Tag Archives: ceramic

3485/500000 and 10th Day of the Baha’i Fast

My day of rest was good and I’m taking another ont tomorrow (one a week). This past week I set two new records: 100 reps of sit-ups in a single set (!!!) and 800 reps total for the week. The 100 reps was really hard and I felt awful afterwards. I also did another 150 reps day. However, I’ve added crunches to the traditional sit-ups, and I’m just calling them all “sit-ups”. So now, I will do 100 proper sit-ups per day and start working on increasing my crunches. I’ve also lost a bit of weight, about 7 lbs, mostly due to eating only one meal per day due to…

The Baha’i Fast has been great this year. It’s a little harder than last year, truth be told, probably because of my week off of work. I find it hard to ignore hunger and tiredness when I don’t actually have to do anything during the day. The part I’m having a hard time with is really getting some good prayer time in. There are distractions, but also I’m just having a hard time remembering. I have, however, been trying to spend time with each member of my family during this week. I have to do something with Ocean and Justice still. I went for dinner with Melanie, dinner with Haifa, and a movie with Verity (Captain America – good, but not great, btw).

I’ve tried doing a bit of pottery/ceramic art, but I feel like I haven’t got the hang of it right now. I tried an experiment for making tentacle sculptures, but it didn’t work out so well. And this evening I started a new “vase”, but it’s too early to say if it will work out.

I finished reading “Great North Road” by Peter F Hamilton. Fantastic sci-fi/detective/creature novel. Some really touching moments. Nice long read too, and completely self-contained. No sequel to wait for. No really unique ideas, but extremely well-written and enjoyable. I highly recommend it!

2nd Day of the Baha’i Fast

Much much easier!

No headache, less tired. Had a great visit with an old friend that I don’t see much, Daniel. We went for a walk together. However, I forgot to have my mom over. Bad son!!! Got a glaze run in on the kiln… see photos. And best day yet for total sit-ups: 150. My goal is in looking more and more possible (full weekly update tomorrow). Sat with Verity and Ocean at prayer time at the end of the day and talked about the rules and purpose of the Fast. Oh… and I built an IKEA bookshelf for out new mini pottery studio room!

Here is the loaded kiln before firing:

Here is the main piece after firing:

Sabbatical Day 13 – Apple Watch Series 4

Well, yesterday Apple announced the new Series 4 watch.  Two big disappointments for me: no ceramic version, and Canada won’t get the EKG feature (at least not in any specified time).  Darn it!  I was really hoping to get a new one, but I really don’t see the point of doing so without those two things.  I have the Series 2 ceramic Apple Watch, and I love it.  So I’ll wait some more and maybe start looking for another vendor for my next fashion/fitness/tech accessory.

Today I cycled to school again.  I love the exercise – and while I’m in better shape than I used to be, I’m still not in “good” shape for cycling.  It’s an 8.5km ride each way and it takes me about 30 minutes.  Lots of hills.  There’s a segment on city streets.  This morning I left at the same time as Verity so that we could travel together for that segment.  Then there’s a bunch of walking/cycle paths along the Thames river valley.  It’s a lovely start to the morning.  The only thing is that I get _really_ sweaty!!  After I cycled home, I jumped in the pool – without looking at the temperature – and it was freezing!!!  I could only do 6 lengths before I had to get out because of the cold.  I’m not sure of the temperature, but I’m guessing it was somewhere between 15 C and 18 C.  Not dangerous, but super uncomfortable!

One of my in-progress projects is to help Haifa with her driving and preparing for her road test. Today we went out for about half an hour to practice parallel parking and three point turns.  She made great progress, but I started getting super tired.  I think I ate something that didn’t agree with me and so we ended a bit sooner than I expected.  Then I took a 4 hour nap!  I’m likely to be up late tonight.  Anyway, I suspect that my dad’s garlic allergy is affecting me.  I have to try avoiding garlic to see if that is the case.

Tonight I’m doing my first official homework assignment for school.  It’s a sheet of six questions adapted from the textbook for Math 2155.  Here are a couple example questions:

Rewrite the following English statements as logical statements. (a) John and Bill are both telling the truth or neither of them is.

Make truth tables for the following formulas: (a) ¬[P∧(Q∨¬P)]

Honestly, it feels a bit like busy-work for me.  My computer science degree covered all this stuff in depth, and even worse, I got into this stuff as a kid somewhere around grade 7 or 8 so I’ve been doing logic and truth tables like, forever!  Anyway, I’ll get it done quickly and hopefully I won’t make any stupid errors.  That’s my most common problem with math.  I’ll let all y’all know when I get my grades.  Here’s hoping for 100% on my first assignment…  Incidentally, Verity is struggling with the same problem with her math in grade 9 – it’s super easy, boring review.  I feel for her.