Comfort and/or Discomfort

Yes, there’s been a big lapse since the last entry in October, but not for a lack of things to write about!

From the time I stepped off the plane, returning from Denver, much of the time has been a blur: straight into a long house-sit, facing a big grant deadline, and then the beginning of the resolution of medical problems initially discovered in June. Part of the process was made easier because I was house-sitting somewhere that I had time to be grumpy by myself, to be honest, and gave me a chance to explore a part of Calgary with which I was not intimate with.



Different walking paths in mostly good weather encouraged me to get out and have the exercise my doctors indicated that would speed healing, and I found myself outside for long stretches on many days. Finally, I decided to start tracking my steps on December 1, thanks to the built-in pedometer on my iPhone, and began a virtual walk of the Camino of Santiago.



Since I eventually want to go explore the Spanish coast of the Bay of Biscay and Galicia, I though it would be a good way to measure my progress, particularly since the virtual walk I’m doing ends at Fisterra, a place on my bucket list.



When the fall house ended, I had barely a week in my own bed before setting off for another one over the holidays, again, in another part of Calgary that I was unfamiliar with at the western edge, near Canada Olympic Park. Heavy snowfalls kept me busy shovelling, and plummeting temperatures turned my usually long walk on Christmas Day down to a much shorter stroll. It was a peaceful week, full of reading and writing: the former (Simon Winchester’s Krakatoa) recommended by a friend, while the latter was a performance piece I would be doing in Saskatoon the first weekend in January.