You might think I’m joking about this, but I’m not. This is how the last couple of days have been for me.
Me: My injured foot is doing better. What a relief. I can’t wait to get back into my normal workout routines again.
Body: Ooh, look! A shiny illness. I heard they pair perfectly with feet injuries, especially during cold and flu season when you can get fresh, locally-grown sicknesses at every corner store.
Me: Wait, what?
Body: It’s so sparkly. I want to cuddle it, name it Fluffy, and carry it around for a while.
Me: Illnesses do not sparkle and you do not want to touch that one. Trust me. It will be better for everyone if you put it down and go wash your hands with soap and hot water.
Body: Too late! Sorry not sorry, but I’m keeping it. The three of us are going to be besties until your immune and digestive systems figure out how fight back.
Based on how I’ve been feeling these past few weeks, I am beyond ready for humanity to figure out a way to give everyone an android body. Meat suits have some benefits, but they also need far too many repairs and recuperation time when they have accidents or pick up the wrong germs.
Give me a nice, robotic body instead. I’d be quite happy to never have to think about all of the things that can go terribly wrong with flesh, bones, and organs even when you’re only dealing with diagnoses that have an expiration date.
The science fiction genre often acts as though transitioning from having a purely biological form to at least partially existing as a computer program would be a terrible fate, but all I can think about is how nice it would be to no longer get sick or injured anymore.
Would you sign up to have your consciousness transferred to an android body if such a thing were possible?
Lately, I’ve been thinking about climate change and how the expectations of what winter, or any other season, will be like in the average year are changing.
This is truly bizarre, and I wonder if it will become the new normal for future generations. Will they no longer need heavy winter jackets, gloves, hats, and scarves? How will they react to the thought of a winter that doesn’t thaw out again until March? I suspect they won’t understand that concept at all, except as an academic exercise when they read about what life was like before climate change.
I haven’t been reading many books lately. It started last month when I went on vacation to someplace warm and sunny. Ontario is such a dark and cold place during the winter that I wanted to spend as much time as I could in the sun during that week without getting burned or tanned.
The nice thing about reading breaks is that they give you a chance to step away from these patterns if you also tend to stick to the same genre(s) with every new title you pick up. Sometimes my breaks are short and punctuated by a stack of non-fiction books about history, food, medicine, or other topics I find appealing. Other breaks find me not reading any full-length books at all or visiting portions of the library that I typically skip over altogether.
In January of 2013, I began blogging once a year about everything I’d read that previous year. This tradition began when my dad asked me how many books I’ve read in my entire lifetime. I couldn’t begin to give him an answer to that question, but it did make me decide to start keeping track from that moment forward. The previous posts in this series are as follows: 
Merry Christmas to everyone who will be celebrating it tomorrow! I hope it’s a joyful time for you and your loved ones.
The rest of the day is spent napping, relaxing, playing games (generally of the computer variety, although occasionally I’ve amused myself with board games and puzzles), or doing other quiet things that don’t require outdoor time. It’s nothing at all like the Christmases of my childhood, but I’ve come to look forward to this time quite a bit all the same.
Like many other places, Toronto’s malls, subway system, and other public places are bustling with activity at this time of the year. No matter when someone might use or visit them in the month of December, there will be far more folks there than will be the case in January when the new year has finally arrived and everyone has settled back into their usual routines.
Instead, it’s about seeing how real people behave on a perfectly ordinary day that stands a very good chance of being neither the worst nor the best one they’re ever going to experience. In fact, they might not remember anything about it at all six months from now. They’re simply a regular person (or, in some cases, animal) going through the routines of their lives.
Lately, I’ve been taking a break from my normal interests like reading science fiction and exercising outdoors in order to try other stuff. One of the consequences of this has been that I haven’t come up with as many blog post ideas related to those topics as I’d normally be playing around with.
That is the only story I know from that portion of his life. He took everything else with him to the grave. While his body survived the war without any catastrophic injuries, his mental health was severely affected by the things he experienced during those years. He became physically and emotionally abusive and remained that way for the rest of his life.