Fortunately, we have a fence

From the Red Deer Advocate: "The City of Red Deer is warning residents to use caution around wildlife after several recent moose sightings. People should be especially wary of wildlife since it’s spring, when animals may be protecting their young. Some animals, including moose, might act aggressively if they’re harassed."

Actually, this  is a Calgary moose. Red Deer moose are far less scruffy.

It's hard to explain this to people who live just about anyplace else. It's a spring-thing. Sorta kinda like the ice cream truck or the current weather report:  "Snow. Partly Cloudy. High: 5° C."

Note the fence.  Note the lilac bushes. May 29, sheesh.

News flash: the ice cream truck is back, but still, no pretzels in Red Deer

Winter must be over. The ice cream truck made its rounds today on our block for the first time this year. I'm hoping it is a signal to RW that it is safe to take the snow tires off the car. And the fence is mostly done, or so I've been told.  These man things are hard to figure out with my small woman brain. They are doing something tonight that involves beer and concrete. When they are finished, I may be told the results. Or not.

In the meantime, I have been missing good soft pretzels, a desire fueled by a New York Times article on the finer points of pretzel making and availability in New York City, where, apparently there is a rebirth of pretzel-love.

When I lived in St. Louis, pretzels were an important part of city life. There it was somewhat of a tradition that retired old men who were looking for a reason to get out of the house, and wanted to do something other than sit with other old men in Jack in the Box drinking endless cups of coffee, sold soft pretzels at various locations throughout the city. They made there way to the pretzel bakeries before sparrow fart and then took up their posts selling the pretzels to those of us who were headed off to work without breakfast.

Apparently, the tradition continues. A decade ago, the pretzel vendor locations were fixed by municipal ordinance and municipal ordinances were more-or-less respected. This is no longer true. The Revolt of the Octogenarians has come to St. Louis.

From St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay's blog:

City inspectors generally have more urgent things to do than chase after octogenarian pretzel salesmen. If no one is hurting anyone, we generally don't enforce minor ordinance violations. For instance, some kids set up a skateboard park underneath a road overpass. Because they were not hurting anyone, we allowed them to stay there. We even installed trash cans for the kids to keep the place clean.

However, City departments do have an obligation to respond to residents’ complaints and to treat all businesses fairly. For whatever reason, the pretzel vendors were getting more and more aggressive. We got complaints from residents that the City was not enforcing the law.

The City is in the middle. If you complain about things like this, we will enforce the ordinances as the Board of Aldermen writes them. If you don’t, we probably will not.

So, if there are any old pretzel guys reading this, you should really consider talking one of those pretzel bakeries to close up shop in St. Louis and move to Red Deer, Alberta. If you set up your cart on Ross Street, you'll have plenty of business. We have bylaws here, but it will probably be at least a decade before pretzel vending is brought to the attention of the City Council, and by then I won't be driving to work without breakfast, and you will either be beyond caring or happy to drink endless cups of coffee at Tim Hortons in the morning.

Good fences make good neighbours

The fellas tore down one of the side yard fences, which revealed our neighbour's backyard. As I am 4'11" and the new fence is 6' tall, I will only have this amazing view for the next few days.

 

They did get a start on the fence itself. The first fence post took 110 pounds of concrete, a six pack+, and about three hours.  I am told the process will be faster now that they have learned the tricks. As there are about 30 posts, this would be a very good thing.

 

Eliot, you got it wrong, let me show you May

T.S. Eliot The Waste Land.  1922.

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding   

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing   

Memory and desire, stirring   

Dull roots with spring rain.   

Winter kept us warm, covering           

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding   

A little life with dried tubers.

This is the backyard at The House of Noodles. It illustrates the effect of one too many winters in Central Alberta.

Now, for some reason, I see spending several thousand dollars on a new fence for our property as something of a tragedy. This is not how it appears to the man I live with. Nor, apparently, is it how it seems to the men who live in the homes on either side of us.

To them it is a project. It is an exercise in (late) middle aged male bonding. It is an adventure. It is a very good reason to drink beer.

It seems that all three of us need new fences this year. And as we share the fences with each other, the decision as to which fence we will buy, how it will be installed, and where we will purchase it calls for several evenings spent drinking beer, several trips to various fencing emporia (prior to the beer drinking, of course), and wild speculation or serious conversation (depending on one's point of view and the amount of beer imbibed ) regarding things like the number of sacks of concrete needed for the posts, the size auger one must rent for the job, and countless other very, very important things.

