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!

It’s easy to identify and criticize bad design. When an object is well designed though, you often don’t notice it (by design).

There are two monoliths that stand outside by house. One green and one black. These waste and compost bins, distributed by the provincial government, are well designed.

• They are durable. It’s rare to see one that has broken. In my 20+ years of using them, they’ve never failed. Even the “moving parts” like wheels and lid hinges hold up.
• They are stable. It takes a very strong wind to blow them over, and when they have some weight in them, they almost never tip.
• They’re big. They hold a lot of… stuff.
• They are manoeuvrable. They’re big enough that if you fill them with dense materials, they can get much heavier than what a person could ever carry. When rocked up on their one set of wheels, a single person can move a huge weight.
• There’s a small version. You can request a smaller version if you don’t need the size. They take up less space and are easier to manoeuvre.

They aren’t perfect. They can build of water (or worse, “garbage juice”) at the bottom and turn rancid. They are waste bins.

Thanks to those who designed these bins and those who identified procured them in our province.

After all, one person’s trash is another person’s, uh, metaphor!