Making It Up As I Go Along #639

The quick version.  Updating on a Friday as tomorrow is the start of my CPSIC schedule again.  So for the next month, or so, I’ll be like I was when previously in CPSIC, updating the blog every last day off… Or every eight days.  

I must be completely out of touch now.  For one, I didn’t know there was such a thing as kinderstart… I assume it’s simply preschool renamed.  Or maybe kindergarten renamed… But then for parents of kinderstart children to say that this means their kid is all grown up? What? Is kinderstart a job? I guess it lines up with people retiring and becoming a kid again.  No wonder our world is so messed up.  Children are grown up and grown ups are kids again.

Speaking of messed up world.  I get way too much delight out of the factoid I recently heard where, in Canada, a barrel of oil now costs five cauliflower.  It wasn’t so long ago that cauliflower was a disposable vegetable… Among the left over scraps of a veggie tray that gets tossed during the after part cleanup.  It was also like yesterday when a barrel of oil was the main symbol of national wealth.  You’d daydream of keeping a few barrels out back by the shed in case financial times got tight.  And now, if we lived in a barter system, you couldn’t get six cauliflower for a barrel of oil.  You’d go into the produce market, rolling your barrel, saying “give me a half dozen cauliflower for this”.  And the store owner would be rubbing his chin and coming back with “I’ll give you three”.  Back and forth bargaining would send you home with five.  Black gold doesn’t go so far anymore.

How bad has the NHL gotten? Canadians, in January, don’t seem to really care about hockey.  The All Star weekend includes a fourth line plug who’s more often a healthy scratch and had to be given a leave of absence from his minor league team in order to take part… And Sydney Crosby wasn’t even invited to go.  This hockey season, I’ve already bought tickets for two spring training baseball games in Florida… Yet no NHL tickets for a team that plays within an hours drive of my house.  And I have turned off hockey games on TV in order to watch baseball player position ranking shows more than two months before the baseball season even starts.  All this and still the powers that be in the NHL say the game is as good as ever.  Delusional. 

And that’s about it for a shortened week.  More substance eight days from now. 

Making It Up As I Go Along #638

Going back to the CPSIC shift shortly.  I think it’ll mean I’ll post something again on Friday of this week (the day before I go back to CPSIC) and then will go back to the every eight day posting schedule.  I’ll be on that schedule until early March… So it’ll be temporary.  But a bit all over the place for the next little while.

I think the end of the heavy machinery across the street from me is soon at hand.  Another day or two of digging will likely get the rest of what used to be Mud Creek, and surrounding forest and meadow, to be a valley with a new creek following an artificial course and bare slopes going from it to the forest and street.  The creek will likely be 15-20 feet below the original level.  I assume the valley shape to this new landscape will be to hold heavy runoff from the built up neighbourhood.  Either way, I’m sure it’ll be nice when complete.  For now, I’m just looking forward to no more excavators and giant dump trucks working a hundred feet outside my front door.  

I’d Rather Be Snowshoeing

I’d rather be snowshoeing

Than stuck in here

To feel the soft sink

As I lumber above

Slumbering snakes and toads

Below their snow packed sky

Leaving me as a giant

Traipsing across their clouds

Shrews and mice now tunnel dwellers

Scurrying beneath my feet

As I carve out new roads

Pioneering the whiteness

Leaving new routes

Set for a rabbit’s scamper

Or a coyote’s jaunt 

Patrolling the forest along my tracks

So why sit here clacking keys

As I glare upon the artificial light

Making wishes when at this moment

The room brightens

Out my window

The sun pushed aside a cloud

Or perhaps it was one of the gods

Snowshoeing by above me

Time for me to scurry beneath their feet.