Back On The Number Nine

I met a man on the Number Nine bus a couple of weeks back who still sticks with me.

When the encounter started I was waiting downtown for the northbound Nine to go home. It was really cold, as it tends to be in January. Very few people were outside like me, but there was this one fellow in a knit cap and ragged looking clothes with a heavy hockey bag who comes up to me and asks if the Nine has gone by. "No," I say to him. "I'm waiting for it too." The bus arrives a few minutes after that, and we pile on board.

The knit cap guy sits beside me, which I find a bit disconcerting. But there aren't many places on the bus where he can keep his bag away from people's feet, so it's understandable. Then he starts to talk to me and I really become concerned, because in my experience people who want to have a conversation with a stranger at 9:00 PM are usually drunk and those talks never go well. But no, this guy is sober. He talks in a normal way, without long pauses or repetition like drunk people usually do. But his voice is weak and he sounds sick.

Pretty soon he draws me in and I become worried for this stranger, instead of being worried by him. It seems he's going to the emergency ward at the Royal Alex Hospital (hence the bag with what must be a change of clothing and personal items), because he's suffering from carbon dioxide poisoning. Last night he was in some kind of shack, and burning kerosene to keep warm. But he didn't know that he was supposed to keep a hole open somewhere in the shack for ventilation. He had it all closed against the cold and overnight the carbon monoxide collected in the enclosed space, poisoning him. In the morning he was really sick and didn't know why, until a friend told him about carbon monoxide and said he should go to the hospital. But he had to wait until after work, which apparently meant nine o'clock at night.

We talked for a bit and he told me how he moved here from the East, and how it was so hard to get by in Edmonton. Apparently he'd fallen asleep more than once on the bus and had his cellphone stolen. (He clearly didn't have one now.) "People steal stuff in Edmonton," he said, in his tired, weak voice, and my heart kind of broke for him.

When we got to his stop, he got up and tried to leave the bus, but despite both him and me shouting for the driver to open the door, the driver didn't hear us and left without letting anyone out. But he let the man out at the next stop about a block and a half away. And so the knit cap guy said goodbye to me and I said "Good luck!" as he heaved his heavy bag out the door and onto the snow and ice of a cold January night, preparing to cross four lanes of busy traffic and walk five or six blocks to the Emergency Room for a condition that should have been treated almost twenty-four-hours earlier. I hope he's okay now.

Snow And Ice, Shadows And Light

This is just an excuse to post some winter pictures.

Of Murder And Moonlight

I ran for thirty minutes again, today! Never ran that far in my life, and now I've done it twice. I felt kind of dizzy afterwards, but it soon went away and I did the rest of the workout.

In other sort of "first" news, I was stung by a wasp today while mowing the lawn. I've been stung by bees once or twice, but so far as I know this was the first wasp. It hurt a little, but it's a lot less trouble than a mosquito bite. The mosquito bites itch like crazy and can sometimes get really red and big, but the wasp sting is small and seems to already be fading. Interesting how the immune system reacts differently to various insects.

I reacted to this provocation by unleashing chemical vengeance upon the wasps, both the (presumably) guilty one and its many innocent sisters were all sprayed, and to top that off I jammed a chemically saturated rag into where I think the entrance to the nest is. Have to see tomorrow if they're still around.

It bothers me that so many of my posts on this blog seem to involve killing animals. First mice, now wasps. I hate doing it, but they keep trying to move in on me. I've only got one small patch of land in this world, and if I don't defend it then it will no longer really be mine. The mice come right in the house and make life a misery if they're not killed, and the wasps will apparently sting me if I'm even close to them with a roaring lawn mower. There's literally not enough land for all of us, and since I'm smart enough to have a credit card and know the way to the pest aisle at Canadian Tire, and they don't, that means it's curtains for them,

In better news, here's some recent photos I took of the Moon. One when it was full, and once when it was a crescent. I would love to get into astrophotography, but that takes expensive equipment and darker skies than I can reach. Maybe some day. In the meantime I'm getting better at taking pictures with the point-and-shoot camera I bought for the trip to Mexico. These moon shots look pretty neat.

Keeping It Classy On The Number Nine Bus

Since yesterday's quick note seemed to work okay, here's another one.

