New Year Socks

New Year, new day. new socks. It’s been a good year so far. There’s nothing like putting on a pair of brand new socks first thing in the morning. The smooth feel along the bottom of your foot, the way your heel slides right into the heel cup and none of that pesky sock fluff piling up between your toes right away.

This may all sound pretty funny coming from a guy who goes barefoot in the middle of the winter. I put this down to my early hockey years. I spent so many weekends and evenings at the rink as a kid, putting skates on at -20 degrees (Fahrenheit or Celsius, take your pick) that I learned quickly how to keep my feet warm almost anywhere.

Tourist Tales

I have been a tourist. There, I’ve said it. I admit to doing and saying things in other countries that I would never do here at home. Get your mind out of the gutter. I’m talking about things like saying “How much does that mountain weigh?” or stepping off a curb in England looking the wrong way for traffic. I know I’m not the only one, either. I’m sure we’ve (meaning you, too) have all done silly things when we’ve traveled.

Take my buddy, Murray. Please. (Sorry, that was too easy...)

Bathroom Blues

We recently rearranged the house, swapping bedrooms between siblings. The boys are now both downstairs (now named the “man cave”, more due to the aromas than the residents) and my daughter has taken over the second upstairs bedroom.

With this so-called minor move, along with all the grunting and groaning whilst moving the furniture, my daughter also moved her bathroom and grooming tools to the upstairs bathroom. This also produced some epic grunting and groaning, mostly from me.

Falling in New Zealand

As I sit here thinking of islands and island life, another memory has just surfaced from my time in New Zealand. Really, it honestly surfaced. Here’s what happened.

Murray, Cliff and I were on the north island, inland a bit from a town called Waitangi. The folks in the hostel said there was a great hike that led to a nice waterfall and lagoon that we could swim in. Still trusting the Kiwi sense of time and distance, we asked them for directions. They said once we got to the stone church, it was about forty-five minutes through the forest to the falls. And the church was supposedly only ten minutes away.

Old-style Neighbourhood

I grew up in an unusual neighbourhood. Everyone knew everyone else and yet, they still enjoyed getting together with each other. Out of about twenty homes on the street, I could go into at least nine of them and raid the fridge for milk and cookies anytime I wanted. They wouldn’t even call the police! Imagine having nine complete households to hang out in! It was great.

Having all those good neighbours also meant that there was nine households that needed garbage taken out or the poop scoop done, eighteen adults that could call me over from the park to help them with chores, nine sets of parents keeping an eye on me. If I misbehaved at the park, by the time I made my way home (six houses away), my Mom would be waiting for me at the front door, already up-to-date with my misdemeanour. I keep telling the Government to use moms for intelligence gathering – they always know everything!

Warehouse Stores

I had to get batteries the other day. With all the game console controllers needing AA batteries and every flashlight in the immediate vicinity dead as a doornail, it was time to resupply. You all know what that means.

A trip to the warehouse store.

Just typing that phrase has sent shivers down my spine. On one hand, it’s the excitement of seeing all the new items they have artfully arranged throughout the 75,000 square feet of space. On the other hand, it’s the knowledge that once you enter the warehouse store, you will never, ever, leave the building with just one item. Even if you hide your wallet in your socks, it’s like a stealth siphon, emptying your bank account when you get within 600 meters of the building.

Similarities mean Trouble

A while ago I wrote about how opposites attract. It’s still my opinion that Mother Nature does this on purpose to keep the world in balance. Otherwise we humans would probably die out in very short order. Like by next Tuesday.

Here’s an example of how two people that are very similar get along. They’ll remain nameless to protect their identities as well as protecting me from their wrath.

Funny Time

Time is a funny thing. Most think that it’s very regular, tick-tock-tick-tock, but really, it isn’t. Ask any student that has to finish a project by morning or a parent at 4:00 a.m. taking care of a sick child. Trust me, for the student, time speeds up and for the parent, it virtually stops. Been there, done that and lost both the t-shirts.

I can’t get over how long this so-called understanding of Time has been perpetuated. Every kid knows that summer days are approximately 22.5 hours long from sunrise to sunset during summer vacation. Every adult knows that their eight hour workday is also approximately 22.5 hours long, yet the clocks on the wall all want us to believe only eight hours have passed.

Neighbourhoods...

I grew up in an unusual neighbourhood. Everyone knew everyone else and yet, they still enjoyed getting together with each other. Out of about twenty homes on the street, I could go into at least nine of them and raid the fridge for milk and cookies anytime I wanted. They wouldn’t even call the police! Imagine having nine complete households to hang out in! It was great.

Sailing in Paihia

I just received an email from a friend who has moved down to New Zealand for a year with her family. Every email I’ve gotten has had the requisite photos attached and a description of where they’ve been on this weekend and where they’ll be going next week.

I may never speak to them again when they get back. Not jealous at all. Nope.

