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.

**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!