Hide a Body

I have mentioned before that either I don’t dream often or I don’t remember the dreams that I have. Mostly…

The other morning I woke and remembered a somewhat odd dream. I was with two guys who were good friends, I didn’t know them, but I knew they were good friends. One of them had a problem; he had a body that he needed to get rid of. I like to think of myself as the kind of guy you can rely on to help move a body, not kill someone, that would be wrong but I am and would be more than happy to help my friends get rid of their problems.

That is how I would like to think of myself, but I prefer that the authorities don’t think of me when they find an unexplained body. So, in the dream I helped roll the body in a carpet and we tossed it into the back of a pickup truck. Surprisingly, even in a dream a body isn’t easy to toss into the back of a truck. It is dead weight after all. We got in the cab and drove for about a half hour over bumpy roads. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the body in the back getting bounced around. Insult to injury.

We pulled into a large gravel pit, the idea being that we would drop the body down one of the large and hopefully bottomless holes that were found in dream gravel pits. The guy who was driving said that just across the road there was a great bar that served cheap beer and for some reason there were a lot of women that would go there to dance. The other guy said he could use a drink and they started to walk off leaving the truck in the middle of the gravel pit. I called out to the guys in a shouted whisper that we should get rid of the body first. He looked at me like I was nuts and told me in his best kindergarten teacher voice “That guy isn’t going anywhere…he’s dead!” They left for the bar.

It was at this point that I began to think maybe I should just walk home. No, if I am seen by anyone walking away from where a dead body is sure to be found, someone will remember a lone guy on the road. The trouble is I couldn’t go overland because I didn’t pay attention to which direction we came from. Shit!

I thought about stealing a car from the bar parking lot, but I don’t know how to steal a car and didn’t think that I had the time to Youtube learn how. Well, there was only one thing I could do and that is just what I did. I woke up.

We Stink Part II

I kind of got side tracked in yesterday’s blog. I had been thinking about deodorant for a while and what I had planned to say somehow didn’t get included.

The modern deodorants are antiperspirants which attempt to halt perspiring. I’m guessing that is the intention going by the name. I don’t know if that is even possible as perspiring is a way we humans have of cooling down. I guess if you lived in a perfectly climate controlled environment, did not over exert yourself, didn’t get the meat sweats at Thanksgiving and Christmas and somehow managed to kill any sex drive an antiperspirant would work.

I have heard of deodorant pads and deodorants that would work for multiple days, but I have my doubts. If those things do work, I wouldn’t know about them because my nose wouldn’t be able to detect them in a crowd. Maybe there are sweet smelling people walking among us…maybe.

I have been using a wax based deodorant for close to fifty years. I did experiment with CFCs in the seventies, but I personally put the planet ahead of smelling sweet. Anyways, the wax based deodorant promises to stop odours from perspiration. The only way to accomplish that would be to totally seal the sweat glands under my arms. That is where the wax comes in I suppose. Mind you, if the wax does in fact seal the sweat glands and not allow sweat to pass then wouldn’t it stop moisture going the other way?

The way I figure it, I haven’t really been able to clean my armpits for at least fifty years. They must be pretty grooty by now. I could use turpentine to remove the wax but that would be pretty painful. Maybe I could use a paint scraper and a heat gun. Again, pretty painful. Besides, if I did manage to remove the wax build up the smell would most likely kill me. I have a large nose.

No, I will keep going the way I have for most of my life and let future archaeologists try to figure out why the people from the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty first centuries have wax covered armpits that don’t decay and smell like Ocean surf. 

We Stink

I have read that the main reason human ancestors managed to survive long enough to become the dominant species on this planet is that we stink and taste bad. Sure, we also have opposable thumbs which enable us to fashion and handle tools, a large brain that tells us when it is smarter to run than to fight. Almost always is the correct answer. However, our survival is really due to the horrific smell our bodies can generate.

I suspect that in the distant past when we lived in caves the smell we created would keep most predators at bay. A strategically placed fire would take care of the rest. I don’t know why the smell didn’t keep us from each other thus ending the homo-whateverwewere. We must have managed to ignore the defensive smell we created. It could be that a small cave filled with aromatic wood smoke helped somewhat.

