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I am:
a clipped-out Dilbert® cartoonLetting the world know that the person displaying it is in the office but not of it. |
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Can't sleep, memes will kill me
Dawn's A to Z
Here is another alphabet meme. Dawn says her version is shorter than Cin's. I say, "WTF?"
A Apple or PC?
PC, although I really aren't so much, am I?
B Banking... online or in person, and if in person, drive thru or inside the bank?
My wife works for one of the major Canadian banks. I haven't seen the inside of a bank branch since she moved into head office nine months ago, and even before then it was almost always only if I dropped by to have lunch with her. I just go by the ATM when I need cash.
C Coffee and Chocolate! The two most important 'C's Favorites please.
Espresso. Regular coffee just can't live up to the Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee we drank on our honeymoon, so it doesn't really matter. If it's hot, and brown, I'll drink it. Which has led to some pretty amusing practical jokes at my expense over the years. Chocolate? I don't discriminate. I love all chocolate equally. As does my tailor.
D Dogs. Do you have one? If yes, what kind and it's name and why you named it that. If no, then if you had one what kind would you choose?
Y'all have seen Shadow, right? Do you remember when he was a puppy? When people ask me what kind of dog he is, my standard answer is 1/3 border collie, 1/3 Australian shepherd, and 1/3 wooly mammoth. We expected him to grow to between 45 and 55 pounds. He's more than 80.
E Elvis. There was only one. Favorite song, and if you ever or your parents ever, saw him live.
I was a huge Elvis fan as a kid. A very young kid, I might add. I've spent a few minutes looking over some of his biggest hits, all of which I can hear in my head immediately, and I had a lot of faves. However, I think the one for me that best defined the Elvis I wish he had always been was Hound Dog. He got sappy with all the movies they made him make, and then he turned into a pathetic lounge act, with those silly white jump suits. Hound Dog seethes with the attitude upon which rock and roll was founded. That's my Elvis, and always will be.
F Flowers. Do you have a favorite to receive and/or a favorite to give?
Nope.
G Grandparents, do you have any left and if you are one, to how many?
My grandparents are no longer with us, but I do remember them all quite well. My grandmother on my mother's side lived long enough to meet her great grandson. Hopefully it will be quite a few years yet before I am a grandparent.
H Handy or call for help?
Both. I am not bad in the handy department. I usually call my Dad for help, and between the two of us, we can usually muddle through a job in about triple the time it should take. To date, neither of us has experienced a major injury, or done enough damage to require outside intervention. Still, there's time.
I IOU's any out there to a person, a friend or family?
Not that I can remember. Doesn't mean no.
J Jello. Love it? Hate it? Favorite flavor? With whipped cream or cool whip or neither?
Whenever I think of Jello™ I remember a comedian who said he didn't trust Jello™ All other liquids, he said, when you cool them, and they become a solid, turn back into a liquid when you heat them again. Not, Jello™ though. Once Jello has become asolid, he said, the only way to make back into a liquid is to put it in your mouth, and swish it back and forth, and in and out of your teeth. Of course, he made the swishing sound with his mouth, which was right on the mark...I guess you had to be there.
K Kiss. Do you remember your first real kiss? Where, who?
Gee, not sure. The one I remember was a girl named Lynn. We were hanging out together, all alone in a secluded place at the school, and it came time for us to go back to class. She said, "do I get a kiss, or what?" So, I kissed her. It wasn't until much later that I realised she had been waiting for me to "make out" with her, but I was oblivious. Yeah, I led a sheltered life.
L Language. Do you speak any others? Fluently or a little?
Little bits of French and Italian, but not with any useful fluency.
M Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck?
Mickey Mouse. Donald was just too hyper.
N Neighbors. Do you know their names? Occupations? Phone numbers? Or not?
We try to make friends with our neighbours. At least the ones on each side of us. We really don't know very many people along the street. Pretty sad, considering we've been here for fifteen years.
O Olympics. Do you watch? Which is your favorite winter or summer?
I think the Olympics are losing some of their relevance in today's world. They have become a war of the pharmacists against the doctors, and the pharmacists are winning. I still watch, and have more interest in the winter games. Canuck<~~
P Pluto. What is your take on the planet being downgraded?
It didn't rock my world. "Words, words, words..." Who said that? Shakespeare?
Q Quiche. Have you ever had it? Do you like it and what is your favorite?
I remember, back in the seventies, a book came out called, Real Men Don't Eat Quiche. It was one of those pop culture phenomena, much like the Chicken Soup for the Soul books today. Kinda the Pet Rock of the publishing world of the time. Today, I have my own saying based on that: Real men eat quiche if they want to, and they don't give a f--k what anyone says about it. I don't eat quiche, though.