The email does remind me of when my buddies, Murray, Cliff and I, all went to New Zealand and Australia for six months in between years at University. The fact that the University encouraged me to take a year off to reassess my academic goals had nothing to do with going on the trip.

Cats and Dogs

One of my friends I grew up with had a Springer Spaniel dog named Liz and a cat named Cat. Liz was a pretty excitable dog, really friendly but easily bored and always wanting to play. I think they named her after a relative. They named the cat ‘Cat’ because their dad said why should they name an animal when it wouldn’t come when it was called anyway.

Cat put up with the dog as cats will, ignoring her completely or tormenting her by kicking all the dog food out of the bowl. Liz probably just thought that dinner was a smorgasbord every night – more fun hunting kibble when it was spread all over the house.

Family Pranks

People sometimes wonder where I got my sense of humour from. Actually, people sometimes just wonder about me in general. Oh well.

I’m going to come right and say it’s all my parents’ fault. Mostly my dad’s to be honest.  He’s 77 years old this year, going on twelve. He’ll still deny stealing a fresh baked cookie, even when he has chocolate on his face and crumbs on his shirt. That’s consistency!

Sense of Humour

I can’t imagine living life without a sense of humour. I actually don’t think anyone can really accomplish that – I mean, look around you! Just looking at your relatives or coworkers will tell you that God has a sense of humour and he passed it on to us!

I had this epiphany one night walking back to my apartment after a late class at University.

Opposites Attract

We were driving the other day, out on the highway and started talking about the small compass that my son bought for the car and stuck on the dashboard. This got me to thinking about how opposites attract.

Believe it or not, that’s how the creative process starts, at least for me. Try to follow along...

Writers

Being a writer is a weird thing. This is my opinion. Maybe it’s yours as well, but I think I’ll stick with my own point of view for the moment. It’s probably safer for everyone. Sing along if you want.

Now that I have the chance to actually think and create and write on a regular basis, I find myself staring off into space a lot more than I used to. Some of you may not notice a difference, but believe me, next time you see me with the thousand yard stare, you can be sure that I am working away diligently...

Self-serve counters

Technology is a great thing, when it’s been thought out properly. I love techie stuff, all of it. Cool phones, shiny lights, buttons everywhere, obviously built to attract the male of the species. Kind of like crows and magpies, come to think of it. Hmmm, I don’t like where this is going...

Anyway, I really want to talk about the new “self-serve” check-out counters every store seems to have installed.

When they first arrived, I thought they were a pretty good idea – cheaper for manpower and faster for the folks that only buy a few items. Seeing how I buy groceries for three teenagers, it didn’t seem likely that I would ever get to use one of these counters at a grocery store for the foreseeable future.

Losing your Mind

Have you ever lost your mind? I have. Take my advice – once you lose your mind, don’t bother looking for it. There are better things to do than look for something that’s only going to get you into trouble.

It’s like forgetting your lady’s birthday, your anniversary or Valentine’s Day. You know these dates come every year, so put them in the smart phone, send them to your own email address or better yet, staple a note to your forehead at the beginning of the year. That way, your girl can rip the reminder off your head and hand it to you a couple of days beforehand. Believe me, it’s cheaper than a data plan for your phone. And a lot less painful than trying to apologize for missing an important date...

Alarms!

I have a love/hate relationship with alarm clocks. Actually, to be perfectly clear, it’s more of a “sorta like”/hate relationship.

When I was a kid and not yet going to school, waking up was an absolute delight; eyes slowly opening, all comfy and warm under the covers, and the prospect of a really sugary breakfast cereal or bacon and eggs for breakfast. I still have dreams like that.

Apologies - Summer days

I just realized that during the summer, it's remarkably easy to forget what day it is. Even what week it is. I just realized it's been almost a month since my last post. 
Between spending days in the basement office on a couple of big projects and sitting in the hammock and watching the vegetable garden grow, I've let the blog languish.


Which, come to think of it, is exactly what summer should allow everyone to do...

Church Memories

Some of my earliest memories of church are from when we lived in Mississauga, Ontario. We were able to walk to this HUGE church – although when I think about it, everything was huge when I was four years old. I always remember trying to have the same stride as my dad as we walked. I was always looking down at his shiny dress shoes and I tried so hard to match him step for step.

Old and Young Travelers

At one of my yearly physical exams, my doctor and I were discussing everything and anything under the sun when he says out of nowhere “You know, once you hit 45 years old, everything starts to go downhill”. Where that came from, I don’t know – we were talking about hiking trails in National Parks. I might have mentioned that my knees were hurting a bit and it was harder to see the fine print on things like stop signs and the like. Still, saying something like that during a physical exam can be disconcerting. 

Seven Miles Downhill

My buddy Murray, called me up one day, to see if I wanted to go cross country skiing. He had found a trail that would take most of a day to ski but had a great thing going for it – after a short climb of a few hundred meters, it was a long, shallow downhill run. Seven miles downhill, he swore.

