two times two is nineteen?

So, a Hyundai Ioniq Hybrid or an Accent 5 door?

Once the house is sold, I get to buy one of these two. If fuel economy was my only factor, the Hybrid wins (4L/100KM compared to 7.3L/100KM).

If price was the only factor, the Accent 5 Door would win (22,383$ vs 33,245$).

With desired accessories as well as 1000$ trade in of existing van and 10,000$ deposit from funds received from sale of house, bi-weekly payments for three years, the Accent 5 Door (Preferred model) would be 158$. The Ioniq Hybrid (Preferred model), also bi-weekly for three years, would be 306$. So, to lower the bi-weekly payment of the Ioniq, I would put down a larger deposit, with a 20,000$ deposit, the three year bi-weekly amount drops to 174$.

I could likely pay the full cost of either car with proceeds from the sale of the house, however, the financing interest rate is either zero (Accent) or low (1.99% Ioniq) and so putting money into retirement investments that can grow at 5-7% makes more sense. On the other hand, I do not want to affect my monthly cash flow too much, and so I'd ideally like the bi-weekly payments to hover within the 150-200$ range.

Oh, and I also compared BMO Investor Line with Questrade, and I'm still leaning towards the latter.

That's about it.

counting the chickens before they bake

It has been a while since I have posted here.

Oh well.

Here I am today putting to words what thoughts I am having at the moment. Not much.

It is like a barrel of cheesecake smelling of three day old sweaty socks being served to an olfactory limited sturgeon. Or, like a marble being chewed by a teenaged female goat.

Not all of the visionaries know how to count to eleven by skipping the non-prime numbers.

Not all of the numbers know what year it was the last time it rained 125mm in San Diego during the first week of September.

I would post more than this, but to do so

painting all of the oranges orange

I gave blood today. It went well, as it always does.

Tomorrow is the first Thursday of this month. I should know; I verified by looking at a calendar.

Asparagus has become my favourite vegetable, can't get enough of it.

I did not get kicked in the shin today, and I was pretty pleased about that. I also did not get kicked in the shin yesterday.

What else is there to say?

Time will tell, as it always does.

The complicated nature of silt

Oh well, that's what the cat dragged in. Count it twice, but not a third time, well, unless you really want to.

All of the NTU stuff, when mispelled, becomes NUT.

In three more minutes something that is expected to happen in three minutes will happen.

I'm getting better at making such predictions.

Okay, good luck!

wow, what a nice polka dot you have!

Retirement.

Greta Thunberg.

Sailing.

Long walks.

Eating ice cream.

Going to the gym.

Spartan Races.

Summer Olympics.

Carbon offsets.

School Strike for Climate.

What else?

These are some of the things I have been thinking about recently.

when meet and meat meet meat

The sousterrain race for 2020 is already on sale; I'm not going to do it.

2020 I'm going to Tokyo to attend the summer Olympics. I may also do a Sprint Spartan Race if I have coworkers who will do it; and I will do it with them. The only other race I'll do is a 5KM in the fall, the Classique du Parc Lafontaine. This is a race I've been doing for quite a few years and it is one of the least expensive ones. I need pecuniary savings to pay for this Tokyo adventure.

This summer (and fall) I have
June 16, 5K race of Pointe-Claire
June 29, Spartan Race - Beast Distance
July 27, Spartan Race - Sprint Distance
July 28, Spartan Race - Super Distance
October 20, 5K race of Classique du Parc Lafontaine

Still to be scheduled are the Exo walks, I'll preliminarily schedule them this way:
May 25, Exo Vaudreuil Walk
June 6, Exo Candiac Walk
June 20, Exo Mont St-Hilaire Walk
July 2, Exo St-Jerome Walk
August 12, Exo Deux Montagnes Walk
September 5, Exo Mascouche Walk

As the Exo walks can really happen at any time, I will allow myself some flexibility with the dates so that I can take advantage of better weather conditions. The only limitation is that only Exo Vaudreuil operates on weekends and holidays, the other five lines do not operate on weekends or holidays.

I'm looking forward to doing these walks, maybe I'll make a habit of it. After I do this the first time, I may also see if I can organize something publicly to get other people to join me. Of course, the Exo's affected by the REM may need to be skipped until the REM is up and running. What would be interesting is that each person who joins gets to walk home, so from the start we'd be together, but eventually our routes would diverge. If a dozen or more people ended up doing it, the diverging would take place at different points so sub groups would form for part of the distance.

when everyone else has left and you're the only one

When all of the people who do not know how to fall asleep in four minutes or less are lined up against a wall and told to count to eleven, the third one from the left accidentally counted to twelve as she got into the groove of counting and forgot when to stop.

This weekend is exactly the weekend where we turn our clocks back one hour to initiate the arrival of Daylight Savings Time. This is a practice that has no noticeable circadian or physiological effect on me, but still, I see the practice as mostly useless.

SpaceX this week managed to launch, dock, undock and splash land a space craft intended for passengers that was carrying a small Earth pattern plush ball in addition to a mannequin in a SpaceX space suit named Ripley. Between now and July they will do another test with no people to test the safety mechanism that could safely land the ship should something go wrong during orbit. Then, in July, two volunteer test pilot/Astronaughts will be going up to the International Space Station in it.

