and things went downhill from there

I am back in Winnipeg just long enough to make a batch of garlic scape pesto and wash my underwear, then I am back to Calgary for another week of training.

This week and the next are all about the mechanical side of running a train. We are not quite getting to the level of detail where we could disassemble an SD40 and put it back together, but I could power one up from scratch if I needed to get it out of a siding. In some respects, I think this week has covered almost as much material as the last two weeks combined, and we are only halfway through the course. They are definitely compressing the material for the management trainees.

One bit that amused me was that the instructor kept stressing the importance of remembering the six critical components of a diesel locomotive, and reminded us repeatedly over the course of the week that we would need to remember then for the test. Then he accidentally left them up on the whiteboard on test day. I doubt any of us needed the reminder by that point, but I found it no less amusing.

For the record, they are: Fuel, Electrical, Cooling Water, Compressed Air, Engine & Equipment Air and Lubrication System.

I'm keeping up my Picture-A-Day project, even while working out of Calgary. I have very little free time while I am out there, so they mostly consist of "phone pictures of things I saw while walking down the street". At some point I need to go through my vacation pictures from our trip to the coast and upload more of those.

Time.

Time is such a premium commodity these days.

I caught a couple of crows in action at the water's edge when we were in Victoria. I am so used to seeing them scavenge their meals from the garbage that it was a bit odd seeing them finding natural food in the wild.


Fisherman's Wharf was not quite as touristy when I lived in Victoria. I'm sure it was there, but I never had any cause to head down there. It's very picturesque - especially when you play around with tilt shift.


I snapped this out the window of the plane as we were coming into Winnipeg last night. You can't see it in this shot, but there were fireworks going off everywhere in the city. The plane was filled with exaltations of "ooh" and "ahh" from people with their faces pressed to the windows.


When we visited my brother over Christmas, Gaia refused to come out from under mom's bed. This time around she is more used to people, and she is really quite friendly and personable.


When we got our Master Card bill from our trip, it was quite clear that we spent a couple of weeks living beyond our means. It's nice to feel rich for little stretches here and there, but our creditors are always waiting to bring us back to reality.

I bought a new belt today because I am growing tired of having my pants in constant danger of falling down. It's a cheap one, but it is just an interim belt to tide me over until I get a proper one. I suppose there are bigger problems in life than shrinking out of my wardrobe.


I had a ghost pepper burrito for dinner this evening. It was good, and it seemed like a much better idea at the time then it will probably seem when I go to bed in about ten minutes. I am not a wise man.

I set myself up with a challenge at the beginning of the year to take and post a picture every day when practicable (that is, if I was on vacation in a place with no Internet connection, I would take a picture that day and post it when I got a chance).

Part of my motivation for undertaking this was to encourage myself to take more pictures, and as a side benefit of it, document a year of my life in pictures. While my goal was to keep them either topical, entertaining or at least mildly interesting, I admit that I have a significant number of pictures of our cats in the mix.

My primary goal was to treat this as an exercise in self-discipline. I wanted to see if I had the staying power to make it through a full year without running out of steam. It has been a challenge at times, and it has been hard to motivate myself some days, but I've powered through even when I've been posted away from home and working/studying long hours. I have been absurdly happy with myself for making all the way to mid-May so far without a stumble. I was really starting to feel like I might be able to pull this off. This had been more staying power than I usually have.

As I was showing the slide-show to a friend yesterday, I realized that there were some shots missing from the album that I definitely remember taking. Last night I went through the album, updating some of the file names, and moving some pictures into the album that I had improperly tagged. After cleaning things up, I noticed that my on-line album only had 134 images, but my off-line folder had 135. No problem - I had probably forgotten to upload one one at some point. To my mind, that's a stumble, not an outright fail.

I did an image-by-image compare and finally found the discrepancy. My off-line folder had the same image tagged twice for different days. I had posted it as February 25, but it was actually a shot from February 23, and I had it saved under both names on my computer. I fixed the tags on-line, and went through my camera folders to try and find the pictures that I was supposed to upload that day.

There is none. In all three folders (Phone, Nikon, Canon) I have pictures on the 24th, and on the 26th, but apparently I somehow missed the 25th entirely. It's a bit depressing to realize how much I've been putting into this thing, only to discover that I had already failed back near the start. I want to go back to the me in late February and give myself a solid slap.

I know it shouldn't be a big deal, but I am really disappointed. I think if I had not been so proud of myself for approaching the midpoint of the year without a stumble that it's really demotivating to realize that I tripped over the starting line and didn't notice. Well, now I've noticed, and it has taken some of the wind out of my sails. Since this was a challenge to see how far I could make it before I failed, it almost seems pointless to keep it going at this point.

On the one hand, it would be a bit of a relief to say, "Oh well, maybe next year." At least I wouldn't have to start each day wondering how I was going to fill my quota before midnight.

Here is yesterday's shot for what it's worth.

