Weekly Report

Weekly Report: August 4th - August 10th 2025

Good Morning Magpie

10 Aug 2025 — 3 min read

The Week in Summary:

On the Civil Holiday, Alida and I went to 68th Ave Wetlands to look at all the wonderful birds at this glorious m0squito-infested slough. Seeing the herons, cormorants, waterfowl, and small shorebirds made the smell of the nearby garbage dump more manageable. In the afternoon, I did absolutely nothing productive and I loved it.
The work week was fairly normal, but our staff did listen to a talk by Dr. Jean-Bernard Caron regarding the Burgess Shale. As someone with limited knowledge regarding paleontology, it was hard to follow at points, but it is always interesting to hear about the passion of experts in their respective field.
On the weekend, we celebrated Taylor's 28th birthday! For Saturday morning, Katelyn and I went shopping in Inglewood, had some coffee at Rosso, and a bike ride. Later in the day, Taylor and I went for a birthday dinner at a family-run restaurant, Sushi Hiro, and went for bubble tea for a bit of a dessert. On Sunday, after spending part of the day in Kensington to read at the cafe and go shopping, we had our family over for Happy Veggie House.
- Taylor's Note: This was my BB (bags and books) birthday, as Chance got me two fabulous books, and I received two new Arkel bike bags - one also from Chance, and a combined backpack gift from my parents and grandparents!
This week I read much of Emily Nussbaum's Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV. Despite the common characterization of reality television as low-brow, trashy, and fake, I have been finding Nussbaum's history of the genre to be fairly nuanced and presents a story more willing to concede to the innovations that emerged with the development of reality TV.
Throughout the week, I played more Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, a couple games of Victoria 3, and started playing an adorable and truly creative cooperative game with Taylor called It Takes Two.

The Week in Images

The Week in Links:

Weekly Report: August 25th - August 31st 2025

The Week in Summary: * For myself, with Taylor working long days, my routine was challenged and I felt a bit more restless than usual. With the disruptions to sleep and a minor episode of health anxiety (the first in several months actually), I kept out of my head the best

Weekly Report: August 18th - August 24th 2025

The Week in Summary: * The week was busy with Taylor working long hours as their team closes in on festival season (the flag was raised on Saturday!). This left me holding down the condo most of the week. On Monday, I stayed home most of the day reading and listening

All Along the Western Headworks Canal

Whenever I played in our backyard's sandbox as a young child, I loved a particular engineering task. I would dig a massive hole, fill that hole with water from a hose, and then build a system of channels to move that water to another section of the sandbox.

Weekly Report: August 11th - August 17th 2025

The Week in Summary: * Monday was Taylor's birthday and they found themselves working for the entirety of the day. For myself, since I do not work on Mondays throughout the summer, I meandered around doing effectively nothing except finishing my reality TV book. But relative to other weeks,