Not What It Sounds Like

I wish that Trading Spouses was on Showcase. Then it would be worth watching.

Daylight Savings, My Ass

Now is the time. It is beautiful outside. The sunsets are moving later into the evening. We can finish work and do things outside. Now is the time to get moving on fixing our winters. We need a time change.
When I lived on York University campus just outside of Toronto, I often thought that changing the campus' time zone to match Vancouver's would be best for all concerned. Any early call from the outside world (say parents) could be met with justified indignation.
"Mother, do you know what time it is?"
"It's 9 o'clock, you should be up."
"Not here it's not. It's six in the morning, mom. Can you call later, say, NOON your time?"
Morning classes would fit into your schedule. After last call downtown, you could take the subway back to campus and have a couple of hours before BC's last call.
While I never got anywhere with that gem, I think it is time for a change out west. I think we should spend the winters on Toronto's time.
Think about it.
Business calls would be easier for one - Montreal, Vancouver, and Toronto would all be on the same time. But who cares? We all know that we don't live out here for business reasons, but for personal ones. So why give all the sunlight to the work day? Wouldn't you like to come home from work with a few hours of sun left?
We live a lot further north than Toronto and I think we should reflect that in our time zone. We vary more with the seasons - maybe not in temperature - but in daylight. We go from 16 hours in the peak of summer to 8 hours in the dead of winter. Actually 8 hours and 11 minutes. Which means that on Dec 23 rd this year, you'll be shopping in the dark. The sun will be coming up as you drive to work and before you get out that day, it will have set. In fact it will set at roughly quarter after four.
Let's not stand for it anymore. I want to see us fall forward. Let's fall forward two hours. Let's move to Toronto time. Wait a minute let's get ahead of Toronto. Let's fall forward three hours. We'll go to work in the dark - leave a message for someone out east asking them to call when they finally get to work - and then when we leave work it will still be light out and we'll have a few hours to enjoy the outdoors. Imagine.
So I say let's get on that right after we De-Elect Emerson.

Season Tickets

This is my second year as the proud owner of seasons tickets. Yes me. The first year, I was so excited by the notion of being just that - a season ticket holder. I knew that the cost of seasons tickets to the Whitecaps wasn't overwhelming and I could have paid more for a single Canucks ticket, but the I loved the idea of saying, "I'm a season's ticket holder."
Not this year. The luster of 'seasons tickets' has worn off. In it's place is 'Southsider'. Not that I have tickets for the south side. No one does. No, I got my tickets in the mail today - this great folded stack of tickets. Eighteen games in all. And I have the same seat as last year. Now I say the same seat as last year, but as some of you may know, I'm not sure exactly where that is. I have a rough idea. It is on the east side of the pitch. In fact it is Section M row 5 seat 5. The thing is I've never sat there. If you happen to be at the game and you don't like your seat and you feel that section M row 5 seat 5 is a better seat than you have, well feel free to move on down.
You see, I'm a Southsider no matter what my ticket says. That means I'll be standing/drinking in the south end, just behind the goalie, taunting players as best I can. I'll do my best to get under the opposing keepers skin. I'll jeer anyone not in a Whitecaps jersey. I'll drink beer and throw the empty cup towards the pitch. I'm a Southsider so I'll find that inner hooligan and I'll call them fat bastards and tell them where they can stick their timbers and their relics and their skydomes and ....

Tick Tock Tick Tock

Guilty Pleasure

I have a guilty pleasure - free on line games. Whether it is puzzles like Sudoku or action games like Heli Attack 3, I love the little challenges they present. I can get sucked down into the world of pixels and become completely absorbed with matching groups of coloured squares or jumping over barrels and giant mushrooms. To that end, I have wasted a great deal of time on Blast Billiards (the original) - a mindnumbingly simple game of pool played with bombs.
So, to Stephen and all you other fools out there just like him, I say this, "1645." That's it. I quit. I can do no better.

Warning: Goodbye Commencing In 5 Minutes

Eavesdropping on Donna's phone call today, I realized that she says goodbye in the way an airline pilot announces a landing. From the first goodbye to the final end of the call, I have more than enough time to safely stow my luggage, make a quick pit stop in the washroom, fasten my seat, and return both myself and my tray to the upright position. In contrast, my goodbye should come with a parachute.