Fast forward a few hundred thousand years and we would be in the beginnings of civilization. Instead of just a few smelly individuals squatting around a fire, fighting over the last bone, there were tens of thousands of us working our asses off building a pyramid for some king that wasn’t smart enough to have someone taste test his food. Writing may have been invented, but there was still the vestigial body odour from our ancient past. Luckily for us we had devised a method of making aromatic oils which we would slather on our bodies to mask our smell. This had an added benefit of cleaning our bodies when we scraped the oil off every now and then. Our skin was soft to the touch as well.

Thru the centuries since then we have continued to mask our stink with oils pressed from flowers, trees and some minerals. There has never been a perfect system, just ride any subway or bus at the end of a long, hot workday and you will know exactly what I am talking about.

A few decades ago, the deodorant of choice was spray on. It was effective, convenient, and easy to use and it contained Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which nearly destroyed the ozone layer of the planet. Our bad.

Just recently, I had to buy a new stick of deodorant which is always difficult for me. When I am in the deodorant aisle, it is like a stoner with the munchies standing in front of a candy counter. I just can’t make a decision. I would like to be one of those guys that smell wonderful all of the time. I fear that I am one of those guys that just smell old. I have come to the point in my life where I am really just happy if I don’t smell of socks, urine or shit. Instead of picking a new scent, I stuck with the “Ocean Surf” that I have used for a long time. The name is misleading; it doesn’t smell like the ocean, no dead fish or rotting seaweed, but a faint, fresh smell.

I have the feeling that “Ocean Surf” has the same odour as my distant ancestors in the jungle did, since I have never been attacked by lions, bears or wild boars.

Five Months Away

I was born at Saint Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, Ontario Canada.

Well, that is what I was told, I was too little at the time to remember and my parents were for the most part truthful. The hospital did burn to the ground a few years after I was born so there are no records to prove it one way or the other. It doesn’t matter to the blog, but at times I think I could be an offshoot (bastard) of some Eastern European royal family. According to my wife the “bastard” part is certainly correct.

I grew up in Southern Ontario and spent most of my adult life delivering mail and living in Alberta. Suffice to say I am no stranger to cold weather.

As a child I spent hours and hours shovelling the longest driveway in the history of driveways only to have the plough dump more snow at the end shortly after I finished.. Well, it seemed that way to me. My brother and the neighbour kids and I would spend a good portion of that time making forts, snow angels and having snowball fights. I should say that since I was one of the younger kids I was on the receiving end of most of the snowballs. It was all lots of fun though.

I fell into a job at the Post Office that required me to be outside for the better part of my workday. Most of the year it was a fantastic job, but during the winter I learned how to stay warm in spite of the weather. In many ways I was and am very proud of earning a living while it was too cold for most others to even venture outside unless they had to. I was involved in scouting and took the kids on a few winter camps. I can’t say that I enjoyed tenting in the snow, but it was an experience.

So, I am able to weather the weather.

Having stated my qualifications, I want to register a complaint with Mother Nature.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?

It is just the beginning of November; we should have cold nights and brisk days. I should have time to rake up those last few leaves that have blown into the hedges. I should have a nice sunny day to put the Christmas lights up. I should be able to talk to the neighbours in the alley for another month or two. I was planning on doing a few November bike rides. It would be cool, but refreshing. I had plans for November!

Instead I get winter! Today I woke up to about 15 CMs of snow and a -12°C with the wind chill of -23°C. There is no respite for at least seven days and the weatherman said that the snow will be on the ground until the spring. Well, unless we get a few fantastic Chinook winds. The best I can hope for is that when I put up the Christmas lights I will be used to cold weather and -10 without a wind will seem balmy. No bike rides; no talking to neighbours; no raking last minute leaves and no slowly getting acclimated to cooler weather slowly.

Ah well, spring is only five months away. Sigh...

Sugar Emergency

Day after Hallowe’en.

 

There is a lot less candy in the house than there was yesterday afternoon. Is it wrong for a senior citizen to begrudge those kids that came and took his candy? I will admit that some of them were pretty cute and deserved a fistful of candy. There were others that came to the door without discernable costumes and sullen expressions on their faces like they shouldn’t have to lower themselves to knocking on doors for candy. Little bastards!

Thankfully the weather wasn’t optimal for going door to door and it was a school night so I retained a good amount of candy for myself. Louise might want some of the candy, but she gets half of everything no matter what.

 

I can remember the planning that went into Hallowe’en. My buds and I would plan out the route that would net us the maximum amount of candy and feed back to home so that we could unload candy. Too much weight slowed us down. We had to avoid the areas that our older brothers took otherwise there might be a shakedown for the best candy in our bags. Lucky for me I had different favourite candy than my brother had. We tried to avoid the houses that gave apples or anything even remotely healthy.

