Another birthday, a new demographic

I am no longer a member of the 25-35 crowd. I can hang on no longer. I still feel young, but I'm merely the youngest of the old now.

Was I supposed to start saving for retirement a while ago?

Money issues aside, this hasn't been all that bad of a year. I really do enjoy the summer weather in Vernon, I have my health and am happy at home. I really can't complain.

I feel that I should. But I won't - at least, not here, not now.

Smoke on the water

There are some fires in Washington state that have been making things very hazy up here. The smoke hasn't been this bad since the Kelowna fire, three years ago. I guess the wind is blowing along the lake, and the valley funnels the smoke toward us, even though we are probably about five hundred miles away from the fires.

So no imminent danger for us, although I'm sure that the people with athsma and other breathing problems are less than enthused.

It has been making for some interesting moons lately. The light reflected off the moon turns a bright orange as it penetrates the smoke, giving it a very unnatural (or at least unusual) colour. However the smoke has been getting thicker over the past two days, so I'm not sure if we will even see the moon again for a little while.

A quiet weekend spent shooting people

Yes, it sounds horrible. Playing video games during the heat of the summer. My Mom would be so ashamed - especially so if she knew the game had me play the role of an assassin, mercilessly killing people of all stripes.

At least the game penalized me for killing innocent bystanders.

Okay, the real issue is that if I didn't have a dog to walk, I would have been indoors the whole weekend. I've noticed that video gaming is easier to justify in the dead of winter, mostly because people are indoors already. Sorry Mom, for not playing outdoors more.

For haircuts, pay more to cut less

I went to my barber for a haircut. It was time, I needed one. Unfortunately, on the day I went, my usual barber was closed. As it happens, there is another barber just a couple blocks away from where I normally go, so I decided (against better judgement) to try him out. At least he was open on a Saturday.

He was a grumpy man who liked to complain that cutting hair for a living was the worst possible thing in the world to be doing. But his rates were cheap, so I (against better judgement) decided to go for it. After all, I would only have to listen to him for about half an hour, right?

Lately I have been getting my hair cut so that the length on top is a little more than an inch, and shaved pretty close on the sides and back. This barber's interpretation of that was to take it down to a quarter inch off my scalp pretty much everywhere except the little piece on the very front. It doesn't look 'bad', but at the same time, it wasn't what I asked for.

One thing I have noticed with it this short though, is I get a pretty good look at which parts are turning grey (or white) faster than others. It makes parts of the top of my head look like they are balding (I'll be in denial on any evidence supporting that theory for quite some time yet) because of the hair colour. I figure things should be back to normal in a few weeks, just in time for my birthday.

Grampa turned ninety

Well yesterday was my grampa's ninetieth birthday. I gave him a phone call to see how he was doing, which is always fun. He actually celebrated a day early because he liked Thursday's daily special better than Friday's at his favorite restaurant. When I heard that the dish was corned beef and cabbage everything made sense to me.

It was a good conversation and later it got me thinking: how much different are things going to be when (if) I hit the age of ninety? Looking back at his life, he was born around the time that World War I started. The Great Depression was soon to follow, and he would have been old enough to be actively enlisted during World War II. By the time the Dot Com Bubble burst, he was already retired, collecting his pension - aside from watching the news, I wonder if he was affected by it at all?

Of course, when I call my grampa, it's not an interview. Sometimes I get a few answers, and other times he says something interesting that I wasn't looking for. But it's mostly about how we are doing, telling a few jokes and enjoying the conversation.

What happened to my hot weather?

On Sunday, the temperature dropped by about ten degrees. It was like someone unplugged the power for our Okanagan summer. While just about everyone around us was rejoicing for the milder weather, I was not amused.

Wearing a sweatshirt while biking into work IN AUGUST is not my idea of summer weather.

Oh well. At least the dog is more comfortable. This is probably the ideal weather for her. I wouldn't complain if it wasn't such a shock. I like a more gradual change, I guess.

On a different note, I have added a lot of blues to my regular playlist at work. Stevie Rae Vaughn, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King and even some Ella Fitzgerald. I dunno, sometimes I just like some blues in the background.