MONDAY…
--- Day one of my new life in CNI. Not a bad first day of learning the ropes. I have lunch with Kiyomi at HQ and spend most of the day working with Linda Jackson (she’s a fine teacher).
TUESDAY…
--- Work is alright. I’m slowly getting familiar with things in CNI again but by 1:30, my head is swimming with too much info.
WEDNESDAY…
--- Work is getting a bit better the more I practice the new deeds. Rush home for the hockey game. Not surprising Canada lost to Russia… they just didn’t seem to click all tournament.
THURSDAY…
--- Work is getting easier each day as I keep learning the new stuff.
--- Lunch across with Melissa.
--- A cold is trying to get me once again… this is four for the year.
FRIDAY…
--- Work is alright and I take it easy at home afterwards in an attempt to ditch this cold before it starts.
--- Canada gets gold in curling with the Newfoundland team doing it. Half day of school back home is kind of neat.
--- My first earthquake! Tonight, at 8:30, we had a 4.5 magnitude earthquake. It was like the people who live downstairs had a dump truck drive through their kitchen. Kind of loud and a bit of a shake… and it went for about 20 seconds.
SATURDAY…
--- Wake early due to a stuffed up nose and I work on my blog a little. Also, St. John’s is in blizzard time! 30 cm of snow in 6 hours! In a way, I miss that kind of weather… it makes things cozy inside. Ottawa is really a wimpy city when it comes to snowfall.
--- Feeling a bit more energetic by the end of the day… the rest helps the cold for sure.
--- I’m loving the new Newfoundland commercials on TV. They really have made my home into an amazing place. Even I want to go explore Newfoundland! And the latest commercial saying “It’s about as far from Disneyland as you can possibly get” just says it all. If you haven’t seen the ads, go to http://www.newfoundlandandlabradortourism.com/sights_and_sounds.zap and click on the images in ‘Beauty on Film’
Beautiful Blizzards
So the weekend brought bad weather to two places. Saturday wasn’t all that nice here. It was cold and breezy and we had five or so centimetres of snow. St. John’s, on the other hand, had a blizzard with some sixty centimetres and drifts that reach the shoulders of men. And in it all, I have to admit that I wish I was home for the blizzard.
Blizzards have a way of bringing out some of the best things in life. I know that not everyone sees it this way. Many would feel I’m crazy to say it. But I’ve been in many blizzards and there’s something I’ve loved about all of them.
A blizzard makes you feel cozy. I remember days lying in bed and waking up to the sound of windows rattling. You climb out and open the blind and sometimes you see the world outside and sometimes you don’t. There are those times when the wind has blown a sheet of snow against the window and you’re left having to shuffle to another window, at the other end of the house, to see what’s going on out there.
And seeing nothing but sheets of white and ghostly shadows of homes and trees that appear and disappear with gusts and spells of the wind is… well… there’s something about it that’s beautiful.
And you know that nothing of the busy world will get done that day. We all go around in a panic trying to get to our next appointment on time and phoning on our cell to set up the appointment that’ll come after this one… and we somehow trick ourselves into believing that this is the way life is meant to be. That people were put on the earth to rush around and talk into tumour inducing, picture taking telephones about how we’ll be there in five minutes.
But when you look out your window at the blizzard outside, it shows you that the world doesn’t much care about our appointments. We aren’t number one in our global environment. Mother Nature puts us in our place and tells us to just sit back and deal with it.
I’ve been in storms in my house of downtown St. John’s and bundled up early in the day, shovelling out the car, and calling my parents to let them know that I’m on my way so they can start clearing a space in the driveway. These are the times when you don’t feel like spending the time alone and you make one trip for the day, driving across windswept and deserted streets to get to your family.
Soup will be put on and a fire will make the living room the centre of our world. Games may be played or books read and one will call others over to a window to show how you can’t even see twenty feet out from the sanctuary of home now… or how “I think it’s dying down, I can see the ball field out back!”
It’s a time warp. Modern technology gets put on the back burner… there’s just no room for it with the soup on… and for a day in the 21st century, it feels like a return to the 19th.
Of course, this is trickery of the mind. Television remains downstairs and indoor plumbing spoils us… but you do get a hint of past generations and on a day when nothing can get done, TV takes on a much reduced role.
