Rainbow Dragon's Lair

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,814
"Striving to be the change."
An updatey sort of post:

1. My overall writing productivity has been down these past few weeks, but I have kept up with my story-a-week challenge. Last night I completed story #18 on that front.

2. I still have no workout streak. I danced for the entire concert on Saturday night, then put in some decent hikes over the next three days. Then I returned to the Booming Metropolis and fell right back into my old bad habits.

3. I have kept up with my French study streak. Today is day 1280 on that front.

4. GOBOT, SOOT, and GBOT are also all zeroed as of this morning.

I am in a much better headspace now than I was prior to my recent trip to Cambridge. But I now have only 36 sleeps left before I commence my move. And a lot to get done in that time! The move itself will take 3 days (due to a process designed to minimize the stress on Shelby, myself, and the people who will be helping us), followed by one day to get ourselves organized in our new home. So basically:

June 25: Pack Shelby, myself, and as much stuff as possible into my mother's car. Drive to Cambridge. Help with whatever is needed to get the space we will be moving into in my friend's house ready. Sign contract and get keys for the storage locker.

June 26: Pick up rental van. Buy a refrigerator. Install refrigerator in my friend's house. Drive back to the BM. Load up van. Feed people who are helping me in the BM. Drive back to Cambridge Unload van into my friend's house and the storage locker. Feed people who are helping me in Cambridge.

June 27: Drive back to the BM. Load up van again. Feed people who are helping me in the BM. Final cleaning and taking out of the trash in the BM. Drive back to Cambridge. Unload van into the storage locker. Feed people who are helping me in Cambridge.

June 28: Return rental van. Hopefully take musical instruments to Guelph (where a musician friend will store them for me, so I don't need to store them in the locker). Buy groceries (hopefully before the mad long-weekend rush). Get organized in Cambridge.

June 29: RELAX.

June 30: Finish story for the week. Get two submissions done (if not already done earlier in the month).

July 1: Canada Day festivities in Cambridge. Our first community party in our new home!

July 2: Return my mother's car to the BM. Farewell/good riddance hike in Rondeau.

July 3: Back to work!

I'm not going to worry about my usual metrics too much over the next 44 days. On the writing front, I just want to hold steady with completing one short story a week, plus get a story submitted this month and two in June. I will still track my wordcount, but I likely won't report on or even calculate my deficit again until July 3. I'm going to fall further behind over the next month and a half. I know this. July 3 begins the start of my new normal. I'll make a plan for catching up then.

I'd like to keep up with my daily French study. (It's not the most important thing in my life right now. But that 1280-day-long streak is a powerful motivator.) This will likely be mostly watching French language television programming on CBC Gem for the next month and a half. Nothing wrong with this.

GOBOT, SOOT, and GBOT I am still trying to keep on track the best I can. But if I miss, I miss. I'll get this back on track on July 3 too.

Workouts are likely going to be mostly walking with Shelby, and carrying things for the next little while. Again: I'll do what I can, and get back on track starting July 3.

I will be so, so happy when this move is done!
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,814
"Striving to be the change."
Thank you @PetiteSheWolf @graoumia @Maegaranthelas :heart:

I'm still here. Still plugging away at things.

On the workout front I've been doing lots of hiking with Shelby and lots of hauling boxes, crates, and furniture around. That's pretty much it. I wanted to try Primal Strength. But there was just no way to fit it in. Maybe if I find a park with a pull-up bar in Cambridge I'll do it this summer.

Shelby and I will commence our move in 15 days. The list of things that need to get done during those 15 days is long but still manageable.

At the end of May, Shelby and I did our final hike on the Marsh Trail in Rondeau together. This has long been a favourite trail of mine for all of the wonderful wildlife one can see there. I was saddened by all the years it was closed (due to the trail actually disintegrating!). It was rebuilt fully last year and is now officially open all the way to the end again. But the back half of the trail is quite narrow now. And it's lousy with ticks. Shelby and I brought home at least 40 ticks on us from that hike. It was not a good scene.

The one tick I found on my pants before we left the park:

DSCN3496.JPG

Some off the many I pulled off of Shelby in the middle of the night after getting up to go to the bathroom and discovering at that time that no, I had not found all of the ticks before we'd gone to bed and that both Shelby and our bed was by that point crawling with them:

DSCN3537.JPG

Shelby is protected from Lyme Disease by vaccination (all of the ticks I found after this hike were American Dog Ticks, which are not known to transmit Lyme, but Black-legged Ticks, which do, are out there too) and from tick-borne illnesses in general by parasite control medications. But those options are not available for me. And Shelby's skin still got irritated from having so many bites. So, sadly, we will not be back to the Marsh Trail again. (I would do it again by myself or with other humans if I'm ever back in this area in the future after Shelby is no longer with me. But I don't think I would take a dog on the Marsh Trail again. This year has been especially bad for ticks. But with the way the climate is going, our tick situation is likely to get worse in subsequent years, not better.)

