This is positive news. I think that we should support endangered people as much as possible and news from the US suggests that trans people are at risk. www.cicnews.com/2026/05/cana...

Today while I was sweeping up traction gravel from my driveway I found a broken ice chopper. I took the metal head and used a dremel, screwdriver & pliers to remove the handle stub. I then reshaped the old handle with a hatchet, reinserted it & bolted it in place. Wife said why not buy a new one?.

Karin's away (dogshow) & last night I binged on the UK show Legends. It's set in the 1990s & the music includes club tracks from the period.(Inspiral Carpets etc.) It follows untrained customs agents in Thatcher's war on drugs; Trainspotting from the other side. www.imdb.com/title/tt3326...

The subject of German TV brings to mind one of my favourite TV Cinematographer/Directors, Uta Briesewitz. She studied in Berlin, but most of her work is in US & Canada. I first noticed her cinematography in The Wire, and now she directs for The Pitt. (Stranger Things, Altered Carbon, UnReal, Usw.)

Karin has started an Intro to Russian language course online and I am getting many TikTok videos on Russian Language in my For You feed. Must be the digital equivalent of the transmission of an infection. One gets a cold and suddenly the whole family is is speaking Russian.

Watching Polizeiruf 110: Goldraub on ARD Mediathek this evening. Interesting concept of a German / Polish police unit working in Germany (there is a real joint force apparently) ARD suggested it because "I seem t like Krimis." Truth is, German krimis are most of the copyright free shows in Canada.

I just went to put something away in our library and my German shepherd raced in to the room to stand in front of my piano and stare expectantly at me as I walked past it. She was disappointed I did not practice. See, someone in the house appreciates my efforts. Should I have her hearing checked?

Today's culinary experiment: Lentil pot pie with crispy baked tofu bits.

I am being spoiled by the warm weather and clear skies. Running in +20 C is so much nicer than -20. I still slow down when going up hills, but that is gravity vs an old body. I no longer have to fear black ice, snowplows and curbs hidden by fresh snow. Forest fire smoke will be the next hazard.

Mopsy was afraid because Karin put on her apron and then marinated her in warm soapy water. No barbecue sauce was used in this photo.

Today we got our summer tires installed. Mobile tire installation is a brilliant business innovation and our guy is worked off his feet in spring and fall. I also had my 6 month visit with my eye surgeon. Nothing has changed ( joy! no operation), but the rest of the day was a dilated-pupil blur.

It appears to be spring here in northern British Columbia. I took my evil bike out of the shed yesterday, pumped up the tires and went for a 1 hr. ride. Today I raked leaves and put them in the mulch pile. See mulch + guard dog with security ball below.

EU / Canada news: Nato has a fleet of AWACS (battlefield electronic control airplanes) stationed in Germany. The proposal is that these USA Boeing planes will be replaced with 12 Canadian Bombardier planes outfitted with Swedish Saab surveillance electronics. www.n-tv.de/politik/Awac...

My beloved wife has decided that she wishes to divest herself of all the jewelry she has accumulated over the years. (Mostly gifts from family, rarely worn). This is, apparently, not an easy task. I suppose this is the reason people invest in ephemeral wealth like bitcoin. No physical residue...

It snowed again today & Karin and Merlin are clearing the deck.

My little sister just sent me a photo of us in the local shop around 1959 - 1960 (my estimate). I was a lot better looking & blond back then.

So I see that the US has reached the stage of Henry II. "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?" I suppose that bombing the Vatican will be added to the military bills this month. (I know: Not my circus (not catholic, not US citizen),not my monkeys.)

Working on a review for an article submission and trying hard not to be the asshole 2nd reader that we all know and hate. It's actually not that hard as its quite good and they already cite something I wrote so I don't even have to option of suggesting they cite me even if I would be irrelevant.

I hear that the EU is interested in having Canada as a member. I bought the shirt so I could be prepared. (My German shepherd seems to like the idea as long as she can bring along her Famous Blue Raincoat...er Ball.)

Today's run was in practically tropical weather (+7 c) and I zoned out, forgot the turnaround point & ran 11.75 K instead of the target 10. I like running & with a good audiobook I am usually quite comfortable to keep going. However, my joints are old & I should be more careful (superego=wife).

For no apparent reason, this morning I felt the need to refresh my memory of the Blomberg–Fritsch affair that happened in 1938. Scandals were used to change the leadership of the Wehrmacht to make it more compliant to the political goals of the NSDAP.

It took an hour of doom scrolling this morning for me to notice that it is April 1st. What to do when April Fool's day and Groundhog day (the movie sort) have combined to take over reality?

I received my bag of diastatic malt from Amazon (product is made in Canada) and today I made my first batch of Brötchen with the "secret ingredient." Why do recipie authors always have a magic ingredient or process? In any case the Brötchen are darker, more chewy and have a different flavour.

Cool tech toy: I bought a usb cable tester on Temu for under $3 CDN. It works for USB C, Lighting iphone, & micro USB cables with 5 lines that light up if it is ok. So far I have found one micro USB cable unfit for power transmission.

Adventures in recycling: I had an old solar panel from a dead security cam. Yesterday I decided to use it to charge wireless earphones that still use the micro USB cable size. I set it up in the evening and wondered, for a bit, why it did not charge. It works fine today...in the sunlight. Duh.

