Weekly Report

Weekly Report: June 10th - June 16th 2024

Good Morning Magpie

16 Jun 2024 — 3 min read

The Week in Summary:

This week was the second last week of school programs. It was fairly busy, but I managed to get through it well enough. As far as getting to work is concerned, I started bike commuting on Monday and I have been getting back into the flow of it. Besides taking the bike lane on 11th Street SW, I am on the river's pathway system the entire way and I absolutely love it (though my legs are feeling the pain). I am grateful I get to hear the birds, feel the winds, and see the Bow River everyday.
Over the week, the city's water crisis continued with water use slowly creeping up. Two workers were injured at the repair site mid-week. On Friday, the City of Calgary announced that further inspection of the water main break revealed significant damage in multiple spots along the pipe. The city government is committed to repairing them now to prevent future issues, but this has significantly added to the timeline for completion by an additional three to five weeks, which means that water conservation needs to be maintained and might impact the Calgary Stampede. By Saturday morning, the city government had made the wise decision to declare a state of emergency to empower them to bring order to the emerging situation. Taylor and I have committed ourselves to a 75% reduction in water use since this crisis started and I have no intention of changing course. We are doing our part!
Given how frequently I was sick these last several months, I went to my family doctor this week for a check-up. He sent me off to get a blood test done and I'm still waiting to hear back about the results. I generally have a bit of health anxiety about this sort of stuff, but I know it's important to be prudent about these matters.
On Saturday, a couple of friends and myself went to Galaxy Diner for brunch then walked down to Contemporary Calgary for Neighbour Day. We visited Market Collective's event and then went to see two art collections there (Winnie Truong's Curious Nature) and (Derek Liddington's the trees weep, the mountain still, the bodies rust). Later in the afternoon, I went to Taylor's parents for a Father's Day barbecue.
On Sunday, Taylor and I had a fairly calm day at home. We did some light tidying up, drank some cider (bought from Uncommon Cider at Market Collective), watched My Hero Academia, and played Talos Principle (puzzle games kick ass). I like a relaxing Sunday.

Recommendations:

Lurking: How a Person Became a User by Joanne McNeil (Book): I read this last year and thought it was a really interesting history of how folk's use of the internet (mostly social networking) has changed from its infancy to today's algorithm-driven corporate digital world. I started using my home computers' internet back in the mid-2000s as a kid (like Piczo and Nexopia), but I always felt like I missed the wild-west era that some older millennials might be able to recall (Live Journal, Friendster, MySpace, and old school chatrooms and forums). This book connected some of those missing links and it helped inspire me to start blogging in the first place.
Split Screen: Kid Nation by CBC Podcasts (Podcast Series): A general overview of Kid Nation: a wild one-season reality television program from 2007 that featured children forming their "own" society. It followed up with some of the children (now adults) who starred on the program, the unethical practices on set, and the personal impacts on these children's lives. It includes a brief analysis of the broader cultural trends that informed the shows' popularity and controversy. I was hooked on the show when it was first released, but I have come to view the use of children in media as generally immoral, so this was really interesting for me.