Every now and then you would meet a school friend and they would pass on useful tidbits of info like “…the lady at 95 Dewey Drive was giving out full sized candy bars!” or “The witch that lives by the creek is giving out rice crispy squares.” That information would make us skip many houses to get in on the goods before they ran out. We didn’t live close to any apartment buildings, but the kids who did made out like bandits. I guess apartment buildings today are crap because you can’t get in to go door to door.

 

When the collecting was done I spread the candy on the bed and marvelled at the wonder before my eyes. I would have candy for a month! Granted that by the end of the month it would be the candy I didn’t really like that much, but it was still candy. I suspect that mom and dad would raid my candy stash and I am pretty sure my brother did too, but hey, there was plenty to go around.

I don’t know if that candy was the cause of the thousands and thousands of dollars of dental work I have had over the years, but it certainly contributed. I now have more metal in my mouth than enamel and my dentist has a holiday home in B.C. with a large boat. She also takes a Hawaiian vacation every year. I bet she gives out that crappy sugarless candy on Hallowe’en.

 

Well, I guess I have to put the decorations away in their box for another year and of course hide a good portion of the left over candy from Louise. Just in case there is a sugar emergency of course.

Dogs Don’t Suck, They Lick

Dogs don’t suck, they lick.

Now, I know that some will have looked at the heading and become intrigued, thinking that they were about to read about bestiality. Not today Brian, sorry.

No, I have actually been thinking about the way that dogs drink and why they drink the way they do. I read an article a while back that described and illustrated just how dogs managed to get water. It seems that the tongue of a dog will curl into a cup shape and pull the water into its mouth that way. I know that Buster drinks better when his bowl is full of cool, clean water. He has gotten used to drinking from a half full bowl that has too much dog spit in it. I forget sometimes. Sue me!

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63Ch2pNkZwU

Buster isn’t one of those dogs that will take a drink from convenient puddles while we are walking, preferring to wait until we get home. I have never tested him to see if he would drink from a dirty puddle by keeping him away from home for an extended period. I would like to, but I think that would border on animal cruelty rather than scientific curiosity. No sense going to court for no good reason.

You would think that since evolution gave dogs more or less pointy faces they would have developed the ability to suck. I mean, they don’t have thumbs so they are unable to grab a cup like we do. Dogs are colour blind and they have an incredible sense of smell which would be unpleasant more often than beneficial. I thought that God would have given the dog people a break with the sucking thing.

 

My buddy has a dog that is getting very old and has built a stand for her food and drink so that she doesn’t have to bend over for nourishment. I guess she sometimes chokes a little while eating. I’d choke too if I had to eat dog food, but that is a taste issue. The way I look at it is that when Buster starts making some money then he can buy whatever fancy ass food he wants. Until that time, he gets to eat the fifteen kilo bag of hard, smelly, nutritious bits of simulated liver and chicken. Mmmmmm….

 

Unlike Buster, I have quenched my thirst in a dirty, brackish pool of tepid water. Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t have a dog’s sense of smell. I wouldn’t mind having a tongue that would curl into a cup though.

Bummer Blog

Eight days ago it was the 20^th anniversary of my father passing away.

From what I understand, he had been shovelling snow and clearing snow off of some bushes when he died. The end of October is pretty early for a heavy snow dump, but you are never going to win an argument with Mother Nature. Mean bitch! Dad was a diabetic and it turned out that a blood clot stopped his heart. I blame Mother Nature and with snow on the horizon I plan on being very careful.

I have been careful for the past twenty years and as each year passes I become just a little more cautious when I have to clear the sidewalks. I have been trying to win a lottery so that I could fly away from the snow, but so far Lady Luck hasn’t favoured me. There is a good chance that Lady Luck and Mother Nature are sisters. Evil witches tend to hang out together.

I remember that we were having unseasonably warm weather in Calgary on that day. I am sure that I was planning on calling dad and bragging about how much nicer our Alberta weather was than what they had in Ontario. We don’t often have nicer weather so I took every opportunity to rub it in. Dad was too nice to point out that our weather was shitty for the most part. My boss came out to my walk and told me to go home and that he would see that the rest of the mail got delivered. He wouldn’t tell me why, he just told me to go home.

