Many, many years ago, prior to getting married, I lived at the farm, in the basement. Where I put my very old computer to rest, in pieces, in the back of the furnace room. This was a computer I bought new, refurbished, with a whopping 256Mb of memory to it. Little more than a word processor for writing essays. If I had cables, power, a mouse, and could remember any sort of password for it, I’d bet I could read all of the horrendous papers I wrote while I was at Trent Univesity. Nothing spectacular to find. Well before bitcoin, and very early days yet for the internet. No short stories to be found, but likely a couple of poorly rendered logos from Microsoft Paint if you looked around. I don’t even know how, or if, I archived materials back then. I didn’t really come into my own with data storage, and file retrieval until I started doing graphic design, and then had to keep all of my project parts accessible, and organized for file transfers. My guess is I kept lots on the desk top, or all together on the C:/ and or D:/ drives. Flash drives weren’t really a thing then. But the smaller compact floppy discs were the go to for moving files around between computers. What a trip down analog memory lane that is.
Found some old weights I used to use to rehab my wrists from the early stages of my design career. A bucket, my old inkjet printer, and my brothers monitor which I inherited, and used to power my newly purchased McCheese PC. I think it still cost me around $400.00 or so on sale for Boxing Day, or New Years. Black Friday wasn’t really a thing here in Canada twenty or so years ago. We weren’t just the US of the north then. More so now than ever before though. TV, movies, and music have really saturated our market now.
Even found an empty 2-4 of Moosehead Light with the old packaging. I don’t recall reclining in the basement here with a beer, but the carton tells me otherwise. I remember smoking some bud out the basement door looking at the creek, watching the animals in the tree line. Now that I recall very clearly. I had no cable, and no satellite, no antenna either. Just VHS tapes for my VCR, an old brown over stuffed arm chair, and my trusty 27 inch Zenith CCTV. Smoke, eat, and watch one of my movie collection over, and over, and over again. I also used to paint a fair bit while I was at it too. I had my crappy mattress on an old pine futon frame (which I still have!, the frame anyway). I had bought an extra firm futon mattress, which was horrible, but proper bed frames, and the accociated mattresses were exorbitantly expensive, even for a single bed. The futon, and “firm” mattress were still more than a thousand bucks cheaper at the time. My back hated it, but it was all I could really afford to spend. Though, as I had no car I probably should have spent the money, as my back is not the greatest anymore. I can’t attribute that to the futon, but it didn’t help. That you can rest assured of.
So here we are, back to Sunday morning. Rock climbing was a total blast. I am booked in to be able to climb with the girls right through until Christmas, with the gear rentals included. Once we swap over the van I might try to go Wednesdays too. If I can manage it, going 3 times a week, twice alone, and once with the kids per week, I will really get my money’s worth. After which I may never want to go again, or I’ll wind up buying my own harness, shoes, and a chalk bag so that I can go whenever I please. But we will have to see about that. I need to drop several more pounds, as I’m still lifting the heaviest body I’ve ever had forty feet into the air up along these manufactilured walls, with teenie tiny narrow foot/hand holds. It’s really a pressure point on my feet, and finger tips while I currently weigh so much more than I need to.
The palm, forearm stretches go a long way towards resetting my hands, and arms. The only thing keeping me from climbing more right this second is the numb arm/hands combo I’ve got going on. If I can learn to do more lifting with my legs, I could save my arms a bit more. Also the death grip is numbing my fingers, and makes the tendons slow to react 24/48 hours afterwards. I’m still enjoying it all, and the kids definitely love it too. Even the youngest is enthusiastic about going, and next week puts us more than half way through. That’s big for my little one, she is notorious for getting bored really quickly, and acting up in a fit of bored rage. Not so with climbing. She is focused, excited, and doing something extremely physical. I love to see it.
So here I sit, at the farm with a van full of junk which I need to tear down, and figure out how to properly dispose of. I need to wait for a designated technology donation day, where they take our old tech, strip out the minerals, and bits they want, and trash the rest safely themselves. I’ll have to check the town website to see when that happens again. Take care out there. Ciao Bella!
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 