I don't think it will ever warm up again here. Today, I had to run without sunglasses again because it was -18 C and anything on my face got iced up in a few minutes. The road was icy too. I suppose that this summer when we are in forest fire hell I will regret these words.

I listened to SRF Heute Morgen & discovered that Switzerland stopped payment on their Patriot missile system order because of delay & price increases. The US simply took F35 payments and used it for the Patriot weapons. Now I wonder about Canadian prepayment for F35s. www.watson.ch/schweiz/arme...

I found the TV show Paris Police on the ARD app, but ARD won't show it to me in Canada for copyright reasons. (that covers mostly anything that is not Tatort, sigh) I finally found it elsewhere & I like the first episode, but Karin will not watch it with me as it is "too violent" for her taste.

I thought that I was the only person in the world to have an irresistible urge to harmonize with electric appliances. Turns out, I am not alone. vt.tiktok.com/ZSu7L4PMt/

Today’s culinary experiment: Brötchen

What do markets reflect? This morning they are up, because the Iran strikes have been postponed...negotiations successful. But, BBC says, " Iran's foreign ministry a short while ago denied that any talks have taken place between the two countries." Who is negotiating with the US?

Yesterday's culinary experiment was Airfryer doughnuts. Karin was not impressed. I did not manage the sugar coating so they were rather plain and my mother-in-law suggested that I deep fry the next batch. (she missed the point of Airfrying) I may look in to glazing, proper dusting or jelly.

New running shoes today: I have been running in Asics shoes for about 20 years, but today I used my new Saucony Guides for the 10 K hill run. My last Asics hit the 700K mark & were done. I could not justify spending over $200 for shoes that wear out every 6 - 7 months and the Saucony were ~ $125.

Snow again this morning.

Today's culinary experiment: Soda Bread with yoghurt version 2. This uses a better recipe than my last effort. It employs a shaggy dough and uses baking soda instead of baking powder and insists on deep scoring that results in 4 mini loaves. It has a nicer crumb and is much drier than last time.

This morning's email included a request to peer review an article for a journal. I assume my selection based on a book I published in 2007, so started to look at the journal to get some context and to see if I am up to date in the field. "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

Gad Elmaleh : Lui-même is on Prime now and it is pretty funny. I looked up his bio and discovered that he emigrated to Canada with his family and attended McGill Uni before moving back to France. (I did a postdoc at McGill, but we never met, quelle suprise!)

A fun day at our household: 1.Listening to an audiobook & think, that sentence should be in the subjunctive. 2. Mention it to Karin and she agrees. 3. We mourn the loss of the subjunctive in English and speculate on a German translation of the sentence. 4. We get caught up in its reflexive aspects.

Today‘s culinary experiment: black bean, carrot & nut-butter burgers.

This morning's odd path to music: 1. Turn on Swiss Radio Klassik. 2. Read Bluesky feed 3. Follow up with news 4. Wonder why I care about US politics now 5. Think of Sun Zu "Know your enemy..." & look up quote. 6. End up listening to this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hdq...

We are watching Tunnel on Netflix. It is a Tai show with a plot something like the BBC show Life on Mars (Ashes to Ashes too) in that a police officer is transported through time, but in this case the hero goes forward in time. I don't get some of the cultural cues, but it's quite good.

Yesterday, when I was driving Axel home from Uni I mentioned the last time I saw US military bombing the Middle East on TV was when we brought them home from the hospital (birth) in 2003. Axel was a fussy baby & Karin & I spent many late nights taking turns watching news TV & rocking them.

Today it was about -3C and when I went for my run up the hill it was sunny and mostly bare asphalt. On the way down the hill there were patches shaded by the forest and black ice collected. I did not notice, fell and got road-rash on both hands. Stupid old man lecture from beloved wife pending.

Guess who is doing snow removal again today instead of going for a run?

Google home in English can't find Radio Swiss Classic, but if asked in German it can. I looked to see if using the Gemini AI on Google home would be better, but that change simply erases its ability to respond to two languages; English only even in Canada. So, AI is going to improve things? Wieso?

We started watching Die Notärztin on ARD Mediathek yesterday evening and it is quite engaging. Set in Mannheim, the show follows the life of a physician attached to a fire department crew. There are significant plot differences from Canadian & US medical dramas. www.imdb.com/title/tt2771...

Today was a running day, but we had a fairly heavy snow fall so I used the energy to remove the snow from our driveway instead of running on a road with poor visibility & traction. Of course, it is still snowing, but I am hoping that stops before I feel that today's effort was wasted.

We started watching Bugonia last night, but could not finish it. Although I agree that there are many reasons to mock both corporate culture and conspiracy theory anti-logic, a story about two men kidnaping, imprisoning, humiliating, and torturing a woman is an unappealing implementation.

SO, today there were bald eagles out and about as I was running near the local landfill site. One swooped down and skimmed the road in front of me and another landed in a tree as I was passing. Here is the image of the one in the tree. I stopped and froze my hands digging out my phone to get this.

It is back to -20 degrees here in the true north, strong and free (apologies to Nunavut et al) and I was wrapped up to the max for my 10 K run yesterday. I even had a red spandex mask over my face and it was covered in ice by the time I got home. (Reverse situation to US masks I hear).