Pondside Planner – Page 2

2026: E is for experiences

January 6 2026

This is a bit of a hard category to nail down. Obviously, everything we do is an “experience” in some way. And I obviously don’t mean simply that…

On the other hand, I’m also not sure if I ONLY mean big experiences. Retiring would be big, but not an experience; going to the circus would be an experience, but not necessarily big.

I guess that I’m more talking about doing things that are not part of my ordinary world. Or perhaps even more simply, things that take effort to do. D&D, even, takes effort.

We’re going to go see Singin’ in the Rain at Centerpointe in June, and it sort of counts, I think.

Usually, I would include various restaurants in the list, except that I don’t have a list at the moment of “must try” restaurants. I should, I suppose, although my interest seems pedestrian…I was following a guy on FB who created a group centred around “Club Sandwiches,” which he called “Clubbing for Cancer” — trying to find the best club sandwich in Ottawa while fighting cancer. He lost his battle, unfortunately, but the group is still active and I liked the premise. I thought of doing wings, but it’s often subjective; burgers, pizza, etc. are all overdone (sometimes literally). But I do have this idea for going out for a simple breakfast — eggs (sunny side, of course), toast, bacon, juice. Home fries if available. Maybe sausages. Normally, no, for bacon or anything else. I don’t really think of that as “an experience” necessarily, but I do have a list of some 70 places that people suggested. I’ve done 3 so far. I tried to tick the box for another one between Christmas and New Years and it was JAMPACKED. Not a relaxing vibe at all. But I’ll probably do a few more over the next year.

I could include astronomy viewings, but again, not really what I’m thinking of, that’s kind of separate.

I am a member of the Capital Crime Writers group, I suppose that would count for an outing to hear a guest speaker.

I could also benefit from a simple baking course, if I could find one that isn’t during the day (I’m not retired yet!).

And I am still thinking about a retreat weekend sometime. Just me and my thoughts.

Oh, and if I get a chance to ride an e-bike or drive a jetski or boat, that would count too.

That’s about it. I’m not dreaming big this year. I did the Bouchercon last year, and we went to BC, even went to an orchard and picked apples (I’ve always wanted to do it and never went!) but this year will be more about home stuff, saving the gusto perhaps for Egypt in May 2027.

Until then, I’ll have to noodle some more stuff. Feel free to suggest out-of-the-ordinary things to try.

2026: D is for Dungeons and Dragons

January 5 2026

Yep, I started playing D&D last year. Except my attendance has sucked as my mental health waxes and wanes more than the moon. 2025 was rough for me both physically and mentally, and some Tuesday nights, I just couldn’t suck it up to play.

My coworker Devin set up a group, and my friend Stephan joined in. We’ve added another friend of Devin’s, Owen, and recently another friend of Stephan’s, Jeff.

We started off with a traditional style game in D&D land, in person, at Devin’s place. That didn’t work out as well as we had hoped for attendance and everything, so now we’re playing a Savage World game on Foundry where we play by remote. The first few nights were rough for the tech side of things, but we added Teams to handle our voice comms, and just use Foundry for the game without video or sound, so it works a little more stable-ish.

But the “night” isn’t really about the RPG, it’s about me doing something social with people. And as a single investment, it’s pretty good. I just have to commit to it more.

That’s it, that’s all. I need to put butt in seat and connect more regularly. I enjoy it, but some nights, I just don’t have the mental energy. 🙁

2026: A is for Astronomy

January 3 2026

I’ve fallen down on the astronomy front ever since the pandemic started. Once the Public Star Parties for RASC Ottawa “ended” temporarily in 2020, I’ve done almost nothing. I think I’ve only done seven things astro-related since then:

Set up my scope for 15 minutes at the cottage to observe some sun-spots;
Checked out the solar eclipse;
Attended a RASC dinner;
Continued to be involved in AstroPontiac, including attending the pop-up event in Gatineau two summers ago;
Went to a star party to wander around a bit and talk to people;
Did the auditor role for RASC Ottawa for the end of year finances; and,
Outlined what I might do for a “PolyWogg Guide” for “astronomy 101”.

