I do this hated activity at this time of year since my wife's birthday comes along shortly and Christmas soon after that. I do shop for fruits, vegetables, milk and bread at the local grocery store, a five minute walk from the house (longer if you drive :-). And I make regular trips to Canadian Tire and the local hardware/lumber store. But the latter isn't really shopping — it's a leisure activity! Anyway our local mall is about a 20 minute walk away with probably a hundred stores to choose from. I had some vague ideas but had to browse around in order to crystallize them. I was successful! You'll have to wait until after her birthday when I can reveal what they were (but only if she was pleased to get them :-).
Earlier this week she plunked a bag of new clothes beside the bed and said this is what I could give her for Christmas. What a great idea! So today I went into Coast Mountain Sports and Old Navy and bought some stuff for her to give to me. Now I'll have to wait for 26 days or so until I can wear/use them. Again all will be revealed in due course because I know I'll like those gifts.
A friend of mine, the tenor section leader in the Oakville Choral Society (OCS), owns the Second Cup franchise at the mall. I dropped in for a coffee and he called me a "quitter". You may recall I resigned my position temporarily because I couldn't sing at the two Christmas concerts due to a conflict with my "home" choir, the Bell'Arte Singers. I explained that the OCS director was aware of the situation. I had even made enquiries about a replacement. However, I couldn't get any takers for a community choir section leader opening. My friend said the OCS director was "distraught" about my departure. I guess it was a compliment of sorts. I hadn't thought I contributed all that much as there were 15 in the bass section when I left. Perhaps some of them lack the confidence now that there's not someone there to count and come in at the right point and on pitch. Now I'm not so sure I will make an effort to listen to their dress rehearsal — it might cause too much anxiety. Of course it may well be that my friend, a known nay-sayer, may have exaggerated for effect.
Since our company went private, we have each become little entrepreneurs pursuing billable hours. I have been fortunate to have been around the 90%+ mark for most of the year. Now I have dropped to the 50s. This should be a short lull as there are a couple of projects just coming onstream. In 2003 I will have to try and do some business development and work on getting contracts from outside the company. My only problem is my preferred area of work and expertise lies in the C++ software, database, web-enablement areas of work and less and less in the electric power apparatus testing areas I used to be involved in. This doesn't mesh as well with the current "service lines" of our group. Anyway, we'll see what turns up in the next little while.
Some people do anything to stay in the news. Michael Jackson may have had one nose job too many. Was it because his father was said to have called him "big nose"? I hope I haven't given my kids some complex psychological hang-up by some off-hand remark I made years ago. Anyway, I find it remarkable that a "man" just a few years younger than I is so weird and eccentric. 'Course when you have lots of money I guess you can hold babies over balconies, de-pigment your skin or de-nose your face. It makes the rest of us look so, well, "normal".
The Toronto Star had an article on blogging in this Saturday's paper. Suddenly it's now mainstream.
In other news, I mulch-vacuumed the remaining leaves — somewhat mushed and flattened by the 15cm of snow we had last weekend. That snow has disappeared save for a few mini-glaciers on parking lots and beside driveways.
You Might be an Engineer If...
- Buying flowers for your girlfriend or spending the money to upgrade your RAM is a moral dilemma.
- The salespeople at Radio Shack can't answer any of your questions. [You ask them questions?!?]
- You are at an air show and know how fast the skydivers are falling.
- You comment to your wife that her straight hair is nice and parallel.
- You have ever saved the power cord from a broken appliance. [What about a whole box full?]
- You know what http:// stands for.
- You see a good design and still have to change it. [This is called "tweaking" or "creeping featurism".]
- You spent more on your calculator than you did on your wedding ring. [Not true Honey!]
- You still own a slide rule and you know how to use it. [Nope. I haven't used one in years. My first year of the class of 7T7 at UofT was the last year calculators weren't allowed!]
- You think a pocket protector is a fashion accessory. [Never liked pocket protectors — that was the generation before mine: back when white shirts and ties were the norm.]
- Your laptop computer costs more than your car.
- Your wife hasn't the foggiest idea of what you do at work. [And her eyes glaze over when you try and explain.]
- You've ever tried to repair a $5 radio. [It's called the I-can-fix-this-syndrome. And what about that overflowing box full of stuff you're going to fix sometime? Instead of buying a new printer, I fixed my (10 year old?) LaserJet IIIP by going on-line and buying the part and video on CD repair instructions.]
- You've already calculated how much you make per second. [That sounds more like a physicist or mathematician to me.]
Source: The Mouth Piece. [Comments are mine, of course.]
