Weekly Report: March 11th - March 17th 2024

The Week in Summary:

• While I did my regular educational programming on Monday, I worked with another coworker at a local school on delivering a four-day climate program. The best part of the work week was getting off work early on a Friday afternoon and enjoying some Village Ice Cream on the walk to the LRT station. Little moments like that matter.
• The weekend was fantastic. I got to spend a lot of quality time with my partner at home and went down to Kensington on a Saturday morning for reading at Higher Ground, lunch at Peppino, and shopping for a new book at Pages.
• As for provincial news, Naheed Nenshi (former mayor of Calgary) announced that he was running for the Alberta New Democratic Party to replace Rachel Notley. Given his progressive track record and strong leadership experience, I signed up for his campaign. He’s got a lot going for him right now and I think that the electorate is getting restless for some pivot away from Smith’s United Conservative government. This is definitely the most hopeful I’ve been about our provincial politics in a long time.
• After many attempts over a few years and some strong resistance to seeking a mechanics’ assistance, I finally fixed my Vitamix blender by following the suggestion of a random Reddit comment from years ago. I’ve been celebrating with a lot of smoothies lately.
• Taylor and I finished the recent season of Love is Blind, which is a reality TV dating show that we love to hate and hate to love. As for games, I played a lot of Lethal Company this week with some friends and worked on learning Imperator Rome over the weekend (getting closer to understanding another Paradox game).

Recommendations:

• The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World by David Abram (Book): This poetic book is soulful, yet rooted in earnestly earthly affairs. It demonstrates that our oral tradition is deeply entangled with our connection with a more-than-human world, particularly due to the sensory nature of simply existing as an animal ourselves. While there are many reasons for our disconnection from the animate world we live in, the emergence of the alphabet is specifically focused on here.
• Yard by Slow Pulp (Album): Sunny indie rock reminiscent of that 90s slack rock vibe.
• 11 Reasons Why the 11 Street Active Modes Underpass will Make the Beltline and Downtown Awesome by Beltline Neighbourhoods Association (Article): A look into a local underpass project and the reasons it will benefit Beltline and Downtown West residents!

The Week in Images