One such time has occurred to me in Ottawa. The blackout of the summer of 2003 had me sitting at my uncle and aunt’s dining room table, reading Moby Dick by candlelight. It is my best and favourite memory of that event. My second most vivid memory of that blackout is the fact that Tim Horton’s doughnut and coffee shops remained open when the city was on a bare bones power supply. Bad coffee in a paper cup was seen as essential in the running of the city and I shake my head at the silliness of modern society.
Back to blizzards of home though, a small power outage would be an added treat. You wouldn’t want to lose electricity for too long… food in the freezer would thaw and go bad. But three or four hours of no power on a snowy night just adds to the time warp.
The living room fire is the only place to be. Candles and oil lamps sit on the tables ready to light the way for a bathroom trip. And wandering from the lit section of the house to the darkness, with nothing but that candle to guide the way, makes the oh so familiar halls and rooms museum like.
And you look out into the darkness of the neighbourhood and see the orange glow of fireplaces and lamps in select windows of neighbour’s homes.
When electricity comes back on, it always seems like a bit of a letdown to me. It’s an awakening from a dream. You’re living in this fantasy world… in this history lesson… and suddenly appliances beep and furnaces cut in and forgotten lights spark back into action. You’re grabbed and pulled back into the modern world where trashy TV shows keep us company and paper cup coffee calls us out of the house.
So these are the things I’ve thought about this weekend… with me watching wispy snow barely coating the asphalt outside my front door. And family and friends sitting at home, taking turns going to windows and describing the situation… and phoning to tell of snow drifts that sound primed for childhood tunnelling and fort building. And I wish I were in the city that has been cut off, just for a little while, from our modern century.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Downtown St. John's
Several landmark buildings of St. John's can be seen here. The Basilica towers are at the top of the hill on the right... the massive and annoying 'Rooms' is directly left of it. The old train station is seen near the bottom of the picture. The Delta Hotel, Mile One Stadium and the Convention Centre are also easily seen in the centre of the image.
St. John's, the west end of downtown
A view of St. John's from the Shea Heights. This was taken when I was home last Christmas.
Friday, February 24, 2006
Making It Up As I Go Along #206
MONDAY…
--- I’m a klutz today. I almost stamp a form at work, not with my date stamper… but my water bottle. Going to squash with Atlas in the evening… I forget my racquet… so we have to go back to my place before heading to the courts… then I leave my racquet in the car and take out my ice brush… having to unlock the door again for the switch, I drop my hat on the ground and almost don’t see it there. And I cap it off by washing my hands in the powder room, only to have the soap fly out of my hand and drop into the toilet. Needless to say, new soap is needed tomorrow… or perhaps visitors should not wash up in my powder room, just in case.
TUESDAY…
--- Valentine’s Day and I work the evening shift for Chris Read so he can get some lovin’. It’s alright though. A fine enough night in AFIS… Chinese food with Laura and Melissa (plus others) for supper and a couple of chats with Laura at break times. We don’t catch up enough anymore… opposite shifts is a pain… with some people.
WEDNESDAY…
--- Longish day doing Better Masters for the first time in about three or four months. Lunch across with Carole… Jonathan and a friend of his sat with us too.
--- I’m about to go through work changes. Starting Monday I’m back to my original place… CNI. I’ll begin learning how to be one of the two team supervisors there. It should be alright with many more responsibilities. So I’ll only have been on my new QC team for about three weeks.
THURSDAY…
--- US torture in pictures is a peculiar thing to hear talked about. Some American military do horrible things to some prisoners and people like Bill O’Reilly throw the blame on the media who shows the pictures… saying that this will endanger American troops. Blame the people doing the deeds… not those reporting it.
--- Work is alright. I eat lunch in the office with Shannon and Sue and it’s good.
--- Talk to dad for over an hour on the phone tonight.
FRIDAY…
--- Windy and not overly nice day outside. But still I go across to the office cafeteria twice. Once for breakfast with my team… the second time for lunch with Sue and Shannon and Dave.
--- Meetings in the afternoon and an evening home with movies. And with that, I’m done in QC and AFIS for a while. Monday will be the start of my training as a CNI Supervisor… back to my beginnings.