Screening Her Calls - Memento Style

I, for one, am a fan of whistle blower legislation. I know their pain. I have noticed a disturbing trend lately and I just don't know to whom I can turn.
Many, if not most, of my friends are well aware of my, shall we say, disability - my inability to retain even the simplest information over the short term. I have adapted. Conformed to my sentence. I have routines and tricks to which I do my best to adhere to.
For instance, I put my keys in the same place every time I come home. Not due to some anal insistence that things have their place. I would not be disturbed by seeing my keys out of place. I have only one reason for putting them down in the same place every time. That is where I look for them. If they aren't there, I have no inkling of where I put them and off I go on a long hunt through recent pants and jackets. A hunt, I should note, that would be shorter, if only I could remember which pants and which jackets I'd worn recently. But that's the problem - I don't.
Donna sometimes finds my keys where they shouldn't be. A place as crazy as say the dining room table or the coffee table or my desk (note none of these are pants or jackets) and knowing that I will have ransacked the laundry hamper before even considering these plain sight places, she will move them to the shelf where they ought to sit. No need to me. No need to say, "Dude, I moved your keys. They are on the shelf." No need, because I have no idea where they are, but I know where I'd look - the shelf, because that's where my keys go.
She too has come to terms with this handicap. Donna went out one day while baking banana bread. She asked me to take the banana bread out of the oven when it was done. And then she stopped. What were the chances? I was watching TV and that is plenty of distraction. A mere phone call is all that is needed. TV is more than enough to push aside a thought like check bread in twenty minutes. What to do?
My mother always said I had selective memory, but the truth is I like banana bread and I really would hate to see it burn. Donna's solution: She put oven mitts on my hands knowing that I would go to change the channel and think why do I have oven mitts on my hands? Whether you see that as sad or brilliant, doesn't matter. I ate some delicious banana bread that day.
Which brings me to the disturbing trend. Someone is taking advantage of me. Using my deficiency to their own end. I won't say who, because it hurts too much. But let me say this, "I told her you called."

In a Timely Manner

While the following image is of a fictional nature and any resemblance is coincidental, in accordance with the wishes of the offices of Johannes, Siegfried & Bahr the following image has been altered to protect the image of their client, who shall remain nameless.

Drunk Dialing

March 17th is a poor time to be on a business trip. But there I was, hunkered down in my hotel room after a fine Thai dinner, in Kelowna. I really don't know anyone in Kelowna other than clients and truth be told, I'm by nature more than a little anti-social. So the prospect of wandering out into that strip mall of town to search out the best facsimile of an Irish Pub just to stand in line for an hour for the chance to have a pint of Guinness with a clamour of green beer drinking strangers - well it just didn't seem worth it.
I was fading off to sleep when my phone rumbled to life startling both me and itself. I answered to hear my wife and friends shouting above the crowd. The highlight of which was Stephen yelling into the phone several times that he couldn't hear me. Funny only because he wouldn't wait for a response before yelling again that he couldn't hear me. Only to pass me back to Donna, who had no trouble hearing me.
The call made me think of university, when I switched answering machines. In second year I had the old tape style that Hollywood directors love where the message can be heard loud and clear in the room as it is being left. Third year I changed to the phone company style - where you call a number to hear the message. My best friends, Stephen and Claude, were living on the West Coast, while I was in school three time zones away. They would be out drinking and come home late and decide to call me. In second year I would wake up to them screaming into the phone, "Get up you fucker. I know your there. Come on. Get up..." In third year, I would wake up in the morning to find the same tirade waiting in a message that was usually 5 minutes long. Each time it would end with one of them turning to the other and saying, "... a fuck. He doesn't have that machine anymore."

LOL

What I hate more than punctuation bastardized into smiling and winking faces is the cryptic looking tag line 'LOL'. Like the rest of us, I have Google and so I know that it means 'Laughing Out Loud'. Oh and, I know that it is meant in the kindest of fashions. But like small children, I simply find it annoying - LOL

a Face in the Crowd

Oscar Winner

Donna, Claude, Al, and myself watched the Oscars together. With the short ballot we found in the Vancouver Sun, we each made our selections of which films we thought would win which Oscars. To minimize luck, we assigned 1-7 points for each award with more points given for the more marquee awards and less points for say, 'Best Makeup'.
Donna made a late charge and she would have won, had Paul Haggis won for Best Director. But she didn't. In fact she only beat Allan and he has A.D.D. No, Claude outlasted her despite missing the big seven points for best film. The funny thing is Claude had only seen a handful of the films nominated for awards, while Donna had only missed seeing a handful of them. And Allan, well, he'd seen a lot of the films, but let's be honest he does have A.D.D. and I think it was good that he was able to fill out the whole ballot.

Final Scores
Paul 19
Claude 15
Donna 12
Allan 7

Having Trouble?

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Just in case you were wondering - from time to time it seems that accessing my blog brings up an access error report - I haven't actually put limits on who can and cannot access my blog. It's a blogspot problem that has been happening to a few sites and nothing to do with either you or I.

Golf Umbrellas

I can't say whether March has come in like a lamb or a lion. It seems closer to a wet dog - stand back he'll shake off soon. And I don't think that either Punxsutawney Phil or Wiarton Willie's jurisdiction extends over the Rocky Mountains. So I don't know how much longer our winter will last. Actually, I don't know why we hold on to the notion that we even have four seasons. Really, for many of us, we have two. Whether it is Ski season and Golf season, or Soccer season and Baseball season, or just plain old wet season and dry season, we still only have two.
While I neither golf nor ski, I am very happy to see the tail end of the ski season approaching. 'Bring on golf', I say. Bring on that silly game that frustrates everyone who plays it. Head out to your courses with your irons, your woods, your tees, your stash of beer - but please don't forget to take those wretched umbrellas with you.
The thing I hate most about golf is the stupid oversized umbrellas. I don't mind them on the course. I don't golf on sunny days, let alone rainy ones. So do what you like on the fairway. It is after all twenty yards wide. But leave our sidewalks Golf Umbrella free.
I've thought we should ban them from our streets - these multicoloured eye gougers. Leave us with our drab little black eye pokers. But then I thought, what would be next? Would people start walking down sidewalks with their patio umbrellas? I mean, just in the wet season.

