Does Exercise Help?

            I was told all my life that exercise was important – not to mention fresh air and sunshine. I never paid much attention, as I was always on the skinny side and had sufficient muscles for my daily life. I figured my just-about-daily bike rides to and from school were sufficient, as well as my weekly LARPing in my teens. I was probably right, but who could say for sure?

            My adult life provided far less opportunities for movement, but, again, I wasn’t particularly troubled by that. At least, not in any way I was aware of. Then, a few years ago, my wife decided to start exercising regularly, and I figured it was probably a good idea to join in – I’ve always accepted that exercise keeps you healthy when you’re older, and I figured that if the routines are built at a younger age they’ll be far easier to maintain. We managed to get into a routine of walking three days a week.

            It took a while, but eventually our bodies adapted and came to expect the exercise – just in time for winter. So we pulled out my old Dance Dance Revolution games, and switched to that for the winter months. It worked well, and when spring came we went back to walking. Last year, we even increased the exercise to every day instead of just three days a week.

            Still, while I knew the exercise was healthy, I couldn’t see it having any impact on me. Yes, it was a good established routine, and was making excellent building blocks for eventual old age, but it took up a great deal of time with no visual impact. I didn’t resent it, but I did often wonder if there was much point to it.

            Then various circumstances conspired to make it so DDR was no longer an option for exercise, a month before it was warm enough to start walking again. In the month it took the weather improve, we had no exercise. I didn’t notice any difference at first, but once I did become aware I came to realize that they happened within the first few days. It became harder to get out of bed in the morning and I had noticeably less energy throughout the day. What energy I did have wasn’t used optimally, because my brain wasn’t functioning as well. I even became less enthusiastic about going to the weekly D&D game I run.

            When the weather improved and we were able to get out walking again, all of that reversed within the first couple days – and I was amazed. There were so many little things in my life that had been affected by the lack of exercise – some I’d guessed at the cause, but others I hadn’t even noticed until exercise improved them. For me, it was quite the revelation.

            So, if you ever find yourself wondering if you should exercise – or if there’s any point in exercise – chances are there are a whole bunch of things in your life exercise can improve, though you probably won’t even notice them at the time.

            Besides, it’s good to know that when the zombie apocalypse comes you’ll be able to survive longer.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Endings are Beginnings

            It’s interesting that this is the season that’s thought of as marking the end of the year when it’s also marking the beginning of the year as well. Why is it that there’s such a focus on the end of the year, when the beginning of the year happens at – literally – exactly the same time?

            I suppose it’s probably because endings come before beginnings, and what’s right in front of us is easier to see than what’s lurking behind it. It’s all rather arbitrary, anyway, since it’s simply a time someone in the past chose to start counting from, yet we shape our minds around it.

            For example, the end of the year is when it’s important to be with family and to be generous, showing people how much you care. Which is silly, because you should care about people the whole year round, but I feel it also says a lot about humanity as a whole.

“Look! The year is coming to an end, better get together with family before time runs out!” Then the New Year comes and everything becomes about taking strides forward – making this year better than the last. And all the important things, like friends and family, get pushed into the back of the mind until we realize that another year is almost over, so we’d better get together.

            As a species, we love symbols and traditions. Having a checkpoint that we pass every year is a nice way to tell ourselves that we can keep growing and improving, and it gives us a point to use as a starting line. Yet, we’re also supposed to put our best foot forward, so wouldn’t it make more sense to get together with friends and family at the start of the year, rather than procrastinating until the end of the year?

            We could even split the difference. We could shift the New Year to the beginning of winter, rather than the end, and have our traditional get-togethers at both the beginning and end of the year. Or we could move the New Year to the most sensible place to have it start, at the beginning of spring, and we’d get together in the middle of the year.

            Or, of course, we could simply decide that what’s important to us is important for the whole year. Not everything has to have a set time or place. Time is just an imaginary construct we have so we can organize things, anyway. Perhaps we should stop using time as an excuse.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Tunnelling Through The Snow

            Around this time of year, I always used to hope for a huge snowfall. Not just because it would mean school would be cancelled, but because I needed a lot of snow for my favourite winter activity: building snow tunnels.

            Of course, at the time, I didn’t call them snow tunnels – I called them igloos. This is a misnomer, because real igloos are constructed using blocks of ice (or packed snow), whereas what I made involved tunnelling out a mound of snow. Since we Canadians live in igloos year-round, it’s an important distinction to make. For the purposes of this blog, I’ll periodically call them igloos for simplicity’s sake.

