What happened

September started with a fun weekend with my friend Alex’s dog, Noodle. We dog-sat her for a few days as Alex and his wife were traveling out of town.

Noodle absolutely made our weekend. She was shy at first but warmed up to us right away. Before we knew it she would snuggle up with us on the couch as we watched TV.

That upward look that Noodle gave me during our walks absolutely melted my heart. It made me want a dog so freaking bad, but I decided that I should probably focus on the upcoming child first.

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In the latter half of September, I decided to take two weeks off of work . This time around I decided to do a “staycation” to chill out at home, play lots of Borderlands 3, and train jiu-jitsu.

On one of the weekends I took the train back to Ottawa, where I spent some time at my cousins’ place to play board games. We started with a new scenario of Time Stories (a game that I wrote about a while back). This time around we played The Marcy Case scenario, in which we had to save the world from a zombie apocalypse.

We completed the scenario in about 13 hours (though we probably could have finished it in less time had we not been stoned). Much like the first scenario that we played, The Marcy Case was insanely immersive and the puzzles and battles were very challenging. I had a hard time sleeping that night because I couldn’t stop thinking about zombies and all of the tough situations we ran into. Time Stories still remains my favourite tabletop game.

What I read

This month I started reading This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein. It’s a very long book so I’m going to need another month to finish it.

I’m digging the book so far. Klein goes into great detail on how the capitalist ideology directly clashes with climate activism, and how deregulated companies have dumped the responsibility of climate change on to regular people.

Frankly, it’s been pretty depressing to read about how human greed and consumerism got us into this mess and how we could have prevented it. Klein does outline potential solutions for a better future, but I can’t help but wonder if the world’s political leaders will ever hold the big oil and gas companies accountable. She also makes a great point about how banking on a carbon-reducing, technological miracle is just as bad as not doing anything at all. It made me think about what I should be doing myself to reduce my carbon footprint.

I’ve got a long way to go with this book, but it’s already made a big impression on me.