Arwen took the call from Mom. She was too young, but she was also the only one at home. I still feel bad that she had to handle that particular situation. Maybe she is the stronger for it, but I am sure she would rather I took the call. Me too.

I remember being at Mom and Dad’s place for the funeral and I kept finding myself in his tiny workroom in the basement. That was where he kept the things that meant something to him. I have a room like that too. When I die, the kids may find themselves down in my tiny, crowded workroom and if they look around they will see all of the things that keep a part of my being. Most of the stuff is and will be just crap to anyone but me. I hope they take the time to look at the stuff down there and touch those things that I touched. I hope that the grandkids find something in that workroom that they can take for themselves as a memory of “Poppa”.

No matter what happens, the memories will be with them at all times, the good ones and the bad ones. I feel closest to dad when I am in Home Depot just walking up and down the aisles looking at ‘possibilities’. I did that with dad a few times, not as many as I would have liked, but enough times to be permanently imprinted on my mind.

This is kind of a bummer blog for the first one in a long time, but it is what I am thinking of tonight. Hopefully they will get more upbeat in the future.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

I suppose that I should write something today since it is my 65^th birthday.

I have never been very concerned about the passing of time and this birthday isn’t any different than the many that came before. I am officially a senior citizen now in the eyes of the government and any business that have special prices for senior citizens. I imagine that there will be fewer and fewer of those deals since all of us baby boomers will be taking advantage of the deals and having an effect on the bottom line.

We had the family over for a celebratory birthday meal that ended with cake, ice cream and jello. We have to have a variety because Hurricane, Tornado and Tsunami (the grandkids) can be unpredictably picky eaters. Imagine not wanting cake and ice cream in favour of plain Cherry Jello!

I received gifts, but when you get up in years you have pretty much everything that you want and need, so the gifts tend to be gift cards. Always appreciated, but unnecessary. The things that I really want are much too pricy for anyone to buy for me and to tell the truth I am not sure I would want them if I did get them. The attainment of one’s goals is rarely a good thing because it leaves you goalless.

Anyways, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to me and with any luck I will be around next year and for years to come.

Off To Save a Life

Today Louise and I will once again donate blood. It is the one thing that I do which insures that I will actually save someone’s life.

Sure I can simply stop talking and whoever I am with will think they have been saved from a fate worse than death, but that isn’t real death. Well…probably not.

The blood donor clinic has moved from its old location to new digs right downtown. I have been assured that there will be ample free underground parking available. Normally I wouldn’t believe it, but the nurse telling me was pretty pissed off because the employees didn’t get free parking so the move to them is like taking a pay cut. Who doesn’t like to take a pay cut? My worry is that the good nurses (the ones that can find a vein) will look for work elsewhere and I will literally get stuck with a cross eyed nurse with Parkinson’s. I will let you know how things work out today.

So, since it is a relatively early appointment and I don’t like to be late for anything, we have to get up around 7:30AM. I need to wash and dress, eat and have some drink with caffeine in it and give myself time enough to shake the cobwebs from my mind. There is also an online questionnaire that needs filling out and printing so that it needn’t be filled out at the clinic. I liked filling it out at the clinic, but I suppose I shouldn’t stand in the way of progress. The Q-Pass can somehow be put on my smart phone, but my smart phone has a less than smart owner so I need to print off the pass. It all takes time.

I should have set the alarm and I did mean to. However I didn’t.

I put on a jesters hat and went to tuck the kids in for their afternoon nap. Maegan and Brendan were still in cribs and Arwen had graduated to the big girl bed. They all smiled a sleepy smile at silly daddy and their eyes closed while they entered dreamland. I should have started to clean up the house or at least get prepared for the onslaught when the kids woke up, but instead I lay down for a short rest. I could hear water dripping or was it the dog’s breathing? I tried to ignore it, but the rhythmic sound continued. Try as I might, no matter how tight I shut my eyes the sound continued. I got out of bed and when I got to the hallway there was a large mouse. I had never seen a mouse that was three feet long before and usually mice tend to run away from humans, but this one seemed angry and bent on revenge. I had killed a few mice in recent days, but they broke the unspoken agreement where they live outside and I live inside. The big mouse didn’t agree. I explained that we had to go and give blood today and that the family would be over tomorrow, so today wasn’t a good day for it to kill us since when we were found dead or missing an exterminator would be called. Thankfully, mice aren’t very smart, even very large mice.