The people on either side of us have dogs to consider in all of this. The men appeared to have forgotten this as they stood by the fence, beer in hand, and contemplated just "knocking the damn thing down." Although, I had no particular reason to get involved in this part of the discussion, as we have cats, rather than dogs that might go a wandering, I did.

In any case, the fencing will be purchased tomorrow and the fun will begin on the weekend. I'm thinking of going to a hotel. I may take the cats, just in case the beer and the dogs and the (late) middle aged bonding becomes too much for delicate souls.

I'm cheap, therefore I Kobo

I took the plunge and bought an eBook reader last week. I've been watching the technology (and the price) since pre-Kindle days, but didn't take the plunge until the Kobo reader was released in Canada last weekend. At $149 CAD it was definitely the right price and e-ink with ePub and PDF formats was the right technology.

Unless you count the "easter egg" that lets you play video poker on it, the Kobo doesn't do anything other than let you read books. It has no wifi, no touchscreen, and no ability to annotate, underline, or surf the web. You can't get a book from out of the ether onto the reader without plugging into a computer.

I bought this particular reader for several different reasons. It is lightweight (222 grams) which makes holding it for long periods of time a non-issue. The scalable fonts are good for my old(er) eyes. I realized that I didn't need something that could also surf the Internet. We have five computers at our house. I have a smartphone for those times when I am away from a computer  and find myself either bored and or wanting to casually browse the net or read my email.  It also came preloaded with 100 copyright free books, good classics all.

Paired with Calibre, a donation supported piece of software that converts file types and does oh so much more, library management is a breeze. If I want to take a walk on the wild side, I could (theoretically, of course) use a small python script to convert Kindle's locked down DRM laden books into nekkid ePub files and read them on my Kobo.

It's not perfect, of course. No 1.0 device ever is, but it does the trick. I have learned the ins and outs of converting file formats, found great sources of free (and legal) books, and successfully retrained myself so that I slow down to the rate at which I read analog books, rather than the rapid scanning that I generally do when reading on-line.

In any case, I have had my Kobo since Tuesday morning. It made a big enough hit at The House of Noodles, that RW bought one, too.  He bought the black one, of course. After all, he is a manly man.

I'm standing in the washroom, and I don't need to pee

I was half way out the door this morning when I realized I had no money. I walked the 15 meters to my bedroom (where the money can be found on top of RW's dresser), but ended up turning left instead of right and found myself in the washroom.

I looked around. I was pretty sure I had taken a shower, brushed my teeth, and put on deodorant. I knew I didn't have to pee. So why was I there? Fortunately, after a few seconds of pondering, I remembered the money thing. I exited the washroom, and soon was on my  way.

I am choosing to reframe this as multi-tasking gone awry--the kind of thing that happens when a busy person with a busy mind tries to walk while thinking. I used to be able to do that, but now, not so much. It could have been worse, I suppose, I could have stood by the dresser wondering how to pee on the money clip.

Unfortunately, I have to work

When I awoke at 3:30 this morning, I immediately realized that my life is not worth living--well, not for the next three days. It's a work thing.

Life would be so much better if someone would just send me a big fat envelope stuffed with money on a regular basis. I would be grateful, very grateful. And I would use it wisely (well mostly). I would pay my mortgage, buy healthy food (well mostly), and work for world peace. I would only buy one expensive handbag a year. I would not fritter away the hours watching food porn on foodtv or decorating porn on HGTV. Well, except for mebbe Top Chef and that new Mike Holmes show.

If the first envelope of money could be delivered to my door in the next 60 minutes, I would do the whole world peace thing today. Really.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. (Shakespeare in Hamlet)

A few days ago, I was struck by a paragraph in a blog post by Liz Spikol. It was  written by Jim Gutstein.

"You’ve lived through several successive Eras: Psychosocial Rehabilitation, Evidence Based Practices, Transformation, Recovery and now Recovery and Wellness but the only thing that actually changed was your medication. You’ve been referred to as a patient, a recipient, a client, a consumer, a prosumer, a self advocate and now a person with but everything is the same at the hospitals, the sheltered workshops, the partial hospitalization programs and the very day program you now attend. You are now told pursuant to the Recovery model that you are suddenly empowered but what evidences your empowerment? What is it in your life that is now different? When did you last hold a meaningful job, live in decent housing, go on a date, attend to a party which wasn’t held at 3 pm or have friends over to your place? Has your health improved? Has your circle of friends and acquaintances changed? Has your income increased to provide for more options? What activities do you now engage in which you wouldn’t have before you were empowered?"

