I have spend an extended amount of time over the last month in Excel® both for personal and professional purposes, and I do believe I run the risk of becoming permanently cross-eyed in the future. Not that I am not grateful to have them, indeed, I cannot even fathom a reversion to banging out repetitive calculations on a Casio scientific calculator. In fact, I have made somewhat of a point of beefing up my skill set when it comes to that venerable office staple. It really is a fantastic way to crunch a lot of data in a very short time span, once you have mastered its formula and macro system.

More specifically, I have been crunching a bewildering array of mortgage and budget calculations in an attempt to reach a harmonious compromise between my desire to be done with the instability inherent in renting and the desire to continue my indulgent lifestyle that relies on a high volume of discretionary income. I have reviewed copious amounts of data for the local housing market, the price/income ratios, the price/rent ratio, general economic indicators, interest rates, and potential for income increase over the next five years, and my likely use of such residence along a broad variety of criteria. It is certainly the most highly leveraged investment I will ever make, and so due diligence is absolutely imperative. That said, it’s easy to get lost in a mountain of figures and projections.

The bottom line (apropos in an accounting discussion) is that the decision to buy is laden with risk, regardless of much forethought is given. That said, the deliberative, methodical approach at least allows one to examine a multitude of scenarios and manage risks accordingly. And there’s the rub, I can manage downside risks, and buffer accordingly, but if the housing market tanks, everybody is going to take a bath, regardless of how well and responsibly they planned. The lesson of the US housing market was not lost on me — a raging mob of greedy and short-sighted investors, buyers, and brokers managed to destabilize and crater an entire market.

Maybe I should just be homeless.

I have been somewhat more disappointed, however, with some of the pregame antics that have been going on for this set of games. It was announced today in the press that Canadians were highly unlikely to achieve the stated goals of ­“Own the Podium”, the wildly over-optimistic program intended to make sure Canadian athletes dominated the 2010 games. To this effect, they spent $117 million dollars on research and training for a goal that nobody in their right mind would have believed attainable. I actually think that spending a bit of money on developing athletics in Canada is a reasonable use of taxpayer resources. However, using that ill-conceived goal to stop other athletes from having a chance at making some practice runs down the ski hill earns my ire.

Winning in the Olympics, as illusory and shifting a concept as that is, should be about training and athleticism, not necessarily who can spend the most and connive their way to the top. I don’t think Canada needs to cheat or twist their advantage to win the games; our athletes are dedicated enough to stand on their own merits. I think it cheapens the achievement when we win by unfair tactics.

I’d like to see in the future, and for the rest of the games, more about the effort and the skill displayed, and less about how Canada has somewhat let down expectations. To my mind, we have great reason to be proud of the performance of our athletes thus far, and we should celebrate their efforts and accomplishments.

Looking out over the admittedly bleak landscape is rather awe-inspiring if you can withstand the icy blasts of wind that shoot across the plains. Looking now at the vast expanse of snowy farmland, it’s hard to believe that once endless herds of bison met a grisly death as they paraded off the ledge featured above in an incredibly elaborate and developed Blackfoot tradition. They called it a Pik’Sun, which translates directly according to the museum that my cousin and I visited, “Deep Kettle of Blood.” Quite.

In the intervening decades, the tribes occasionally would return to the jump, when the conditions were appropriate to prepare for the ritual that would ensure food and clothing for the difficult month ahead. As I contemplate a move perhaps professionally and certainly personally within in the next couple of months, I come back to this chilling image of bygone bones resting eternally in the valley below. It’s a powerful reminder that sometimes the ugliest of displays of gore result in a fresh and creative beginning for all those that are willing to work at it.

Because at the end of the hunt, the carcasses were carefully plundered, bones carefully fashioned into tools, meat prepared for storage, and hides tanned for clothing. What could be a tenuous existence in a harsh and sometimes barren land was sustained by what must have been unpleasant work in that killing field. In a very real sense, their lives were made out of that buffalo jump.

Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that that is the best that can often be taken away from a difficult experience. I have in my time run a great many of my own personal bison off a cliff, and I I think the best that you can do is to use what’s left to create something new. The process is never pretty, and what you’re left with is something completely different than you started with — the tools and the food for growth.

