Making It Up As I Go Along #409

Hobbit Days
One day we’ll be gianormous. Living life like elephants.

We see it everywhere. Bowed out shower curtain rods used to cheat the system... keeping our girth within bath tubs, even though we’re spilling out over the edges. Claimed space by simply pushing the curtain out.

It’s not just us. Everything is big. Trucks of today are called mid-sized, but that’s only done to make us feel okay about it all. Today’s mid-sized would have been yesterday’s tank.

And it takes time for things to catch up. Parking spaces, be it at malls, or businesses, or home, have not grown. Yet the cars within them are like those bodies in the shower. We need to yellow lines to bow out in shower curtain ways. But they don’t, and it’s a rare sight to see parked cars at malls that sit within the lines.

Within the cars, our cup holders also feel the strain. A large drink bought at the movie cinema will not sit within the cup holder of my car. The funny thing is that the large drinks bought some twenty years ago would also not fit within my cup holder. They’d be too small and would tip and spill all over. Yesterday’s large fast food cup is about the same as today’s small. And, in fact, there are places you’d go today where the small isn’t even an option. Regular goes to large and small has become extinct.

I live alone in a space that’s about equal square footage to a home for four during the 1950s. And yet I would hesitate to move into anything smaller.

Single beds are to be rolled out of. I sleep within Queen sized comfortably and would likely even wake on the edge of oblivion... inches from toppling to the floor... if I slept in a twin or double.

In the world of sports, also massiveness. Football players of today make William “the Refrigerator” Perry appear average. And we won’t have to wait much longer to see the first 300 pound hockey player carving the ice.

I remember being astonished back in the days of Willie Huber (defenceman from the 1980s). I wondered how someone so big was able to keep up at all. Huber was the biggest player of his day by far... and was 6'5", 225 lbs.

Today, there are several players bigger than Huber. Zdeno Chara is 6'9", 255 lbs, Derek Boogaard (6'7", 258 lbs), Hal Gill (6'7", 250 lbs), Andy Sutton (6'6", 245 lbs), and Alexei Semenov (6'6" 235 lbs) are just five of many.

There are attempts at control being made. Smart Cars exist. They’re little more than enclosed golf carts. And the Hummer is no longer in production for civil uses.

It makes me wonder what the future has in store. Not only will we be elephant sized... we may be living fossils. I actually read something recently that said it’s possible that people born today may live to be a thousand years old. In fact, just by googling “live to 1000" I see an article where they say it’s possible that people who are currently 60, may make 1000.

Will we be ten foot tall, six hundred pound, thousand year olders? Will today’s mansions be seen in museum settings with our great great great great great grandchildren holding our hands asking “how did you live in something so small?”

We’ll be there at future movies, a family reunion attended by several thousand people... with parking lots that are acres large as we sit in a room the size of a soccer field, eating bath tub sized containers of popcorn and personal supply hoses of soft drinks.

People of today will be short lived hobbits living in tiny villages. And the Hummer will come back...as a compact.

MONDAY...
— Day shift. First time in a while. I don’t do too bad with it. Slept ok the night before and leave at 1:30 for my physio. Lunch with Shannon and Annick is fun and, in the morning, I’m actually asked to go back to evening shift for the rest of the week due to a lack of space for the people. Good stuff for me.

TUESDAY...
— Evening shift again. AFIS work with Scott and his team. Pretty quiet night and I listen to some music for a while... not too bad.
— Check the MEC catalog for this Spring. They’ve got a folding bike! I always wanted a bike I could fold up and put in the closet and carry down over the stairs with ease. Much more of a city bike than what I have but it does look cool and seems like it would be easier. And folded in 15 seconds. Ohhhh, makes the $800 tempting. Although my knee says no bike for most or all of the summer anyway... and there’s nothing wrong with my current bike either. Ah to be rich.

WEDNESDAY...
— TV on the PVR is nice when I get home. Thai food with Scott is fun at work. Physio was normal in the afternoon and I slept in today... not getting out of bed until close to 11:00 for some reason. There you have it, my day in reverse.

THURSDAY...
— New license plate sticker before work. Pizza with the boys at work. Some TV after work. And Edena and family’s birthday gift in the mail when I get home. More Future Shop gift card... ready for the Play Station 3 to soon be purchased.

FRIDAY...
— My birthday. Fairly normal day though. Physio... work... Get a nice birthday card and cup cakes at work. A&W for supper... home a bit early.
— Lots of emails and facebook messages through the day.

SATURDAY...
— Logy all day today. Barely able to keep my eyes open. Tonight it’s a night with Phil, Sarah and Jamie. Phil’s hot tub followed by food and UFC PPV at my place. Good night.
— Read tonight that Eva Markvoort died this morning. In the Fall I watched a documentary about her fight against Cystic Fibrosis and, since then, I’ve occasionally checked her web journal. Quite a courageous story and she was very open in her writing.