Oh, wait. Wait, wait, wait. We might have gone to the edge of the river to look at a comet with binos during that time. Or with COVID time involved, that could have been last century. I don’t know.

The really terrible part of all this is that just before COVID hit, there were some REALLY great sales on for the previous Black Friday where I picked up two small telescopes that I wanted to use and make videos about using. And then at that RASC dinner? I won a telescope. That means I have my son’s 4SE, my 8SE, and…wait for it…three more telescopes I’ve never even opened or set up yet. Yet I pretend I’m “into” astronomy.

Just like book buying and book reading may be two separate hobbies at times.

Anyway.

*cough*

Where was I? Oh, yeah, thinking about what I want to do for the year in the way of astronomy.

1. USE MY SCOPES! Obviously, duh, I want to set up my scopes and use all of them! No, not at once. But over time. Hopefully at Star Parties this year.

2. DECIDE IF I’M BUILDING AN OBSERVATORY. Yeah, yeah, I know, this is that old chestnut again. Except Jacob designed me a format/layout/blueprint of a workable design, and we might actually have room to do it this year. Although, if I put off retirement to next year, it could wait. The point is to make the decision, not the build. I’d like to lay the pad and install the pier this summer if we can.

3. EXPAND MY LEARNING. I’ve looked into a bunch of academic courses to pursue in my retirement, and considered even doing a formal degree in astronomy / astrophysics. However, there aren’t many online options that are ideal for what I want to do. Instead, I’ll cobble some together from Coursera and The Great Courses, plus potentially a bunch of astro podcasts and YouTube sites.

4. START WRITING MY GUIDE. There are two aspects of my guide that I can do sooner rather than later, even without the above efforts. I can write the intro part for the history of astronomy, and I can write the intro to telescopes, their design, and their pros/cons.

5. PHOTOGRAPH THE MOON. I want to see if I can do a bunch of nights in a row at a time to try and snag the moon across all 28 days of its cycle. Maybe I get it done this year, maybe I don’t.

6. ENGAGE WITH THE ASTRO COMMUNITY. I’m a member of both RASC Ottawa and the Peterborough Astronomical Association, and while they have their meetings on the same night each month, I don’t attend either. Sigh. I need to do SOMETHING more “social”.

If I get into it heavier, I have another 20 ideas of things to do. 🙂 But I’ll aim to do at least the first one above — use the actual telescopes I have!

There are some potential things to plan around visible from my location:

January 10th — Jupiter will be at opposition
April 19th — Conjunction of the Moon, Pleiades and Venus
June 9th — Conjunction of Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury **
August 15th — Venus as the “Evening Star”
August 27-28th — Potential partial lunar eclipse (closing shadow)
October 4th — Saturn at opposition
October 5th — Conjunction of Moon and Mars
November 14-15th — Conjunction of Jupiter and Mars
December 24th — Christmas Supermoon

I love the plan for June 9th (**) because I’ve never seen Mercury. It’s usually so faint and low, I’ve never been able to see it. Maybe I’ll get lucky this year, with a bit of planning to help it. It’s a Tuesday night, so I’ll have to find a good locale with a low horizon.

I’m excited, and hopeful. But also really freaking lazy. Hence, my goal is to set up a few times, and the rest is just potential gravy.

The content of my sites (part of my mental reboot)

January 1 2026

As I mentioned yesterday, I am doing a bit of a mental reboot, and I decided to start with my website journaling. I generally know what I have on the sites currently:

I might do some additional topics this year, but that’s the basic premise at least.

From the previous post, I also mentioned that I’m updating/upgrading/tweaking my journaling approach based on some resources about journaling. I went back and reviewed the “journal styles” that Scott Green wrote about in his book, “397 Journal Writing Prompts & Ideas” (2015).

I’m definitely in the personal journal side of things for ThePolyBlog.ca although there are elements that include a travel-journal-style.

