Airport

Anyone want to go to the airport? I can drive you to the airport. I miss the airport, it's been a few MONTHS since I've been there, can you believe it! It's been years since I've gone this long without taking a flight!

Drumheller

Friday was forecast for nice weather, so I took a vacation day. For some reason, had the badlands on my mind, possibly because of Mantracker, possibly not. Don't really know where to go hiking in the badlands other than Horseshoe canyon, so I went there. Of course, nooone to go with, so wandered alone. It was ok. Never been down into the canyon before. Very different from what I'm used to. So many steep "hills" around, can't tell what's around the next corner. If you let your imagination go, you feel you might come across a dinosaur, or a bandit hideout, or some human remains. Have to be a bit careful, so much undercut, and the ground often crumbly. But overall was fine and easy to get around. Sometimes quite neat to drop down some feet into a narrow dry creek. In general the area felt so lifeless, colourless and dry. But, actually lots of shrubs especially near the dried creeks. Sometimes walking over some, the fragrance of crushed herbs was quite pleasant. At one point, I was inspecting some tracks, suspecting they were deer, then minutes later crossed a ridge and saw a deer prancing up a slope and out of sight. Couldn't really pursue it. Felt like I wandered around for a some hours, but turned out closer to just two. The relentless strong wind when not sheltered tends to tire me out quickly.

Went into drumheller then, and went to the Tyrrell Museum. I think the last time I was there was in junior high on a school trip. So in a way I sortof didn't want to go in, hard to explain. But I did. It was great. I'm a little surprised the admission is only $10, I expected it would be much higher. I remember my favorite part long ago were the computers that let you design a dinosaur. So of course you tried to make the one mostly likely to make Darwin cry (and the game told you why it would never survive)... give it a big triceratops head on the end of a long thin brachiosaurus neck, with some stubby tyranosaurus front legs etc. Unfortunately I didn't find such a game this time. So today, my favorite part was the garden area... smelled so good, like hiking in the spring, not sure how to describe it, cool and fresh and clean/natural. As for museummy parts, lots are nice of course. Aquarium & underwater type areas felt peaceful. I should try to design a home like that.

Bio clock again

The week ended with another gathering of friends. This time, there were a few children present, around the 2 yr old mark. Of course, these became the main topic/focus of attention and conversation for the evening.

I still didn't interact with them much, just observed. And as I mentioned in a previous post... once again observed that they weren't too annoying, and much of the time were quite amusing or cute. They were behaving quite well.

I know it was probably an example of the "best of times", and may not well represent the "real world", but the fact that it even seems this way at all, maybe it is an subconscious reaction to getting older.

Lotion

A couple weeks ago, my hands were crazy dry, soon to have skin splitting and bleeding, as typically happens during the winter. I was putting moisturizer on each day, which made it feel ok for a while until I washed my hands. Meanwhile had to be careful which parts of the hands it got on, since I don't like touching things through lotion. I had to buy some more. I decided to experiment. Aveeno was about $9 for a small bottle. Many others were around $5 for a larger bottle. Some generics were as low as $3. I decided to try the fancy stuff, to see if there was any actual value behind the much higher price.

And lo and behold, it appears there is! This stuff actually feels better, as well as seeming to actually improve the skin it is on rather than just temporarily covering it. Of course there is some chance that changes in weather or other uncontrolled factors contributed, but overall I'd have to say I'm a somewhat surprised but impressed convert. (still, we'll see how the rest of winter goes)

Time's passage

At the temple the other day, noticed someone seemed to be getting a bit old. I then realized, it's actually been almost 10 yrs since I first phoned there and spoke to him and decided to try visiting.

Milestones of time's passage always seem to come as a surprise.