 

I have no idea what the dream means, but it did wake me up plenty early. If tonight I hear water dripping or the dog breathing I will send Louise out to check on it.

Well, I’m off to save a life.

The Rest of Your Lives

Today is back to school day 2017.

The kids are all excited and dressed in new “back to school” duds which will hopefully tell all their friends how much cooler they are this year than they were last year. Some kids won’t have new clothing because their parents don’t understand the need or they simply don’t have money to spend on new clothes when the old clothes are perfectly serviceable. They all will have new binders, duo-tangs, pencils, pens, rulers, calculators/computers and hopefully a new attitude to learning. Exciting times!

The parents are relieved to have the kids back in school. They don’t have a need to find things to entertain them and keep them occupied for weeks on end. No more camps to send them to and no more vacation days to spend because the day home operator wants a vacation week or two. Of course the parents have to come up with the school fees and pay for all of those items I mentioned in the first paragraph. I hated the fees when my kids were going to school. No, I didn’t mind the fees, what bothered me most was getting nickel and dimed every week for something else all through the school year.

On the whole, back to school is a good thing for all involved.

Today when Buster and I were on our walk, I met a woman and her young son coming into our street. I thought that she was returning home with the little one after dropping an older child off at school. Turns out that she home schools her child and was coming back from a walk and about to hit the books. I wished her well and Buster and I went on our way.

Buster mentioned that he wasn’t sure about the effectiveness of home schooling. He had a couple of good points, wondering if the parents had to have any minimum education standard or aptitude for teaching. I know that I couldn’t teach my kids how to cut the lawn, never mind new math. We decided that the province probably has all of this under control and carried on trying to find the perfect spot to drop a load.

I wondered if some parents decide to home school because in the short term it is less expensive than going to regular school. I have no idea what the actual cost is or what hoops you have to jump thru to teach your own kids the skills they need to become productive members of society, but I am sure it isn’t easy.

I suspect that for most parents who home school want control of curriculum and perhaps to be able to direct their kids away from or towards some religious belief. I know of a mom who decided to home school to keep her kids from being picked on by the other kids at the school. It certainly solved the immediate problem, but I have often wondered what the long term effects have been. I have met the kids over the years and they seem to be as normal and well adjusted as kids that went to school. I guess by that I mean they haven’t taken a high powered rifle into a tower at some university and started killing random strangers.

They are still young...ish.

Anyways, to all of those kids and parents out there, I hope you have a good year and learn things that will stay with you for the rest of your lives.

Try To Make Someone Smile

I am not what anyone would call a religious man. Sure there have been times in my life when prayer seemed like a good idea and times when I would gladly have made a deal with the devil.

For a number of years I went to church on a regular basis, listened to the sermons and afterwards I would mill around talking to the other parishioners drinking that horrible church coffee. I did some odd jobs around the church and was in a Christmas play once. That didn’t mean that I believed any stronger then than I had in the past, I just needed the sense of belonging at that time in my life. I tell myself that I wanted the kids to have a solid knowledge base so that when they decided that religion was bunk they knew what they were talking about.

Well, as much as anyone can “know” about religion.

Sometimes I envy those who have a very strong belief in a loving God and rewards in the afterlife. When I was working as a mailman, I wore a uniform to work and every day I knew just what clothes I had to put on. Uniforms take that early morning decision making of what to wear away from you and protect you from the wagging tongues about your choice in fashion. It would be wonderful to wake up every morning and KNOW that you had a place reserved for you at the right or left hand of God.

Religion is based on belief and belief is not an iron clad certainty so no one can be sure that they will end up in whatever version of heaven they happen to believe in.

My faith seems to alter almost every time I really start to think about it. Not a lot you understand but enough to keep it fluid. The basic precepts remain the same, be nice to people if I can, try to do the right thing in any given situation, do my best to leave this world just a little better than it was when I arrived. The last one is tough because it is difficult to make even a tiny change. I think I will have to hope that the people I have chosen to surround myself with during my life will have learned something from me that improves them and their world. It is likely that what they learn is what not to do, but that works for me.

I hope that when you read this you are having a good day and try to make someone smile if you can.

Easy

Generally speaking, if something is “easy”, that something just isn’t worth doing. Well, that seems to be the general consensus in our society. If you work hard for a long period of time with multiple failures along the way, then you have somehow succeeded. You’re worn out and near death, but yea…success.

