canada

Oblivious: Prime Minister Trudeau has been tweeting a lot, but I’ve kind of been self-absorbed this week. Maybe check his twitter to see what’s up.

World

Surprised: Britain voted to leave the European Union. What does that mean? I didn’t know either. Maybe this will help you understand why it’s a big deal. We’re going to see and feel a ripple effect and it could be a while before things stabilize.

Well, I’m off to chill for a bit before my appointment. Have a good weekend!

Ciao,

R~