Both my washing machine and my dryer have a “permanent press” setting; I realized this morning that I had no idea what that meant, putting it in the same class as “ball joint” or “surf break” or “remoulade”.

So I looked it up:

Permanent press fabrics are textiles that have been treated to resist external stress and hold their shape. Clothing made from this fabric does not need to be ironed.

Those settings on my washer and dryer? Here’s what they do:

In older washing machines, the permanent press setting sprays moisture during the spin cycle to maintain the moisture content of the permanent press fabrics above a certain specified limit to reduce wrinkling. Most older clothes dryers feature an automatic permanent press setting, which puts clothes through a cool-down cycle at the end of the normal heated drying cycle. Modern dryers tend to include this as a standard feature.

I have a laundry philosophy that skews heavily toward “just throw it all into together,” so I’m not sure whether I’d be better served by this setting or not.

I would have been much better served by taking home economics in high school than wood shop.

I stumbled across this blog post of mine from 2001 about Reboot 4.0, three years before I made my way to Reboot 7, and two years before I’ve always thought I’d first heard of the Copenhagen conference that went on to change my life.

This time of year I always get the Reboot tingle in my throat, as my blog’s “on this day” fills up within swashbuckling tales of Reboots past. Spring just isn’t the same without that cocktail of people, ideas, and adventures.

I’m late to the seedling-hardening game by about a week, but today I’ve got my tomatoes, acorn squash, eggplant, watermelon, and the tenacious last-surviving broccoli out for a day in the warm and sun.

Also, I bought new shoes on Monday, a pair of Oboz Bozeman Low Leather from Proude’s Shoes the description of which is:

Mountain town life is busy, and the Bozeman Low Leather hiker is ready to take on any and all of the fun and adventure that comes with it—a lunch time hike on the Highland Glen Trail or any last-minute errands around town.

That’s me: on the trail, on the errands, living the high mountain life! They’re very comfortable.

This is my second pair of Oboz: I bought a pair of their boots for the winter, and have been very happy with them.

With the closure of Wright’s and Corney’s, Proude’s is the last independent shoe store standing in Charlottetown; I encourage you to support them.

Five years ago today the City of Charlottetown planted a Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum) in front of our house at 100 Prince Street (link), replacing the Dutch Elm tree that was there previously that was cut down due disease:

Today, at five years old, the tree is growing nicely, and I look forward to the next five years, as it starts to get large enough to shade the front of our house:

A reminder that you can find out a lot about the tress of Charlottetown on streets and in parks in from the city’s tree inventory map.

Pro tip: if you take the “Site ID” for any tree in Charlottetown – mine is 9301, for example – you can make a link directly to the tree, like this:

https://charlottetownpe.treekeepersoftware.com/index.cfm?siteID=9301

Thank you to the super-helpful support line at Davey for helping me sort that out!

Dr. Heather Morrison at today’s public health briefing:

The thought of transitioning out of a public health state of emergency is hopeful, it is doable, and almost surreal.

So true.

On this day in 2007, the BBC ran a story about Reboot, which included word of Dopplr, the (now) late, great service that, for many, represented a high water mark of enlightened web services:

Another highlight was Dopplr, a new service “designed in a pub” according to its design director Matt Jones.

Announced as part of a talk on travel and serendipity, Dopplr gives frequent travellers a tool to “share where you are going to be with who you trust”.

It is currently in private beta and open to invitation only, although it appears to be used already by dozens of the Reboot attendees.

Apparently users of the service are fixing up meetings in pubs, bars and cafes that would not have happened otherwise.

Although the site works in a familiar way to any user of social software, using friends and invites, Jones wanted to stress that Dopplr “is a feature of a larger service, called the internet”.

He said: “We’re trying to be a beautiful part of the web.”

If you look carefully at the graphic accompanying the story you’ll find a (purposefully) terrified-looking picture of me.

From the weekly update from Charlottetown Farmers’ Market:

We bid our fantastic Market Manager, Bernie Plourde,  a fond farewell this past weekend. Bernie has been with the Market for 7 years and has made an indelible mark on our market and community, spearheading countless initiatives, including the launch of CFM2GO during the pandemic. We’ll miss you Bernie! 

Bernie is a great friend to the community in innumerable ways indeed; his tenure as manager at the market has been remarkable for the improvements to the building, for the multiple pivots required by COVID, and for his calm, cool, friendly demeanour in thick and thin. The members of the market coop have strong personalities, not easily wrangled into cooperation; that Bernie steered the ship for 7 years is a testament to his character. He will be missed.

I have long admired the Wall Street Journal hedcuts, used for author portraits. Originally these were painstakingly created by artists; recently, though, the paper has been experimenting with an AI-assisted system for converting photos into the same style.

For “members,” they have an online hedcut creator; membership is free, though, so anyone willing to sign up can try it out  

Since I decamped from Where’s Waldo?-style eyeglasses, I’ve been in need of an avatar refresh, so I did some experimenting and the machine came up with this:

I’m not sure it will stick, but it’s growing on me, so I’m going to try it out for awhile wherever fine avatars are served. 

May’s five weeks of Saturday Movie Night were programmed by brother Steve, arguably the family member with the deepest intellectual bench regarding film.

Last night, the final Saturday of the month, his selection was the the 1992 Norman René film Prelude to a Kiss, starring Meg Ryan, Sydney Walker and Alex Baldwin.

It was a good choice: it’s the sort of movie that doesn’t get made anymore, a quirky character-driven romantic studio film with a supernatural element. For a fan of Heaven Can Wait, it was right up my alley.

Musically the highlight of Prelude to a Kiss isn’t the eponymous song rendered by Deborah Harry but rather Annie Lennox’s rendition of Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye, from the 1990 compilation Red Hot + Blue, the best treatment the Cole Porter song has ever received (which is saying a lot for a song best known for versions from Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn).

I spent last night at The Inn at Bay Fortune where, in 2015, Catherine and I spent our last weekend away together by ourselves.

What I didn’t know when I booked—I thought I was just getting away for the night—was that there was an important healing aspect to this, a sort of reckoning that she’s gone and not coming back.

This didn’t really hit me until they brought the wine for supper, and I had nobody to wish cheers to. And nobody to share food with. And nobody to while away the evening chatting to. None of this made me sad, per se: it was more like my new baseline was rendered in sharp relief. “It’s just me now.”

On the way into supper I ran into my friends N. and D., a happy couple away for the night together, both of them very much alive. They invited me to join them for the meal, but I thanked them and declined, as I realized I needed to see what “alone” felt like. I did join them for dessert, though, which was very nice. And I didn’t hate them (that much) for being a happy couple.

It turns out that “alone” and “lonely” are different things, and that was helpful to learn.