R Refrigerator. Name three things in your refrigerator that you think are unusual.
Well, we don't have any urine in there right now. Big bottle of apple cider, but you couldn't get the two mixed up. Some fresh eggs, but those never last very long. Also, rapini. Are any of those things unusual? No. Do I care? No.
S Safari. Have you ever been to Africa on one? A theme park version?
No. Haven't even been to African Lion Safari, in Guelph, Ontario.
T Telescope. Have you ever looked thru a telescope?
When I was a kid, I had a small telescope. I farted around with it a little bit, but never got really into it. I was a bit too young to appreciate it. When I got a little older, and might have been more interested, one of the neighbour's little brother's had taken it apart, and we never did find all the pieces, so it was unusable.
U Umbrella. Do you have one and what is its design?
Got a few floating around here. Big golf umbrella hasa Wilsonlogo, I think. Also have a little collapsible one from SONY.
V Vintage. Do you have a favorite wine to share? Or drink?
We're pretty enthusiastic about Australian wines right now. Yellow Tail, maybe. Also, Chilean wines.
W Willies. What gives you the willies? You know, that shudder you can't stop?
Yeah, I'd have to go with spiders, too, Dawn.
X X-ray. Last one? What body part and why?
This was on Cin's quiz, Dawn. What, no originality? Where's the question about Xylophones, Xanthan gum, St. Francis Xavier, or xenophobia? Beware Planet X. The end of the world is near.
Y Yolk. How do you like your eggs?
I like eggs. Soft boiled, sunny side up, scrambled, poached on toast, raw in nog, you name it. Last year, the father-in-law had a couple of ducks for a while. Fresh duck eggs are something worth having if you ever have the chance.
Z Zodiac. What's your sign and does it fit your personality, in your opinion?
I am rolling my eyes as we speak. There's this woman who has a blog who offered to do a free astrological reading for any skeptic, but, she lamented, no one would take her up on it. So I did. I sent her my birth info, and she told me she'd get back to me in a few days. It's been almost two weeks. Where's my free astrological chart? Huh? Where? I'll let you know if she ever comes through, and what she says about me.
Tags: memes, Dawn's A to Z
Monday, January 29, 2007
Life's ABCs
From various sources (including IndigoBlueGreen{I got it from Cin}), here are Life's ABCs...
Altitude. What is the highest altitude you have ever been at without being in a pressurized cabin? Standing on the slopes of Mount Etna in Sicily, at 2500M, or about 8200 feet.
Boxing. Sport or just people beating each other up? Sport. Not one I have any interest in watching, but definitely a sport. UFC? More of the just people beating each other up side.
Cars. What do you do in traffic jams? Sit.
Distance. What's the longest distance you've ever walked in one day? I have absolutely no idea.
Eighties. What is your favorite movie from the 80s? In order to answer the question, I had to refresh my memory about 80s movies in general. My first stop was a website that listed every movie made - one page per year. I got through all of 1980, and up to the Ds for 1981 and realised this was a much larger task than I had the time, or the inclination to perform.
My next strategy involved a web search for lists of the "best movies of the 80s," the results of which led me to believe that the vast majority of Internet users were born between the years 1970 and '75. I've never seen so many John Hughes references together in one place before in my life. Yeah, I thought The Breakfast Club was a pretty good movie, too, but the best movie made between 1980 and '89? Come on! Every single cast member currently resides on the "where are they now?" list.
Oscar.com wasn't any help either. It seems I have seen precisely 50% of the films that won Best Picture honours during that decade. The five I haven't seen, I have no desire to see, either. Out Of Africa? Terms Of Endearment? Puhlease! Might as well just ask me to watch Titanic.
I did jot down a quick and dirty list of movies from the eighties that I liked. Looking back at Oscar.com, I see that Rain Man is on both lists. But where is The Empire Strikes Back? ET- The Extraterrestrial? Die Hard? Anyone...Beuller...Beuller? (That's just a pop culture cliché, not a suggestion Ferris Beuller's Day Off should be mentioned - although I did come across several people who think it's the finest film ever made - in the history of the universe. Really.)
OK, after much thought, speculation, and laughing at people who still have a crush on Molly Ringwald, I have decided that my favourite 80s movie has to be, Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Why? I don't know. I'm making this up as I go.
Fun. What's the most fun work you've ever done, and why? Fun? Work? Not sure I've ever put those two terms together before. OK, that's not fair. I've had several fun jobs, but they were fun because of the nature of the workplace and the co-workers, not because of the nature of the jobs themselves.