Tonight I was coming home from the gym on the Number Nine Bus. It's one of the worst bus routes in the city, so of course ETS forces me to take it as much as possible. There's literally no other bus available at 9:30 PM. Anyway, there's a mostly eaten bag of chips or popcorn or something on the seat in front of me. I'm reading my Kobo, trying to lose myself in Bertrand Russell's critique of Plato's theory of ideas (heavy stuff), when this little black guy gets on the bus and heads right for that seat in front of me. He sits down and puts the bag on his lap. Then over the next five minutes or so he keeps shooting little glances back at me, while I'm trying to lose myself in the book. (But I can see him in my peripheral vision so it isn't really working.) Then he reaches in the bag and starts eating whatever's in there. At first he does it tentatively, while still looking back at me, but when he sees I don't react, then he starts eating like it's no big deal. Just snacking on some random food he found on the bus. Meanwhile, there's a guy about four seats behind me who's explaining to his buddy how he got out of a seven year jail sentence because there was a last minute change in judges, and the new judge didn't have experience in criminal cases. And later he came to a meeting with his parole officer both stoned and drunk, but the parole officer was out of town and her replacement decided to ignore the whole thing. I got off the bus before he reached the moral of his story, but I imagine it was something like "I can do whatever I want, and it always seems to work out for me." Just another day on the Number 9.

Longest Run To Date

This isn't a full post. It's just a quick note to record something, because I'm kind of proud of it. At the gym today I ran for thirty minutes at five MPH. I'm certain this is the longest I've ever run without stopping in my life. It's twice as long as my usual warmup. Today I thought I'd just see how far I'd could go, and I kept going and going...

Late Night Encounter With An Idiot

Something just happened, and it's disturbed me enough that I feel I have to write this down, even though I really don't feel like writing just now.

But first, context. I've been going to the gym pretty regularly the last year or so, and over the summer I've gradually slid into doing things later and later. (Partially because I'm naturally a night person and partially because nocturnal living helps to beat the heat.) Anyway, today I went to the gym at 6PM, then went to Safeway to get some groceries and didn't come home until 11PM.

It's about three blocks from the bus stop to my house. It's an easy walk that I've made thousands of times before. It was pretty dark, but between the full moon and the streetlights there was enough illumination to see where I was going. Seeing anything further away was a bit difficult, though.

So I get off the bus and I'm walking home. There's some woman walking in the same direction about half a block ahead of me, but I'm not paying much attention to her. Mostly I'm thinking about having pizza for supper. Then we both get to the last block before home, and as she passes the alley there, she turns into it and disappears. Again, this doesn't make much of an impression on me.

Then some guy appears from out of the alley. He's yelling and waving something in the air and - I'm not kidding, an actual chill went down my spine when I realized it was a machete. He's standing there yelling and waving a machete in the air. Then the woman reappears from out of the alley and I realize he's yelling at her. He's calling her stupid and irresponsible, and what was she thinking walking out by herself this late at night. Meanwhile I stop walking and as these sensory impressions hit home I wonder if he's going to attack her with that thing. Is he a murderer? Can I stop him if he is? Do I have to jump a man with a fucking machete when I've got nothing but my backpack? I can't let him attack her, to say nothing of the possibility that he might go for me next. They're less than twenty feet away.

Then they start walking together, in the same direction that I'm going. And I realize from her manner that she knows him. She's acting more like a sullen teenager than a terrified victim. Then he says something about how she's going the wrong way, and she says "this is the way I walked down here." Then he interrupts her, saying "We walked past the wall, we have to go around it again to get to the other side." And I realize he's talking about the Yellowhead freeway. He tracked her from somewhere on the other side of the Yellowhead to here, apparently because she left the house without telling anyone where she was going. Meanwhile he puts the machete back in its sheath on his belt and I feel a little better. But they're walking slower and slower and there's no way to avoid passing them. Meanwhile he continues to berate her in an incredibly patronizing way, calling her stupid and foolish and so on.

So when they get to my corner, of course they stop. Or rather the man stops, then the woman does too. Then, feeling more than a little scared, I pass right by them. I was trying to pass on the man's other side, so if he drew the machete again he'd have to turn to face me. But he's already turned, and while he's still yelling at her the whole time, I feel his eyes on me as I go by. Then I turn onto my block, they start walking again and soon they're out of sight. But I can still hear the man's voice because he's really loud, as he says "You're so fucking irresponsible. What if you forced me to take a man's life? You don't think of these things."