There are of course those that manage to succeed the easy way. I guess the easiest way to succeed is to be born into a wealthy, hard working family who have generations of struggle and success behind them. Then, you can be the ne’re do well that just wants to enjoy the fruits of that labour. Of course this is all speculation because I don’t have first hand experience at being wealthy. There was a chance I could have been born wealthy. I understand that my great or great, great grandfather came from a well to do family that owned a lot of real estate in downtown Toronto. It is possible that one of those great, greats was the one who decided to screw work and start to piss the family fortune away. I guess I was just too little, too late.

 

I have a feeling that the Puritan work ethic was developed to keep the masses in line. I remember reading that societies based on hunting and gathering would work about four to six hours a day. I am assuming that would be the norm if there was an abundance of food to gather and animals to hunt. When we were in Hawaii we found that when the first Europeans arrived at the islands there was a population of about a million people and they were totally self sufficient. Today with all of our labour saving machines and improved farming and production techniques, there are 1.5 million or so people and 95% of food and goods are imported. From talking to the people, they work much longer than four to six hours a day.

 

I don’t know if those figures are accurate, but it seems that in our current political climate we are able to create facts and figures to suit any situation.

 

Anyways, all I really wanted to say is that it is really very easy not to write a daily blog. My life is pretty much the same except that I have a little more time each day to put to more productive uses. Nah, just kidding, I am watching more TV and reading fluffy, mindless drivel. Strangely, I feel that I am letting myself down. I know that no one else needs to have this blog, but I think I do. If nothing else, at the end of a lazy day I can say that I have at least written something. Sometimes I am even proud of what I have written, not often, but sometimes.

Hopefully I will be able to find the time to be a little more productive in the future.

A Long Day

I am sitting in the backyard and it is 9:30 PM. It is still light, still warm and the neighbour kids are still playing instead of sleeping. Everything is good.

Normally, it is far too cool for me to sit outside at this time of night, but we are smack dab in the middle of a heat wave that shows no sign of letting up. It isn’t a heat wave like my friends in Ontario endure from time to time. It will still cool down to 13 or 14℃ and be quite nice for sleeping. Well, until that fucking crow starts up at 5:30AM. It could be a fucking magpie, but whatever it may be…if I ever get my fingers around its neck…

According to the weather network there is really no end in sight. I put off installing the air conditioners in the kitchen and bedroom because last year we only had one day over 30℃ and just not worth the effort to install them. This year is going to be a warm one though. I put them in the other day and am still experiencing the effects of strained muscles. I think this will be the last year I don’t ask for help from Brendan. It won’t be any easier, but shared misery is much preferable to just plain old misery. It will be six or seven years before I trust Hurricane and Tornado to help.

Let’s see, what else you don’t care about. The garden is growing more or less. Some of the plants are more and some are less. The roses are doing really well and I treat them badly. Not intentionally, but just thru ignorance. The tomatoes are doing Calgary well; they are growing and will produce tomatoes. I don’t know if they will ripen on the vine, but I live to dream. My potatoes are doing well but I have no idea what I did to help them along. Probably stay away from them is the key. The onions are growing as are the carrots. The carrots aren’t doing as well as they should and I have had several stern talks with them to no avail. We planted bell peppers this year and they haven’t died yet which I think we can all agree is a good thing.

If the weather stays warm, the crop should be a bumper one. By a bumper crop I mean that the garden produced more food than I could have bought with the money I spent on the plants. No, I don’t get a lot of satisfaction from watching my garden grow, that is what Mary, Mary does. The food tastes better I guess but I am not and never have been a foodie. Just boil it, toss it on a plate, salt, pepper and butter will make anything taste good.

Well, I have to go and psyche myself up for tomorrow; it is going to be a long day.

A Guy Has To Make a Living

I have been writing a blog now for a number of years and for the most part it has been an interesting way to spend part of my day. Sometimes it is just an onerous task, but for the most part no one gets to read that because I just don’t write. That works for everyone.

I don’t have a large following or what anyone would call a following at all. Just a few curious people that check it out from time to time. They are like people rubber-necking while driving past an accident scene. They have interest, but not the morbid curiosity that would cause them to get police scanners so they wouldn’t miss any of the gory details. My followers would never go out of their way to read this drivel and quite frankly, I don’t blame them.

