Our walking challenge at work is over! Collectively we’ve walked about twice the distance between Ottawa and Easter Island, where our mascots the Maori stone (bit)heads come from. I personally put in 1,500,000 steps over about 100 days, putting me in around 15,000 a day on average. It would have been higher except for a sick spell I had early on, and then around week 8 pedometer-wearing-fatigue set in for a little bit and I “forgot” to put it on for a few mornings.

In total, I walked 1,100+km in 3 months. I came in second in the office to a hardcore treadmill walker, so I feel pretty accomplished.

No spoilers, don’t worry.

So I’m finally watching through Season 4 (at least, the first half) now that it’s on DVD, and there’s an episode called “The Ties That Bind” that really takes the grating and bleakness level of BSG up to the max, with a constantly wailing baby through about a third of the episode and the crew sweating buckets in every shot. The episode is so unwatchably dreary and unforgiving I’d tell you to skip it, except a couple of important things happen that you kindof have to see.

To make it slightly bearable, I think they threw a couple of winks and nods in for people watching closely.

Firstly - I’m not sure if this is meaningfully intentional or just for fun - someone in the star painting department decided it’d be clever to throw in a bunch of recognizable constellations. I haven’t noticed any accurate starfields in previous episodes, but when this Basestar warped into the shot I was in front of my big screen staring at a huge image of Orion, so it kindof stood out. I drew in some lines so you could catch it in the screen cap. The thing is - Orion’s stars only line up to form it’s familiar hourglass shape when viewed from within a few light years of Earth, not from deep space. In fact, as the camera pans, you can see the Big Dipper, Andromeda, and a couple of other familiar (nearby!) night-time arrangements, either making me a huge nerd, or revealing that the Cylons are right on top of Earth.

Then - a troubled gang of crew members have a meeting in a room they take great pains to reveal as 1701D. A familiar number to anyone who’s ever watched Star Trek TNG repeats for 15 years. *sigh* Supernerd. I’m not sure that the number -means- anything in this context, which is weird because it’s such a jarringly upbeat thing to contrast against the sinister events afoot.

I felt something skittering on the back of my neck Monday as I was biking into work, so I slapped at it and knocked whatever it was (probably a fly) off and didn’t give it a second thought.

So I get to work, change into my work clothes, pound away at my keyboard, 8 hours later change back into my home clothes, and pedal home. I take off my helmet as I’m going up the elevator, and there, riding along on top, is a big brown wolf spider. I’m pretty sure he’d been living in my helmet all day.

I hope they don’t have security cameras in the elevators, because I probably jumped like 3 feet.

As I was eating my strawberries this morning I saw what I thought was a new red dome on a building down the street - and then realized it was moving. Ponderously, the CTV balloon drifted out along the river, floating along at what looked like ladder-height most of the way. I wonder if the pilot is afraid of heights? I suspect they were just happy to get an unusual wind current blowing them along a safe route and thought they’d explore it.

I found a nifty sidewalk chalk character outside a kids’ store during Westfest, a dinosaur monster someone drew among all the scribbling of the toddlers. I’ve been itching to bring a box of coloured chalks home and doodle out some art on the sidewalks in front of our building, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Maybe this is the impetus I need. Anyone up for a creative sidewalk chalk-bombing excursion?

I read that there was a sidewalk chalk rebellion a few years ago in the Glebe - some kids got fined for doodling on the pavement and the entire neighborhood came out to scribble in solidarity.  I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for a yearly event but haven’t spotted one yet.

We were out with Nigel and the family a little while ago and while Rowan was climbing around on the equipment at the park, some neighborhood kids borrowed her recumbent trike-thing that Nigel built and were racing it around recklessly, eliciting gasps from the adults until one of them finally (predictably) ran into another.

There was lots of crying but no permanent damage - unlike the effects of riding this mean-looking rusty bug trike into groups of neighborhood kids, which at the very least is guaranteed to cause a few cases of tetanus.

