The TV-series Only Murders in the Building is fun for a few reasons. It makes fun of true-crime podcasts and the combination of Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez is perfect.

What I was most surprised to find myself enjoying about the show: the literal wallpaper.

For all its sordid history, the gossip-news site Gawker left us with a lasting gem: The “How Many Pizzas Should You Order” formula. It’s elegant in its simplicity: (# of people) × 3/8.

What if some of the people are adults and some are kids? Large pizzas or Medium? No more questions! Just use the formula, and round up to the nearest pizza. It works. Your quality of life will improve.

Having just weathered Hurricane Fiona, the strongest to hit Canada on record, I have a few notes:

• Everyone in my circle and as far as I can see around me is safe.
• I’ve never felt my house shake in a storm – but I did this time.
• We had a lot of close calls, but no major damage to property.
• There was a lot to clean up (branches, sticks, leaves, trash, etc.)
• Our power was out for an entire week (even longer for others).
• It gets dark early! We really rely on our artificially-extended days to keep up with life.
• A BBQ with a burner was a life-saver. We cooked a ton of decent meals, and boiled a LOT of water.
• There was no interruption to our municipal water supply (we could flush the toilets!).
• It takes a LONG time to boil water.
• Cleaning out the fridge after a week wasn’t as bad as I expected.
• Cleaning out the freezer after a week was was much worse than I expected.
• The mobile network was unreliable. Text messages wouldn’t go through, and then would go through 10 times repeatedly. Mobile data was like the weather, coming and going as it pleased – never there when you need it.
• The clean-up and recovery mobilization at a large-infrastructure level has been impressive (tree removal, power line repair, etc.).
• Solar panels are awesome, but people don’t realize that most residential solar installations can’t generate power when the grid is down. For now, the only option is a $10,000-$20,000+ battery installation.
• A similar outage in winter would have been much more dangerous. Keeping warm and keeping pipes from freezing would be difficult and has me thinking of contingency plans.

I’m moving to a new house (same town) and so I’m being forced to contend with All of My Stuff.

I’m selling off a few bits of guitar gear that I’m not using as much these days. You can buy my stuff through this Reverb shop. It will be much easier for me to carry your money to my new house than my stuff.

That Reverb site makes it dangerously easier to buy and sell music gear.

I enjoy how the Hyundai Canada website asks you to choose between a gigantic container ship and a hatchback EV.

My family got me the perfect Father’s Day gift this year. First, some background.

Living, as we do, on Prince Edward Island, we have access to some beautiful beaches. I spent my summers as a child at a cottage near a beach, and we visit the beach lots now that I have kids of my own.

I don’t actually like the beach. The air is too hot, the water is too cold (and there are things in it), there’s sand everywhere. There’s no coffee shop. One star.

What I learned in the past few years, though, is that if you add a stream to a beach, my opinion changes dramatically. There are two beaches we frequent in the summer that both have a small streams that runs from an inland pond, across the beach, and out into the ocean.

These streams change dramatically day to day, depending on the tides and currents. One day, a stream might run straight down the beach to the ocean. Another day, it might wind down the beach, parallel to the ocean for up to one or two hundred meters before meeting the ocean.

This running fresh water gives you something to mess around with. If you dig a shorter path for the water to take from stream to the sea, gravity will take over. Your little canal, no wider than your hand, grow larger and larger and can completely reshape the flow of the stream.

I love this. I can dig this miniature mega-projects for hours. I last for twenty minutes at a beach with no stream. Add a stream, and I’m in for the day.

So, my family got me a mini-shovel for this beach digging. It’s a glorified beach-toy, and I can’t wait to use it. Like many great gifts, it’s something I thought about getting, but felt it was a silly indulgence and never bothered to actually buy it myself. I love it!