I was sitting on the train reading a newspaper when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. I observed liquid dropping slowly from the corner of a woman's briefcase she had on her lap. After a few more droplets fell I asked her if she had a water bottle in her briefcase. She looked at me kind of strangely at first then realized where I was pointing. She pulled out the bottle and screwed on the top then kind of paniced and dumped the liquid on the floor of the train. (Luckily my pants or shoes were out of the way!) She put her briefcase on the floor and didn't say a thing, just looked out the window. The liquid looked like juice which pretty well means the briefcase is ruined. I hope she didn't have library books or an important report to review in there.
If I hadn't said anything there could have been other scenarios: She did have her briefcase horizontally on her lap so there was the potential for her to be wearing whatever that liquid was once she got up when reached her stop. If not, when she eventually reached her destination there would have been a big surprise waiting for her in that briefcase.
I thought I would share this picture that came attached to an email from a family member recently. Of course, I know who these people are.
My wife and I attended the Gala Dinner and Live Quilt Auction in Stratford, Ontario last night. One of our friends wasn't feeling well, probably suffering from the after effects of her gall-bladder surgery earlier this week, and her husband asked us if we would like come with him. It turned out to be quite the drive with snow in the "greater" GTA area both going and coming. Fortunately the weather in Stratford and environs was mostly clear. We enjoyed a fine supper of salmon, other fine delectables and jazz music at the Church Restaurant. I especially enjoyed the after dinner words from the sommelier telling us that the wine we ordered (the house pinot grigio) was compliments of the restaurant. Our thanks go to Mr. Kraft, the owner.
Luba Goy was a most humourous MC for the evening's auction where almost 200 quilts were sold. A professional auctineer kept the auction moving and even exciting at times. My wife bought two quilts: one by silent auction and one at the live auction. She was so excited. Being a quilter herself she could assess the workmanship, examine the quality of the quilts, get ideas for new quilts and find out what the quilts on our walls and beds might be worth. Even though she might have spend a bit too much on the silent auction quilt, she will be giving it away at Christmas and the money was going to a worthwhile cause.
The drive home was an adventure with the blowing snow (thanks to Mr. Smith, our driver, we made it home safe and sound), and it's still snowing this morning perhaps accumulating to 15cm. Winter has arrived here in Mississauga. We didn't get to bed until after 2 a.m. last night but it's Sunday so I don't have to go out and find the snow shovel and do that work until later in the day. Sitting here reading email and blogging with a cup of coffee suits me just fine at the moment.
It has been several years and several diseases (I'm referring to the handout and questionaire they give you) ago that I gave blood. There used to be a clinic every 3 months or so at work back in the days when a couple of thousand employees worked at this site. With downsizing and the splitting of Ontario Hydro regular clinics became unsustainable. Canadian Blood Services managed to track me down and so I gave blood at a regular clinic at the Square One mall. Now the process of answering blood diseases questions and R.N. interviewing takes longer than giving blood. Back when I first gave blood they asked if you had eaten, pricked your finger and then you waited for the next available cot. There were nice old ladies to hand you cookies and juice before and after. Still it is a very worthwhile cause if you're healthy and disease free.
It used to be difficult to install stuff in a computer but the form factors, power, data connections, etc seem to have been pretty much standardized. My older son gave my younger son a CD burner for his birthday (18!) at the end of this week. I installed it last night in his computer. I had to take out the existing CD-ROM drive to find out whether it was a master or slave on that IDE channel. The tiny screws on the right side fell into a narrow channel in the case — it took me a while to slide them along and extract them with tweezers. When I put it back together I used the screwdriver with the magnetic bit so this wouldn't happen again. Anyway, my younger son reports that the CD burner works. I'll have to open up the case of my PC and try to determine why my burner only makes coasters unless I slow the process down to 4X or lower. Perhaps its the fault of running Windows Me so I should upgrade to Windows 2000.
Yesterday I took off work a bit early and visited my Mom prior to Bell'Arte Singers' practice in downtown Toronto. I managed to get her sound card working again but primarily it was good to be there longer and enjoy some good conversation. About a year ago they happened to discover a tumour or growth around her spine when they looked at a routine chest x-ray. She still feels no symptoms but has just recently had a second MRI. Now she and her doctors can find out what, if anything, this tumour is doing. I hope that it's doing nothing or growing very slowly. The tumour or growth is in a very awkward spot to operate and Mom, now in her 70s isn't interested in heroic measures. Fortunately the surgeon is of the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" school. Apparently she'll know when the growth gets in the way but for now we'll hope and pray that it just stays the same or shrinks even.
