Tina's Walking Journal 🌳🚶🏻♀️🏡
Archive
January 2025.
January 28 2025
Temperature: 25°F
Condition: Clear
Wind: none
Listening to: Bob's Burgers Character Anthems Playlist
I haven't been out for a stroll for weeks. I've been doing the stairs fairly regularly, but nothing noteworthy happened those days, so I didn't write about them. Since, for whatever reason, I'm still awake at 06:00, I may as well go out now.
["Mr. Blue Sky", Electric Light Orchestra (Bob's Anthem)] They've got the slighly-brighter-than-the-sun stadium lights on at the athletic fields. I can only imagine this is due to some kind of sport being practised right now. I'm serious, these lights are so bright, you can probably see them from the crest of the hill at Numerical & Alphabetical 5 miles away.
It's interesting how our perception of the weather is relative to the last weather system we experienced. 2 months ago, this temperature would have seemed really cold— in fact, I remember talking about a 28°F reading being "frigid" in October. Well, since then, I've walked in blowing snow, 17° temperatures, and had to stay inside and run the stairs because it was 2° out. Compared to all of that, 25°F is a veritable heat wave. I'm out here in my henley with rolled-up sleeves and a button-down short-sleeved overshirt and I'm comfortable.
There's steam rising from the vent on the roof of the house with the toys scattered across the lawn. Lit up by the stadium lights like this, it looks quaint and cosy. Probably other houses have steam rising from their vents, but I can't see them from here.
["Be Stiff", Toni Basil (Linda's Anthem)] The frat house has some new holiday lights up. Unlike their Christmas do, it's only along the side with the carpark.
While I would have preferred to come out here yesterday, being Monday, I fell asleep before I could decide what route I wanted to go. That's the good thing about freelance work; I can majorly fuck up my regular-people hours and it doesn't affect my work.
It's like I said once: there's something urgent about the pre-dawn hours on Monday, like something important is going to happen at any moment. Tuesday morning, though... people have accepted the fact that the weekend is over and that same anticipation just isn't there. Wednesday morning is straight-up maudlin, as people start to think that death would be a better option than the continuous grind of mind-numbing busywork. Let's not talk about Thursday. Thursday is the Sunday of the business week.
The day's activities are just starting up at the university. There's some kind of sport going on that involves obscenely bright lights, sure; but a light just got turned on in that office over there and I can smell cooking going down at the dining hall. There are various lights on in single windows all over the campus, where you know that someone came in early to work on something. My math professor barely prepared anything at all and I could swear she was just making stuff up some days. Whenever she broke out the improper fractions, I knew her kid was sick or she'd gotten up late that morning.
["The World's a Mess", X (Tina's Anthem)] It looks like the "Trump/Vance" sign is still in the window of this house here. I guess someone is still dazzled by Scrotus Maximus' unwavering commitment to the bit. Or they're pretending to be edgy, thinking they'll get girls this way. What does that say, though? "Hey, baby, you wanna act out my 1950s domestic fantasies with me? You wanna have my kids and get forced by your family into a toxic marriage that you can never back out of, but I can throw you out of at any time, and I get to keep all your money because being the man of the house it's actually MY money?" Oh yeah sure, that's got MY loins all a-tingle, I tell you hwat. Ppbbhhhthh 🤧 Let's get off this script.
Hey, there's the bus way down there! It's stopping for someone, even. Yep, it's Tuesday all right.
["Pop Goes the World", Men Without Hats (Gene's Anthem)] There's actually a light on in this house for a change. It's in the basement, but if it's like every other sublet house around here, there's a flat down there. I don't think anyone's been into the ground or 1st floors for 6 months at this point.
Somehow the pavement around here is in even worse condition than it was the last time I was here. Great hunks of it are missing now. I guess it's time to turn my screen white.
There are actually more houses around here with their Christmas lights still up than I initially thought. 3 that I can see from here.