SATURDAY…
--- Cold out so I stay in all day. Sleep much of it away… watch some Olympics and some movies as well. Crash is a really good movie.
Smooth Sailing Mondays
There are days when things just don’t work out. Easy tasks become as challenging as mountain climbing and hard tasks aren’t even attempted, if you’re smart.
Monday is such a day.
It starts at work and, although it doesn’t really seem like much there, the day snowballs into one of comical uselessness.
Sitting at my desk in QC, I’m handling civil fingerprint forms. At the end of each form, the standard practice is to stamp it with a stamp that displays the date and your identification number.
As I work, I develop a flow like that of an assembly line. Do the proper modifications and follow it with the “chunk” of my stamp. It’s almost like the monotone drum that paces the rowers in those Viking movies… “Stroke”… boom… “Stroke”… boom… It’s basically the same thing.
So I follow my strokes with my ‘chunk’ and talk quietly with my desk neighbour, Sue. All goes well until I stop myself just prior to the downward stroke of my stamp. For I look up at my hand, poised over the form like a knife wielding maniac about to do away with my victim… and instead of my stamper… I peer upon the less imposing image of… my water bottle.
I look over at Sue and begin to laugh… the ‘thud’ of the water weighted plastic would have brought many eyes my way… total embarrassment is narrowly avoided.
The rest of the day at work goes without incident. I leave for the day agreeing to pick up a squash ball before I drop by to get Atlas for our Monday night game.
At my first stop, no squash balls can be found. There are tonnes of hockey skates and some soccer balls, but squash is a no go and I’m suddenly running behind.
Onwards to Atlas’s house I drive. He’s about ten minutes away from my house but he’s on the way to the squash courts, so getting him along the way is normally not a problem. I think about our lack of a ball… and decide on a place we can stop at that should have balls and won’t be too far off route.
I pull up in front of his place and am about to climb out of the car to get him when I notice his shadow in the window… he’s on his way.
It’s at this point in time that a sudden fear envelops me. I sit in the car and shake my head. Not only am I here without a ball… my racquet remains nicely tucked away in the front closet.
Atlas climbs in the car and I confess my stupidity. Suddenly, my house is very out of the way for our trip to the game… but we make that drive anyway.
With racquet finally onboard, we begin the trip to squash all over again. This time, Atlas points out where we should be able to get the ball, and sure enough… there they are! From here it’s straight to the courts.
A full lap of the parking lot gives us a good spot. Finally some luck is on my side as I watch the other car backing out.
We rush out of the car. We’re ten minutes late, thanks to my racquet and ball disaster, and Jonathan may be at the courts waiting for us. I reach into the back seat… grab my bag and racquet in one mighty sweep of my arm… and lock the doors as we hustle our way out of the parking lot.
I take a few steps away from my car and look down at my arms… gloves… hat… bag… ice scraper… ICE SCRAPER!?!?! Where’s my racquet?? Once again, the racquet is missing.
I return to the car, unlock the doors, and toss the scraper back to the floor where it belongs. There sits my racquet… quiet and shy as it tries to hide in the darkness of the car. I grab it, lock the doors again, and hustle to catch up to Atlas. Another arm check… bag… gloves… racquet… hat… hat… Where’s my bloody hat!??!?
Again I turn and head back to the car… and there in the shadows of the parking lot lays my poor wool hat. I scoop it up and shuffle on to find Atlas.
As I catch up to Atlas from behind, Jonathan meets him from the front. He had been at squash waiting… and waiting… but nobody else showed. He decides to go for a workout instead so it’ll just be Atlas and me on this night.
Seeing how I’ve been today, it’s surprising that I actually make it through squash without much incident. I stink on a few serves and returns of serve… but overall, it’s alright. I don’t drop my shorts by accident… I don’t have my racquet slipping out of my hand and shattering against a wall. I don’t crash head first into the wall as I run for a ball. It all goes fine.
So I figure the adventure is over. We leave for the night after an hour of play and I drop Atlas off without incident. I continue on home with a touch of hunger so I decide I’ll get a snack before having a shower.