            Anyway, the first time I made an igloo, it was a big family project. My parents, brother and I all worked really hard on it. To this day, I couldn’t say for certain how big that igloo was, because I was rather small at the time – in my memory, it was at least five-feet tall with a diameter of ten feet. Big enough for my entire family comfortably fit in, at least according to me. In reality, it was probably significantly smaller.

            After that initial construction, my brother and I got creative. We built a second, much smaller, igloo and attached the two with a tunnel. My poor mother nearly got stuck in that tunnel – it turns out adults are bigger than kids, but we were so proud of our accomplishment that we wouldn’t let her alone until she’d crawled through it.

            In future years, my brother and I became experts at tunnelling through the snow. This was, in part, for safety reasons. Around this time, there was a great deal of concern about kids getting injured in collapsing snow tunnels. One of my friends (you know who you are, and I know you’re reading this) was only allowed to play in our tunnels with us as long as she kept her head outside. My brother and I felt this was unnecessary because none of our igloos ever collapsed (unless we jumped on them or they melted) – we believe that the any that did were poorly constructed.

            Here are the guidelines we used for making our tunnels:

-          First, only use snow that packs decently. Light, fluffy snow won’t hold together well enough to form a solid structure. It is a good idea, once your pile of snow is ready to be tunnelled, to ensure it s sufficiently packed. To do this, carefully (so as not to leave footprints) climb to the top of the pile and roll down the hill. If the pile isn’t too high, it is also possible to jump lengthwise onto the top before rolling down. Repeat this until the hill is sufficiently packed on all sides and feel free to continue for as long as it’s fun.

-          Second, when tunnelling, make sure the walls are the correct thickness. If they are too thick, they could collapse from the weight. If they are too thin, they won’t be strong enough to hold up the structure. The ideal thickness is right before the point when you can see sunlight through the walls. The best way to achieve this is to tunnel until you can see a bit of light – then pack some snow over top of that and use that location as a guide for the continued tunnelling process. It is especially important to focus on getting the roof the right thickness, since that is the most likely part to cave in if there is a structural problem. In that event, a thinner roof is less dangerous.

-          Third, the don’ts. Don’t freeze your igloo – the process of freezing it will make the structure weaker and, in the event of a collapse, more dangerous. Don’t fill the walls with windows and doors – one entrance is enough, maybe one or two tunnels if you have a complex structure. And whatever you do, don’t jump on top of it – especially if there is another person inside.

Using these guidelines, my brother and I crafted many interesting snow tunnels. From a triplex of interconnected igloos to an igloo fort with a tunnelled outer wall, we had a great time every year we got enough snow (right up into out twenties). It helped that we had a large driveway – big enough to hold 6-8 card or 3 (friendly) dogsled teams. The snow needed to be shovelled anyway, so why not put it all in one place?

            So, if you’re stretched for things to do this winter, and you happen to get a lot of snow, try tunnelling. It’s a great deal of fun – just make sure you stay safe.

Disclaimer: To the best of my knowledge, that driveway has never had a dogsled team parked in it – and no, all Canadians don’t actually live in igloos.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Just Blame the Romans

            With autumn now in full swing, naturally I’m thinking about other seasons. Which led me to an ever-recurring question of mine: why does the new year start in the middle of winter?

            I mean, really, it makes no sense at all. What’s so special about that specific time of year? Nothing at all. Why doesn’t the new year start weeks earlier, during the winter solstice? That at least has some logic to it: the transition from the longest night of the year, after which each day gets longer and longer. That seems like a nice, optimistic way to start a year.

            Or, better yet, the first day of spring. Spring is when all the plants are coming back to life; all the animals are coming out of hibernation. It’s the time of new life and beginnings – doesn’t that sound like the perfect time to start a new year?

            Seriously, sometimes human decisions make no sense.

            I decided to look it up, just in case there really is a good reason for this nonsense. There isn’t. The only excuse we have is that when Julius Caesar fixed the calendar so it theoretically correctly calculated the length of the year (1000 years had it out of sync by a week), he decided to start the new year at the ancient Roman feast to Janus, the two-faced god of doorways and beginnings. I guess that made sense for the times, but you’d think we’d have updated our system by now.

            It does show us another example of how much the Romans impacted modern society. From now on, whenever something about the way the world is run makes no sense, I think I’ll just blame the Romans.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.