It is on some level difficult to believe that it’s already 2010. Which also of course means that it’s January again. It’s hard to disguise a a certain amount of distaste for a month that is punctuated by bouts of bone-chilling cold, incessant darkness, and a certain level of tedium. It’s hard not to spend a certain, more than minimal amount of time, fantasizing about warmer climes. Tahiti sounds like a fantastic place to spend January.

It is a brand new decade. Seems like just yesterday that we were collectively terrified about Y2K and waiting with anticipation the dawn of another thousand years. And perhaps more importantly, it’s been a decade, a critically important decade, of my life. I want to say that it’s been a momentous one. And to some extent, so that I can plan for the next one, it’s wise to take stock of the previous one. I completed high school, travelled to Central America, South America, completed my degree, obtained fulltime professional employment, and moved to another country in another region. I certainly would like to continue on that pace going forward, which I think is going to be a bit more difficult to maintain. Certainly, a part of that is due to some of the unpleasantness endured to achieve those milestones.

In any case, I enter this decade with healthy amount of hope and anticipation for the future. I have think I have answered for myself some of the major existential conflicts that so afflict youth, and I have a lot more confidence in handling the challenges of the years to come.

In its most innocuous form it bedazzles us, blinds us to the consequences of our actions, tricks us into believing the convenient lie of the one-time occurrence, and leads us into perdition. It’s so easy to believe, to want to believe, in in the minor justification, the temporary slip that becomes ever so permanent. As appropriately postmodern children, we believe in the total existentialist worldview of our father Sartre, in which all decisions are mutually exclusive of the next, that the rules of causality are bent by mere force of will and desire. After all, they teach it on Oprah, it even has a pseudo-scientific name — the Law of Attraction! You can read all about it in modern spiritual tome, The Secret.

The unfortunate, inconvenient truth, is that our lives are the summation of the individual choices that we make of the decades of our life that are in the end, the ultimate formative factor in our lives. They are the product of the the daily rituals, avowals, and liturgies in which we steep ourselves in to reinforce and strengthen our worldview and interpretive actions. The world then, is ‘literally’ in many senses, exactly what we make of it.  Literally in the sense, that, we are the narratives, and understand ourselves in the narrative context, that we create for ourselves in our expressions of our lives and how we make sense of the chaos in which we live and interact. These narratives are all-consuming, and encompass fully our first Fall from Grace, and each subsequent reinforcing act. Succumbing to temptation, therefore, acts as a splitting mechanism against the narrative, and can only be reconciled in one of two ways — incorporation in the self-narrative or the creation of self-deception. Neither of these can be construed as a positive event.

It seems crucial then to note, in light of the prior observations, that the biggest battle for the person lies in the way they deal with the daily, smaller transgressions, that create the greater framework that almost absolutely dictates how the larger dilemmas of life are engaged and answered. In this, I think most often of Mandelbrot’s fractals, the beautiful mathematic models created by the scientist a quarter century ago. This is when the concept of self-similarity came into vogue, that the same patterns that exist in the smallest of domains re-express themselves in the largest. I think our lives in many senses follow this model, the way we live in the smallest ways is echoed in the way we live in the entirety of our lives.

And thus… the temptation of the moment is thus also the temptation of our life.

Gifts

I got started on the subject of temptation because of the sudden and unexpected appearance of the boxes pictured above in my life. I received a buzz from UPS who wanted to deliver a package I was not expecting. It was, indeed, my name on the package, so I took the parcel and sliced the tape open suspecting that I had forgotten something ordered a while back. Inside, I found the blue boxes, and what is going to vex me until Christmas.

Based on the size of the package, its relative heft, and the suggestively worded caption on the gift tag, I suspect a popular, literary reading device made popular by a famous online retailer. It’s going to take all of my willpower to wait until Christmas to open a package that I suspect contains an item I have not ever even seen in person, much less used.

I went this evening to watch the University of Alberta’s annual production of “9 Lessons and Carols,” which is always a treat. The handbells are particularly spectacular, especially given that this is nearly the only opportunity in the year that I have to witness such a display. They do a set of scripture readings and performances with the mixed chorus of many classical Christmas tunes, sometimes in Latin and others in English. The audience at times is invited to sing certain carols, making it a rather nice prelude to Advent. And this time, I actually surprisingly ran into my cousin, who was there to see a friend perform. It’s quite a small world after all, I guess.