With some of the tape having rubbed off my racquet and onto my hand, I decide to at least wash my hands before handling food. I go on into the downstairs bathroom and start sudsing up my hands. I rush through lathering up… I want to get that bit of food in me as soon as possible. And with a twist of a hand, the final bit of klutziness occurs. The bar of soap squips out of my hand and flies through the air. I watch it as it rockets out of my grip and soars with more grace than I’d ever expect to see from a bar of soap.
The grace is short lived however. After all, how much grace can one have when it goes plunk, straight into the toilet? Yes, with marksman like accuracy, I’ve shot a bar of soap out of my hand… my left hand mind you!... and it has landed dead centre in the middle of the toilet. It even did it in the proper, Olympic diver, form. No belly smack for my soap… little in the way of a splash… it slips beneath the surface and scores a perfect 10 in style points.
I stand at the sink. Hands still lathered up and with mouth dropped open in disbelief. The toilet water begins to go cloudy with soapy cleanliness. And I burst into laughter.
Do I fetch the soap? Do I let it sit and see if it dissolves over time? Do I try to flush it? That’s best left for another tale. Just be warned… if you see a bar of soap in my downstairs bathroom, perhaps it has best if you don’t use it… you never know where it’s been.
--- I’m a klutz today. I almost stamp a form at work, not with my date stamper… but my water bottle. Going to squash with Atlas in the evening… I forget my racquet… so we have to go back to my place before heading to the courts… then I leave my racquet in the car and take out my ice brush… having to unlock the door again for the switch, I drop my hat on the ground and almost don’t see it there. And I cap it off by washing my hands in the powder room, only to have the soap fly out of my hand and drop into the toilet. Needless to say, new soap is needed tomorrow… or perhaps visitors should not wash up in my powder room, just in case.
TUESDAY…
--- Valentine’s Day and I work the evening shift for Chris Read so he can get some lovin’. It’s alright though. A fine enough night in AFIS… Chinese food with Laura and Melissa (plus others) for supper and a couple of chats with Laura at break times. We don’t catch up enough anymore… opposite shifts is a pain… with some people.
WEDNESDAY…
--- Longish day doing Better Masters for the first time in about three or four months. Lunch across with Carole… Jonathan and a friend of his sat with us too.
--- I’m about to go through work changes. Starting Monday I’m back to my original place… CNI. I’ll begin learning how to be one of the two team supervisors there. It should be alright with many more responsibilities. So I’ll only have been on my new QC team for about three weeks.
THURSDAY…
--- US torture in pictures is a peculiar thing to hear talked about. Some American military do horrible things to some prisoners and people like Bill O’Reilly throw the blame on the media who shows the pictures… saying that this will endanger American troops. Blame the people doing the deeds… not those reporting it.
--- Work is alright. I eat lunch in the office with Shannon and Sue and it’s good.
--- Talk to dad for over an hour on the phone tonight.
FRIDAY…
--- Windy and not overly nice day outside. But still I go across to the office cafeteria twice. Once for breakfast with my team… the second time for lunch with Sue and Shannon and Dave.
--- Meetings in the afternoon and an evening home with movies. And with that, I’m done in QC and AFIS for a while. Monday will be the start of my training as a CNI Supervisor… back to my beginnings.
SATURDAY…
--- Cold out so I stay in all day. Sleep much of it away… watch some Olympics and some movies as well. Crash is a really good movie.
Smooth Sailing Mondays
There are days when things just don’t work out. Easy tasks become as challenging as mountain climbing and hard tasks aren’t even attempted, if you’re smart.
Monday is such a day.
It starts at work and, although it doesn’t really seem like much there, the day snowballs into one of comical uselessness.
Sitting at my desk in QC, I’m handling civil fingerprint forms. At the end of each form, the standard practice is to stamp it with a stamp that displays the date and your identification number.
As I work, I develop a flow like that of an assembly line. Do the proper modifications and follow it with the “chunk” of my stamp. It’s almost like the monotone drum that paces the rowers in those Viking movies… “Stroke”… boom… “Stroke”… boom… It’s basically the same thing.
So I follow my strokes with my ‘chunk’ and talk quietly with my desk neighbour, Sue. All goes well until I stop myself just prior to the downward stroke of my stamp. For I look up at my hand, poised over the form like a knife wielding maniac about to do away with my victim… and instead of my stamper… I peer upon the less imposing image of… my water bottle.