Then I'm walking down my block under the moonlight, and I realize that he wanted me to hear that last part. He wasn't waving the machete in the air to threaten her, he was doing it to threaten me because he must have seen me behind her when he was waiting at the mouth of the alley. And when I realized that it scared me even more! I wondered if the woman would be okay, but it seemed like she knew him, and frankly I didn't want to approach them again and ask questions. I was glad for it to be over.

But as I though about it a bit more, I started to feel angry. What if I had been walking at a slightly faster pace and passed the woman in front of the alley? Would that fucker have attacked me with his big knife? I actually think he would have. The only reason I didn't get attacked by an idiot with a machete tonight is because I was lucky enough to be walking slowly.

Third Blog Entry In A Series of Six

There's an interesting FPP (front page post) on MetaFilter today: Skepticism Refocused. The point of discussion is a post by John Horgan on his Scientific American blog, wherein he addresses the Skepticism movement. The body of Horgan's post is a reprint of a speech he made to the Northeast Conference on Science And Skepticism, and then there's some addendums where he addresses a few prominent critics.

Second Blog Entry In A Series of Six

Hello again. I'm doing this once more, in an attempt to prove the first time wasn't a fluke. You can do most anything once, but the real test is when you come back to do it again and again. It's been three days since the first entry, so I took my time. But here I am.

So... things to talk about. I've been hitting the gym pretty hard the last three days, and as soon as I finish this I'll go hit it again. (I'm actually typing this on a laptop in a coffee shop close to the gym.) The goal is to go four times in a row this week. It's exhausting but fun.

Saw what looked like a C-130 fly over the house on Wednesday. It was dark coloured and definitely wasn't a water bomber like this plane. The C-130 was flying roughly west-to-east and slowly gaining altitude, lumbering through the air like it was ready fall down at any moment. No grace at all. Maybe a military flight?

Looking at traffic is kind of fun. It's constantly changing but always the same, like watching waves or flames. Visual white noise. The cars are a lot more drab than they used to be. So many whites and greys! Every once in a while a Yellow Cab goes by and it's like an exclamation point. When did car owners start to crave anonymity? Cars used to come in all colours, and the older they got the more interesting the colours became. People who owned twenty or thirty year old cars would often give them a neat custom paint job, or decal flames or stripes - and on the flipside, people who neglected their cars would end up with weird mixtures from flaking and rust, or vari-coloured replacement panels. Nothing looks neglected these days, but nothing looks exciting either. The cars all look like plastic toys.

Speaking of interesting looks, I just saw a guy go past the window in a white fur coat, pork pie hat, and black tights. There's a man who isn't afraid to make a statement. There are still people like that, who put a lot of energy into being characters. Last night I was on Whyte Avenue at about 10PM when this shirtless guy on a bicycle flies past me while playing a guitar. He was guiding the bike with his legs and strumming away. The interesting thing is that I've seen him before, in the daytime about two months ago when it was cold, and he was shirtless then as well. Apparently he spends all his time on that bike, and can be found day and night, immune to cold, riding and strumming away. He goes quite fast, too.

Writing something in  public is a bit like that. No matter how much I try to suppress it, I still feel a bit like those guys, awkwardly panhandling for attention from passers by. But if no one stands out, then what fun is that? We become a sea of anonymous white and grey people hurrying back and forth. Someone's got to make an effort.

First Blog Entry In A Series Of Six

So I'm supposed to write six blog entries, three this week and three the next. It doesn't matter why. The important thing is I've made the commitment and have to follow through. But I've really gotten out of practice writing these things, and words aren't coming easily. It's probably more honest to say that the words have never come easily. That's because I don't like self expression. Writing is fun, but writing about anything personal is hard. Looking for attention, exposing myself to the scrutiny of others, is hard.

The thing is that it's easy to write about other things. Conversing on the Internet about some other subject that has nothing to do with me is fun and simple enough, and so is contributing to a group effort where my contribution is just part of a greater whole. But if I accidentally express too much of myself the words dry up and it hurts. The idea here is to directly tackle that resistance by writing regularly for two weeks. Six blog entries sets an achievable benchmark.

So what is there to talk about? I lost weight recently. I've been going to  a gym regularly for about eight or nine months and working pretty hard in there. My goal was to lose the extra twenty pounds I gained after Dad died, but I wasn't having much success. I think all the weight lifting helped me gain some muscle, but I didn't lose any fat. Then I went on a ketogenic diet for a month (while still going to the gym) - and BOOM, the weight melted off. I lost twenty-three pounds. I've been off the diet for about three or four weeks now, and kept most of the weight loss. I gained back about six pounds (but I'm pretty sure that's mostly muscle), so I'm still eighteen or nineteen pounds lighter than before, and that weight seems to be pretty steady. The diet really worked.