Then, this morning, I watched a TED video on You Tube by Dan Gilbert: "Why are we happy? Why aren't we happy?" While watching it, I had one of those odd ah ha moments: odd in the sense that I wasn't really learning anything entirely new, but I was putting it together in a way that was new to me.

From my perspective, Gutstein was challenging us to demand more for ourselves and from the mental health system because he does not believe that what so many of us settle for is nearly enough.  And for those of us who (also) work in mental health, the challenge is to double down to create a system where this simply doesn't happen anymore.

Gilbert seems to give us one possible reason why we do this. Look at the video and see what you think.

Send me a mac book and I may change my mind

Disclaimer: I have not purchased an Apple Product since 1983 when I bought an Apple IIe.

I have been watching the iPad circus as if its success or failure mattered to me. It doesn't. I'm not in a position financially to buy a new digi-toy and my lifestyle doesn't seem like its a particularly good fit with it. I am not a gamer and I live and work with real-deal computers never more than a room away from me. I drive the 12 minutes it takes me to go from one of these places to the other--so I have no boring transit journeys. I also have a very nice netbook and a smartphone.

But this is not about my dislike of Apple products, in general, or about the iPad, in particular. It may be about my propensity to care about stuff so distant from me as to be entirely meaningless, but by the time this post is completed, it may turn out to be about something else. I never know until it's over.

Yesterday I spent an embarrassing amount of time watching an old Top Chef marathon. Old as in Season 3 (2007). I fell in and out of like with contestants; I booed and hissed. I manipulated RW's sweet nature to be able to watch the finale in bed, in lieu of the repeat of Law and Order that is our usual bedtime fare.

In real life, I am the antithesis of a busybody. I often stand back and observe the lives of people connected to me, but I ask no probing questions and, these days at least, it's unlikely that I will intrude into someone's life unless explicitly invited to do so.

I often find myself repeating, under my breath, "I have no horse in this race."

Sometimes it seems like I might, indeed, have that horse. I truly care about the progression of my son's romance, but I don't ask about it. RW has a financial thing going on that will impact both of us, but that he is not willing to talk about--yet.

I think some of this came about as the result of being raised in a family in which unrelenting over-involvement was a given. My family could have served as the inspiration for the concept of high expressed emotion.

From my perspective, it takes real effort, sustained over time, to become a player, not just an actor, in someone else's life. This effort should be coupled with a belief that one can make a positive difference in the outcome and the sure knowledge that the involvement would be both welcome and ultimately useful. Lacking those essentials, it takes chutzpah and a sense of entitlement I can't seem to muster these days. Well, most of the time--though I have my moments.

It's so much easier to be invested in the outcome of a three year old TV series, or the launch of a digital piece of kit. It makes no difference to Steve Jobs if I join the throngs of Apple lovers, or not. The folks competing on TopChef have long since moved on without me. These things don't touch my life. They can't.

The other things do, but that does not mean that I should worm my way in, either. My son will work his way through his relationship without my involvement. When RW has news to share, he will do so. I believe that most people competently navigate through their lives without my whispered comments (or yelled instructions) from the sidelines.

Or mebbe I am just lazy. Or scared.

With each step, the cat grew larger and larger (or not)

Our cats never go outside. Never. At least not unless they are in a cat carrier. However, we do have visitors. They come several time a night and seem to especially enjoy making the motion sensitive light come on right outside our bedroom window.

We've known there was something odd about those cats.

This morning, as I was trudging through the snow (assuming one can trudge through about 1 cm of the stuff), I looked down to see sure proof that the cat that haunts our yard at night must be very weird indeed. It is the stuff of nightmares--a cat that develops the necessary height for its trail to expand like this. More then that--it is a cat that can do it without any change at all in the size of its paws.

Or not.

Apparently when RW went out for his morning ciggie, there was only one line of paw prints. The second line appeared sometime before I came on the scene. I'm trying to be satisfied with the strangeness of two cats preferring to walk half on and half off of the sidewalk. That will have to do.

If Noodles is 58, how old is Beanie the cat?