For the PolyWogg.ca site, I said it was about professional writing, and maybe that wasn’t really the right nuance (although it captures some of the form and style). More pointedly, it is all about creative writing in whatever form…the only difference is that for the items on that site, I’ll likely collect and curate them into something more formal than a blog. Some of the elements even fit the “scientific / academic” journal style, but that could be for either site at times.

However, I don’t really do “gratitude” elements, and nothing on a friendship journal or prayer journal. I’ve tried, but they didn’t really resonate with me.

The journaling advice included the idea of stepping out of my normal comfort zone and writing about topics that are atypical, or working through a range of familiar topics.

First up? A is for Astronomy

Ctrl-Alt-Delete in 2026 — a mental reboot

January 1 2026

As I get closer to my actual retirement date, which is now within the next 20 months and likely within the next 12, I’m starting to figure out what I’ll do in my so-called “third act” after I retire. Writing is a clear goal, no problems there. Kayaking, hopefully. Astronomy, definitely. Travel is an easy yes, but I’m still figuring out what form that will take — RV? series of trips? Hard to say.

For my “personal” websites of ThePolyBlog.ca and PolyWogg.ca, I have a decent handle (I think) on the two sites, how I will use them, etc. But I was thinking about new posts for 2026, thinking of including a bit more personal journaling, and so I picked up some resources from the library and elsewhere for some “extra” things to go back and revisit from my long ago planning days for the blog.

Scott Green has a book in The Blokehead Series, “397 Journal Writing Prompts and Ideas” (2015), and I’m adapting it a bit from the original premise. It is about keeping a personal journal or diary, and that is pretty much what my ThePolyBlog site is — my online journal. While the prompts might prove useful, it was more Chapters 1-3 that interested me, as it deals with the basis of journaling in general, elements of a good journal, and the benefits of journaling.

I wanted to see if it captured my “zeitgeist”, so to speak.

In chapter 2, Green says:

First and foremost, you have to ask yourself as to why exactly you are writing the journal,
or the certain topic that you’re trying to write about.
Chapter 2, “397 Journal writing prompts & ideas”, Scott green, 2015.

For my sites, I think that breaks into two parts. First and foremost is why I write / journal at all; the second is why THESE topics.

Green suggests some reasons / benefits of journaling:

It clears your mind;
It helps you understand yourself better;
It helps you remember what you’ve gone through;
You get to remind yourself about the good things in life; and,
You get to improve (/practice) your writing skills.

The fifth reason is fundamentally why I write anything. Because I can and because I want to get better. So writing is practice, in any form.

The third reason — remembering — is there in part for certain things, like travel or my photo gallery. The fourth is for experiences I want to capture when the moment is fresh, so I can revisit them later. And mostly positive, so sure, remember the good things.

For me, the real reason is a bit of 1 and 2, together. Yep, it helps me declutter my brain AND understand myself better, but that’s not really “it”.

Overall, writing about my life or ideas helps me understand the world. By working through descriptions, by choosing how to frame the explanation, by simply journaling at all and figuring it out in my brain so I can put it down on the page, I process my world. By figuring out how to explain myself to “others”, I sometimes surprise myself with what I actually think, not just what I was more unconsciously manifesting.

Oftentimes, it is that “something” bothers me — an opinion I heard that doesn’t seem quite right, but I can’t quite figure out why. Or a story that doesn’t sit well with me. OR THERE’S SOMEONE SAYING SOMETHING WRONG ON THE INTERNET and I can’t let it go mentally. I don’t care about the “issue”, I only care about why it is triggering something in my brain.

If I take speed cameras as an example, they bothered me. I wasn’t quite sure why. Safety? Good. Photo radar? Fine. Other uses? Fine. So why was it niggling at my brain? It took a bit for me to figure out before I eventually wrote about it in full. But writing about it helped crystallize my views. It helped me dig deeper into my thoughts around rights, minimalist government, efficacy in approaches, and limited use of heavy hammers where other tools work better. Writing helped me structure my thoughts more clearly.

In short, I do it primarily to help myself better understand the world. Secondarily, I write about stuff I already understand to help others have a possible framework to aid in their own understanding.

The question is…what parts of the world do I want to understand?

Stay tuned. That’s part of the mental reboot.