Put your feet up and relax as summer quickly comes to an end. A last round of golf with friends and other thoughts from the week gone by...MONDAY…
--- Quiet day around the house. I was thinking baseball (last Lynx game of the year) and also of the balloon festival. But the weather is grey and iffy today and I just sit around, watch the Jays on TV, and catch a movie or two… plus a nap.
--- Night time walk is nice.
TUESDAY…
--- Busy day at work and I stay late too. So it’s midnight before I pack up and I end up running in to and chatting with Mark and Bill until close to 1:00.
WEDNESDAY…
--- A morning movie… work is busy with four meetings and I stay on until midnight again.
--- Home and book my ticket for Christmas. It cost more than last year but I can also stay longer… three days of leave give me nine days home for the holidays. Not bad.
--- Mom and dad are booked to be here for Thanksgiving. So Air Canada did well off of us today.
THURSDAY…
--- Busy day. In early for a luncheon… so I work 11:30 to 7:30… although I stay an extra couple of hours too. Meetings now done with my team. It made for a long week.
FRIDAY…
--- Up early. Going from evening shift to day in mid week isn’t usually good for me with sleep. So at 4:20, I’m up for good.
--- Work until 9:15 today and then it’s the office golf tournament. Laura, Leslie and Linda are my team mates and they all do more to help the team than I do. Playing off the men’s tees don’t help me on this course as, for some holes, it added a good hundred yards to my drives compared to them… but Laura would have kicked my butt either way and today, it’s all fun among the team anyway.
SATURDAY…
--- Quiet day around the house. A few movies and some news on TV. Plus some naps… catching up on the missed sleep of Thursday and Friday.
Some Thoughts as Summer Ends
I’ve got nothing today. Too much going on and none that I particularly want to devote an hour or so to covering… so a little bit of a mixed bag today.
The office golf tournament happened Friday. This is my favourite office event and really, only one of two that I have any degree of enjoyment doing (The curling was okay too). This year, the weather was great and the course was quite nice to look at. And history was made for me personally… in my fourth RCMP tournament, this is the first time that I played with another person for a second time (Laura being the answer to that exciting bit of trivia).
But this course hurts my game in a pretty big way. My best golf shots are either from the fairway, about two hundred yards out… or within one hundred yards of the pin. I’m inconsistent off the tee and down right bad if I’m a hundred and fifty yards away (and needing to choose between my five and seven irons). Well this course had narrow tee shots and lots of times when I found myself one hundred and fifty yards out.
Still, despite my awfulness, it was a fun time.
The anniversary of Sept. 11 is fast approaching. There’s not much needs saying about this. It’s still a vivid memory when I spent some 17 hours glued to my TV in the loft of my St. John’s house. I do think back and wonder if I should have walked down to Mile One Stadium and offered my home to a family of stranded passengers on that day.
And rather than bringing those responsible to justice and acting as a jumping off point for the western world to learn how our foreign policies have alienated others we see conspiracy theories and nauseating repetition of “they hate us because we’re free”. Bush’s administration has been strong arming the world ever since Sept. 11 and feeding us slogans rather than reality. And Canada decided to elect a government that was just chomping at the bit, waiting to join in with the “they hate us because we’re free” garbage too.
The most that has come from the terrorist attacks of five years ago was the removal of a dictator that had nothing to do with it.
On a personal level, September 11th has had a gigantic effect on me. Had the events of that day never happened, I’d likely still be living in Newfoundland doing who knows what. The increased desire for security is what started the RCMP’s hiring process and the rest is history.
It always strikes me how interconnected the world is. Saudi terrorists based in Afghanistan took planes from Boston and crashed them into buildings in New York and Washington… and this influences me moving from St. John’s to Ottawa and working in a field I barely ever thought about previously. I have many Ottawa acquaintances and some friends… all of whom I’d never have gotten to know at all had September 11th, 2001 gone the same way as September 10th did.
The Crocodile Hunter dies this week. Steve Irwin was a likable fellow that anyone who watches more than twenty minutes of TV a day would recognize. Of course CNN made his death out to be some vile attack by the deadly and threatening sting ray population of the world. They went on for days about the Sting Ray Attack! It’s laughably predictable how 24 hour news networks distort the facts of life. The reality is, Irwin died of a one in a million accident. A startled sting ray will strike defensively and, on the rare occasion when such a strike occurs, it’s barb hits a leg or arm and you’re in lots of pain but your life isn’t in danger. By simple bad luck, Irwin took the barb in the heart and nothing could be done.
Still, CNN decides this is a good time to ask the question “Are we safe to go into the water!” For 24 hour news agencies, every event is their next Sept. 11th. And that’s just sad.
I end things with thoughts of travel. Mom and dad are all booked for Thanksgiving in Ottawa. This has become a tradition with us ever since my move here and it makes Thanksgiving one of my more favourite holidays now. We’ve already booked our steam train ride that will take us into the small Quebec town of Wakefield. And we’ve begun planning a few other things to do at the Museum of Civilization. Plus I’m sure we’ll be down in the Byward Market to pick up the vegetables and dessert that’ll go with mom’s turkey. Less than a month and this will all have happened and be done… time goes by so fast.
Also this week, after Canjet went belly up, I decided I better hurry up and book my Christmas trip home. So I’ll be there for a nine day period (much more than the four or five days of last year) and hopefully I’ll be able to find some of that magical time of St. John’s. Being with family and friends is great but I do admit to missing the alone time in my home city. It’s the quiet, night time walks alone downtown that inspire. And times at Cape Spear when you walk where you will and hear nothing but crashing waves or the wind meeting the land… these times have become rare for me now that I live in Ontario. It’s not that I don’t like sharing these things with others… and if I only have the time to do it once while I’m home, I’d pick to go with mom and dad rather than alone. But the times alone are special too.
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