This fourth paragraph ought to have four sentences in it. The reason for this is that this is a pattern post where there is a pattern to the number of sentences in each paragraph. If you have read my blog for any amount of time you are likely to have encountered a pattern post in the past. If you haven't, you didn't.

Drink up, the soup is blocked

For the first time in ages I visited my municipal library this past weekend. I first checked out the 'New Arrivals' area where certain books are highlighted and not any of the three dozen or so seemed to have caught my interest.

So then I wandered through the stacks, Science Fiction, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Biographies, etc. Up and down I went, occasionally pulling a random book off a shelf, reading the back cover, or, the inside flaps. I picked out a Steven Gould book about Jumpers. It seems there are some number of books by him in this Jumper world, but the library did not seem to have the first one which would have introduced me into this universe of his. So I put it back and wandered some more. I began to get restless, that I couldn't come up with a decision, so I went back to the Steven Gould books, of which there were four, and grabbed two of them.

'Helm' was the first one, roughly 380 pages, and I read it in two days. I guess you can say it was easy to read and rather engaging. The second one is called 'Exo' which is the second book about the main character 'Cent'. I will start it tonight or tomorrow.

On my next trip to the library I may do a bit of research first; look at short listed Giller Prize books, or other award lists.

when bread is baked or half baked

So yes, all of the windows in the building are not made of cheese, I should know, I tried tasting three of them.

Indeed, all of the doors in the building are not made of crayons, I should know, I tried tasting three of them.

As expected, all of the ceilings in the building are not made of Oreo Cookies, I should know, I tried tasting two of them, though I needed to use a ladder.

Unerringly correct, all of the floors in the building are not made of cream cheese, I should know, I tried tasting the one I'm on and interpolated that it applied to all of the floors.

After all of this tasting my taste buds started growing into flowers.

serendipity and the lint

The rest of them, heh, they didn't know what year it was.

It took them forever to figure out that the left shoe goes on the left foot and the right shoe, well, you know where it goes.

A pin dropping from the left hand to the marble floor only made a sound to the person whose head was just above the floor next to where the pin dropped. To everyone else, they looked askance at the image of a person lying down on the floor with raised head as another person standing nearby drops a pin.

That a pair of sentences would be composed only so that the use of the word 'askance' could be used, and even then, inaccurately, would serve no real purpose. I should know.

Not all of the people named Bartholomew had the nickname 'Mew'.

The sleeping agent cried out foul, wanting to continue sleeping, when awoken by her pet cat, who meowed longingly for a play-date with the neighbour's garden gnome. The gnome didn't utter a sound, knowing that the agent prefers sleeping under all but the most exceptional circumstances.

I can tell by the shininess of the keys on my keyboard at work that the keys F2 and F4 seem to get used with significant regularity as compared to the other F-keys which all have a layer of dust upon them. Well, upon further examination, F5 does seem to bear somewhat less dust then the other unused ones. I know that F2 in MS Excel allows me to enter a cell to edit its contents, and Alt-F4 allows me to close applications. I am less certain why F5 shows as being used; in both MS Word and Excel the F5 is used for 'Go To' or 'Search', but usually I use Ctrl-F or Ctrl-H.

My suspicion about beep was correct. Let's count twice about the chances of in the middle and all of the rest. Only time will tell, as it always does.

rent bent tent lent sent vent Kent

What if I take the first commuter train in the direction away from the city to it's terminus, and then walk home.

These are the distances Google says it would be to walk home from them:

Vaudreuil, 23.5km
Deux-Montagnes, 31.2km
Mascouche, 41.1km
Candiac, 46.5km
St-Jerome, 50km
Mont Saint-Hilaire, 62.3km

Only the first one has trains that run on weekends, so I could easily do the first one on a Saturday.

Take the train close to my apartment out to Vaudreuil, it would leave at 9h58 and I'd get there at 10h30, and then walking home I'd arrive at 15h20.

For the Deux-Montagnes line, there is an early train at 6h35, but I would take the next one at 8h49, gets me to Deux-Montagnes station at 9h26, and I'd arrive at 15h50 walking home.

To get to Mascouche there's a train that leaves the city at 6h55 that gets me to Gare Mascouche at 8h10, and according to Google if I walked without stopping to get home, I'd get home at 16h38.

The Candiac line's earliest train leaves the city at 9h35, gets me there at 10h15, and I'd walk home to arrive at 19h45.

The St-Jerome line has an early train out, leaves the city at 6h57 and arrives there at 8h22, walking home I'd arrive at 18h43.

Finally, the Mont Saint Hilaire line, furthest away, has it's earliest departure at 12h30, arriving there at 13h15, add the walk home and I'd get home at 2:04 the next morning. This is one to be done as close to the summer solstice as possible to take advantage of the late sunset.

I was thinking about doing this during my commute into work this morning as an in expensive way to have a memorable experience.

I would need to do the Deux-Montagnes one this year, as the whole line is being shut down in January, 2020, for the upgrade to the REM.