A ketogenic diet is where you eat no more than  twenty grams of carbs a day. That's it. There's  no point system or complicated diet plans. I had no bread or sugar for a month, but ate plenty of meat. Sometimes I'd get a roast chicken from the grocery store and eat the whole thing for supper. With the weight lifting and running I was burning plenty of calories, but they were all coming from protein and fat.

Maybe that's enough for Blog Entry Number One. But Ill be back soon.

April Photos

Yeah, I know. It's halfway through May. But I didn't take enough pictures for the current month yet.

Here are some of the images of April:

This is the fifty or sixty year old dogwood (Maybe ash?) behind the garage.

The yard looks like Mordor in this picture. That's because the tree trimmer I hired convinced me that Dad's magnificent fourty-year-old rosebushes needed to be trimmed to the ground. You know, for their health.

I'm really scared that I've killed them, but everyone says that roses like to be trimmed.

My hope is that these will be the "before" pictures, and when the roses have grown out again I can post the beautiful "afters."

The Blood Moon of April 15.

And here's the regular Moon. I'm a bit obsessed with it.

Hello there, Magpie.

These birds are hard to photograph, because they never stand still! And on top of that, they have black head feathers, black eyes and black beaks, which makes the features blur together. Got this one, though.

And finally, at long last, the first robin of spring!

This little guy was nearly invisible, but I saw something hopping around on the other side of the alley and just knew it was a robin. So I ran for the camera and viola!

You're Just Looking For Attention

An interesting discussion on Metafilter today got me thinking about the right to speak, and my own hangups when it comes to self expression. The discussion was about Jaden Smith, celebrity son of big time movie star Will Smith, and his strange pronouncements on Twitter. It actually wasn't that interesting. The kid has acquired a reputation for posting strange non sequiturs, and someone on Buzzfeed decided to take advantage of this by pairing Jaden Smith tweets with Garfield cartoons. The bit is marginally funny, but you could probably do the same thing with anyone's random Twitterings.

What interested me is when someone mentioned that Jaden had an Official Twitter account, and another Mefite said that his publicist probably encourages him to blast a quota of tweets out into the infosphere every month. Now that is strange. Heck, it's downright weird. His publicist thinks it's a good idea for a movie star to send unsolicited messages to random people? I mean, you can be on the bus or sitting down to a nice prime rib at AppleBee's, your phone buzzes, you see it's Jaden Smith tweeting You Can Discover Everything You Need To Know About Everything By Looking At Your Hands, and what... You smile like it's a good thing? Wouldn't that be incredibly annoying and make you hate him? Apparently not.

I just can't imagine doing this, and therein lies the problem. Deep down I've always felt that I'm unlikable, and people can only tolerate me in small doses. Twitter and its accompanying cellphone culture is weird and alien to me because I just can't believe on a gut level that people want to talk to each other that much. In our house phone calls were mostly received, not made (by a ratio of maybe a hundred-to-one), and even today I find it extremely difficult to call people. It just feels like an invasion of their privacy. I like talking to people on the phone, but calling them makes me feel tremendously guilty, because I know I'm bothering them with my unlikable self when they have better things to do. Tweeting things to a list of followers would ramp that guilt up to a whole new level.

This causes problems with writing, too. I started this blog as a storehouse for interesting things I've written elsewhere on the perishable Internet, but I've never once used it that way because deep down I don't think anything I write is worthy of preservation. I was going to post photos here, but still haven't done it. I barely post on Facebook. There are so many things I want to write, but never even start because I hear that voice (my father's weary voice) saying "You're just looking for attention." My mother had cancer for a long time, and Dad had to care for both of us. It was really hard, and I don't begrudge him anything. He did a great job, but that kind of situation messes you up as a kid no matter how much love there is in the family. Whenever I had night terrors or cried because I couldn't fit in at school, he'd say "you're just looking for attention" and I'd stop because that was the ultimate sin. You're not supposed to look for attention, you're supposed to just do your job and be quiet, like him.

But maybe that isn't the best approach to life for everybody.

Dream No More

It's been quite a while since I made a post. A lot has happened. A WHOLE lot, probably too much to summarize right now. But here's the important part for now.