While my wife was attending the OMEA conference in Niagara Falls I drove along the Niagara Parkway wondering what I could do during the day on Saturday until 3 when our hotel room would be ready. Noticing the Niagara River Recreational Trail along the way, I parked the car north of Queenston, donned the roller blades I had stashed in the trunk and skated the several kilometers (15-20?) to the cable car terminus and back again. There was a head wind most of the way there and an arduous climb up the hill where Brock's monument is located. Also leaves and twigs are not very in-line skater friendly, the former because one can easily spread-eagle if not careful, or get stuck between the brake and the rear wheel and the latter because the small wheels can easily jam on twigs and trip you. Fortunately this is all stuff I have encountered before. At the top of the hill into Queenston on the return trip I changed to hiking shoes and visited Brock's monument (closed at this time of year as most things are outside of Niagara Falls itself). I walked down the hill figuring I'd only wear out my brake and the many leaves on the bike path would make stopping a tad treacherous. Once back in Queenston I put on the in-line skates again. I stopped at one of the recreation trail markers and read the fine print: this trail isn't designed for small-wheeled things like in-line skates or skateboards. Oh well, I have already done probably 30km worth by then. I only suffered a broken blister on one ankle and, of course, major fatigue in the evening.
In the Falls we took a “Falls View” room at the Sheraton next to Casino Niagara. We did the touristy thing and ate at Planet Hollywood — lots of atmosphere and the food was pretty good, too. We both had the Asian noodles. There must have been something in it though that didn’t agree with us. We cut short our walk towards the Horseshoe Falls so my wife could rush back to the washroom. I just felt gassy and bloated for a while that evening. Instead we moved the couch in the room and sat by window gazing at both Falls’ and drinking a glass of wine. And yes we acted like newlyweds, too (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge say no more.). As it was pouring rain this morning, we ate an expensive breakfast in the penthouse which, of course, overlooks the falls.
Yesterday's high was 1°C and, indeed, it was -5°C when I walked to the train station yesterday morning. Looking at the forecast I decided to take today off. It's already 8°C and the high is predicted to be 15° — a perfect day to finish vacuu-mulching the rest of the leaves. Tonight's big event is my younger son's Grade 12 graduation. It hardly seems that long, well 18 years a week Saturday, since when I held him in my arms just after he was born. It's also been a year since the passing of wife's oldest sister, Corinne. It has been a hard week for my wife's family trying to get through their daily tasks and remembering. It's part of the magic of the human condition though: as the sorrow arising from the event of the death "heals", we tend to fondly remember more about our sister / daughter / friend's life.
It has been awhile since I've been on my inline skates — there always seemed to be the threat of rainy weather and, for the last month, parts of my route have seen the the top layer of asphalt removed and the road resurfaced. Well, now that's done. It was just a tad chilly at -1.3°C this morning. I wear thin gloves under my wrist guards and a couple of years ago I had my Mom knit some oversize mitts which fit over the wrist guards. Still, the trip to the GO station is mostly downhill in the morning so it's hard to warm up. However now its a modestly faster trip down the newly asphalted road. I don't have to deke around the potholes and long cracks anymore.
My wife and I have plunked down our deposit to travel with the Cathedral Singers of Ontario in the summer of 2003. For a week we will be singing Evening Vespers at Canterbury Cathedral and Sunday services probably sitting or standing here. After the first week we'll travel by ferry from Dover to Calais, sing at a Canadian war memorial and then to Paris where we'll sing at La cathédral de Notre Dame. We plan to stay a couple of more days in Paris and celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary in style.
I did. Or at least I screwed the last two deck boards down and moved the gas BBQ back on to it. "Fancy stuff" like triming the ends, adding facing boards, making and installing a railing with turned spindles and making some benches out of the leftovers will wait until spring or if it turns incredibly mild during my Christmas holidays. My older son says it looks like a stage. Winter theatre anyone? This afternoon I got around to the usual fall chore of mulcher-vacuuming the leaves around the place. I have now filled my three compost bins. Seeing as there seems to be as many leaves still on the maple tree as I vacuumed I will use the rest for mulch on the flower beds.
It snowed yesterday and there's been a few flakes today but nothing has stuck around yet. The smashing pumpkin set has been out doing their post Hallowe'en ritual. Somebody smashed a floodlight(?) on our driveway but the pieces are so small I can only suspect it's a floodlight because of the silvered bits. I'll need to vacuum up the bits in the morning. Since I don't have any of that type of fixture outside then I guess a neighbour is missing one of theirs. How your outlook changes as you age — I remember smashing one or two pop bottles in the ravine when I was kid. What I also remember doing was when we found an old tire someone had dumped in the ravine: we'd take it up to the top of the ravine and roll it down the hill watching it bounce over rocks, smashing through small bushes and samplings, generally being more destructive as it built up kinectic energy. Not something I'd do nowadays nor would I condone it. We're so thoughtless as kids sometimes.