I think it's genetic. Nobody in my family seems to be able to keep track of their age. When my brother Jonathan started to obsess about turning 40, I thought he was just in for 13 months of fretting, but no, he thought his fortieth was next up. He even had his friends planning a big party for the event.

At the time, I knew how old I was, and I knew how much younger he was, so I clued him into the fact that he was about to turn 39, not 40. If I remember correctly, he had the party anyway. Our mother never knew her own age, either. When I still knew my own age I was able to pitch in with the correct information.

All of the above is to let you know two things:

1. I once knew how old I was; and
2. I have not totally escaped my genetic inheritance.

Until recently, I had been telling everyone who would listen that I am 58. I believe I started using that number shortly after June 3, 2009, when I actually turned 57.

I discovered the truth when I attempted to figure out the age of my Siamese cat Beanie. Of course, I did not know/remember how old I was when Beanie was born. Initially, I thought I got her two years before I moved to Canada, which would make her 12. Then I came upon a picture of her at my son's high school graduation party. I knew my son was 19 at the time. However, I didn't remember what year he was born, so I couldn't figure out what year he was graduated from high school.

Fortunately, I still knew how old my mother was when I was born and I also knew that I had my first (and only) born a year later than did my mom. That means that I was 22 when my son was born. As I also remembered that I was born in 1952, that meant that my son was born in October 1974. Extrapolating from that, I knew that the grad party must have taken place in June 1994. Beanie looks about three months old in the picture, which means that Beanie recently turned 16.

2010-1994=16
2010-1952=58 (but not until June)

Genetics or bad math skills? You be the judge.

TwoSquare for FourSquare

I live in a great smallish city. It's about twice as large as the city I grew up in, which, when I was a kidlet felt like it was the whole world, and is 95% smaller than the place I spent 30+ years of my adult life. It's officially a nuclear weapons free zone and there is a statue of a freedom loving pig that can't be beat.

It's also a bit off the beaten track, unless you happen to be driving from Calgary to Edmonton and need to go to the bathroom. Still, we're closing in on the 100,000 mark and although it seems to me to have a small town feel, in Central Alberta it's a good sized city.

As an aside, I met RW on-line and in our first phone conversation he talked about his home town, Swift Current, a town of 25,000 in Saskatchewan, in such a way as to make me feel geographically challenged because I had never heard of it. I later learned that all Canadians seem to know a fair amount about any town, in any province, with a population of more than about 3,000.

People know about them, but that doesn't mean they actually go there voluntarily. And they certainly don't bring any kind of technology to any of the places they do go, well, not if the destination is in my neck of the woods.

I found that last bit out when I installed FourSquare on my phone-toy. If you are even less hip than I, you may not know that FourSquare is an app (yes, people actually use that poor excuse for a word) that lets you check in at various locations and tell the world, or your friends, that you are there. I hear that in bigger cities, popular people announce their presence and their minions flock to join them upon receiving the notification. If you hang out in one place more than anyone else, you get a badge identifying you as its mayor.

It appears that I could be the mayor of just about anyplace here. None of the places I go have been established as FourSquare venues, well, not unless you count City Hall, and I only go there to pay parking tickets. I thought to remedy this by making the coffee shop/cafe near my office into a venue, but really, what's the point? I have no minions, after all.

Because I have a bit of pioneer spirit, I carried on. I established said coffee shop as an official FourSquare venue. I then let FourSquare search my GMail contacts for possible minions. Alas, the only possibilities seem to be my friend Howard in Como, Italy or a person I Emailed accidentally about a year ago who lives somewhere North of Toronto.

Oh well, I forgot to stop by the cafe on my way home anyway. Maybe I can become the mayor there later today.

Yet another betrayal of the body

I started wearing glasses when I was about five. It was somewhat a badge of honour in our house to have lousy vision. I remember my dad saying he could hear better with his glasses on, which made no sense at all. At some point, when I was about ten, I realized that it was probably true. It wasn't an ear thing, but when your vision truly sucks the world is confusing on a whole lot of levels.

For about 40 years it was pretty much glasses-shamasses. You got up in the morning, put the damn things on and the world came alive. I quickly figured out that the whole "boys don't make passes at girls who where glasses" was a lie, so as long as I could see, the fact that I did it through prescription lenses was pretty much a non-issue.

