Les Bonnes Choses

I'm not ready to push out my next thought, but I just wanted to mention that people like this kick ass (link goes to story about daring good samaritans).

A lag of twelve days is easily accounted for:
I'm at a conference in Florida during what appears to be a heat wave. Near as I can tell, if you don't like baking by a poolside or surfing, this is not the place for you. St Pete Beach, the community in which this conference is being held, has an odd geography. It basically looks like a paved sandbar:


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The A on the map marks where I am staying. The conference hotel is about 1.5 miles to the south. I hear the walk along the beach is okay, when the sun isn't beating down. I wouldn't know. 30 minutes in this sun would probably kill me.

So a week or so before this conference, I was making preparations so that things would go smoothly in my absence. Unfortunately, in the days leading up to the conference, things started to go decidedly UNsmoothly. A fierce but short-lived storm blew through my neighbourhood, knocking down trees and branches and severing power lines. We were without power for three days. Unless Gill went on a binge shopping trip, we're also now without food. That, incidentally is a second reason I didn't update recently. I recall having a couple of topical ideas about which to write, but with no means to publish them, I have since forgotten them.

July first and fourth mark the dates that Canada and the United States respectively told their contemporary reigning English monarchs that they had things pretty much under control. So happy Sod-Off England weekend to all!

As I drove around today, I heard an ad on the radio that struck a chord. It was for the Airmiles rewards program. The theme was things that are awesome. The example was getting carded at the age of 37. It was a little close to home for me. I am approaching the age where I was of legal drinking age when people who are now of legal drinking age were born. In some jurisdictions, I am already there. Nonetheless, I continue to get carded when I go to the local grocery store. Signs posted there indicate I should expect to be carded if I look under 25. Twenty-five happened quite some time ago for me, and is now just a fond but vague memory of living in an apartment storage-closet in Toronto's Parkdale neighbourhood. That I continue to get carded suggests to me either an inability to think critically, or else an inability to discriminate a fifteen year age differential. Both of these, I think, qualify as a real handicap. I refuse to believe I look youthful enough to just possibly be less than 21 years of age. If so, that might speak to how perception of age may have undergone a recalibration to account for sun damage and air-borne pollutants.

I could brush this off as a flattering mistake, were it not so much bloody trouble. The local store requires government-issued identification. American states count as governments. Canadian provinces often do not, it seems. The first time I had this problem, there was a big to-do, involving the summoning of the store manager. Next time, I was told, I should bring my Canadian passport, which is inconvenient (it doesn't fit in my wallet), makes me nervous (losing it would be a disaster), and bothers the hell out of me (just on principle). My Ontario driver's license would be satisfactory identification to the Chicago police, were I to be pulled over. The local grocery store, on the other hand, fancies themselves a branch of the Department of Homeland Security. As if a grocery clerk is any more expert on Canadian passports than they are on Ontario driver's licenses. If I wasn't afraid of running afoul of a number of laws, I'd have a bogus passport done up just to prove a point. I suppose I could just as easily make my point by asking the cashier what colour my passport should be, and what should be on the cover, but they don't get paid enough to deal with my crap.

A fierce storm blew through the area last night, with fallen branches downing a number of power lines. Crews are out on the street today, cleaning up some of the mess, as branches lay strewn about sidewalks and roadways. Just now, I witnessed a woman walking her dog. She paused momentarily as the golden retriever sniffed and then peed on a thick tree limb that had fallen on to the boulevard. Territory Fail.

That reminds me of something I witnessed not long ago, here in the heart of the good old US of A: Commies. Socialism at its worst.



You see that? That right there is a forestry crew tending to trees along my street. TREES! Those bastards don't even pay taxes, yet here they are getting free health care on MY dime! What's it to me if the oak tree down the street gets an infection? It's not in my yard. It shoulda taken better care of itself. Probably made some bad choices, and started drawing water from the storm drain or something like that. You know drugs get in that water, from when people flush unused medication down the drain? Probably a bunch of junkie trees. Good riddance, I say. I don't need my tax dollars keeping those junkie trees on the dole.

Anyways, my trees have been doing a good job looking after themselves. Yeah, they've been shedding twigs left and right lately, which Amy was good enough to help me get off my roof and out of my eaves-trough, but on the whole, they seem to be pulling their weight, and doing their job of keeping my house shaded and cool. So I'm not worried about one of them getting sick; besides, when did getting sick ever hurt anyone else?



I don't think my complaints are going to get anywhere. I have been thinking of writing to my local Tea Party candidate, to get him or her on-board. This could be a big election issue. I mean, what next? Making sure that people are healthy?

From the title, you might expect this to be a tongue-in-cheek misogynistic entry. So you should read this, keeping in mind my strong affection for irony and absurd paradoxes.

I heard on the radio today that the women in Saudi Arabia were contemplating a new wave of Middle-Eastern rebellion. You see, an ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam sees is as inappropriate for women from getting behind the wheel of an automobile. This is understandably intolerable for these women, especially since gas in Saudi Arabia is less than $1 per gallon, so it must be like being a diabetic in Willy Wonka's factory. However, the women planned to protest by getting behind the wheel and driving around. Given that they are generally going to be unskilled drivers, does anyone else see a problem with putting thousands of Saudi women on the roads at the same time?

That was one helluva week. I'd like to say that it's over, but it's not, as I'll be cooped up in a basement tomorrow, scanning brains. Compared to the rest of my week, however, it'll be a walk in the park. I'm sure you're familiar with weeks like this, especially if you've had the post-secondary school experience of having two final exams and two term papers due the same week. I had no exams that I had to write, personally, but the student I was supervising did. This meant that her hectic schedule became my hectic schedule. To boot, my other student also had a deadline today.

So it was with great relief that I ended my work-day early today, having also submitted changes to the author proof to my manuscript, which, because of the rest of my schedule, I didn't begin until about 4 hours after the 24 hour deadline indicated in an email that I didn't get a chance to read.

Amy was good enough to give me a lift home, and I unlocked the door in eager anticipation of the chance to put my feet up, and perhaps video chat with my beautiful family. I still haven't put my feet up, nor have I called my family, because I had to first write this segue into what I found when I came home: an Aqua Velva Man. Or rather, the smell of one. I suppose it's better than the smell of chicken left to rot on the fridge (I may have blogged that story once). But to smell a department store musk in one's house when: 1) one has been out all day and 2) one doesn't use department store musk is rather strange.

I looked around the house for clues. No new insurance policies on the table. No for sale sign on the lawn. No retired golf buddies sipping scotch in a leather armchair. So that ruled out the three most likely candidate musk sources. I suppose it could have been the lingering scent of one of my house guests from last night, but I don't think so.

So maybe it's just me. I have had olfactory hallucinations before, so maybe I am joining the ranks of those weirdo synaesthetes. Or maybe it's just the week getting to me. Time to go put my feet up.

It's June, making now a good time to look back at the past school year and take stock of what my son has learned. From the Ontario Junior Kindergarten curriculum: not too much, though his penmanship has improved. That, however, could just as easily be attributable to the copying exercises his Lolo sets out for him and his cousins to keep them quiet on those days they don't have school. He has a precocious grasp of some concepts from physical, chemical and biological science as well as numbers (including the rudiments of binary, which I really must do something with), but here again, we can thank They Might Be Giants, rather than the school system.



So what has my son learned in school this year? For the most part, I'm not entirely sure, but I do know this: There is a computer in the classroom. Over the last 9 months, he has aligned himself with the morally ambiguous element in his classroom, and was preoccupied with figuring out his teacher's computer log-in and password, mentioning it almost every time I dropped him off at school.