8r4dsfeets We does a 10k practice hike this morning as we be now officially booked some summer time backpacking in the mountains. There will be significantly more climbing on the real thing and significantly less asphalt.

8r4d The temperature dropped and the wind picked up and so day 17 of my #running streak was a chilly affair of adding some more orange lines to my gauntlet challenge. I would have driven somewhere and done more than some overlapping patchwork pickups, but the city is cleaning streets around here this week and so there is a parking ban in place. Between that and all the construction it’s a wonder there’s anywhere to even run these days.

pixelazy #puddles and #running make for interesting illusions on the trails. I did some flips and flops on this photo and I really kinda like the artistic vibe it gives off.

pixelazy Reflecting on #puddles

pixelazy The dance studio where the kid did her lessons has a lovely atrium filled with light and #plants for the parents to enjoy.

8r4d Our usual Thursday meetup for the #runcrew also marked day 16 of my #running streak. It had rained pretty hard all day but cleared up for a few hours and just long enough for the sidewalks and paths to dry... well mostly. I’m getting darn bagged doing this daily churn of kilometres tho and we had a good chat this evening on the value of a rest day to a proper training plan. Streaks are fun and all, and of course I’m gonna keep it going for a bit more, but anyone who runs daily every day and always has something in their mettle that keeps it going longer than most can.

pixelazy After a day of rain, this little critter found her way onto my window screen. #insect #macro

8r4dsfeets Between everything else a little #rain is welcome this week. I sound like an old man, but we need it.

8r4d So here’s the thing. I’ve been playing #violin now for almost 8 years. Why I picked up this instrument all those years ago is a winding tale that merits further documentation, perhaps to be elaborated as I go along, but not for today. Today, I am looking at some of the frustrations I’ve been having in #orchestra achieving the level of play that I felt I should have been at by now. Yeah, it’s been less than 8 years, but I squandered a couple back during the pandemic and so it goes, on and on with excuses. My bowing is jittery. My fingering is sloppy. My fourth finger never wants to cooperate. So what to do? Well. The #fourseasons is a renowned piece of violin music that is clearly stretching for my current ability. I own a full violin score that feels fairly advanced, slightly out of reach and something I could just barely muddle through now. But not if I worked at it. See, back when I was doing lessons my instructors would basically help me pick something I wanted to learn then walk me thru week by week learning it. A phrase at a time we would pick it apart and get it right. Those pieces were simpler but those lesson books were designed for beginners and children. It got me thinking. I could go back to lessons, or I could just pick something to learn—like learn really well—and just methodically practice it. Record myself. Tweak. Tune. Learn. And as such I think I could really hone the technique I know and work on fine tuning the fabric of my practice methodology around a focus. Yes there is very much a lot of positive about structured instruction, but for a few months, maybe a year, to do something self-focused that isn’t just noodling on easy music I think—I think—could be hugely beneficial and perhaps set me up to take some more structured learning down the road to hone and refine even more. So. I pulled out that Vivaldi score and downloaded a recording and… here goes nothing: day one.

squwetchy Week four of my #watercolour class and we dug into some interesting new techniques for this elaborate people flower. Some lifting and some layered/blending washes had some interesting optical effects related to what goes the illusion of transparency on the petals. I have been pushing in the boundaries of my backgrounds for all the pieces I’ve completed for this class …which was above and beyond to the assignment, and just something I’d seen done online. The instructor really likes it tho and has been ribbing me and calling it The Brad Technique and some of my fellow students have started to imitate it.

8r4d Half May and I’m officially fifteen days down on my #running streak. This evening we clashed our #runcrew with #runclub and raced the threatening rain with a speedy right klicks. Somehow I managed yet another day even though my legs are feeling the daily pound of the asphalt. That said, we broke off and ran a bit of parallel trail for kicks.

