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fifty is the number

I turned fifty last month. We had a small party with old faces, lots of laughs, and, at least for me, a reminder of the life I had before the pandemic, before having a kid, before my colon surgery . That is to say, a good time, and I hope to have many more like it. I do feel older, in practical, daily ways. For one thing my eyes have gotten much worse over the past year, so bad that I find myself looking over my glasses to look at my phone. My skin is just ravaged by this dry winter air, well beyond anything I'd ever experienced. A lifetime of neglect and sun-exposure has finally caught up to me. While I'm not exactly getting heavy I have noticed a softness building up around my torso. So over the past few months I've taken to doing modified burpees as my daily exercise and have been pretty happy with the results. I do them in small bursts, HIIT-style, and that seems about the pace I can afford, both on a time and energy level. I do try to play video games but I definitely

father

My dad has three to six months left to live. My sister and I got the news over the weekend, preceded by a discouraging call from my mom saying she had some "news" about my dad. It turns out that the brachytherapy  he'd started last year (as the laser ablation treatments were proving less and less effective) had greatly damaged his liver and that the cancer was now spreading rapidly. I could immediately tell, as we all sat at the kitchen table, that my parents had some serious things to say. I sensed a slight jump in my heartrate but didn't find tears until later that night, my eyes closed and hearing nothing but death's door hovering closer and closer, now more tangible than ever. My dad was very calm about delivering his sentence -- to him, these past 27 years with liver cancer were all a bonus on top of the life he'd already had: growing up in a Japanese-occupied Korea, escaping the violence of the Korean War by travelling south by train and leaving behind f

Watching stuff and such

I mostly  enjoyed The Last of Us' first season though there were lots of changes that irked me, such as the portrayal of the self-sustaining commune and the isolated couple. I know it's late but maybe a quick rundown of recently consumed media is called for? House of the Dragon (Season 1): Pretty good. Much more palatable than Game of Thrones, feels a lot less sensational. The Banshees of Inisherin (2022): I enjoyed it, sure. Seems I'm still squeamish, even now. Better Call Saul: Excellent, top tier stuff. The Lalo stuff was a bit overwrought but seeing Jimmy and Kim struggle to make it really hit hard. Invincible (Season 1): I really liked it but I wish they'd used different actors -- having recognizable voices is distracting. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Season 1): Awful, just terrible. Feels like a kids show written by an AI -- most of the parts are there but overall doesn't make sense, like drowning in a feverish dream. The dialog is super awkward.

Yo

So yeah, I continue to float and bob along with the tides of 2023. The initial shocks and surprises of owning and maintaining a house have mostly dimmed themselves into the background, a hum that periodically bumps into shape, sometimes scary, sometimes less so. I am hopeful for a more relaxed December. Sora is growing so fast, it’s really true what they say. I do miss her being a little peanut but I’m routinely amazed by her development. And as she gets bigger I find watching over her a lot less draining, a lot more interactive. I’ve started watching a lot of chess and thinking about chess. I’m still quite terrible, laughably terrible. I am curious to know if I can get Sora into it. I played and loved Lies of P, definitely my favourite game this year. Diablo 4 was disappointing and Starfield was just so tedious and dead. I am currently really into Sekiro, a game I’d always wanted to try. I do wonder how many more years I can play these flicky-reaction games. Speaking of years, my eyes

Enter Whitby

So yes, the move happened, and like all moves was a haze of mind-numbing packing, desperate rushing, meals on the run. We hired help to pack and move, which really, is the only option, but the experience remained a heavy energy drain. MJ and Sora stayed at the apartment while I got the cats accustomed to their new home. I'd anticipated that the larger space would ease their stress, and it has measurably, but not as as completely as I'd hoped -- they remain aloof at best to each other. How's Whitby, you ask? While my bitter disappointment of moving out of Toronto has lost the worst of its sting, the wound is reopened whenever I go outside, whether to walk the missing sidewalks, or ride the infrequent buses, or drive the inscrutably clogged roads. We're located on the edge of the downtown, such as it is, which simply highlights the slapdash zoning and lack of any kind of urban planning. The library is really nice though . We are mostly settled: The boxes are gone, the fur

Peterborough

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Back in September we took a family trip to Peterborough -- a sort of holiday for Sora and I and a regular work day for MJ. I guess I must be getting old because I found the 2+ hour drive draining, a real slog. The Prius is a pretty comfortable ride but my body complains from sitting that way for so long. Arriving in Peterborough, my first time, felt both familiar and strange. I could see how the freshly resurfaced downtown attempted to hide some dusty history, bringing to mind the downtowns of Kitchener and Guelph, which I guess makes sense as this is another university town: The same 60s low-rise downtown, pockmarked with signs of poverty, the same pre-war homes, many chopped into multi-unit rentals, the same bafflingly congested roads that compete with inadequate public transit. Our hotel was located just outside the downtown and served well enough. Sora found the experience exhilarating, excited by the new bed, a new room with just mama and papa. We ordered some Greek takeout, very

We are COVID

It may have been an inevitability but the truth of experiencing it was no less upsetting — our family caught COVID back in April, a punishing trial affecting each of us differently. For me it ramped from a mild cough to a day of chills and aches, unable to function outside of the barest of essentials; a week later it had exited my system, a brief but fearsome storm. During my downtime, confined to my bed, I managed to catch up on Game of Thrones, the ending for which I had never seen, and had managed to avoid spoiling. How it came to mind I don’t recall for I had all but forgotten it after Sora’s birth/the pandemic’s rise; certainly I found it engaging enough to finish, even after all this time. I still find its extreme physical and sexual violence difficult to sit through. And speaking of difficult to sit through, how has Ontario decided to re-elect Doug Ford. How. True, the alternatives were not particularly palatable — Del Duca? And Horwath? What a woeful state of affairs! It seems