This was one of the fantastic finds at the Art in the Park festival in the Glebe a few weekends ago, but I’ve sadly misplaced the artist’s name. He had a whole corner of the park full of sharp pointy rusted metal things for evil step-parents to give their kids.

After a short excursion to Westfest today we headed over to my parents to put our half of the garden into the space they generously plowed up for us. We had to spend a few hours picking clumps of sod out of the freshly turned soil, but once we set down to actual planting, it went pretty quick. We put in a bunch of regular old veggies, but it wouldn’t be a Jason Cobill garden without some freaky mutant hybrid plants.

I’ve been reading about interesting heirloom varieties and hybridization - maybe I’ll try crossing my cucumbers with jellyfish this year. Mmmm, Pirhanapples. Kukumberoos?

Living among the normal radishes and cucumbers you’ll find:

Chocolate Peppers

8-Ball Zuchinni

Black Cherry Tomatoes

(Images liberated wantonly  from copyrighted sources all over the internet.)

New Line have finally released the trailer for the movie version of “The Time Traveller’s Wife” which I’ve been eagerly anticipating since I read they were filming it two years ago. I’m a bit weirded out by the trailer - they give a lot away early on (which is meaningless to anyone who hasn’t read the book, probably) and they didn’t go out of their way to tease readers with any of the meaty scenes. I would have liked to see some shots of Clare and Henry’s underground punk roots, but the characters seem a little cleaned up for film. I’m worried for the storyline!

I had read Rachel Weisz was going to play Clare Abshire - a character so memorable I actually recall both her first and last names, which I can rarely muster even for real people. So I was surprised when I saw Rachel McAdams in the role - I think she’ll do a fine job. It’ll be interesting to see how they try to age and de-age her through Henry’s jumping back and forth through time. Eric Bana looks like I imagined Henry DeTamble.

About the actual time travel - I’m not sure I like the way he slowly disintegrates between jumps.  In my imagination it’s a violent forceful spasm and collapsing into nothingness. Like Nightcrawler’s “Bamfing” but more painful looking. I had actually sketched it out someplace - I should go through my drawings and do up a video treatment. Who wants to travel through time? Swing by my place and I’ll film you spazzing out!

So I thought I’d travel light to work yesterday without my bag full of camera equipment and sketchpads and magazines and technical documents and library books, and invariably stumbled on all kinds of interesting stuff as I was leaving work. It seems like the universe waits for me to not have my camera on hand before the weird stuff starts.

I got to witness a really cool Model T Ford meetup at Monkey Joe’s, there were about 10 of them lined up facing Carling in the parking lot, and a bunch of old guys comparing wooden wheel diameters. Beautiful paint jobs and excellent restoration work on all of them. I hope it’s a recurring event, I’d love to get some detail shots of all the chrome and custom metalwork.

Then I saw someone dressed up in a monkey suit outside of Mark’s Work Wearhouse dancing around and trying to get people to come into the store - not really picture-worthy but odd enough that I wished Natasha could have seen it. (It turns out she saw him too on the bus ride home.)

So I’ve learned my lesson - I’m going to fuse my camera to my arm somehow. Meanwhile, here’s a 7-minute sketch of the dancing monkey guy… EXACTLY as it happened. In black and white for maximum artistic effect.

A gang of us ended up at Amigo Go-karting last night in the back of Gatineau (wayyy in the back) to celebrate Nigel’s birthday, and had a blast. They have some really fast “Superkarts” there that they claim get up to 80km on their winding outdoor track.

I ended up in a slightly less powerful kart (I guess it’s rare that they’re all evenly matched) but even though I was outmatched on the straightaways I had a lot of fun trying to perfect my lines into and out of corners. With the rear axle fixed, when you hit the hairpin turns you can feel the back tires chirping up and hopping across the ground, about to come loose. It’s exhilarating to be on the edge of control.

I ended up coming home smelling of gasoline, rubber, and motor oil, which satisfied my machismo requirements for a little while. I’ve also got a really fantastic bruise on my hip that Natasha was shocked to discover this morning - a casualty of slamming into the sides of my seat on S-curves. Lots of power in those things!