8r4d I spent a lot of the winter driving to various #cafe in the neighbourhood looking for a distraction-lite place to write and work. Then as the #spring arrived I switched to walking, trudging along the paths to my local haunts to find the same gaming-console-free no-tv nothing-to-clean space to get some more writing done. This morning I realized that with the nice weather and warmer mornings a #bike ride would substitute. So maybe I’ll spend my summer #cycling to write? As long as I can find a place to lock up. Starbucks was acutely lacking in bike racks this morning so I’m at Waves instead. #coffee

8r4d Day fourteen of my streak and on the last day of my second week of #running I opted to tackle the hot-ish #spring temps with some more mileage on my summer gauntlet project. I really need to be more methodical about my routes to be honest because I seem to recall that last time I tried this I was cleaning up the neighbourhoods with a lot less overlapping of stuff I’d already run. Or maybe I’m just idealizing my memories.

8r4d With only about 10 days until our year end concert our #orchestra is in full gear for practice. The result is that it’s Tuesday morning and I’m on the north side of town to meet for a morning sectional practice having barely recovered from our practice last night which ended almost exactly 12 hours ago. And it’s such a beautiful sunny #spring day too.

8r4d Monday afternoon the smoke has cleared and JB and Sadie needed a run, so I clocked day 13 of my #running streak.

8r4d According to the sacred violinist’s lore one must change one’s strings with care and regularity. Prolific players may need to change their strings every six to nine months. Moderate players like me should change their strings every twelve to eighteen months. Occasional players may wish to only replace strings every couple years or as required, because it’s not cheap nor trivial either. I last replaced my strings about five years ago… or in a timeframe clearly in breach of the sacred advice of internet #violin experts. Probably should have got on that sooner, huh?

8r4d Another day, another sky full of #firesmoke but RM messaged mid-afternoon and figured we were sitting at about the clearest it was gonna be for a day or so and would I like to get my daily #running done? So I drove to the south side and we tried out a 9k from the starbucks in the smoky air with some thunder cracking off just outside the city. Some trails, some suburbs, some asphalt, some sun…all good.

squwetchy I did some unplanned meditative painting last night before bed. Just put on an audiobook, watered down some blue paint, and starting with a wash and some selective lifting just let my imagination go wild. I have been a little bit fascinated with the idea of ethereal forests emerging from the soft wet-on-wet blur of layering washes of tree silhouettes and this is a good example of how that can blossom into something interesting by simply adding carefully layered tree textures over and over into a still-damp paper. The trees sort of soften into each other as you work and then you go back over them to build up colour value later by layer. I was just mucking around here mostly but even as I worked I kind of regretted not going about it in a more planned way because the result was actually materializing for me. Sadly, my iphone is a little weak in photographing such nuance and it keeps trying to amplify the textures and grain of the paper, inflating the contrast that is not there as strongly when you are looking at this in real life. There photo does not do it justice.

squwetchy Oh sure, you say, after all those pretty flower pictures now you go and post some depressing #dystopian #watercolour scene from a Fallout game or something, but see the thing is this was inspired, colours and all, by a photograph I took this morning of the creek valley filtered through the haze of all that forest #firesmoke, so… put that in your pipe and… well.

8r4d I was kinda hopeful that I would need my #firesmoke hashtag for a few weeks yet, but yet again the pall of burning forests in the north squashed my relatively wee & insignificant #running plans. I was all set to crank out a 12-15k long run this morning (because of scheduling issues for tomorrow) but woke up to a haze and all sorts of cancelled races. I scaled back and just added to my gauntlet in north riverbend instead of a longer adventure.

pixelazy The only filter I used on these plum tree blossoms was the smoke of a million burning dreams. #firesmoke

pixelazy We checked out the #northernlights from a suburban field this evening. Not as spectacular as a drive to country, but worth a quick look…

pixelazy The temperatures climbed up into the high 20s this afternoon which was nice enough to sit in the backyard and #spider watch. #insect #macro

8r4d Day 10 of my month of #running streak was pretty mundane compared to our adventure yesterday, with just a few more clicks of gauntlet running around the hood. Fortunately the sun was shining. Unfortunately the summer heat has come with it. Great for the flowers and sunbathers, bad news for long runs.