["Pocket Calculator", Kraftwerk (Louise's Anthem)] There are actually porch lights on at the flat I thought was abandoned. No lights or cars otherwise, so I suppose it's possible they got turned on by a repairman or inspector or someone.
Is the security floodlight still blinking and flashing like the Star Trek red alert alarm? You know it.
["Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go", Wham! (Regular-Size Rudy's Anthem)] I haven't walked down the alley to get home for a while. I think I'll go that way this morning.
January 22 2025
Temperature: 39°F (wind chill of 28°)
Condition: Overcast
Wind: Variable
Listening to: nothing
I got up way too late today, so rather than deal with all the people swarming about at the university, I'm just doing the stairs again. I sure wish mum's friend would decide on a car already so I can start going back to the park.
There's nothing going on around here. I think I'm the only one at home on this side of the building, actually.
Earlier, the landlord came round and I almost had a panic attack because I was somehow convinced that she was gonna kick me out and fine me loads of money. I don't know why. All she was here to do was install a new fire extinguisher on the staircase landing. Damn! I haven't been this stressed out for about 12 years! I wonder what brought this on. Trump? Well, Obama was still president 12 years ago, so probably not.
Like I said, nothing going on around here.
January 19 2025
Temperature: 0°F (wind chill of -14°)
Condition: Clear
Wind: Moderate from the north
Listening to: #8's little boy having a temper tantrum
Remember how I said my absolute temperature limit was 5°F? We're 5 degrees below that. I don't have a pair of trousers or a sweater or a coat that can possibly keep that kind of cold out, so it's Stair Day II: Electric Boogaloo, I wish it could be higher.
I remember once upon a time I was trying to get a singer onboard with a re-write cover of "Electric Avenue" to do the main lyrics. Someone painted "Lockdown 2" on the wall over the "Electric Ave." plaque in London and I wrote this whole spiel about how politicians bungled the COVID19 emergency. The only thing was, that song in any form can't be taken seriously if a white voice sings it, and I'm nerdy in the extreme, I'm whiter than sour cream. Oh well, too much time has passed now. I guess I could put the incomplete version with my white-ass backing vocals up on the site someday.
Well, #8's little boy's tantrum appears to be over. Now I hear unspecific TV sounds in there. It's not like I'm eavesdropping, the walls are "fire code violation" thin around here.
#5's Amazon Ring is gone. It was on the floor when I went out 2 days ago, now it's just not there at all. Even the mounting is gone. Well, good for me I guess. I wonder what condition their Echo is in?
I've had Reese's variation on the town tune and the Re-Tail shop theme from New Leaf stuck in my head solid state for the past week. Oh well, I go in there a lot. It's probably my most visited location in the whole game. I think I should quit without saving one of these times so I can get the Reset Surveillance Centre on the agenda.
January 18 2025
Temperature: 30°F and falling fast (wind chill of 10-20°)
Condition: Mostly cloudy
Wind: Substantial from the north
Listening to: the laundry machines running
It's 30°F right now, but it's going to fall down to 14° in a couple hours' time. While I'm not ordinarly scared off by the wind, I think the impressive wind-chill is too much to walk in. So, we're doing the stairs.
#2 still has their Halloween sign standing by the door, and #1 still has their halloween doormat out, but all the Christmas (and chanukah) related door decor is gone at this stage. I left my plastic snowflake on my door because it's still winter, but otherwise, the holidays are quite over.
January 17 2025
Temperature: 36°F (wind chill of 30°)
Condition: Clear
Wind: Light from the northwest
Listening to: "Perfect System" (Oingo Boingo, from ONLY A LAD, 1981)
There, that's better from yesterday. It's still pretty dark out here, but leaving when I did, it'll be sunup by the time I get back. Also, I decided to just use my corporate feudal shackle for my playlist this morning, rather than the MP3 player.
