Category: hiking

Foto Phlurry.

~ Lkvy ~ 2 Comments

I don’t think I can claim to be anti-social media now that I’m a Redditor. I love my friends, but most of them don’t have hours to talk nonsense at any time of the day, so I get my fix on Reddit. R/AskReddit is a fountain of thought-provoking but mostly pointless questions that get answered by oversharing enthusiasts such as yours truly. Many of these questions inspire a trip down memory lane:

“What’s the weirdest compliment you’ve ever gotten?”

That is a tricky one because I am a woman on the internet, and there are thousands of photos of me online. My Flickr account turns 16 this year, and I’ve been objectified for some oddly specific reasons. Sometimes I’ll go through my Flickr archives and wonder why the permissions for some of the photos have been set to Private until I read the comments. Rather than sending my brain down the darkest lane of my annals, I reflected on real-world instances.

When I worked at Value Village (thrift store) many moons ago, my job consisted of digging through dusty, old stuff. Naturally, there was a lot of sneezing going on. A co-worker I was starting to be friends with told me that I had the cutest sneeze. From that point on, whenever I’d sneeze, she’d giggle and go, “Aww!”

And you know, COVID has taken this away from me because there’s no way I could charm someone with my baby mouse sneezes ever again.

That was also the year I learned that hearing people add sound FX to their sneezes. This friend also confessed that she was afraid of pink dolphins because they “look like people”. She was cute and I miss her.

But I still have cute friends. I call this one Tammy:

Wait, what’s she doing?

Continue reading “Foto Phlurry.” →

Apocalyptic insignificance.

~ Lkvy ~ 2 Comments

Last night, Yann and I laced up our Nike Decades and headed up to Gonzales Hill Observatory with a flask of phenobarbital to catch a glimpse of NEOWISE before it disappears for the next 6000 years.

The observatory itself is an old weather station and is off-limits to the public; however, the Capital Regional District was kind enough to provide a park bench 20 metres away from the building.

Yann and I settled down on this bench as the sun sunk below the horizon. As usual, Sirius was the first to seep through the evening twilight, followed by the Grande Ourse, which is French for Big Bear, which how they refer to The Big Dipper. Or you’re in the UK, The Plough. Whatever it’s called, it’s the one constellation most Northern Hemispherians can identify. The Big Dipper was to direct us to NEOWISE’s position in the sky.

We sat in the darkness, shivering among the wind-warped Garry oak trees for an hour before scoping the dim smudge that is NEOWISE in the sky. It was expectedly anti-climactic, as we had long missed the window when it was the most brilliant.

Also, there was no flask of phenobarbital, and I wear Adidas kicks.

Continue reading “Apocalyptic insignificance.” →

It’s safer in the mountains.

~ Lkvy ~ 2 Comments

At 11:59pm on December 31st, I stood behind Yann as he washed the dishes. I had Enfoiré in my arms and an eye on the range display, waiting for 12:00 to pop up. At midnight, I yelled Happy New Year at the back of Yann’s head.

The scene an hour earlier had been even grimmer: I was hunched over on the couch, trying to comb the mats out of my toque’s pompom, which had shrunk in the washer. (The entire thing shrunk, actually. I aimlessly restored a pompom on a now too-small toque. I should have known better than to put a toque in a washer. Fuck.)

Continue reading “It’s safer in the mountains.” →

The peak of my summer.

~ Lkvy ~ 4 Comments

“YANN!” I yelled from the top of a mountain.

I don’t like using my voice in public. The deaf accent is mocked globally. Imagine not getting to experience a part of yourself that the public gets to experience? Then the result of your efforts to accommodate others not only goes by unappreciated but gets ridiculed!

But it wasn’t the time to be insecure about my voice. I was near the top of Mount Albert Edward, alone, and without water. I had seen Yann just a few minutes earlier: he was busy massaging a water purification tablet into a Nalgene bottle filled with snow. He had also run out of water, and our solution was to thaw last season’s snow.

Continue reading “The peak of my summer.” →