Gas. Do you put gas in the car when it is half empty...a quarter...running on fumes? I tend to put gas in the car when the price goes down. I don't know what it's like south of the border, or in other Canadian provinces, but here in Ontario, buying gas is like a game of chess. At-the-pump prices go up and down like yo-yos, with ten cent per liter (think thirty cents per gallon) daily swings a common occurrence. So when gas is running about eighty-one cents per liter (USD$2.60/gal.), and you see it drop to seventy-four cents, you pull in and fill up. It doesn't matter if the tank is full, and it's all you can do to squeeze three bucks worth in.
Hayride. Ever been on one? Yes.
Internet. What are your favorite music-related internet websites? MySpace. Close your mouth, the flies are getting in. Yes, I said MySpace. Yes, I know you have heard me rant in the past about how much I hate MySpace. Probably several times. And I do, truly I hate it. I mean, 99.9% of all MySpace pages I have seen are painfully eye-searing examples of horrendously bad design, jam-packed full of mind-numbingly inane content. However, MySpace were the first service to offer all kinds of easy to implement widgets like animated photo album displays, and the like. Their little streaming audio player widget works well, and is just the thing to allow upcoming amateur and indie musicians to easily get their work out to a larger audience. The musical community on MySpace is among the most vibrant on the web, and it is the place to go to find new and interesting artists.
Runner up: the new kid on the block, YouTube.
Junk Mail. What do you do with it? Put junk in its place.
Key. Do you have keys to cars and doors and things that you no longer own? No.
Lost. Have you lost anything lately? Probably.
Missing. Name one thing you did in the past that you no longer do but wish you did? I'm married. Think about it.
No-frills. Tell us about the cheapest motel/hotel you've ever stayed in. I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I may not be required to incriminate myself.
One hundred. Ever driven faster than one hundred miles per hour? I'm not a real speed demon. I have, at times, pushed it a bit. Still, I think the fastest I've ever driven any car was about 150. Uh...that's kilometers per hour, not miles. Pretty fast, but its not 100MPH. Plus, I scared the crap out of myself.
Postal. If you could send a package to your postal worker to show your appreciation, what would you send them? Cookies. Everyone deserves cookies.
Quick-frozen. Name three things currently in your freezer. A big bag of peas. Never opened. We don't eat 'em. They're for icing down knees, or other injured body parts.
Three (3) different flavours of ice cream. I think there are three more in the chest freezer downstairs. What? I buy them on sale.
Fish. Lots of fish. Mostly Tilapia and Rainbow Trout, but I think there's some salmon in there as well. I think I've eaten more fish in the last year than I have for all the rest of my life to date. Good for the cholesterol, don't you know.
Radio. What three songs from your own collection would you play right now if you were in charge of a radio station's playlist?
King Crimson - Epitaph
Traffic - The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys
Led Zeppelin - Dazed and Confused
Suck. What is your favorite thing to suck through a straw? Root Beer.
***Extra Credit: Name something you can do with a straw besides suck things into your mouth with it. Spitballs.
Tunes. What was the last music you bought? Sarah McLachlan - Wintersong. It's her new Christmas album.
Underwear. Do you wear it daily? Yes. But no bra. (Yeah, I just didn't bother changing Cin's answer for this one)
Victoria's Secret. Ever shop there? No. What's that place in the mall called? Oh yeah, La Senza. I've shopped there.
Weird. What if some nice, polite, peaceful aliens landed at your house one day. What would you do? Offer them coffee. And maybe ice cream.
X-ray. What parts of your body have been x-rayed? Lots of teeth. Wrist, once. That's all I can think of.
Yard sale. What is one (or more, if you can remember) thing(s) you have bought at a yard sale or "pre-owned" on EBay that you still have today? I don't go to yard sales.
Zoom, zoom, zoom. Ever been in a car when it unintentionally left the road? Ooh. Have I! I was driving home from the curling club one night before I was married. It was nasty, snowy weather, and I was driving cautiously when my tire caught a runnel of snow/slush on the road. It seemed like I provided a proof of the existence of instantaneous translocation of matter. One second I was on the road, pointed south, the next I was in a deep ditch, pointing north. Zoom, indeed.
Tags: memes, life's ABCs
John Scalzi's Weekend assignment
Weekend Assignment #149: Reveal Your Teenage Fashion Disasters! Yes, whether it's big hair, Nehru jackets, acid-washed jeans or an ill-advised tattoo, let us know what about your style as a teenager you would change today.Here I am again, working on one of John's weekend assignments on Monday morning, trying to squeeze it in before he starts updating. My teenage fashion disaster was one of exclusion. There was no fashion.
Extra Credit: Are you kidding? Pictures, baby!
My high school uniform was runners, jeans, and a t-shirt. In fact, if you check out the annual school yearbook pictures I posted in this old entry, you'll see that, so unadventurous was my wardrobe, that I was wearing the same t-shirt in both the 1981 and '82 photos.