You know, that might be a confusing term for younger readers: "MP3 player". It's the progression of portable music-playing technology. Transistor radios, to Walkmans, to portable CD players, to MP3 players, to smartphones. I should make a blog entry about that sometime.
It looks like there are 2 houses that still have Christmas lights up.
I read a post on Tumblr yesterday about ageing and mobility that said you need to stay mobile in your 20s, 30s, and 40s if you want to be mobile in your 70s, 80s, and 90s. It recommended at least 2 walks every week. I used to do these every frickin' morning; I don't know what happened to that. Well, actually, I can explain one lost week. It's a little TMI so I'll despoil the text. 
A spot on my thighs inexplicably started chaffing a couple days before the last snowstorm. When I went out during the snow, I accidentally rubbed the blister open and it's taken this long to heal completely. I ended up sacrificing a pair of trackpants, jeans, and 3 y-fronts to the ensuing blood stain. Anyway, I'm back to 3 a week, so I'm doing pretty good, I'd say. Looking forward to being able to walk at the park again, though. I just wish mum's friend would hurry up with that damned car of hers so we can carry on with that.
I keep forgetting to look up at Luna. She was full a couple nights ago, so definitely not a werewolf trigger anymore, but it's like I said before. I love our moon. She's been up there in some form or another since long before humans walked the earth and she'll be there until long after we're all gone. You just can't find that kind of stability anywhere else.
Wow, it's getting light out a lot earlier now! I remember coming out here at 07:45 and the sun wasn't even changing the colour of the horizon. There's some more stability for you: the sun will always rise. Even though the measurement of time is a human construct, time itself is a baked-in feature of the universe. The planets orbit their stars, photons travel through space, atoms decay, galaxies move from the universal centre. Time passes.
Anyway, we're starting to get way too existential for this time of the morning. Gonna hang up!
January 16 2025
Temperature: 50°F
Condition: Clear
Wind: None
Listening to: nothing
This was the wrong time of day to come out here. I thought, "hey, lunch time— everyone's going to be at work or at the campus dining hall or something." Nope. While it's pretty quiet on the residential street, it's standing-room only on both sides of the road round the university. At least I brought my 3DS this time.
You know that fish from SpongeBob that always exclaims, "My leg!"? Man, I feel that right now. I've had to walk uphill at a pretty brisk pace in order to look like I'm normal. From sheer muscle memory, I can't slow down, either. My legs ache SO much right now because I'm ignoring my pain receptors and walking as fast as I used to walk through the corridors in high school. I'm a big girl, but I can book it when I need to.
The only reason I'm not listening to anything right now is my MP3 player/recording stick needs batteries and I'm fresh out of AAA's. I seem to recall needing AAA-size batteries a lot more a few years ago. Electric torches, clock radios, portable CD player, loads of stuff. Now, though, my dictaphone is the only thing I still have that needs them. Everything else is AA or rechargeable.
Yeah, this was a really bad time to come out here. WAY too many people around. I guess I'll just turn here, double back on my route, and go back home. Waste of everybody's time.
January 15 2025
Temperature: 24°F (wind chill of 10°)
Condition: Partly cloudy
Wind: Light from the north
Listening to: "Misfit Kid" (The Cars, from PANORAMA, 1980)
I keep forgetting my Nintendo 3DS. Especially now that the Nookling Junction got replaced by T&T Mart and they sell 2 fortune cookies now. That's 4 Play Coins! I hope I can find something else that Play Coins do, because unlike certain people, I'm not interested in just "number go up".
Besides, I live in hope that one day, I'll Streetpass with someone. Can't do that at all if I leave my 3DS at home.
It's actually colder out here than it looks. I'm not wearing anything under my sweatshirt because I thought, "Well, I don't want to sweat." A) it's cold as tits out here, B) mine are freezing, C) I'm gonna sweat anyway. It doesn't matter if it's 94F, 24, or 4, I am going to sweat.
