Although I am no longer certain of it, I may have made it to bed last evening by around 9:30 p.m. to do my best to nap away the latter evening ─ my method of fortifying myself to endure sitting up in the weest a.m. hours as I work on various things here at my computer.
It also ensures that my younger brother will have gone to his bedroom for the night. However, he had not as yet returned home from wherever he had gone to drink that afternoon.
And as was to be the case, he never did come home overnight, apparently spending it at the home of his girlfriend Bev ─ this can sometimes occur when the two of them get together on Saturdays. I rather wish it was more often.
I actually slept well over the latter evening. In fact, when a point came in which I was sufficiently conscious to be wondering on the time, initially I was unsure which part of the day it was. I thought possibly that I had already been up overnight and was catching up on some sleep later in the morning or maybe even the afternoon.
When I saw the time to be 12:48 a.m., reality oriented itself, and I rose. The house was in darkness ─ even my two stepsons had gone to bed for the night.
I had plans to go shopping after the nearest Save-On-Foods outlet (Google Map) opened at 7 a.m., so it would be required that I return to bed to rest up ahead of that venture, or else I would be unlikely to go. The store is only about 1½ miles from here, but I do have to walk ─ I do not drive.
Well, it was around 4:30 a.m. when I made that return to bed, setting my cellphone alarm for 6:30 a.m. This would allow me time for a black (and unsweetened) instant coffee to help revive and fortify me for my venture.
It seems to me that I must have fallen into some sleep, but then I was alert again and aware that the day had arrived. Had my alarm failed to sound? But I checked and found that it was not yet even 6 a.m.
No matter, I felt renewed enough to rise. I would now have the time to research online to discover if there were any sales on items I might normally purchase.
As I have reported before, I do not care to arrive and shop at that store too soon after 7 a.m. because I find that I cannot rely that there will be a cashier on duty ─ and I absolutely dislike having to use those self-service stations.
On my way to the store, I would be depositing the monthly expenses reconciliation cheque for something like $277.38 that my brother had given me early in the week ─ I would be doing this at the Coast Capital Savings headquarters outdoor ATM over by the King George SkyTrain Station nigh a mile from here.
I managed to dally sufficiently that it was at least 7:10 a.m. before I was on my way. It looked as if we might be in for a sunny day ─ there had been frost on the roof when I had risen earlier, so it was a little chilly out there.
With me, I was taking along two empty Avalon Dairy one-litre glass milk bottles that had previously contained heavy or whipping cream ─ twice I had been forced to buy one because there were no litre cartons of Dairland's heavy (or whipping) cream.
Sure, Avalon's is organic, but I do not know if the cows are 100% grass-fed; and the cream is a few dollars more per litre than the general commercial Dairyland or Lucerne brands available in supermarkets around here.
Also, there is a $1.25 milk bottle deposit added onto Avalon's cost, so I was hoping to be getting that back.
As it happened I did, but while dealing with the woman staffing the customer service desk, I apparently adjusted my face mask too aggressively and a strap broke. When I announced this to her and observed that I guess I was not going to be doing any grocery shopping, she offered that they did have face masks on hand for a $1 donation, so I had to 'donate' back a dollar.
Confound these unfounded face-masking mandates!
I kept my original mask ─ it truly is "original", for I have never used any other. I will see if I can reinsert the elastic strap end that pulled out of the mask and then knot the elastic end like I did many months ago when I first put on the mask and this happened to me here at home. But at least now I will be able to have a back-up mask with me for any such future mishap when I am shopping.
Other than that, I had a pleasant enough experience in the store ─ the staff always seem to be nice people. I am sure much of their demeanour is due to how early it still is in their day, and they have had little customer exposure as yet.
It was only while I was on my walk back to home that I remembered that I had forgotten one of the items I had meant to buy ─ natural peanut butter. Nevertheless, I have a huge stock of the stuff, so I am not presently anywhere near needing to stock up.
I also noticed as I was coming home that the sky had clouded over. Even so, the day was to prove out as a blend of sunny blue sky and lots of cloud masses drifting about. Toward mid-afternoon I stepped out onto the backyard sundeck to test whether it would be worth trying to sit out on the lawn and benefit from the Sun, but the air was so chilled that I immediately abandoned any such idea.
The weather has been unseasonably chilly for over a week now, but it is not unprecedented. When I was making an entry in my private blog this morning ─ basically, it was a reproduction of a journal entry that I wrote exactly 40 years ago ─ I told how that evening I had gotten involved in partying and ended up at the home of a cousin.
Well, I must have been the 'last man standing', so I decided to hike away and sleep at my father's small suite that was probably a little over 4¼ miles away, rather than 'crash' where I was. I was largely staying at my father's new and very temporary 'home' where he was renting in what I wrote was called either the Hillside or Hillcrest Motel, just a short distance from 108th Avenue along the King George Highway in Whalley.
I wrote that it was lightly raining when I left my cousin's home, but soon that rain had become "strictly snow". This would have been ahead of the dawn on Sunday, April 12, 1981. That must have been one of the latest acts of snowing here in Surrey in its history. I doubt that it was to manage to cover the ground before it stopped or changed to rain, but at least I was witness to it.
Anyway, returning to this morning, when I first began that outing, I was unhappy to discover that an arch strain that had developed during a couple of shopping expeditions last weekend (which saw me bearing a heavy load on both occasions) has evidently not begun to heal.
The problem lies not with the instep of my left foot, but rather with the area toward the outer part of the foot where there really is not much arching. Would this, then, be an inflammation of the long plantar ligament?
I was not bearing too much of a load this morning on that return hike home, but the sensitivity was becoming more pronounced over the duration of that small distance. It makes me concerned for when I schedule my next far longer shopping expedition nest Sunday that is more than double the distance, and which typically sees me toting home a far heavier load.
My brother was not yet home, nor either of my two stepsons out of bed, when I was back here. I put away my purchases and then dressed down, and finished up a little work here at my computer, before returning to bed.
I did not anticipate sleeping as well as I succeeded in doing, for it was around 11:30 a.m. when I roused and checked the time. I had meant to try and watch some videos on T.V. (via our Android TV Box) with my brother that I had previously downloaded onto a USB thumb drive, but there was now no time for that.
Even so, I ventured downstairs to boil water for another black instant coffee and then I joined him at the T.V. to finish up the show he was watching. We then watched a short ─ just under 10 minutes ─ impromptu cellphone video that Odessa Orlewicz recorded yesterday in Vancouver: April 10th- I interview Derek Sloan Conservative Party MP who just got the boot for speaking truth too much.
The video ends so abruptly that it is clear that either her phone's power died, or she didn't want the remainder of the interview made public.
I rather wish that Derek Sloan would not seek to create yet another political party and instead join up with the People's Party of Canada (PPC). Having two parties vying for the votes of those of us who want to be done with lockdowns and face masks is counterproductive ─ it will dilute our votes.
Maybe he will understand this if he truly does have the nation's best interest at heart and is able to reign in his own ─ personal ─ ambition.
I want to have a little exercise, and maybe even make a phone call. My afternoon is nearly done so I will post this selfie I took at 4:39 p.m. today out beside the house in the sunshine:
I will be trimming that beard down drastically once it is warm enough to sit outside in the sunshine, facing into the Sun and soaking up colour while generating vitamin D ─ I will want more facial exposure to the sunlight than my beard presently allows.
I never thought that I would still have the beard this deep into the year.
But its days are likely numbered.
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