Lunch, with roses

One of the joys of being retired is spending time with friends without having to zoom back to the office. There were a few lunches during the recent work spell and they were nice, if a bit truncated.

But how nice is this place? I totally loved the decor, mainly because I don't think it's decoration. I think this is the way it is, and has been for some time.

It's in High River, and I had a wonderful lunch with my buddy. I was sitting with this view, and was fascinated by the photographer. He clearly knew the staff and was showing them some photos on the back of his camera. I chatted with him a bit later, but didn't get his name. Mainly now when I see people carrying nice cameras I'm curious about what it is. He showed it to me, we chatted about some of the challenges using it, and that day's photos (a dragonfly in flight!) it takes wonderful photos. The Canon cognoscenti will know what 5DsR means. For the rest of you it means bring lots of money.

Yes, that's a train running around the track near the roof. It's a lovely small town diner, and it was full at 1pm. We scored a booth at the back. The chicken soup was the best I've ever had in a restaurant.

I've known this particular buddy since some time in 1985 or so, and there's been lots of changes since then. We used to see each other quite often when he lived in Braeside, but Okotoks is a little further away.

Now this week I met up with a buddy I've known even longer, though our visits are more periodic. Again, much to talk about, particularly the transition from working full time to retirement.

This morning was a slow start, after an amazing fireworks show from the Philippines last night. Holy doodle! This afternoon was spent with my laptop in the back patio. The smoke is worse than yesterday, but not as bad as downtown, so it wasn't bad at all. I have to admit it wasn't the most productive writing session ever. I may have napped.

Here's some roses for you flower buffs.

You are who you hang out with

I have a few simple rules of life. One of them is, believe what people actually do, not what they say. Watch how they treat wait staff, receptionists, and other service people, and you'll get a good idea about the content of their character. If you want an insight about someone, look at who they hang around with by choice.

People go where they fit in, where they feel comfortable, where they are accepted. Back in the days before the internet it was more difficult to find people like you, and the less conventional you were, the harder it was. I suspect people made more of an effort to fit in. Now everybody seems to let their freak flag fly, as the saying goes.

You can find an internet group for quite literally anything, which is both good and bad. Stamp collectors want to get together at a convention, and most people are all 'who cares?' You might not be interested in collecting or exchanging stamps, but it's a recognized hobby. Pre-internet one could publicly talk about it, or buy advertising, and risk nothing but boring those not interested.

You're a left-handed albino welder from Illinois, and you're looking to form a support group and exchange tips on protection against the UV rays? There might not be many in Illinois, but nation-wide, or even world wide there's got to be enough to form a club, and with the internet you can find them. Before the internet it would be tough sledding. Not that anything is wrong with being such a person, it's just really rare.

Then again, criminals and other ne'er-do-well types can get together and learn from each other. They are just as eager as the stamp collectors, perhaps even more so, to trade their illicit materials, and most seek to make money along the way. If you're the only such person you know, before the internet, you would keep a low profile.

It's one thing to hold legitimate but unpopular positions, like being the only Democrat surrounded by Republicans. Being a Libertarian, or a Communist, starts to raise eyebrows. Saying you were a Nazi was beyond the pale. You would be shunned. The world went to war to stop that repellant and disgusting ideology. Now they get together via the internet, and hold rallies, and find further support! They get support from each other and build legitimacy. It makes me queasy to see it happening.

Not that I want to roll things back to before the internet. No way. I think back to it now, and it seems like a strange time. News coming on printed paper, delivered to your home, or broadcast a few times a day by a small number of channels. Standing in a long line to get money from the bank or pay bills. Looking things up in big heavy books. Hearing music outside your home only on the radio, or making mix tapes to play on a 'portable' boom box. Phones with dials, wired into the wall and typically one per house, sometimes on a party line (look it up and prepare to be horrified). Having the store clerk making a phone call to check your credit card, and the thunk thunk of the card machine, and if I stretch a bit, I can recall credit cards themselves being rare, so people paid with cash or (horrors!) a cheque.

No thank you.

So if you're facing some life choices, doing some self examination, don't stop with yourself. The people you hang out with, in person or on the internet, are likely a reflection of yourself. Are you in an echo chamber? Could you talk about who and what you are to random people you might meet? Or does only a select group 'understand' you? Do your friends encourage you to grow and explore new things, or do they try to restrict your access to other people and outside situations? That might help you sort out what you're all about.

