Animal with Home Value

 A Short Riverside Walk With Joe, a Hill Climb, and a Happy Dog Today’s walk with Joe felt like exactly the kind of small adventure that keeps me moving forward. We met up down by the riverside and decided to take the hill up and down once—simple, but enough to wake up the legs and lungs. Dixie even got to wear the camera for a moment, and she absolutely loved it. I, on the other hand, spent the whole time imagining it falling off into the coulees, so the camera ended up clipped onto me instead. She didn’t mind; she was too busy enjoying the trail. We covered 1.84 km in 27 minutes while carrying 30 lbs, which is a solid bit of work for a casual outing. The temperature was a comfortable +8°C, one of those mild Alberta days that tricks you into thinking spring is closer than it is. Snow is supposedly coming in two days—classic Alberta—but for now the warmth made the climb feel good. Any elevation is good elevation, and honestly, the healthiest thing we can do is keep choosing stairs...

AI Demand Is Reshaping the Console Market The console market is entering one of the most unpredictable periods we’ve seen in years. With memory and CPU prices climbing, largely due to AI companies buying up massive amounts of hardware, the entire industry is feeling the squeeze. Steam has already hinted that their next Steam Machine may be priced out of the market entirely if current component costs continue to rise. It’s a sign of how dramatically the landscape is shifting. At the same time, both Xbox and PlayStation appear to be delaying their next‑generation consoles. These delays aren’t random—they’re tied directly to the rising cost of components and the difficulty of securing enough supply to hit a reasonable launch price. Even Nintendo, traditionally the most affordable of the big three, has raised the price of its upcoming hardware by about $200, and that’s just for the console alone. No bundle, no game included. If these trends continue, the next wave of consoles could easily ...

 Dixie Leading the Way as Daylight Fades Walking the dog tonight, I caught a great photo of Dixie leaning into me, almost like she was saying thanks for one last decent winter walk before the snow rolls in. If dogs can sense the weather turning, she definitely felt it—she was buzzing with excitement the whole way. We stopped by the river to check the water level, and it was higher than I expected, the ice completely gone. This time of year, that water is deathly cold, so I made sure to loop the leash around her before we got too close. She listened right away, no fuss, just that quiet trust she always gives. She’s a good dog, through and through. Up on the edge of the coulee, we paused for a quick photo in the last bit of daylight, the sky fading out faster than I expected. I’ve stopped tracking Dixie’s active minutes, but part of me knows it would push me to get out for more walks again. I might go back to a month‑to‑month subscription, though the tracker looks huge on her, and I ...

Easy Pace, Zone 3, and a Night That Felt Like Therapy   Tonight’s run with Dixie felt like one of those small adventures that sticks with you. We headed out at 7 p.m. for a dark February run, and somewhere along the path a whole pack of deer drifted toward us like shadows. I tried to catch them on the vlog, but the camera didn’t quite pick them up—and the moment felt longer and more dramatic in person than it looks on video. Still, it was a good outing: ten minutes of running, seventeen minutes of walking, and just over a third of the whole session done at a run. Not bad at all for a winter evening. I felt good, tired in the right way, and aware that I’ve got a six‑day week ahead of me. I’m both excited and anxious for it, but I need the money, and the cold weather coming probably means busy days. Busy is good. Dixie has been glued to my side ever since we got home. She’s sitting beside me now, perfectly content after being fed, watered, and taken out for a run. Moments like this...

 Rebuilding Fitness One Session at a Time Today I met my dad for a walk, and for the first time in twelve weeks my training status finally nudged its way back to maintaining . It’s wild to think how long it’s been stuck in detraining and recovery, but that back pain really knocked me off my feet. I’d been pushing so hard—nearly a thousand intensity minutes in a single week, day and night—that it’s no wonder my body demanded a timeout. There are only about 10,080 minutes in a week, and I was living most of them in the red. So I held back, let myself heal, and trusted the process. Getting out there today felt like reclaiming a piece of myself, a reminder that progress doesn’t disappear—it just waits for you to catch up again. Back at it today, and already planning how to climb my way back to better fitness. My VO₂ max took a real hit over these twelve weeks, dropping down into numbers I haven’t seen in a long time, so the goal now is to work it back toward that 44 range. That’s the ...

 41 Days and Counting — Staying Quit, Staying Focused Setting Goals, Staying Quit, and Dreaming in Terabytes Forty‑one days into the year and holding steady at 11% smoke‑free. Three hundred twenty‑four days left on the calendar, which means 88.7% of the year is still ahead of me — plenty of runway to keep building this streak. Numbers help me stay grounded. They remind me that quitting isn’t just a feeling; it’s measurable progress. Last year I made it 259 days out of 365 — about 71% quit. That’s not failure. That’s a foundation. This year I’m stacking on top of it. And part of staying motivated is giving myself things to look forward to. Not random impulse buys, but earned rewards — markers of progress. The Xbox Goal — My Quit‑Smoking Birthday Gift I’ve been thinking about next September, my “quit‑smoking birthday.” A full year. A milestone worth celebrating. And honestly, an Xbox Series S feels like the right kind of reward — not because I need another console, but because...