I decided to make some changes to my life, to make some plans and actually carry them out. And the first plan was to travel. All my life I've stayed in Edmonton. When I was younger our family went on vacations, but the most exotic place we ever went to was British Columbia. After my Mom died, Dad and I still went on the occasional vacation, but we stayed within the bounds of the earlier trips. Then came my big act of rebellion in my twenties: going to the World Science Fiction convention in Winnipeg with a friend. By Greyhound Bus. It was exciting and wonderful, but world travel it was not. And every night I called my Dad on the phone. It was so good to hear his voice! I worried about him constantly while I was gone.

But now Dad is the one who's gone. He's dead, and it's been nineteen years since that trip. I spent six or seven months crying and wondering if I should still be alive, and eventually I decided the answer to that was Yes. So now it's time to start living, and make one of those childhood dreams come true! I'm typing this right now on a laptop in the departure lounge at the International Airport. In about an hour and fifteen minutes (barring further delays) I should be in the air (for the second time in my life) and on the way to Cancun Mexico for a week long vacation. It's exciting as hell, and absolutely terrifying.

Is this what it's supposed to feel like when dreams turn real?

Asleep Inside A Dream

Strange dream last night. I was in a cavern deep inside the Moon, about to enter an icy coffin. As the cover clicked shut I knew it was just supposed to last for a year (Asleep inside a dream!), but next thing I knew I was in a busy restaurant and somebody told me that I had actually died. There was somebody else I had to meet, but I couldn't find them or maybe they were too busy to see me, and in the middle of the bustle and commotion with all these people walking around and bumping into me I realized that dying had changed nothing. My skin was really pale, but I could still feel a heartbeat in my chest and nobody else seemed to care. It was same old runaround.

Birthday

Today is my birthday, the first one I've ever had alone. More perhaps later.

A Visit From The Trickster Spirit

There's a coyote in the backyard! Just a small one (probably less than seven pounds), but definitely a coyote. I looked them up on Wikipedia, and this little character is just like the photos. It's got a thin muzzle with close -set almond shaped eyes, triangular ears, and a fuzzy yellow-brown coat. The fur is puffed up a little around the shoulders. I haven't seen it's tail, unfortunately. But I'm pretty sure it's not a dog.

And it doesn't act like a dog. It laid down in front of a rose bush and curled up around itself, nose under tail, but instead of resting it kept sticking its head up in the air, maybe listening to the neighbourhood sounds. Its manner reminded me of the rabbits from the last few years: always on alert. Then it licked its fur for awhile.

I coughed a couple of times, and it heard me! Even though I'm on the other side of a window and more than ten feet in the air. I was scared it was going to leave, but it just moved over to the other side of the bush and seemed to eat some snow. (Not sure it was actually doing that, but that's what it looked like.) Then it sniffed the air for awhile, and looked back in my direction. I looked right into its eyes, but it might not have seen me through the window. Then finally all must have been well, because it turned around three times and laid down again. I guess coyotes, dogs and wolves all have that turning behavior.

The coyote is still there! I think it's sort of half sleeping.

EDIT: Heh. One of my neighbours is out shovelling snow now. You can't see him, but the coyote is laser focused on the sound. You can just see it calculating danger levels in its head. Should I stay or go? So far it's "stay."

Stairway To Heaven

There have been so many incredible auroras this week! Every clear night the sky is alive with dancing fires and sheets of light. I just saw a beautiful display tonight. It lasted for nearly an hour, and may still be going on, but I had to come inside eventually.

At first they hang in the sky like glowing clouds, but then they start to move... It's amazing.

Father's Day

I had a pretty rough day. I've been crying and breaking down quite a bit this week, probably because Father's Day was coming.

The cemetery made an event out of it. They sent me a letter and I went, not sure why though. It was a really nice day. They gave me a carnation to put on his grave, and drove me over to the plot.

It was still broken soil, just like after the funeral, and the markers were gone. I expected the latter, because I paid extra to have Mom's marker refinished at the factory wherever they make these things. When it's done, both Mom and Dad's markers will be put in at the same time, within a shared concrete border that should look quite nice. But I didn't expect to see broken dirt and no grass, like they'd just forgotten him there. So I talked to someone (can't remember the name) and she said they put in sod over whole bunch of graves at once. There are at least fifty graves like Dad's, apparently, and they're going to cover them all over in July. I didn't like it, but what can I do? I can't bring my own sod.