I maintained the same cavalier attitude when the eye doctor asked whether I wanted bifocals or the newfangled no line type specs. I could see just fine, so I was fine.

I guess I was in my late 40s when no amount of manipulation of my lenses made it easy to read. I went through a glasses on, glasses off period and did that silly thing where I tried to move my arms back and forth in order to manipulate what I was reading until it was just right. Fortunately, I learned how to zoom in on the computer and figured out how to read in bed with the book positioned correctly so everything more or less worked out.

About a week or so ago I noticed a sudden increase in floaters in my left eye. Initially I thought wayward strands of hair were falling down over the eye, but no, my hair was where it was supposed to be. I puzzled over it for a bit, alternating between being amused by what looked like little critters dancing back and forth across my left eye, and worried that one day there would be so many of the buggers that I couldn't see at all.

Finally, I went to the doctor. She is very young, way too young, but then all the doctors my age have retired or only see patients on sunny Tuesday afternoons in July. She was reassuring, in an appealing coltish way, and told me that the goo in my eye (I guess I no longer look like the kind of person who can comprehend words like vitreous humor) had dried up a bit and that the floaters were the result.

Apparently if they get bad enough there is some sort of laser treatment that will zap them away. At least she said laser. If she had said something like "very bright pointy light" I probably would have popped her one.

Like most getting-older women, I knew that juicy eventually comes to an end. I just didn't know that it came to an end for eyes.

The upper end of the middle, I suppose

I spent an hour or so this weekend trying to guilt my husband into installing a virtual machine on my computer so I could run some legacy software on my Windows 7 box. I failed.

I'm thinking he was getting back at me. A few weeks ago, I did not update his phone when I updated my own. He lost data services and his calls out were mysteriously rerouted to Rogers' customer service where a very nice women in India cheered him on as he installed the update. 24 hours later his service was restored and all was well.

OK, maybe not so well, after all, he was not inclined to help me with the damn VM and I ended up doing it myself.

From my perspective, our marriage license came with a terms of services agreement. RW took responsibility for networking, databases, and installs. I was the go to person for web building, advanced googling, troubleshooting, and all things requiring a word processor.

Times have changed. When we got married ten years ago, RW went to work doing techie business in the big city everyday and I stayed at home doing some web building, but mainly taking care of the home front. These days, I go to the office and RW stays home running a smallish accounting business and worrying about what he will make for dinner. I am in charge of an education program for a non-profit. My job also includes a techie component, including the website and our social networking presence.

The VM debacle represents that change, I suppose. So does the cell phone bit. Our TOS has apparently changed, or at the very least, been modified to include changing technologies.

We're both within hailing distance of 60. Neither one of us seems to have the burning need to embrace new technologies we used to have. If we want to make it sound better, I suppose we could say we have developed a late middle age ennui. If we were being honest, we'd probably call it the march of the noodles.

When rudeness transforms

I've always been somewhat lacking in social skills. I think it dates back to my childhood, when no one listened to me anyway, or if they did, I had to jump right in before they moved on. In any case, I developed a caustic wit and a reputation for being very direct (AKA rude).

Then, about 15 years ago, I had an aha moment. I was riding in the car with a woman I've known my whole life. At the time, she was about 5-6 years older than I am now. In the middle of a conversation about something truly trivial, she told me that at her age she no longer felt like she had to be nice or accommodating or polite. She went on to say that she had earned the right to "say whatever is on her mind."

Now, my experience of this person was that she had always had two distinct personae: one was bitchy and self-involved; the other was sweet, helpful, and, from my perspective, utterly phony and reserved for a small circle of friends and total strangers. I assumed that her proclamation meant that there would now be only one of her, the bitchy self-involved one I had always known.

The aha part came about when I realized that I had somehow inherited the bitchy part of her, and that I didn't want it anymore. I didn't want the false thing she was discarding, but I did want to make a change--a real change.

I then went on a journey, the intent of which was to become a no less honest, no less witty, but infinitely more pleasant person to be around. I think I have succeeded. The people I have met over the past dozen or so years still think of me as being direct, but not in a nasty way. I still have a sense of humour, but it tends toward the self-deprecating rather than the caustic variety. Best of all, it feels real to me, like over the years I was (mostly) able to successfully rid myself of a personal style that wasn't working for me any longer. I'm guessing that it never did.