It sure was fun walking around here in the dark with all the Christmas decorations about. Now, there's nothing. No one decorates for Valentine's Day or St. Patrick's Day, or really any other holiday. Sometimes Halloween, but they shoot the wad doing up Christmas.
January 12 2025
Temperature: 30°F (wind chill of 24°)
Condition: Overcast
Wind: Light from the west
Listening to: "Are U X-Perienced" (Devo, from SHOUT, 1984)
8 days. It's been the full duration of Passover or Hanukkah since I've been out here. In my defence, it was impressively cold for about a business week, and the other 3 days it didn't get warm enough during the day to melt the snow in any meaningful amount. I did the stairs on a few of those days, but it's not the same. Since the sidewalks should be clear now, I'm going for a pre-dawn stroll like the old days... you know, September 2024.
At least I won't get called for jury duty this year. Hopefully that won't happen for another 14 years. I should look nicely femme by then. I'll be, what, 47?
Technically, the moon won't be full until tomorrow, but it's close enough for werewolves. I actually can't see Luna right now for this thick cloud deck, but I saw her earlier from my porch.
We actually didn't get all that much snow here, compared to some places. We were supposed to get about 3 inches of snowfall, but it turned out to be less than a quarter of an inch.
It looks like school's back in session: all the residence hall carparks are full for the first time since Thanksgiving.
Sunday morning is always an interesting time to be out for a stroll, especially early like this. The pubs all closed 3 hours ago, so it's definitely not Saturday Night anymore. At this stage, everyone is either finishing in their one-night stands, en route to a hangover, asleep and awaiting 12 hours of church, in hour 6 of their 15-hour Smash sesh, or out walking in the dark listening to the forgotten hits of the '80s. I'm going to wait until 06:00 to go out tomorrow, because the only thing better than early Sunday morning for people who work from home at their own pace and can set their own hours is early Monday morning.
Talking of gaming, I should have brought my 3DS with me. I've given up on Streetpassing at this point, but I finally found a use for Play Coins. Nookling Junction in New Leaf sells fortune cookies for 2 Play Coins, which have fortunes that you can redeem for a Nintendo-related item. I've actually created quite a routine around this game, which I should really write about in my Game Log, rather than the Walking Journal.
January 4 2025
Temperature: 19°F (wind chill of 5°)
Condition: Light blowing snow
Wind: Moderate from the north
Listening to: "Where Do All My Friends Go?" (Oingo Boingo, from BOI-NGO, 1986)
I better get out and walk now if I plan to walk at all! This is the start of the winter storm warning that we're about to get, and the SPC is saying 3-5 inches of snow.
Besides, this is the kind of thing I wanted to see on my walking journal when I started it back in August '24. To be able to look at my archives when it's fucktillion degrees kelvin outside and see "19° and blowing snow" on some long-forgotten day in January.
This time, instead of "She Blinded Me with Science" playing on my playlist outside the science building, "Chariots of Fire" is playing outside the athletics field.
It's actually kind of hard to walk on this pavement in the snow. Well, I'll just walk in the planter. There's nothing there at the moment except trees.
I thought it was cold the last time I walked in this kind of temperature? That's nothing compared to walking when there's snow blowing in your face. Fortunately, my anti-camera plague mask can be used as an ad-hoc scarf.
It feels like I'm on a high-fantasy adventure, since I had a ploughman's lunch
right before I went out. Of course, I substituted pickled onions for pickled cucumbers, but it was still fun.
That's the first thing I'm going to do with my new car: I'm going to make my 3-rise bread and then take a ploughman's lunch out to the end of the Verley trail at Pioneer's Park. I'm not going to sit on the cyclist benches at the roundabout, I'm going all the way to the old trail-end with the wood benches next to the creek. I'll have to substitute the cider for, like, iced tea or something, but I haven't been out there since May 2020. That'll be my welcome back to the land of the living. I haven't felt human for a lot of the past 5 years, so I really need this: to eat basic nutrition after a long walk in preparation for a long walk back.
