I was off of work for the past few days. I spent a lot of that time working on my home lab (A bunch of computers that I can configure, break, fix and use to learn). I had been working on a particularly persistent problem and I couldn’t find the cause.
It probably took me about 8 hours over three days to solve the issue. It seems so easy to get working correctly once you understand why it wasn’t working to begin with. “It’s easy once you know how to do it”. These are skills and knowledge that are applicable to my career. It felt so good to “work the problem” until i found the solution. This included a few breaks when I felt like just giving up.
I was suppose to meet my old boss for lunch. Just taking some time to catch up with ourselves. He had to cancel an hour before due to unforeseen events at work. We rescheduled for the following week.
I had made some chicken noodle soup from scratch the day before but hadn’t had a chance to eat any of it. It had taken all day to make, and my old roommate had invited me over for supper at his place. So I reheated a small pot of the broth, which included the chicken and vegetables and I threw in some pasta.
It was the perfect food for the day we were having. The weather indicated it was hovering around -16 Celsius. -21 If you took into factor humidity and wind. Despite the cold, there was still sun shining and a blue sky to be seen in between the occasional clouds. I finished the soup and decided to head to the gym for a cardio workout.
Riding the metro, I tried to make some progress on the current book i’m reading for our work book club. I’m already weeks behind and they’ve started a new book. I’m very disappointed in myself.
I’m stepping out of the metro in order to make my way to the gym at work when I hear one of Montreals great buskers playing his violin. This particular busker wears a white wolfs head mask as he plays. He’s an excellent performer and musician. I often give him change when I have some as well as stop and listen to him play when time permits.
All I had on me today was a 10$ bill. I tell myself as I’m approaching him that if there’s a lot of change in his violin case I’ll wave the bill in front of him, drop it in the case and then make some change.
His case being full as I approached, I stopped in front of him as he was playing and attempted my best to wave the 10$ bill in front of him. I then crouched, dropped it in took at 5$ and was getting ready to pick up a 2$ coin when I someone grabbed my shoulder and tried to hold me down while saying “woah, whoah, stop…What are you doing”.
As I looked up I realized it was the violinist himself and he had taken off his mask. I explained I was just making change for 10$, and that I had tried to wave it in front of him earlier to explain. He quickly and profusely apologized, explaining that on a few earlier occasions he had been robbed.
I told him not to worry about it, I completely understood why he reacted the way he did. I wished him a good day, told him how much I enjoyed his playing and hoped that I hadn’t caused him too much trouble by making change as he continued to apologize. We were both apologizing at the end. I felt a little bad for making him panic and think he was getting robbed again. Lots of people have asked who he is, who is under the mask. Well today I unintentional and unwittingly found out. I continued on my way.
I ended up doing 55 minutes of jogging on the treadmill. It indicated I lost approximately 740 calories if it’s to be believed. Ran 9.36 kilometers. My longest run in a very long time. I finished it drenched in sweat. I cooled down, did some stretching and then finished off with a small set of negative pull-ups.
I had been working on my home lab a lot over the past few days. I had been looking forward to meeting up with my old boss for lunch, but that was cancelled. The gym workout was good, but I wanted a change of scenery. I stopped at my favorite tea room and settled in. A nice tea pot of Oolong arrived shortly afterwards and I made some more progress with my book.
An hour of so later, it was time to start thinking about what I would eating for supper. Although it was quite cold today, it was still a nice day. There wasn’t too much wind so being outside wasn’t difficult. I decided I would walk home. It’s a 7 kilometer walk from my favorite little tea room to home. I plugged in my headphones and set foot into the night. The sidewalks aren’t too slippery, there’s almost always some cement underfoot which lets me walk faster. There are less people in the streets because of the cold, so there’s less pedestrian traffic as well.
I’m grooving to my music winding my way through side streets when I see this old man in a wheel chair. He’s in front of a building, has no gloves on and is trying to make his way up an incline in his wheelchair. He was barely making progress. I had almost walked past when I took off my glove, removed my ear plugs and asked him in French: “Sir, would you like a hand getting up the incline?”. He quickly accepted. I made my way over to where he was, slowly started pushing him up the small ramp until we arrived at the front door. He had a little box in his hands that automatically opened the door when the button was pressed. He did his thing, the doors opened. I slowly pushed him in and wished him a good night as I turned around.
There are two things I’ve often found myself doing when I walk long distances or travel. One is take pictures of my shoes while I’m standing somewhere. I don’t know why i started doing this, but it’s something I’ve often done. I think I may have posted one or two examples of these on the blog over the years.
The other thing I do is take pictures of doors. This started out of my habit of liking and reading graffiti. I’ve posted lots of pictures of doors over the years on the blog. So as I stepped out of the building, I wanted to take a picture of the door, while the old man while still in the reception area. One more picture for my doors collection, this one just has a little extra meaning for me. At some point I will make a post with all the pit cures of doors I’ve ever captured.
I’m almost home, maybe 20 minutes away. I’m not too cold, walking fast enough to keep warm. My phone suddenly pops up a low battery warning but it indicates I should have more than enough battery to make it home. Maybe ten minutes later, I grab my phone to skip a song and it powers itself off, with a low battery warning. Although it was strange I knew right away it was because of the cold. The phone had been in my front jacket pocket where there was very little insulation between it and the cold that was being forced upon it while walking. It was the first time in recent memory that I’ve had a phone shut down because of the cold.
I finally made it home and got to cooking super. Some ground turkey, onion, red pepper, tomato, lettuce wraps with a little tzatziki sauce. I even managed to prep some food for the next few days while it was cooking.
It was really nice day where I got a lot done.
- I hit the gym
- I worked in the lab
- I cooked
- I went out for some tea and reading
- I spent some time outside
- I wrote
- I stretched
- I meditated
I have no idea how long all this productivity is going to last. My gut is telling me it’s going to last. I’m probably wrong but I’m just being honest when I write that my gut really is telling me it’s going to last. For the time being I’m getting shit done. All I see in front of me are good things.
It’s weird and wonderful my friends
mtl_dokkaebi.