Aside from the tick situation, however, we had a glorious hike. The weather was perfect. And we saw many wonderful things. Including a snapping turtle laying her eggs right in the middle of the trail!

NestingSnapper.png

This was on the back half of the trail, where the trail is quite narrow. I explained to Shelby that we must be very respectful of the turtle and give her as much space as we could while passing. And she did awesome! We had to walk past that turtle twice (the Marsh Trail is out-and-back) and Mamma was not disturbed. She just kept right on working on her nest.

Shelby+Turtle.png

HelloMamma.png

I will try to catch up with what all of you lovely Bees have been up to soon! In the meantime, please give me grace as I slog through the next three weeks. Things will settle down in Rainbow Dragon and Shelby land after that.
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,814
"Striving to be the change."
PetiteSheWolf said:
Oops, not the same eyes,
Click to expand...
Right. Turtles do have prominent, bulging eyes like frogs. But they tend to be more to the sides of the face, instead of up on top like with frogs. Turtles also like to float at the surface of the water, with only part of their faces out of the water. But when they do this, it's their nose that is most noticeable. Sometimes the tip of the nose is the only thing I see of a floating turtle. But with a frog--especially a bullfrog--you're always going to see those huge bulging eyes.
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,814
"Striving to be the change."
Today, for the first time in years, the birds shared the cherry harvest with me. A parting gift, I think, in thanks for all the sustenance this property has provided to them over the years.

cherryharvest.png

Not a huge harvest. (There's lots more fruit still on the tree. But it's a tall tree, and I cannot reach most of it.) But still nice to have.

I don't know that the birds will be able to enjoy the fruits of this land for much longer than I will myself, sadly. Realtors these days all seem insistent that a property must be razed down to monoculture lawn in order to sell it, and my brother (who has sole control over the property now) seems inclined to follow their advice.

The original cherry tree that was here when my parents bought the place is mostly dead now. (It does still have a few live branches, which have fruited again this year. But that fruit is all still green today.) These cherries are from the new tree that was planted by the birds in thanks for all the fruit from the original tree.

newcherry.png
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,814
"Striving to be the change."
Thank you @graoumia @Lady Celerity @MadamMeow @PetiteSheWolf @NancyTree

Sorry for the tick nightmares. They truly are not fun, and probably are the most dangerous wildlife in my area.
(Shelby and I are sleeping on white sheets, white blankets, white pillow cases now so that I can better see the things when they do sneak into our bed. That night after the hike in Rondeau was not fun, and having darkly-coloured, patterned bedding was an issue.)
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,814
"Striving to be the change."
Friends on Garmin Connect, give me a holler! (Same name on there as here.)

I've not logged anything on Garmin in a long while since my old Forerunner stopped charging way back. Since I'll soon be moving to a new place, where I won't know any of the routes, and where I'll no longer have much space for working out indoors, I figured updating my Garmin gadgetry would be a good investment.

DSCN3571.JPG

This watch has better features for programming multi-sport activities. So I figure I'll be able to use it to take DAREBEE workouts to a park. Also, it has a flashlight (useful for walking Miss Shelby after dark) and navigational features to help one find one's way back to one's starting point (very useful for me in a new town). Also: it is red 💖!

Unfortunately, the new watch is more up-to-date than all of my other technology. Which presented some challenges. When the product specs said it ships with a USB-C charging/data cable I foolishly assumed this meant it shipped with a USB-C-to-USB-A cable. Like all the other technology I own with USB-C ports. But no. It ships with a cable with a proprietary Garmin plug on one end and a USB-C plug on the other. "Just plug it into the USB-C port on your computer to charge the watch," says the documentation. Awesome! Except that my computer doesn't have a USB-C port. None of my wall charging adapters have a USB-C port either. Fortunately, the device appears to have charged just fine from my cell phone.

This of course also means I have no way of getting data from the watch into the Garmin Express app on my computer. So I had to install the Garmin Connect app on my phone. Which works fine. I don't love having to do everything via my phone since my eyes and tiny screens don't get along all that well, and a computer with a real, full-sized keyboard is so much faster than a miniature on-screen touch keyboard. But it works.

I also invested in some bifocal sunglasses (necessary for me to be able to actually use the watch these days, due to the aforementioned lack of compatibility between my eyes and tiny screens).

shades.png


Don't know how much I'll log on the watch over the next couple of weeks since we're heading into a significant heat wave here, and most of my activity for the next couple of weeks is going to be dancing and hauling stuff. But look for me to start showing some activity on Garmin in July for sure.
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,814
"Striving to be the change."
Somebody asked me at the Boreal concert last month how many calories I burn during a concert.

I have no idea. It's not something I track. My new watch reckons it can track it for me though.

June21-DanceParty.png

Le Vent du Nord is a pretty high energy band. I expect this is a higher than normal calories/minute rate for dancing for me.
Also: I probably should figure out how to tell the watch not to track GPS during dance workouts. :LOL:
 
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