I am starting to get the hang of stabbing myself three times a day for blood. I hate needles, and I am not strong at the sight of blood (especially my own), but I am under orders, so I do what I must. I figured that as long as I am going to the trouble of sucking out my own blood to gather data, I may as well build some statistics from it. When I see the doctor again next month, I plan to pull out my Surface and show him charts with variants on my weight and glucose levels.

This is the little prick that I need to use for drawing blood. I have nicknamed him Mister Stabby.

I got my first misread today when the strip did not get enough blood from the pathetic drop I offered it in sacrifice. It wanted more blood. More blood.

atara recommended that I should start calling it Audrey.

Audrey it is.

Curiously, my readings have been trending downward since I started monitoring them.

We de-cluttered the kitchen a bit yesterday, and one of the things we found in the pantry was a stash of tomato soup. Based on the expiry dates, it looks like we bought a flat of soup while it was on sale back in 2009ish, and it got covered by other clutter after we'd gone through about half of it. As it was six years past expired, we decided not to take a chance on it, so I emptied the cans and recycled them. I could not pass up the opportunity to line them up for a Warholesque picture first, though.

I got the results from my sleep study, and the apnea is not as bad as I'd thought. atara has mentioned that I don't snore as badly as I used to. It's worth noting that even with the weight I put on in 2015, I am still about 15 pounds lighter than I was at one point.

The doctor who gave me the results from the test seemed a bit put-off that I had even taken it, almost like I was wasting their time for getting more than 3 hours of sleep a night. She showed me the charts they made during the night, pointing out that that I have severe, life-threatening apnea when I sleep on my back, but only mild when I sleep on my side. She said they would hook me up with a CPAP if I felt that I really needed one, but her recommendation was to sleep on my side and lose some weight.

I've already been mandated to lose some weight because of the diabetes issue, so I guess I can kill two birds with one stone. atara and I are both back on the weight-management train again, so we'll see how it goes. It's easier when you are both on board. I've dropped about six pounds since my last visit to the doctor. That's nothing to dance in the streets about, but at least it's going in the right direction.

Winter refuses to release its hold on us. We got more snow yesterday, and today they are calling for rain, freezing rain, and more snow. Perhaps May will cut us a break.

When I went for a walk on Sunday afternoon, I was the only person in the park. It was a little odd seeing the place so empty - there are usually people about, even in the winter, but I guess the drawn out cold has driven people to hibernate.

I got the results back from some of the tests I'd been taking in order to qualify for the engineer training I am being bullied into at work. Since this is the first time I have undergone a full physical since I was the age when a the doctor gave me a lollipop and told me I'd been a brave boy, I was expecting to find quite a number of things wrong.

Surprisingly, I am actually in pretty good shape for my age and, well, my shape. I am undeniably obese.

I knew that I would have high blood pressure.

I wasn't prepared for the part where I am diabetic.

I have to take two of these every day for three weeks and go back for further testing to see if I have got it under control.


atara thinks that all of the stress I have been under for the past few weeks may have contributed, since stress can screw up your insulin levels.

My bit of amusement was when I passed this news along to the Occupational Health Services nurse at work. She had been expecting to get some updates on my EKG readings, and the other things they'd been mildly concerned about.

"You're what now? This was just diagnosed?"

"Yes. Sorry. I learned of it about two hours before you are learning of it now."

Apparently that is another thing that they can't let through on a safety-sensitive position, so she's said that she is going to refuse to pass me medically until I get more testing done to see if we can get it under control.

On the plus side, that means I don't have to fly out to Calgary for two intensive weeks of training on Monday.

On the down side, I have diabetes.

I accidentally got an EKG yesterday. One might wonder how that is possible, but I managed to pull it off.

I am long overdue for a full physical, and my employer forced the issue when I failed the medical for Locomotive Engineer training that I had been browbeaten into for later this month. I won't go into the details about where I failed it, but among the things the company demanded before they would allow me into this training I didn't want was a full physical and an EKG.

I had an initial consultation with a doctor, and he filled out the forms for various tests which included an EKG. Since I have a few days off work (our acting director ordered me to take the rest of the week off when she noticed that I was buckling under the stress - a story for another time), I decided I would start the process of lining up some of the tests I'd been told to take.

I drove over to the lab that the doctor had recommended for the EKG, but when I got there, I discovered that they are now only a blood clinic. The receptionist there told me that the nearest place that would perform one of those for me was the hospital further up the road. I took my forms back to the car, managed to luck into a coveted, free parking spot on the street just a few minutes from the hospital and trundled off to start setting up appointments.

I wandered in through the non-emergency entrance (though it may have been a service entrance in retrospect) and bumbled around until I found a counter with labels such as "X-Rays, Radiology, EKG, Etc." in front of a waiting room with about 15 people lounging about in the institutional-turquoise chairs. I took my forms up to the desk and waved them at one of the helpful ladies working there.

"I would like to set up an appointment for an EKG and stuff," I said hopefully. She looked at the forms, then at me, then at the forms again.