No, if you want to talk about fashion disasters with me, you have to go back long before my teenage years. When I was quite a bit younger than that, my grandmother used to buy me outfits, for my birthday and Christmas, that were quite interesting. I'm sure they were the height of fashion...if I had been Austin Powers, maybe.
What's that? Evidence, you say?
Oh, behave!
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Belay the "Dr. Stubbs" jokes, people
via: Pharyngula
Hmph. I have no idea what this means. To the best of my knowledge, I have never read a single thing by Hal Clement.
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I am:
Hal Clement (Harry C. Stubbs)A quiet and underrated master of "hard science" fiction who, among other things, foresaw integrated circuits back in the 1940s. |
Friday, January 26, 2007
Five things (you probably didn't know about me)
Local potty-mouth, big heathen Mike has tagged me to do the "five things about me" meme. I've been religiously (heh) ducking my head every time that thing has swung around for several months now. You see, there just aren't five things about me (that you probably didn't know) that are all that interesting. Nevertheless, I've been hard tagged, and according to blogosphere rules and regulations, if I reneg, I get castrated. Or is that castigated? I always get those two mixed up.
Oh, well. Here you go. Read on at your own risk. Really, I recommend you go over and read Scalzi right now, 'cause he'll probably be able to keep you awake. Or at least his posts are shorter, better to fit your attention span. Anyway...
1) I had braces on my teeth as a teen. This required me to have very regular orthodontist appointments, about one every six to eight weeks, to have the tracks aligned, or adjusted, or whatever. I don't know if they really needed to be adjusted that often, or whether the guy just needed to justify the price we paid.
Anyway, it meant that frequently, during the school year, I would need to go down to the school office, present my note from the parents, sign myself out, walk down to the bus stop, and take a bus uptown to the orthodontist's office. During the several years over which I did this, I formulated a set of rules which governed the event, which I called, "Paul's rules for signing out and going to the dentist." These are the ones I can remember.
~ it doesn't matter what time of day you enter the office to attempt to sign out, of the five secretaries working, one will be on lunch, one will be busy with another student, one will be sitting at her desk, busy with paperwork, one will be sitting at her desk pretending to be busy with paperwork, and one will be standing in the middle of the room, staring into space with a blank look on her face, trying to remember what the hell it was she was supposed to be doing.
~ it doesn't matter what time you get to the bus stop, the bus will have just left. In fact, the length of time you missed the bus by will be almost exactly the length of time you spent in theoffice trying to catch the attention of one of the secretaries.
~ the next bus will be late. While youare waiting, three buses will go by that don't stop at that corner. This is just to rub a little salt into the wound.
~ when the next bus finally arrives, the exact change you carefully made sure you had in your pocket will somehow have become inexact change. If you are lucky, you will be over, so you can just throw it all in the collector and say, "screw it." If you are short, the bus driver, whom you recognize, will not remember that you were over the last time you rode his bus.
Yeah, they went on like that for a while, but that's all I can remember of them. Oh, and the braces eventually came off. My top teeth are relatively straight, which is good, because they're the ones people see the most of. My bottom teeth, on the other hand, spent the next decade slowly shifting back to the same level of crookedness at which they started. Another odd thing: my teeth don't line up. When I bite down, the space between my front two top teeth is a good quarter inch to the right of the space between my front two bottom teeth. My right, your left.
2) I have several avid fans who are chickens. No, they're not afraid of something, they're chickens. Brown ones. I'm not kidding. I visit them daily, and every time they are waiting at the door, eager to see me, falling over each other, in fact, to be the first to greet me. They gather around my feet, clucking and strutting, pecking and preening, as, you know, chickens do.
They leave me gifts. Every morning. Gifts they laboured all night to create. Ovoids of marble-like material, filled with gold. They are precious to me, and I faithfully collect them and carry them home to my family every day. I am so appreciative of these gifts that I reward these tiny fans of mine upon every visit with the materials necessary to ensure their continued ability to create their miraculous masterpieces. Without my constant regard and provision, they would surely waste away in despair, and die of loneliness...oh, and starvation. Ah, the rewards, and the responsibilities of being looked up to...
3) I have small feet. Depending on the way a particular make of shoes fit, I might be anywhere from a 6-1/2 to an 8, but am most commonly a 7 or 7-1/2. I have found that in recent years, I am more likely to require shoes in the upper end of that size range, whereas when I was in my teens and early twenties, I often wore shoes on the smaller side. In fact, I once had a pair of Pumas that were a 5-1/2. I guess it's possible that my feet have slowly expanded a bit over the years, just as other parts of me have, but I prefer to look at it as a huge conspiracy by the global cabal of shoe manufacturers to make men believe their feet are larger than they really are.