Right now, though, I'll settle for getting back home before I become Frosty the Snowman.
It's really starting to accumulate on surfaces now... this was the best idea I ever had. Oh well, it beats sitting at home wishing I'd gone out when I had the chance.
January 2 2025
Temperature: 32°F (wind chill of 25°)
Condition: Overcast
Wind: Light from the north
Listening to: "Coal Mine" (Devo, from HEAVY METAL, 1983)
It's probably going to get way too cold and snowy to walk pretty soon, so I might as well get out while I can, cos it sounds like 2 weeks solid of stair time coming up next week.
I'm going the same way I went the last 2 days because why not.
Of course, doing that doesn't leave much room for variety. There's a hawk or something on that streetlight, but other than that, this bit's pretty copypaste.
Eh, I'll take a picture of that hawk and text it to my mum. She loves raptors. I wish I could see that owl again, that'd be bad-ass.
Anyway, nothing interesting is happening beyond that, so, yeah.
January 1 2025
Temperature: 32°F
Condition: Clear
Wind: Light from a variable northerly direction
Listening to: nothing
Once again, listening to nothing because I'm making a verbal diary entry at the same time.
Actually, I'm going the same way I went on the 29th, mostly because it's novel (I don't come this way very often) and all the university kids are going to be back probably by Sunday, so I'm not going to get another chance to come this way until summer.
I wonder how many of these statues and things I'm passing are PokéStops in Pokémon Go? I quit playing that game after the Unity Engine debacle a couple years ago and never went back to it. I miss my Flareon, Pyrrho, but not enough to go back to the game. I realised that, oh this is just another data-collector mobile app, isn't it. That's the only thing mobile apps are good for, collecting data for marketing and now AI training. If I want to play a Pokémon game, my Nintendo 3DS is just right there.
Talking of, I have my 3DS with me again. Last time, the podometre said I went something like 3500 steps. I wonder what kind of good "Play Coins" do? And why you earn them by walking? Probably they did more good when the system was current. Now, it's probably nothing more than a number that goes up but can never go down again.
There's a dog across the road who's barking at me. Like I said, I appreciate being barked at by dogs; it shows me that I exist. If I didn't exist, would dogs pull on their leads to try and get across the road and bark at me close up? Or jump on the sitting room picture-window when I pass by in the road? Or stand against the fence hoping I'll throw something to them and relieve their boredom? No.
While I wouldn't presume to say that taking strolls can cure clinical depression (anyone who claims it can is probably trying to sell you something), one of the shared depression experiences is feeling like you don't exist. When I go for strolls, I can find irrefutable evidence of my existence. First, my shadow. Photons travel all the way from the Sun at incomprehensible speeds, just to get stopped by my fat ass before they can hit the ground. Second, dogs barking at me. Third, if I were to stand at one of these bus stops at a particular time of the day, a bus would stop for me. The driver's got a strict schedule to keep, she's not gonna stop just 'cuz freedum. Fourth, if I'm in the middle of a crossroads while a car is coming, the car's going to, if not stop, then at least slow down until I pass by. I recognise that there are depressed people who are not physically able to go for strolls, but if you turn on the lights, do you not cast a shadow? If you opened your fromt door while your neighbour was there, would he not turn and look at you? Does your cat not complain at you if you're 23 seconds late with her breakfast? You exist.
Why is it that everyone's boyfriend around here look exactly the damn same? The word "boyfriend" seems to refer to a young-ish white man in a ball-cap, wearing a brown leather jacket and blue jeans, having about 3 days' worth of beard stubble, whose main car is a pickup truck with a pine-tree shaped air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror and Nebraska Huskers and Kansas City Chiefs bumper stickers. "Girlfriend" can mean a woman of any age, shape, colour, or mode of dress, but "boyfriend" seems to mean only this one type of man. Whatever.
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