I admit to being glad I grew up before the internet. I blush at some of my memories, and there were a few times I was really lucky. (Mom, if you don't know, don't ask, you don't want to know!) My mistakes and fumbling around to understand life and who I was in it are mercifully buried in the mists of time.

Yes, it's easier to find out who you are and connect with your tribe. But what if you're just exploring? What if you didn't know how vile those people actually were, or who they were connected to? What about those honest mistakes made along the way? What about that photo your delusional ex-lover posts? What about all those stories that get made up about even marginally famous people? None of that goes away now. There are people paid to sift through the dregs of the internet, looking for such stuff, to be used by your enemies when appropriate. I can't imagine myself being desperate enough, or debased enough to do that, but the political parties don't seem to have any difficulty finding such people.

So, who do I hang out with, you ask? There are some photos here, if you're curious. And these guys.

Comparisons

So this day lily shot. It's a perfectly nice shot, and I'm pleased with it. For some reason it's hard for the day lilies to take a bad shot. The camera loves their red and orange. The only problem with it is that I've done better. Like the one from last year on this page, about half way down. That's a much nicer shot. There's even another one similar to it, with an ant, that I can't find at the moment. What's not to like there?

A lily, of course, most of the stamen in focus enough to see tiny beads of pollen on the edges. Or maybe those are tiny drops of water. It's hard to tell, even in the bigger version.

As I've accumulated more photos, there tend to be some repeats. I'm sure you've noticed that I've posted more than one photo of lilies, or dahlias or roses. Or the cats. Part of the challenge is finding interesting ways to shoot them, or to catch the cats in action.

Inevitably when you have lots of shots, you start to compare them. Which ones are better, and why?

Here's a few more stamen with different kinds of lilies. One of the them is the traditional shot, with all the petals on display. In the other the petals are a framing device. Is one better than the other? Can they even be compared because they're different kinds of lilies?

Couch to 5K

When I was actively training, and people got a grip on the distances involved, and got over their astonishment that anyone would willingly do this, many of them asked, "what's the hardest distance?

I always told them, couch to 5K. Why?

Because on the couch is not moving. Running 5K is movement. Lots of movement, and it takes time and dedication and determination to move so you can run 5 K at once and not collapse in a heap or injure yourself doing it.

Once you can do 5K, it's not so hard to move up to 10 K. It's just a bit more of the same, and typically doesn't demand a lot in the nutrition or hydration departments. From 10 to 21.1 is a jump, it's true. Some planning is needed to take care of nutrition and hydration, and you need to start thinking about the right gear. What worked for 5K and about a half hour to 45 minutes might not work for 21.1 K and what could be 2 to 3 hours. We need not get into the jump to 42.2 K here.

Both of those jumps are easier than the jump from motionless to motion. More of the same, with a bit more planning as the distances get longer. Our bodies are evolved to run, and many people find that with a bit of care, they come to love running, and want to go further. I certainly have. There's been lots of times my body has been chugging along without me needing to pay attention to it, and I've been thinking of whatever. What I'll write in my blog is very common, I've written so many blog posts during workouts that you wouldn't believe. Lots of the novel writing has happened during a run. Sometimes I've noodled through problems at work. Sometimes I've just let my brain idle in neutral, and often been astonished at the end of the run how far I went.

I was last actively running in April and May, kind of nursing some nagging injuries. I decided to stop running and biking seriously over the summer and keep swimming. Well, that last one is sort of ok. There's been some shoulder issues as well. This getting old makes life difficult sometimes.

When you're active it's easy to run into other active people. I knew a few people in the local triathlon community, and have become good friends with some of them. But I never really thought of myself as an athlete or a competitor. I strived for athletic for my age group, which is a different thing entirely. In fact, one of my major unfulfilled triathlon goals is to finish mid-pack.

One of my buddies did Ironman and is now thinking about her next goals. I keep telling her one doesn't escape the Ironman taint that easily, because I haven't entirely escaped it either. Both of us are thinking of the next things. I want to get back to running regularly, if not the distances involved before. 5K  a few times a week is fine. Trick is getting back there.

Today was the first day. 40 minutes of walk run, 4x 4 min easy easy run (7:30 pace mostly downhill) and 1 minute walk, with a good walk to warm up and cool down.

Remember what I said? I am essentially getting off the couch here. Active retirement starts today.