Think of it like the Dressmakers' conspiracy in reverse. It is 100% true that women's dress sizes have been shrinking. A dress labeled as a size four today would have been labeled as an eight less than a decade ago. All in an effort to make women feel better about the clothes they buy. The rationale is, if you fool a woman into thinking she's really a size six instead of a size twelve, she's more likely to buy the dress she is trying on. Maybe even more likely to buy more stylish, and therefore more expensive clothes than she otherwise might have.
Well, you know what they say about the size of a man's foot, don't you? See those boots I'm wearing in the above photograph? Those are an eight. And they're tight. Yeah, baby!
4) I like good food, and good drink. I don't think that will be a surprise to anyone who reads this blog. When my wife and I go out for dinner (an all too infrequent event these days), we tend to visit nice restaurants, and we are always on the lookout for new places with good food. It doesn't have to be a hoity-toity fancy dress place, but the food has to be good. For example, there are a couple of sushi places in town. The one we used to go to was really reasonably priced, and we ordered take out from them about once a month. Recently, they were taken over by new ownership, and are now a part of the Sushi Sushi chain. The prices are still reasonable, but the sushi isn't as good anymore. So, we tried the second place last week, and found that it was quite a bit more expensive. The sushi, however, was excellent, and we will gladly spend the extra money there, rather than eat cheaper, but less enjoyable food.
Likewise, for beer, wine,and spirits. I can't drink Molson Canadian, or Labatt's Blue anymore. Those mass produced, fizzy, yellow, vaguely beerlike beverages just turn my tastebuds. When I buy beer, I spend almost as much on a sixpack as most people spend on a case of twelve, in order to get a good craft beer with some character, and actual taste.
We travel to Ottawa, or even to Quebec, to buy maple syrup. No Aunt Jemima in this house. We have to go to the Italian cheese store to buy parmesan for our pasta, and we have to buy the most expensive of the three kinds they sell: Parmigiano Reggiano - twenty five bucks a kilo.
I love to cook, and I love to experiment with new recipes. When I find a recipe I like, every time I prepare it, I change it a little bit, trying to make it better. This has resulted in several dinner table horror stories, but it has also resulted in several dining experiences worth remembering.
Of course, you know all this. Why am I telling you all this? Well, you see, I have a dirty little secret.
Oh, well. Here you go. Read on at your own risk. Really, I recommend you go over and read Scalzi right now, 'cause he'll probably be able to keep you awake. Or at least his posts are shorter, better to fit your attention span. Anyway...
1) I had braces on my teeth as a teen. This required me to have very regular orthodontist appointments, about one every six to eight weeks, to have the tracks aligned, or adjusted, or whatever. I don't know if they really needed to be adjusted that often, or whether the guy just needed to justify the price we paid.
Anyway, it meant that frequently, during the school year, I would need to go down to the school office, present my note from the parents, sign myself out, walk down to the bus stop, and take a bus uptown to the orthodontist's office. During the several years over which I did this, I formulated a set of rules which governed the event, which I called, "Paul's rules for signing out and going to the dentist." These are the ones I can remember.
~ it doesn't matter what time of day you enter the office to attempt to sign out, of the five secretaries working, one will be on lunch, one will be busy with another student, one will be sitting at her desk, busy with paperwork, one will be sitting at her desk pretending to be busy with paperwork, and one will be standing in the middle of the room, staring into space with a blank look on her face, trying to remember what the hell it was she was supposed to be doing.
~ it doesn't matter what time you get to the bus stop, the bus will have just left. In fact, the length of time you missed the bus by will be almost exactly the length of time you spent in theoffice trying to catch the attention of one of the secretaries.
~ the next bus will be late. While youare waiting, three buses will go by that don't stop at that corner. This is just to rub a little salt into the wound.
~ when the next bus finally arrives, the exact change you carefully made sure you had in your pocket will somehow have become inexact change. If you are lucky, you will be over, so you can just throw it all in the collector and say, "screw it." If you are short, the bus driver, whom you recognize, will not remember that you were over the last time you rode his bus.
Yeah, they went on like that for a while, but that's all I can remember of them. Oh, and the braces eventually came off. My top teeth are relatively straight, which is good, because they're the ones people see the most of. My bottom teeth, on the other hand, spent the next decade slowly shifting back to the same level of crookedness at which they started. Another odd thing: my teeth don't line up. When I bite down, the space between my front two top teeth is a good quarter inch to the right of the space between my front two bottom teeth. My right, your left.