All that is well and good, however I am beginning to think that it is out of step with developing cultural norms. Reading comments on websites, and interacting with people in the grocery store, it seems that rude is the new default for interacting with each other, at least in situations that are not mediated by actual relationships. Listening to how people talk to and about people they presumably love, it seems to be a big part of those relationships as well.

Oh well, I'm out of step. Again.

Learning new shtuff

I spend a fair amount of time every day reading on-line. I read things related to my work and things that catch my eye for no particular reason at all. I also read about new digital technology, mostly software, apps,--the kind of things I have always called toys.

I'm finding the technology reading a bit daunting these days. Let me give an example.

An hour or so ago I read that Swype, an application that lets you trace words on a virtual keyboard instead of typing in each letter, was now available for my cell phone. Since trading in my HTC Dream for an HTC Magic (long boring story there, boo hiss), I have had to use a virtual keyboard full time, and my typing on it leaves much to be desired. I watched a video, and it looked useful.

I knew how to do the download and install part, but found I had to watch the video again to get it going. I watched a couple of other videos that demonstrated some of the features. Then I watched them again.

I tried the damn thing, and as I came to realize that I was not immediately good at using it, I started to panic. No, not a full blown "I can't breath, I'm gonna die" kind of panic, but I felt this pressure build up as I didn't quite get it. It was like the thinking part of my brain was getting in the way of the doing part of it.

I was alone. No one was watching me. No one was judging me. Still, I was having some sort of weird performance anxiety--just like I do when I have to record a new voice mail message and I find myself having to do it over a dozen times until the eight words (hello this is noodles, leave me a message) sound good enough. Good enough? Is there an outgoing messages god who judges such things?

What is that about? It's not like there was going to be a test that would decide my future. It's not like a job interview. It was just me, sitting at my desk, holding my phone, and trying a new spin on text input. Finally, I started to breathe again and in doing so, it became the insignificant thing it always was, and I had no problem doing it. Sure, it wasn't perfect, but perfection was no longer necessary.

I'm beginning to understand why there are so many technophobes out there in the world. I am beginning to understand why people seem to get stuck in the past and refuse to even try new things.

I don't like it, but at least for now, I am willing to push past the discomfort. Check back with me next year.

To sleep, perchance to dream (or not)

It wasn't all that long ago that all the great unknowns in my life took place during the day. There were challenges at work, unexpected interactions with unusual people, heck, even a trip to the grocery store could be fraught with angst and excitement. Of course, night time had its own unknowns. Would there be sex? Would there be great sex? Was there a new episode of Law and Order on the teevee?

That being said, when looked at objectively, most of the great adventures in my small life took place when the sun was up.

Perhaps my day time life has gotten easier or even smaller and more predictable, but in the past year or so the night time mysteries have increased. Would I actually fall asleep? Would I fall asleep before Ron began to snore like the trombones in an elementary school band? Would I walk in my sleep and find myself standing nekkid in the garage at 3 AM?

Lately, the line between waking and sleeping has blurred. For example, a few nights ago I dreamt that I was doing something physically difficult. I'm not sure exactly what it was. I vaguely remember making 20 pounds of Buffalo wings and pulling heavy pans out of the oven, but how difficult could that be when it is all happening in dreamland?

In any case, I woke suddenly to find that the effort I had made in my sleep had translated into thudding pain in my lower back. Now I have finally learned to accept the fact that things I used to do easily and with grace have become more difficult than they were when I was younger. I walk with a cane, elevators are now my friends, and when offered assistance at Safeway, I am truly grateful.

I can deal with all of that. I am not though prepared to have dreams during the night produce physical pain during the day. My brain may be full of noodles, but at night, I should still be "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound" without waking up feeling like I have done all those things, for real.

I am not prepared to spend my dream life smelling flowers in imaginary gardens and watching reruns on teevee. Not yet.

Lusting like a loser

It's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) time in Las Vegas. Whilst some of my friends dream of getting married there, I find myself musing about wandering amongst the exhibits with my tongue hanging out and my disbelief in fully suspended mode.

I've followed the CES news over the years, and because I am not a total idiot, I know the following to be true:

• A fair number of the gadgets announced will never be made, much less sold;
• A second group of things that look innovative when they are announced at CES will be hopelessly out of date by the time they become real;
• The list of items that are both real and available in Canada will be small; and
  
• For the next two weeks the techie blogs I follow will be filled with fanboy comments going on and on about non-existent products from people who live in their mom's basement.