On the particular blog platform that I use, I am able to change the way my page looks, control who reads it, read any comments that anyone might make and check the statistics of who is reading and where they are. I can see what their web browser is, where it is located and how they got to my blog. I don’t mess with the look of the blog and there are rarely any comments, a few from friends agreeing with my opinion, but not so strangely, few of those. I do get some cryptic comments every now and then and I am convinced that spies use random blog comment boards to pass secret messages to each other. The bulk of the comments seem to be from non English speaking countries. I suspect that reading and commenting on a blog is part of an English as a second language course. The words are correctly spelled and probably every sentence has a verb, noun, adverb and dangling participle needed for correct structure. They just seem odd and really quite meaningless. I like to think that those odd comments are high praise in whatever language they are most comfortable with.

More often than not lately, when I check the site that led some poor, unsuspecting soul to my blog I find that I am at a Slovakian bearing companies web site. Slovaks need bearings too and probably more than most. I wonder just how bored the Slovak employee had to be at work to struggle through reading my blog. I have to assume that English wouldn’t be a first language and probably not even a second one. French or Bulgarian would be much more useful in the Slovak bearing industry.

I get my fair share of comments from European or Russian porn sites. I assume they are porn sites from the pics of naked women, but they could be models in the Russian version of Victoria’s Secret. I don’t read Russian so I am really in the dark. I suppose it could be a catalogue to find an Eastern European woman that is looking for a North American husband. Sorry ladies...I’m taken! Get back to me when and if Louise ever comes to her senses. You would think that I would enjoy getting linked to from porn sites. I’d rather that bored office worker in Bratislava struggle through my site.

Maybe the porn sites and bearing manufacturing places are getting me down. You know, I just had a thought. What if the same guy in Bratislava is running the porn site and teaching ESL on the side at night. Anything is possible…

A guy has to make a living.

Buster Can Be a Real Dick Sometimes

If anyone has read this blog for any amount of time, they would have read about my dog Buster. Buster and I go for walks together where he gets to smell all sorts of interesting things, sometimes if I am not watching he will skarf down something dead and or rotting by the sidewalk. We both manage to get some exercise and I think he likes it when I have to pick up his shit on a corner of a busy intersection. He can be a real disk sometimes.

The rest of his day is spent either sleeping or sitting at the window keeping an eye on the neighbourhood. He missed the guy across the street getting all of his tools stolen from his garage, so I question just what he is looking at. There is this high school girl that he just hates and will bark at until she is well out of sight. He also barks at other dogs, birds (he hates birds), some cars that drive by and the guy that drops off the flyers once a week. Oh, and he barks at the wind, ghosts, hallucinations, airplanes, his reflection in the window, odd shaped clouds, time travellers and me if I appear to have dozed off on the couch. He can be a real dick sometimes.

Last fall I replace the old screen door that had a doggy door with one that actually kept the winter wind out. This impacted on Busters ability to run outside so that he could bark when the urge came upon him. The house was much warmer this year and the heating bill was a trifle less than previous years which made me happy. Buster not so much. However, the little jerk continued to bark and I would have to get up and open the door so that he could bark when he really ...really....really needed to. Thankfully we have a PVR so that I could pause my show no matter what mind numbing TV trash I happened to be watching.

Well, this spring we took a vacation for a couple of weeks and there was a wedding to go to which caused Buster to be pawned off on very nice in-laws with an acreage. He loved it up there, running free like his wolf ancestors had. The wolf ancestors probably didn’t have a bowl of food waiting for them when they finished running and when they slept it probably wasn’t on a king sized mattress. Even so, I am sure he missed me.

While we were away, I happened to see a wooden screen door at Norms Deli in Bowmanville. Great perogies, cabbage rolls and Kielbasa. The door was the kind that I remembered from my childhood in cottage country. It was basically just a frame with a very large screen area to let in the maximum breeze and minimum flies. I looked at the door and thought to myself that it wouldn’t take a lot of skill or materials to make a door like that with a doggy door. I could have fun making something I don’t really need and assuage my dog guilt at the same time.

So, that is what I have been doing for the past couple of days. I brought my lack of skills and left over materials into the garage and began constructing. Long story short, I am pretty much finished with the door.

Hopefully tomorrow will see me begin some other useless project. I just have to install a push bar to keep hands from going thru the screen and a little bit of trim work. It isn’t a work of art, but I feel good that I actually built a door and it works!

Buster isn’t as impressed as I thought he would be. It seems that he enjoyed making me get up and letting him outside. He is reluctantly starting to use the door, but it is under protest..

Buster can be a real dick sometimes.