2) I have several avid fans who are chickens. No, they're not afraid of something, they're chickens. Brown ones. I'm not kidding. I visit them daily, and every time they are waiting at the door, eager to see me, falling over each other, in fact, to be the first to greet me. They gather around my feet, clucking and strutting, pecking and preening, as, you know, chickens do. They leave me gifts. Every morning. Gifts they laboured all night to create. Ovoids of marble-like material, filled with gold. They are precious to me, and I faithfully collect them and carry them home to my family every day. I am so appreciative of these gifts that I reward these tiny fans of mine upon every visit with the materials necessary to ensure their continued ability to create their miraculous masterpieces. Without my constant regard and provision, they would surely waste away in despair, and die of loneliness...oh, and starvation. Ah, the rewards, and the responsibilities of being looked up to...
3) I have small feet. Depending on the way a particular make of shoes fit, I might be anywhere from a 6-1/2 to an 8, but am most commonly a 7 or 7-1/2. I have found that in recent years, I am more likely to require shoes in the upper end of that size range, whereas when I was in my teens and early twenties, I often wore shoes on the smaller side. In fact, I once had a pair of Pumas that were a 5-1/2. I guess it's possible that my feet have slowly expanded a bit over the years, just as other parts of me have, but I prefer to look at it as a huge conspiracy by the global cabal of shoe manufacturers to make men believe their feet are larger than they really are.
Think of it like the Dressmakers' conspiracy in reverse. It is 100% true that women's dress sizes have been shrinking. A dress labeled as a size four today would have been labeled as an eight less than a decade ago. All in an effort to make women feel better about the clothes they buy. The rationale is, if you fool a woman into thinking she's really a size six instead of a size twelve, she's more likely to buy the dress she is trying on. Maybe even more likely to buy more stylish, and therefore more expensive clothes than she otherwise might have.
Well, you know what they say about the size of a man's foot, don't you? See those boots I'm wearing in the above photograph? Those are an eight. And they're tight. Yeah, baby!
4) I like good food, and good drink. I don't think that will be a surprise to anyone who reads this blog. When my wife and I go out for dinner (an all too infrequent event these days), we tend to visit nice restaurants, and we are always on the lookout for new places with good food. It doesn't have to be a hoity-toity fancy dress place, but the food has to be good. For example, there are a couple of sushi places in town. The one we used to go to was really reasonably priced, and we ordered take out from them about once a month. Recently, they were taken over by new ownership, and are now a part of the Sushi Sushi chain. The prices are still reasonable, but the sushi isn't as good anymore. So, we tried the second place last week, and found that it was quite a bit more expensive. The sushi, however, was excellent, and we will gladly spend the extra money there, rather than eat cheaper, but less enjoyable food.
Likewise, for beer, wine,and spirits. I can't drink Molson Canadian, or Labatt's Blue anymore. Those mass produced, fizzy, yellow, vaguely beerlike beverages just turn my tastebuds. When I buy beer, I spend almost as much on a sixpack as most people spend on a case of twelve, in order to get a good craft beer with some character, and actual taste.
We travel to Ottawa, or even to Quebec, to buy maple syrup. No Aunt Jemima in this house. We have to go to the Italian cheese store to buy parmesan for our pasta, and we have to buy the most expensive of the three kinds they sell: Parmigiano Reggiano - twenty five bucks a kilo.
I love to cook, and I love to experiment with new recipes. When I find a recipe I like, every time I prepare it, I change it a little bit, trying to make it better. This has resulted in several dinner table horror stories, but it has also resulted in several dining experiences worth remembering.
Of course, you know all this. Why am I telling you all this? Well, you see, I have a dirty little secret.
**I like McDonalds.**
Sure, Wendy's burgers are made of beef that is "fresh, never frozen," and Harvey's use of Canada Grade 'A' beef, "makes a hamburger a beautiful thing." McDonald's, of all fast food restaurants, has been the most criticised for their food quality and flavour (or lack thereof). Still, if I want a fast food lunch, it's a Double Quarter Pounder™ with Cheese Meal, with a Root Beer to drink. Is that so wrong?
5) I am relatively proficient in basic plumbing and electrical work. Enough so that I did all my own wiring when we finished our basement. I hate soldering copper pipe, though. There are a couple of places in the house where I did a somewhat sub-standard job. They leak intermittently, but I haven't fixed them because it'll be a huge hassle, and besides, they only leak intermittently. There's this one spot where there used to be one of those little needle taps connected to the copper piping, to feed water to a furnace mounted humidifier. Instead of cutting out a small section of pipe, and replacing it, I simply wrapped the pipe very tightly with about twenty layers of electrical tape, and put a pipe clamp over it. That was more than a decade ago, and it hasn't leaked yet.
If you're a town of Aurora by-law inspector, pretend I was just joking when I wrote all that.