It’s been quite interesting listening to the health care debate that is currently occurring in the US. It continually fascinates me how differently different groups of people will report on and interpret the same or similar sets of data. I am surprised that so many people are convinced that the satus quo is somehow acceptable. Still, with so many deeply vested interests and stakeholders involved in the US health system, it stretches the bounds of my optimism to assume that something meaningful is going to emerge from this soup of a conundrum they find themselves in. Reminds me of the weather, without the promise of an eventual spring thaw…

My other big coup for October was installing the release version of Windows 7. After my computer crashed at the beginning of September, I held off on installing anything else, because I figured that I would have Windows 7 soon, but it’s been frustrating having my main computer in limbo. I haven’t played a single game on it in months. And listening to music has been a little awkward as well. It is nice to get the new OS finally. I have to say, it has a nice feeling to it and it at least seems a bit faster and more streamlined than Vista. I haven’t entirely adjusted to the new taskbar yet, but it seems more like the Dock in a few ways from OS X.

Other than that, I give two thumbs up for Zombieland, which while having a bit too much for gore, turned our to be a fantastic move, really funny. I also enjoyed watching U2 on Youtube. They’re an amazing band.

It's been a challenging few months as I come out of the summer and look into the bleak darkness that is the beginning of winter here in the Great White North. As something of a last hurrah, a friend of mine and I would up going down to Kananaskis Country to camp for the weekend. It was a fantastic weekend; wonderful to get out of the city for a while and look at actual stars. There were a number of campfires, great views, and an excellent hike. It was also cold and rainy for part of it, but that is the risk you run with off-season camping. The upside is that the fire is appreciated all that much more, and you really cut down on the crowds.

Strangely, this fall I am fairly busy, back in classes that I am taking for work. it feels a little strange to be back in the classroom, but only a little. It is good to stay up-to-date and active in learning. I think it's always a mistake to be professionally or personally complacent. One always has to push on, because life will take you unawares otherwise. It is busy though and it's odd to come home from a full day at the office to several hours worth of homework and reading.

Tags: camping, summer, Kananaskis

August is usually the pinnacle of the summer season, but also signals its near end in Edmonton. Unbelievably to me, I am now looking at the waning side of the summer, and it seems like it just got here. I have never looked forward to the summer more than when I moved to Edmonton. Somehow, it became so much more valuable to me. I have been rather sick the last week or so, but now that I am on the path to recovery, I have every intention of making the most out of the time remaining.

I am now sadly in the process of looking for a new roommate for the condo, after my current one gave me definitive notice that he is moving out at the end of August. I am not really given to making regular changes to my living arrangements, but sometimes I have no choice in the matter. I am hoping to find somebody soon, as I’d really like to be able to keep the place that I have now. It’s conveniently located, nicely appointed, and has the benefit of inertia: I really hate moving. I have made the best looking ad that I could, and now I am nervously waiting for phone calls. I sure don’t have a lot of time to wait…

I guess the one upside is that it forces to me evaluate my current possessions and do a bit of downsizing and rearranging. Whether I need to move or accommodate a new roommate, it’s appropriate. There’s more than a few things I could afford to donate to charity, recycle, or discard. It’s awfully easy in this society to accumulate an abundance of things, and I have never been great at letting go of items with sentimental attachments.

Not wanting to waste a single summer weekend, so spare are they in Edmonton, I have been spending many weekends getting out of the city into new locales and limited warm weather activities. I spent this most recent past weekend in Red Deer where I went paintballing for the afternoon. IT was fun, but I was covered with some fairly nasty welts, sunburn, and slick sheen of sweat from crawling around in the woods for 3½ hours. In end, we wound up diving into the massive lake in the picture above for a dip to cool (and rinse) off before going to get some dinner. I think the groom was fairly glad to be done after having been made to complete a gauntlet lined with paintball guns for his bachelor party.

It’s been relatively cool in Edmonton for the month of July so far, which has been kind of pleasant. The combination of humidity and warm temperatures makes a sustained run quite a bit more difficult. I’ll take it over -30° C that we often get here, but it does take some getting used to. The great upside is that running through neighborhoods at this time of year grants access to wonderful smoky BBQ aromas wafting out of various houses and apartments.