So I sat there beside their graves and talked to them for awhile. Cried a lot. Just uncontrollable sobbing, so bad I nearly choked. I talked about suicide, and how I can't take the pain anymore. Then I went to get a helium balloon that they were also giving out. The idea is to say something and then release the balloon, send it to them in heaven.

So I came back to the grave, cried a bit more, and started to talk about how this was for them when the balloon burst! It just went "pop" right there when I was holding it, sending bits of rubber all over the grave. I scrambled to get back to the funeral home (it's a fair distance, and this was near the end of the event) and got another balloon. Then I went back to the grave and cleaned off the bits of rubber that I missed the first time. I said "This is a symbol of my love for you. I hope you get it in heaven." and let the balloon go. The wind got it right away, and it sailed between two trees, then started to gain altitude. I watched it until it disappeared from sight. I talked to Mom and Dad a lot more after that, but didn't feel quite as bad, because I got the message: Dad popped that first balloon, because he was angry I was talking about suicide. He didn't want to hear it, and let me know in the only way he could. I promised him that I wouldn't do it, but in return I wanted him to be happy in heaven, and not worry about me so much. Because I know him, and my grief must be bothering him a lot right now.

And that's it. I'm feeling pretty weak and numb, and a bit dizzy. But I'm still here.

It's The End of The World

My father has passed away.

Blizzard!

This morning we got the worst winter storm (so far) this year - and it's the fourth of May! Yesterday there was green grass and bushes tentatively unfurling little green leaves, birds singing and flying around, and today it's a total whiteout. Soggy, heavy snow everywhere and the wind blowing like a hurricane. The power went out for a few minutes this morning. I went outside to help my Dad get on his bus (probably not the best idea, but he got to his destination okay), and I couldn't even breathe. The wind was blowing so hard that it became diffuse and I couldn't get enough air into my lungs, and after five minutes I was just coated in snow.

And the worst thing is there's this cute little bunny that's been showing up in the garden for the last couple of weeks, and it's out there right now in the snow. It's made a little burrow for itself out of the branches of a bush and some long grass and by digging in the snow, and it's just sitting out there with its eyes closed trying to tough out the storm. I've been watching it from the kitchen window, trying to think of what I can do to help, but it's a wild animal. If I went out there it would just run away and lose the minimal protection of the burrow, so all I can do is watch and hope it gets through all right. Sometimes I get worried because it hasn't moved for awhile, but then it will twitch its ears or rub its legs and knock off the encrustation of snow. I guess it'll be okay.

Now it's my turn to go outside and do the grocery shopping. Time to break out the winter coat.

EDIT 1:
I'm back for the moment. The wind petered out after 12:30, and it hasn't been too bad after that. Just wet and cold. The rabbit is still in his emergency burrow and shows no sign of coming out, but he seems to be okay. I guess that's how they've survived for millions of years: when bad weather hits, find the best shelter you can and dig in.

EDIT 2:
The rabbit is gone now. I think it left sometime around sunset yesterday, but I'm not sure. The strange thing is that it left no trace of itself behind. There's smooth white snow all around the little grassy hole it made, but no tracks or marks whatsoever. Was this some kind of ninja bunny? I don't know.

Ye Winds Tempestuous Blow

Quite a storm last night. There's power outages and damage all over the city - though not here, obviously. We got off pretty light at this house. One of the trees out front has a big, broken branch, and that's it. But look a little further down the street and you can see a whole lot more broken branches. Across the street and a few houses down, there's a tree that's got half its branches lying in a leafy green heap on the grass. About a block away there's a yard where a tree split in two right down the middle, with half of it lying on the road. We had to drive around that last night. I was out in the storm with a friend, but we were safe in his car and nothing happened to us. It was still a pretty interesting ride home, though. I might write something about that later.

Right now the most relevant thing I can mention is this weird feeling that's in the air. I don't know exactly how to describe it, it's like this vibe that says something isn't right, and things still aren't back to normal. No doubt it has to do with the changes in ions and air pressure that you get after a storm, but the physical effect is pretty striking. People get angry or depressed or feel sick for no reason at all, and there are no birds singing today. Not even a magpie squawk, just silence, broken by the distant wail of sirens. (There's been a lot of sirens today.) No newspaper today, either. It's weird how everything seems topsy turvy and you don't know what to expect. I even found a spider in the coffee pot this morning.