There. That wasn't so bad, was it? Was it? Hello?
Wake up!
Tags: memes, five things, braces, chickens, feet, food, McDonald's, electrical, plumbing, by-laws, wake up!
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Meta blogging at its finest
I can't seem to finish a blog post to save my life these days, so in the most venerable tradition of blogging around the world, in order to post something so as to keep the blog active, here is a list of unfinished blog entries in my test journal.
1) A meme called the ABCs of Life that I found at Cin's place. I just picked it up from her today, and haven't had time to look at it yet. I do remember beginning to formulate my own responses to its questions as I read Cin's, but who knows if I'll actually remember them by the time I get around to completing it.
2) A meme that's making the rounds everywhere I look right now called Five things about me you probably didn't know. Mike tagged me a few days ago, and I've been struggling with it. I'm up to four.
So far I've seen three people, who I might otherwise have tagged, find it somewhere else and complete it, whilst I muddle along, trying to come up with five things that aren't completely inane. Perhaps I should just take Simon's cue and pick the five grossest things I can think of and have done with it.
3) Weekend assignment: Cats or Cheese - there can be only one! Oh, well. I guess I can delete this one.
4) Spam e-mail subject lines that caught my eye. This one may never see the light of day.
5) Statutory holidays - why?
6) There is no sixth thing.
7) A skeptical post about statistical significance that I abandoned after it became evident (sorry for that) that it was borrrrrrinnggg! Simon, who could write about shredded paper bags and make it interesting, offered to have a look at it and make suggestions. After he read it, he rescinded his offer. "You're on your own, pal," he said, or something very similar.
8) A Guide to Selecting a Chick Flick. This was a brilliant idea almost eight weeks ago, but writing it didn't fit into my schedule at the time, and inspiration eventually left me, and it, by the roadside. I may get back to it if Teh Funny one day comes back by and kisses me on the butt.
9) Did you know...? Currently sitting at two items. Not enough to turn it into a real blog entry.
10) It's about money. An article about how most Christian organisations in America consciously choose not to pursue avenues traditionally associated with the teachings of Jesus because there is not enough money in it. This one's been sitting there since September, and I don't know if I can generate the vitriol necessary to do it justice.
11) A most outrageous fairy tale. Started in March of 2005 for a Judith Heartsong artsy essay contest. I completed a chapter, and kind of lost my way. Another one I will probably never return to.
1) A meme called the ABCs of Life that I found at Cin's place. I just picked it up from her today, and haven't had time to look at it yet. I do remember beginning to formulate my own responses to its questions as I read Cin's, but who knows if I'll actually remember them by the time I get around to completing it.
2) A meme that's making the rounds everywhere I look right now called Five things about me you probably didn't know. Mike tagged me a few days ago, and I've been struggling with it. I'm up to four.
So far I've seen three people, who I might otherwise have tagged, find it somewhere else and complete it, whilst I muddle along, trying to come up with five things that aren't completely inane. Perhaps I should just take Simon's cue and pick the five grossest things I can think of and have done with it.
3) Weekend assignment: Cats or Cheese - there can be only one! Oh, well. I guess I can delete this one.
4) Spam e-mail subject lines that caught my eye. This one may never see the light of day.
5) Statutory holidays - why?
6) There is no sixth thing.
7) A skeptical post about statistical significance that I abandoned after it became evident (sorry for that) that it was borrrrrrinnggg! Simon, who could write about shredded paper bags and make it interesting, offered to have a look at it and make suggestions. After he read it, he rescinded his offer. "You're on your own, pal," he said, or something very similar.
8) A Guide to Selecting a Chick Flick. This was a brilliant idea almost eight weeks ago, but writing it didn't fit into my schedule at the time, and inspiration eventually left me, and it, by the roadside. I may get back to it if Teh Funny one day comes back by and kisses me on the butt.
9) Did you know...? Currently sitting at two items. Not enough to turn it into a real blog entry.
10) It's about money. An article about how most Christian organisations in America consciously choose not to pursue avenues traditionally associated with the teachings of Jesus because there is not enough money in it. This one's been sitting there since September, and I don't know if I can generate the vitriol necessary to do it justice.
11) A most outrageous fairy tale. Started in March of 2005 for a Judith Heartsong artsy essay contest. I completed a chapter, and kind of lost my way. Another one I will probably never return to.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Heads up!
I have published, on time for a refreshing change, the latest edition of CarnivAOL™.It is the thirty-first, and chock full, as Scalzi might say, of bloggy goodness. It contains links to ten different blog entries from around AOL J-land. I recommend it to your attention.
Or something like that.
Or something like that.
Friday, January 19, 2007
tun'd his pipes wi' grave grimace...