It’s also festival season in Edmonton, and I have been trying to make it to some of those, though being out of town on the weekends makes it more difficult. Still, I went to the Taste of Edmonton a few days ago and enjoyed it. Many restaurants in Edmonton set up shop in Churchill Square and make signature menu items available with live music. There’s usually pretty good selection, and it’s not that far from where I work.  I almost always make to Heritage Days too, which is this coming weekend, but I am hoping to go camping so I am not sure if I’ll make it this year. Either way, I am sure I’ll get to enjoy the sun and the time off.

After spending the weekend down in Glacier National Park, I am decidedly sore but contented. I have made many trips to the Rockies over the year, and weather is never an element one can plan for; I have certainly seen it go both ways. I am very grateful to say that for this particular trip, the weather was excellent. We had a bit of rain, but not until we were driving back up after finishing our weekend. Thankfully, the rest of the trip was graced with sunny clear skies and and pleasant temperatures.

My roommate and I made good use of our good fortune by leaving no stone of the park unturned over our short three day excursion. We did numerous hiking trails, the longest being our first, up to the top of the Apgar Lookout where it was surprisingly well vegetated. In fact, there were a bit too many flies for comfort. Thankfully, there is a radio tower maintenance building with a deck accessible to the public that we were able to escape to — that and a very healthy portion of DEET. We also took the trail out to Hidden Lake located at the top of Logan Pass. The trail might have been a bit easier had half of it not been covered with a very well beat down and slightly melted snow-pack. Climbing uphill on especially slippery snow was quite a challenge after previously doing an 1860 feet climb. The view back at the lake is stunning, however, with the lookout high above a massive valley with a snow-touched lake.

It is the first time that I have been out camping in the mountains for a couple of years, Thankfully, my skills at building a suitable camp fire have not degraded much over the years. I got two roaring pyramids on my first attempts, which we enjoyed well into the night. Cooking ‘attempts’ actually went shockingly well. My roommate pulled off a very nicely cooked salmon fillet in what was a very dark campground. Fortunately for me, he didn't want to have all of it.

I am now contemplating what will hopefully be a deep sleep, followed by another full week at the office.

When out running, I often like to pick out a different route to head out on to keep the sense of adventure and discovery higher. I figure it also doesn’t hurt the sense of accomplishment when you get out in a new area. It’s a good reward to oneself when the further you run, the more you can open up in the way of new areas previously uncharted. I have learned much about the neighborhood that I live in simply by running through various areas of it. On Monday, I was running by the Alberta Provincial museum, and wondered if I would find anything by running around it. As is turns out, it’s rather nicely groomed, and there is access near the rear to the river valley trail system. After shooting the picture above, I ran down a rather steep hill and found a paved path running alongside the North Saskatchewan river. It’s gorgeous down there, and you could honestly believe while down there that you were no longer in the middle of a metropolitan city at all. Needless to say, I’ll be running a bit more down there now as I try to tease out where all of the different paths lead.

It has been a tumultuous year thus far in many ways. From large scale American structural changes, to more personal changes, life feels like it’s racing past. I have watched with no small amount of concern as western debt levels rise to rather alarming percentages of GDP, and I can’t help but wonder when the hammer is going to drop. Nevertheless, I am trying to proceed with my plans, which includes paying back my rather large student debt. Slowly, but surely, I am making progress in that area. I figure if the country has to be in debt, I might well do my best to set a good example. Heh.

One of the local theatres by me is running a summer promotion that involves cheap tickets, something always worth getting excited about, so I am going to catch some escapist summer blockbuster. After all, that’s what summer promises best — escape!

Far is also the title of Regina Spektor’s new album, which I have listened to a couple of times already, courtesy of NPR. It is rather whimsical and peculiar, which are hallmarks of a good album in my view. It has a fairly wide scope, with some rather off-beat subjects. She also has a great voice.

After years of wearing the same glasses, I have finally bitten the bullet and purchased new eyeglasses. It’s a good thing, too, as passing my eye exam with the old ones in the end proved to be too much. My prescription has apparently changed over 50% from my previous pair. And the lenses on those, I think, were in the midst of disintegration. If nothing else, I would swear that I’d worn all of the coatings off.