8r4d #running #trails in the rising heat and sunshine of #summer meant it felt fast and fast but was actually short and pretty slow. We kept to the shade as much as we could this morning.

Once upon a time in a hot, smoky day in July we went #running on some suburban #trails and I recorded some video…

8r4dsfeets An Saturday evening #icecream break

castironguy The second #haskapberry haul of the season, which is good news cuz the Kid devoured that jar of jam I made with the first mini-haul a few weeks ago.

No, i’m not bleeding from the effort—they are a little leaky when they pop if you’re not super careful picking. I pulled off about 3 cups worth and they are super tasty. #garden #summer

8r4d Some #rivervalley #publicart deserves it’s own post.

8r4d The #rivervalley called is once again, so we did a 2+ hour #hike with some serious stairs for the practice with our upcoming backcountry adventure only about a month away.

pixelazy I’m not used to seeing ladybugs in their larval form, but we found some bushes on our hike this morning with a whole bunch of them. #insect #macro

8r4d A spicy evening so we headed into the shade of the creek for some easy trail #running through the suburban creek, those same trails we avoid in the winter but call us a lot more strongly on hot #summer days.

gamerdad As much as I flip flop around with my reading habits, when I really get into a book I tend to stick with it. Sadly, that wasn’t the case when I bought this tome of a non-fiction book over two decades ago. Something compelled me to tackle it again recently though and I’ve made some serious progress—I mean, not enough to offer a coherent opinion yet, but certainly enough to state here that I’m actually reading this one now. Officially, like.

8r4d A couple weeks in and I’ve written about ten thousand words on the new #keyboard in a variety of settings: home, cafe, backyard and on my lap. I thought the colourful lights were a bit of a gimmick and sure, it mostly is, but I do get a bit of a kick out of writing at night which is about the only time they are bright enough to notice.

gamerdad I think this was my fifth full play thru since installing this classic on #ps5 a couple weeks ago. I kinda found myself getting into an obsessive groove trying to win this thing on some measure. I would play a great game and then some group I’d barely met on the other side of the map would come up the middle for a culture win or something out of left field. My concession to my own sanity was to turn off all win conditions except for a total point victory. Managing this thing on a console with a controller versus a keyboard makes juggling five different win conditions almost untenable. That said, I still tried to play a balanced game. I founded a custom religion and defended my cities against evangelical takeover. I completed the space race and settled Mars. I built a whole bunch of cultural districts and created nearly twenty works of art/culture. And when some group picked a fight with me and declared war against one of my cities, I took the real low road and started nuking and razing their cities until they begged for a peace deal. I think the only thing I really didn’t excel at was Wonder building, but when the ideal time came round for that I happened to be quite busy trying to keep up a holy war, so… excuses excuses, huh? Overall, I think I might shelf this one for a while now that I trounced at least one round. We’ll see. It is a pretty zen game for those quiet days at home.

squwetchy A theme park might literally be among the worst places in the world to try urban sketching.

There is nowhere to get more than five minutes of peace to draw. So I embraced that: I went with the intention of seeing what I could accomplish in the least amount of time possible. I adopted a loose af sketching style and a sloppy/abstract watercolour style and spent literally no more than 5 minutes sketching— standing in a queue, waiting outside a bathroom for my fam, after lunch—and then painting with super-limited time and supplies back at the hotel.

The result was 28 sketches over the week (i filled a sketch book!) and about 6 hours total invested in drawing and painting. They are not neat nor tidy. They are not photo perfect by any stretch. They are vibes. Impressions. And the whole collection, despite a few flops and a leaky sketchbook seam, is an awesome souvenir.

gamerdad Sometimes you need to play a game with no other objective than making something interesting.

8r4d We did one of our holiday Monday breakfast #running meetups for Canada Day today. Five kicks earned us some eggs and bacon back at A&W and of course a hot cup of coffee.

8r4d Who knows how long this little bush might survive as I’ve not had great luck with my front #flower bed but I put a rose in earlier this year and it bloomed for the first time this morning!

8r4d We started collecting those Starbucks #coffee mugs with the stylized art and locations on them a while ago, and they have turned into quite a collection, so much so that we’ve kinda sworn off buying any more. That is also a good thing because they changed up the style in North America and they are hard to find. Sure, the new Disney series doesn’t perfectly match the style of the rest of our collection, but I couldn’t help adding just one more #starwars limited edition to my set. And who says I haven’t been to Hoth anyways?

8r4d A rendezvous with a long lost puppy post vacation. [read more...]

8r4d We don’t have these dumb things in Canada, do we? [read more...]

8r4dsfeets Last day in Anaheim and #breakfast before we fly. You wouldn’t have thought it, and neither did we before we sat down and ordered, but mediocre pancakes were literally the most expensive meal of our trip. Two stars, would not recommend.

8r4d Just those last day #fireworks at #disney2024 —and just like that four days in Disneyland wraps up. We parked on the warm pavement for a solid hour to watch the show, hit last couple of rides on the way out of the park, did some window shopping, and waved goodbye for another couple years.

8r4dsfeets #disney2024 #starwars

8r4d #disney2024 #starwars We logged into another trip on Smugglers Run, the premise being that six people get tossed into a motion simulator version of a borrowed Millennium Falcon to do a cargo run. Each person is assigned a role. The Kid and I were pilots. Karin was a gunner. And the family (including a grandmother and her two very young grandkids behind us who may have just gotten lost and wandered into the ride looking for a bathroom) were the other gunner and the engineers. Needless to say we scored about 30% on the game as the kids howled in confusion behind us, but it was a good time.

8r4dsfeets Stepping aboard #starwars #motionsimulator #disney2024

8r4d #starwars #disney2024 You’d think all we did on this trip was hang out in the Star Wars themed area of Disneyland, huh?