To keep my flower fans happy, here's some lilies. Some of them like me, a little battered and worse for wear, but still hanging in there.

Giving me the eye

The dahlias are up and blooming, though it isn't the bumper crop it was last year. They got a later start because of the severe winter, got beaten up by hail, and now there's all this smoke in the air diluting the sunshine they need.

The bees are still hard at it though. I love trying to catch their little faces all covered in pollen. I think this one is giving me the eye, wondering why I'm distracting it, while it has work to do.

This red dahlia is in the back garden, and I never saw any bees on it.

These lovely pink ones are in the front patio, and while they weren't covered in bees, they did get their regular visitors.

Still murky

The other night I peeked outside just before bed to see these, and scampered outside. Of course that's when every neighbour just HAD to drive down the street. Yes, it's still smokey, this morning was the worst yet, I think. Bleah.

These two colourful shots bookended the smokey ones above, first the stone, then the smoke, then the flower.

A couple more from the smokey downtown walk the other day. I had walked past this any number of times before I actually noticed, then a bunch more times till I had my camera with me.

This, I think does not go with the skyline photos that are normally taken from here. It reminds me more of the last one from yesterday's post, the white walls and the black railing.

Re-re-retired

There's an old joke that I hope won't be too offensive. A wealthy man is chatting up a beautiful woman at a social function. Eventually he pops the question, "For $100,000 are you willing to go up to my hotel room with me for an night of wild and crazy sex?"

She responds "Sure, once we get the payment sorted out, you can't have that much cash on you."

"All right," he says, "How about for $100?"

She slaps his face hard, and yells, "What do you think I am?"

He rubs his face, having not ducked quite quickly enough. "Oh ma'am, we both know what you are, now we're negotiating the price."

I was thinking of that last week. It's what almost all of us are, trading our time doing things that we're told to do and probably wouldn't do on our own, in exchange for money. The difference is that some people have different standards, and different needs. If you need a job to pay the rent and put groceries on the table, it's very difficult to say no to an employer.

The rich rely on that, and take advantage. It's the main reason they want to keep people poor, so they can continue to take advantage of them.

But what if you don't need any particular job? What if you're working because you want to? Maybe the work is interesting, or maybe it contributes to something you think is important, or you're doing a favour for a buddy, or any number of other reasons. But you aren't working because you need the money. What then?

You can walk away from a job. You can fire the company that has employed you. I did. I decided I wasn't going to deal with a certain situation any longer. I had pushed back on the situation a while ago, and it got marginally better. Then it got worse again and there was no indication things would change. Enough was enough. I don't think they thought I was serious. Now I'm retired again, and I'm thinking I'm not going to take another office job again.

So what did I do this week instead of working? Being busy, wondering how I ever had the time to work. In no particular order, a nice walk with Linda, lunch with a buddy, a (smokey) bike ride up to the reservoir on the newly overhauled hybrid, lunch with Linda, shopping for bike accessories, a (smokey) photowalk downtown, lunch with another buddy, shopping for a winter vacation, thinking about several photo trips, investigated buying a specialty lens for astro photography, received a pitch for another office job, chatted to a buddy met by chance on the street, worked on my novel (that one germ of an idea, two characters meeting over a dead lawnmower has sprung wings and flapped off in several directions), had several afternoon naps, attended a fireworks event, and here it is Friday afternoon. Wow.

So if you're looking for a buddy to go on a photo ramble with, get in touch with me. Or if we haven't seen each other for a while and would like to catch up over lunch or coffee.

A few days after that big event, I got news that an uncle of mine had died abruptly and unexpectedly at age 71. That is an uncomfortable small number of years older than I am now. It makes me ask myself how I want to spend the remaining years I have.

These are a couple more hand held shots with the 600 mm lens, before the smoke rolled in and made the very concept of such a lens useless.

I've looked at this scene almost every working day for more than 5 years. I park and walk past it to take the stairs. This ramp leads to a pair of slow elevators. I can reliably beat them going up 4 floors. A buddy once asked why I parked on the bottom level and walked up 4 flights rather than park on the +15 level. The difference is that I can walk up or down those flights much faster than I could drive them. It's a process thing, thinking it through on a holistic level.

One night of fireworks at Globalfest done 4 more to go. No, I didn't take the camera. I'm not sure if I will. For these sorts of things I'd rather watch them with my eyes and enjoy the experience. Then I don't have to mind an expensive camera, and get all worked up about the shots I might or might not get.