"Ya, uh, you'll have to check in down the hall," she said. Just go out here and follow the hall to the right until you see the thing you need on your left."

While it is possible that she could have issued slightly more vague directions if she tried, I gathered up my forms and toddled off into the hall, taking the right turn as instructed and looking for something helpful on the left. It was a very long hall, though unerringly straight. It led me past many unpromising side-halls, past doors bearing labels like "Authorised Personal Only" and "Other People, Not You". At one point I also passed through a bustling cafeteria, and I began to despair that I would not find the thing that I needed on the left. Finally the hall opened up on the left to a general lobby before continuing further into the bowels of the hospital.

In the lobby was a helpful desk bearing the title, "Information."

"Hi," I said, approaching the desk and holding out my forms. "I need to book an appointment for an EKG."

The girl at the desk eyed my papers and then politely said, "OK you need to take these top the department for X-Rays, Radiology, EKG, Etc."

"I did," said I, "and they sent me here."

"Oh. Well, I guess the person who usually handles these forms must be on break."

Then she sent me in a direction almost exactly the opposite of where the people at the "X-Rays, Radiology, EKG, Etc." department had sent me. Her instructions led me to a generic, easily-missed check-in counter staffed by two ladies who bore the air of people who had been born into bureaucratic roles. They were friendly and efficient, and they asked me to verify every character and mark on the forms I had given them, along with questions about my wife's name and birth date.

Fortunately I remembered my answers, because I had to repeat them all again when I got back to the "X-Rays, Radiology, EKG, Etc." department. The lady apparently had issues with some of my answers, because she called the doctor's office and had a lengthy discussion with the receptionist there before she was satisfied that everything was in order. She stuffed my forms into a folder and said, "Please take a seat."

"Um," I said. "That is, I don't mean to sound ignorant, but I'm unfamiliar with the strange and sometimes Byzantine workings of this place. I thought I was just here to make an appointment."

"We don't do appointments," she said tersely. "Please take a seat."

I glanced at the dozen-and-a-half people in the waiting area, then at my watch, then at the waiting area again. "If you don't mind my asking, but how long will this take? I didn't anticipate being taken right away, and I only parked in a 1-hour spot on the street, and this process has taken thirty-five minutes so far."

Fortunately, most of the people in the waiting room were not waiting on the same thing that I was, and they promised to have me finished and out within twenty minutes."

It was actually closer to 18, but I don't begrudge them on overestimating a bit. I was actually surprised at how quickly and efficiently it was all handled once I got past the initial paperwork and running around.

We stopped at one of the local Mediterranean markets on the weekend to pick up some essentials for our Valentines day dinner (including a couple of chocolate-covered strawberries). There was an accordionist wandering up and down the aisles, serenading the shoppers with his squeeze box. It straddled the line between charming and surreal.



I keep meaning to post my daily pictures up here more often, but for some reason my days don't seem to have as many hours in them as they did once. I really am taking a picture every day, and I have been faithfully posting them to my Flickr page.

I am holding out hope that the longer hours of daylight will give me more time to capture interesting shots as the year wears on, rather than pictures like this one, where I had to pull out my old and new portables in order to perform a task. I was just struck by how much difference just a few years could make in technology.

Almost invariably it is when I am standing in front of the mirror, dressed in my pyjamas and getting ready to brush my teeth that my shoulders slump as it dawns on me that the day is almost done, and I have not yet taken my daily picture. Then I think, "Well, I could do a self-portrait if I was not busy getting ready for bed."

I am nothing if not a multi-tasker.

We returned to a new downtown sandwich place we first tried a few weeks back, and it was just as good on the second visit. The place has a modern vibe of hipster and kitsch, and the food is definitely not geared toward the budget-minded, but they deliver a premium product at what I consider to be a reasonable cost.


After our second visit, I decided to log my findings in Zomato (formerly Urban Spoon), and I was disappointed to see a few 1-star ratings. As I read them, I found myself shaking my head over how typical they were of the small-town attitude pervades this city. One reviewer posted a snotty, single-star review because he went there late on opening day and they had run out of some of the ingredients. Most of the other bad reviews were from people grousing about the prices.

"I could go to Joe's Greasy Shitburgers in Transcona and get twice as much food for this price!"

What can I say? I've lived here long enough to know that on average, Winnipeg folk are cheapskates. A few years back, the neighbourhood was holding a public barbecue down at St John's park, where everyone was welcome to some free ribs or a burger. Though neither of us was hungry, atara and I rode down there to check it out. The line for food was at least 100-125 people in length and four across. While most would get their food and wander off to eat, there were a fair number who made a beeline to the back of the queue so that they could wait in line for seconds while they ate. Folks here like a bargain.

Fortunately the city seems to have grown sufficiently that we may have enough people to support these more - if not fancy, at least moderately upscale - eateries.

On another front, I have made it through a whole month without missing a day on my "picture a day" project.