As smug as I am about all of this, I am still trying to figure out how I can watch the Nexus One (not really CES) announcement when I am supposed to be in a meeting everyone seems to believe is very important, indeed. Yes, Nexus One, which, if the rumours are to be believed, will be too expensive for me to buy, won't work with any cell provider in Red Deer, and is, after all, just another phone.

I was late to work because two strangers bought a house in Florida

I had some time off work for the holidays. I swore to have a productive vacation, and, in large part I succeeded. For example, I watched almost all five years of Corner Gas on Comedy Central. I took pictures of my cats. I even washed their nests (AKA cat beds) and I thought long and hard about cleaning my desk.

I was not ready to return to work this morning. I was up early enough. Heck, I was up in time to get to work early three time zones away. But did I get in the car at 7:45? No, I did not.

Instead I watched Property Virgins. To my great shame, I watched a repeat of a four year old episode in which a couple had only five days to buy a home in Coral Gables. I already knew the home they chose was truly ugly. I remember thinking that they paid too much for a house that needed a whole lot of work.

I have no idea why I can remember a four year old TV show, but I can't remember why I opened the refrigerator or came upstairs, but that's the way it is these days.

It wasn't until the very end of the show, 15 minutes after I should have left for work, that I finally realized what I was watching for. And as soon as I did, I also realized that this would have to be one of life's great unknowns. The folks that bought the house had four young children. They bought a house with an unfenced backyard that bordered a canal on the edge of the Everglades.

I was waiting to see if there was an update, perhaps one that talked about a kidlet getting eaten by an alligator. It was the only ending that made any sense.

Did I mention how ugly the house was?

Salty fish is not enuff

My husband is a prairie guy. At this point, about nine and a half years into our marriage, he has absorbed a fair amount of Jewish culture. He understands me when I refer to his family as the mishpucheh. He knows why I don't put butter on meatloaf sandwiches. He loves my chicken soup.

One of the truly wondrous things I discovered, shortly after moving to Canada, is that every single grocery store sells relatively reasonably priced quasi-lox. They call it things like "alder smoked salmon," but, to a girl like me, it's all Nova Lox, the unsalty version of the real deal that by the mid-80s was so expensive that using enough of it to make a difference on a bagel was living large, indeed.

His every day breakfast is now a toasted bagel, cream cheese, salmon, red onion and fribbles, I mean capers. Capers were not part of Sunday morning breakfast in the home I grew up in (we never toasted the bagels either), but when the lox is not salty...

In the meantime, I have moved on. Oh sure, I truly appreciate the fact that our only kinda sorta middle class family can afford lox every day, but sheesh, it gets boring. Yes, boring. I still love it, but it requires supplementation beyond capers. Pickled jalapenos work pretty well. A bisseleh pesto makes a nice addition. Shaved Parmesan, bring it on.

But change comes slowly to my prairie guy. He loves his lox, but is not ready to move on. He's more traditional than I am. It's the United Church in him, yanno.

Probably not a good sign

I suppose it is noodlish for me to do this, but what's up with toilet paper these days? For years and years, I bought huge packs of Scott toilet paper at our local big box store and it simply did what it was supposed to do. All the TP in all the bathrooms I happened upon outside of my own home also seemed fine.

By fine I meant that I had no sense of rubbing my bum with sandpaper and I never received a paper cut on my nether regions. Those in the know never told me that I had pieces of left over paper festooning my behind, either.

That all changed in 2009. Suddenly the big box store didn't sell plain old Scott Tissue. And the teevee started extolling the virtues of soft, softer, softest teepee. There were ads with bears examining each others' butts and finding the dreaded paper clumps, and other bears counting the number of individual sheets used per performance.

I could avoid the bears by hitting the 30 second skip on my PVR, of course, but there was no denying that toilet paper had changed, and not for the better. It seemed like any brand we brought home was suddenly so soft that it no longer functioned, urmm, effectively. Leaving clumps behind actually did become a problem. More then that, it suddenly seemed necessary to use 24 sheets of the damn stuff to be able to emerge from the bathroom dry and not noticeably smelling of poo.

I'm looking forward to 2010, but at the same time, I am feeling nostalgic for the toilet paper of 2008. I'll be eagerly monitoring the bears' adventures for a TP equivalent of Coke Classic in the months ahead.

And Happy New Year to you, too.