Olympic Medals

Turin 2006

(click to view)

Rome 1960

Rinse, Lather, Repeat

No longer will those three simple words suffice. Donna pointed out the back of her shampoo bottle, where we are told to "Enter a world of botanical bliss and unleash the power of your beautifully renewed hair."

Unleash the power! That, my friends, is fantastic. I didn't even know there was power waiting inside my hair - let alone that it has been, shall we say, bottled up. No, the only person I've ever thought to have hair power was Medusa and I don't think that is the image they are going for.

But maybe my folly has been in ignoring the directions. I have been shampooing old school style: rinse, lather, repeat has always seemed enough. Actually, that's not true, I don't usually repeat. But anyway, there are new and improved instructions out there to follow. "Massage into wet hair and indulge in the luxurious lather. Surrender to the intoxicating fragrance. Rinse when ready." Notice - no repeat. It seems I had one thing right. I may not have been indulging in luxury or surrendering to intoxication, but I wasn't unnecessarily repeating either.

(To be fair, you won't get that kind of quality instruction from your no name special, which was my shampoo buying M. O. for the longest time. But I'll confess, I've lost the moral high ground of the frugal to the irresistible smell of cinnamon buns shampoo - A gift to Donna that I highjacked.)

For those of you who use conditioner, you probably already know this, because instruction with conditioners is very important. But I'll leave you with a sample from Donna's conditioner that borders on an AA rating:

"Delight further in a world of luscious exhilaration and unleash the power of your beautifully replenished hair. Bursting with a sumptuously fresh fragrance, this vibrant conditioner with ... will take your hair to a place it's never been before... Work into wet hair, caressing every strand with an exciting burst of smoothness and fresh fragrance. Exhilarate as long as desired ... "

The Olympic Spirit

In a world full of sports scandal, it is nice to hear a beautiful story of fair play coming from this years Olympics. Canadians Sara Renner and Beckie Scott were leading a competition in a cross country ski relay when Sara Renner's ski pole snapped. Funny enough the Canadian later compared it to canoeing without a paddle. She dropped from 1st to 4th instantly and would have dropped further if Bjornar Haakensmoen, a Norwegian Coach, hadn't handed her a replacement pole. The Canadian pair battled back and finished with a silver medal.
I don't know how Norwegians feel about Haakensmoen, especially since Norway finished fourth, but I think he is a shining example of what sport should be. Thank-you Bjornar.

How far is Turin from Torino?

Sometimes I feel, as an English speaker, like an obnoxious boor. The sort that never gets anyone's name right at a party. The one that calls Susan Vicky because 'she looks like a Vicky'. Or calls Michael Mike, which Michael never does. Doesn't it feel that way when it comes to other cities and countries?
The whole world is focused on a little Italian city right now and we can't agree on what it is called. It seems pretty clear that they call it Torino, which doesn't seem that hard to say. So why do I hear so many people reporting from Turin standing in front of backdrops with Torino written all over them?
Why do say Germany, Japan, and Finland? Lisbon and Rome? Do all English speaking cultures butcher foreign names? Do other languages call us by their own names?

the organ grinder's monkey

Check out my friends new blog the organ grinder's monkey If you were at the Rugby club recently, you just might recognize that moustache.

Emerson Lied to Vancouver Kingsway

What is wrong with British Columbian politics? Are we unique in our degree of scandal or is democracy just this flawed? I have been here for less than a decade and in that time we have had scandal in every level of government. From the pathetic to the petty, our government has been a pretty shady beacon of democracy. Mr. Emerson is just the latest.
We have had a Premier lose his leadership over the bribe of a backyard deck. We have had an MP confess to stealing. Our current Premier was arrested in a foreign country for drinking and driving. Our current Mayor cheated the election process by helping a man run for office with the same name as his chief opponent. And now we have Emerson.
Less than two weeks after he was elected on a Liberal platform, he has taken a bribe and crossed the floor. He is now a Conservative. I understand that from time to time divisive issues arise that may cause MPs to rethink their party loyalties. I can understand it, when crossing the floor is measured in terms of weeks prior to an election, but not in weeks after an election. What could possibly have changed in those two weeks that would force that kind of soul searching? Clearly he ran on false pretenses. Clearly he lied when, according to 24 Hour News, he said, "I'm going to be Stephen Harper's worst enemy."
Scandal will happen, it is true. What we must decide is how we are going to receive it. It was despairing to think about how Premier Campbell stayed in office after his conviction. It was frightening to know that Vancouver Central was nearly willing to elect a thief. It was frustrating to watch as nothing happened about our tainted mayoral election. But will we take it again is the question. Will we sit back and allow Emerson to hoodwink us all? I guess I'm counting on the people of Vancouver-Kingsway to say, "No."