I was looking at a website for a local business today. They are located at a corner which abuts a town park named after the founding residents of this fair burgh. Aurora, Ontario used to be known as Machell's Corners, after Richard Machell, who was the first merchant to set up shop at the spanking new crossroads of Yonge Street and Wellington Road in 1804. This business (the one whose website I was perusing, not Richard Machell's), which is located in a plaza across the street from Machell Park, has a map to their location on their website provided by Microsoft MapPoint™. What caught my eye was the fact that the name of the park, no doubt typed in by a tired and/or bored data entry clerk who was used to the plethora of Scottish and Irish derived place names in southern Ontario, was rendered as MacHell Park.
I'm wondering, is that where the piper's will be practising before tomorrow's Robbie Burns Day dinner?
Tags: humour, Aurora, Machell's Corners, Ontario, Robbie Burns Day
Brother, can you spare a spoon?
Here in AOL J-land there is a significant sub-community of journalers who suffer from diseases and conditions that manifest themselves primarily in pain and fatigue; things like Lupus, and rheumatiod arthritis (feel free to add to the list in comments), which for the most part are invisible to the world at large.
Those of us who are generally healthy cannot understand the trials and tribulations of those who suffer from these conditions. I was going to use a modifier in that sentence; cannot easily understand, or cannot really understand, but the truth is, we do not even have a frame of reference with which to approach understanding of what these people have to go through every day of their lives.
Occasionally, some little thing suddenly reaches out and slaps you in the face, bringing your attention abruptly to your lack of comprehension. For me, recently, it was a post by Dawn, in which she participated in a meme I had stolen from Dan. I got as far as her first answer, and stopped, dead. The question was, "When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was the first thing you thought?"
Dawn's answer was, "Damn, I need to put my hair in a ponytail, but my hands hurt." Did it stop you the way it stopped me? Her hands hurt too much to even put her own hair in a ponytail. I have watched my wife put her hair in a ponytail with a flip, flip motion that is so practiced she doesn't even have to think about it. Dawn has to think about it, and some days, she has to decide not to even bother trying.
In order to make an attempt at educating a friend about her condition several years ago, Lupus sufferer Christine Miserandino (how's that for an appropriate last name?) came up with what she called The Spoon Theory. She gave her friend a handful of spoons, and then started taking them away as she described her day. When her friend ran out of spoons before her day was even close to being over, a light went on.
Click on that link, and read Christine's description of The Spoon Theory, then head on over to Dawn's blog, and read about her day to day travails. Another good blog to visit is Loretta's Life Beyond Lupus, where you can find links to many other blogs written by sufferers of Lupus and other similar conditions, as well as many websites explaining the conditions I have mentioned.
As well, if you know someone in real life who suffers from a condition that causes chronic fatigue and/or chronic pain, why don't you pop over and give them a hand with some of their daily chores. Lend them a few of your own spoons. After all, you've got more than you need.
Those of us who are generally healthy cannot understand the trials and tribulations of those who suffer from these conditions. I was going to use a modifier in that sentence; cannot easily understand, or cannot really understand, but the truth is, we do not even have a frame of reference with which to approach understanding of what these people have to go through every day of their lives.
Occasionally, some little thing suddenly reaches out and slaps you in the face, bringing your attention abruptly to your lack of comprehension. For me, recently, it was a post by Dawn, in which she participated in a meme I had stolen from Dan. I got as far as her first answer, and stopped, dead. The question was, "When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was the first thing you thought?"
Dawn's answer was, "Damn, I need to put my hair in a ponytail, but my hands hurt." Did it stop you the way it stopped me? Her hands hurt too much to even put her own hair in a ponytail. I have watched my wife put her hair in a ponytail with a flip, flip motion that is so practiced she doesn't even have to think about it. Dawn has to think about it, and some days, she has to decide not to even bother trying.
In order to make an attempt at educating a friend about her condition several years ago, Lupus sufferer Christine Miserandino (how's that for an appropriate last name?) came up with what she called The Spoon Theory. She gave her friend a handful of spoons, and then started taking them away as she described her day. When her friend ran out of spoons before her day was even close to being over, a light went on.
Click on that link, and read Christine's description of The Spoon Theory, then head on over to Dawn's blog, and read about her day to day travails. Another good blog to visit is Loretta's Life Beyond Lupus, where you can find links to many other blogs written by sufferers of Lupus and other similar conditions, as well as many websites explaining the conditions I have mentioned.
As well, if you know someone in real life who suffers from a condition that causes chronic fatigue and/or chronic pain, why don't you pop over and give them a hand with some of their daily chores. Lend them a few of your own spoons. After all, you've got more than you need.
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