Making It Up As I Go Along #207

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.