I look over at Sue and begin to laugh… the ‘thud’ of the water weighted plastic would have brought many eyes my way… total embarrassment is narrowly avoided.
The rest of the day at work goes without incident. I leave for the day agreeing to pick up a squash ball before I drop by to get Atlas for our Monday night game.
At my first stop, no squash balls can be found. There are tonnes of hockey skates and some soccer balls, but squash is a no go and I’m suddenly running behind.
Onwards to Atlas’s house I drive. He’s about ten minutes away from my house but he’s on the way to the squash courts, so getting him along the way is normally not a problem. I think about our lack of a ball… and decide on a place we can stop at that should have balls and won’t be too far off route.
I pull up in front of his place and am about to climb out of the car to get him when I notice his shadow in the window… he’s on his way.
It’s at this point in time that a sudden fear envelops me. I sit in the car and shake my head. Not only am I here without a ball… my racquet remains nicely tucked away in the front closet.
Atlas climbs in the car and I confess my stupidity. Suddenly, my house is very out of the way for our trip to the game… but we make that drive anyway.
With racquet finally onboard, we begin the trip to squash all over again. This time, Atlas points out where we should be able to get the ball, and sure enough… there they are! From here it’s straight to the courts.
A full lap of the parking lot gives us a good spot. Finally some luck is on my side as I watch the other car backing out.
We rush out of the car. We’re ten minutes late, thanks to my racquet and ball disaster, and Jonathan may be at the courts waiting for us. I reach into the back seat… grab my bag and racquet in one mighty sweep of my arm… and lock the doors as we hustle our way out of the parking lot.
I take a few steps away from my car and look down at my arms… gloves… hat… bag… ice scraper… ICE SCRAPER!?!?! Where’s my racquet?? Once again, the racquet is missing.
I return to the car, unlock the doors, and toss the scraper back to the floor where it belongs. There sits my racquet… quiet and shy as it tries to hide in the darkness of the car. I grab it, lock the doors again, and hustle to catch up to Atlas. Another arm check… bag… gloves… racquet… hat… hat… Where’s my bloody hat!??!?
Again I turn and head back to the car… and there in the shadows of the parking lot lays my poor wool hat. I scoop it up and shuffle on to find Atlas.
As I catch up to Atlas from behind, Jonathan meets him from the front. He had been at squash waiting… and waiting… but nobody else showed. He decides to go for a workout instead so it’ll just be Atlas and me on this night.
Seeing how I’ve been today, it’s surprising that I actually make it through squash without much incident. I stink on a few serves and returns of serve… but overall, it’s alright. I don’t drop my shorts by accident… I don’t have my racquet slipping out of my hand and shattering against a wall. I don’t crash head first into the wall as I run for a ball. It all goes fine.
So I figure the adventure is over. We leave for the night after an hour of play and I drop Atlas off without incident. I continue on home with a touch of hunger so I decide I’ll get a snack before having a shower.
With some of the tape having rubbed off my racquet and onto my hand, I decide to at least wash my hands before handling food. I go on into the downstairs bathroom and start sudsing up my hands. I rush through lathering up… I want to get that bit of food in me as soon as possible. And with a twist of a hand, the final bit of klutziness occurs. The bar of soap squips out of my hand and flies through the air. I watch it as it rockets out of my grip and soars with more grace than I’d ever expect to see from a bar of soap.
The grace is short lived however. After all, how much grace can one have when it goes plunk, straight into the toilet? Yes, with marksman like accuracy, I’ve shot a bar of soap out of my hand… my left hand mind you!... and it has landed dead centre in the middle of the toilet. It even did it in the proper, Olympic diver, form. No belly smack for my soap… little in the way of a splash… it slips beneath the surface and scores a perfect 10 in style points.
I stand at the sink. Hands still lathered up and with mouth dropped open in disbelief. The toilet water begins to go cloudy with soapy cleanliness. And I burst into laughter.
Do I fetch the soap? Do I let it sit and see if it dissolves over time? Do I try to flush it? That’s best left for another tale. Just be warned… if you see a bar of soap in my downstairs bathroom, perhaps it has best if you don’t use it… you never know where it’s been.
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