I really should have known better.

Older Brothers

So I’m driving my Number One son somewhere out of town and ask him “What’s with you and your younger brother today?”

“Well. I think he’s repulsive and I hate him” he said calmly.

Not one to have knee-jerk reactions, I promptly pulled over and said, “Okay, we’re going home”.

Then I thought it might be better to continue on and try to get to the bottom of this, to delve into the mind of a teenager. After all, I was a kid once, and many of my peers believe I still have that mentality.

Showers

I made it. I finally made it. The plan this morning was to go for a walk first thing with my darling wife and our goofball of a dog. We could be up and out for a brisk thirty minute walk and be back in time to see the kids appear sleepily from rooms, look at the clock and then do the mad morning dash to get ready for school. That never gets old. Then it would be a quick shower and right downstairs to write a column or two.

Percussive Maintenance

Everyone knows that I have older, more mature vehicles. I’d like to say that I prefer older vehicles because they’re easier to fix. The fact that there are more of them on the road certainly doesn’t hurt. More spare parts, for one. You don’t have to worry where you park it, either. A great thing about older cars and vans is that for many minor repairs, there is a maintenance procedure that everyone, I mean everyone, can use. I’ve heard many names for this procedure while it’s being performed (most of them not fit to print) and the one I prefer is ‘percussive maintenance’.

Flying Fish in the Rockies

Flying fish in the Rocky Mountains. Not something you see everyday.

My buddy, Murray, and I had made plans to hike into the Kananaskis backcountry and camp by a small alpine lake. The idea was to relax for three days, away from university life, take in nature and fish a little.

The reason we picked this lake was because Mur had never fished before and we needed any and all the help we could get. The lake was used as a breeding pond for trout and it hadn't been open for fishing for a couple of years. I was hoping the fish were really hungry.

Tourist Questions

I just have to pass on some of the tourist questions that I and others have had to field over the years. I had the pleasure of working and living in the Kananaskis region, both in Peter Lougheed Provincial Park and in the Canmore/Banff area. Believe me when I say that I love tourists unequivocally. They force me to answer questions diplomatically and imaginatively. Excellent skills to develop.

Here we go...

Indispensability

We’d all like to be indispensable at one time or another. Sometimes you plan to be that way and other times it’s accidental. This is about the latter.

I started work at Nakiska Ski Hill in 1987, in preparation for the 1988 Olympics. In case you think I’m dating myself, remember I started working when I was eight years old. Or was it six?

Just had to put this in...

"We've always been here and we'll always be here. We are a specific arrangement of particles and this instant is infinite. Did we luck out, or didn't we? The odds against this sentence having ever being typed, much less the odds against you reading it were inconceivable. Smile, because the fact that you're able to is almost impossible to comprehend."

Jeffrey Rowland

Hamburgers and Eagles

A few years ago, my wife and I learned how to sail together. We also have wall-papered a kitchen and painted a living room together and we’re still married. Amazing, isn’t it?

After we received our sailing certification, we promptly chartered a sailboat for a week in the summer and invited a couple of friends to come with us. Now, stocking up a sailboat that has an ice box instead of a fridge can be tricky. Since this was our first time bare boating, we made a few errors.

Men and mornings

I’ll admit to everyone that I am not a morning person, not anymore. I was once, ask anyone. I could get up at any hour after midnight and be ready to go forth and do what needed to be done. I may not have been happy about it, but it could be done.

When my darling wife first met me, she was astonished by this talent. Once she called my name, barely above a whisper from the bedroom door and I was instantly awake and conversing with her. In English, no less, with all the words in the right order.

Low Flying Station Wagons

My sleep deprivation started just before the twins were born - literally two days before. We were living in Dawson City, Yukon, and my wife and I were eight months pregnant. All fathers know, if their wife is pregnant, then both of them are pregnant. So for all you new dads-to-be, get used to it.

Hitchhiking Saga

One winter day, I had to go from Canmore to Calgary in my trusty 1970 Toyota named Tat. The weather was the usual for that time of year in the Rockies – rain, snow and slush mixed and only a few metres of visibility. Nothing unusual.

On the way out of town, I saw a poor soul hitchhiking towards Calgary. The car obviously thought we should pick him up, as it spat, coughed, stalled and rolled to a stop a little ahead of the guy. Knowing what happened, I got out of the car just as the hitchhiker ran up, looking very thankful. I was happy to see him as well, because I needed someone to work the throttle as I cleaned out all the snow and slush out my air cleaner and carburetor.

Full Contact Baking

Today was not a particularly great day for me in the kitchen. We were out for the morning and as we got home around lunch, I realized I needed to bake. Bake something, anything, just to move and create. Time for cookies, Nanaimo bars and jello!

Just so you know, I am considered the baker of the family. I make all types of cookies, Nanaimo bars, quick squares that are like s’mores and cheesecakes of all sorts. For those that know me, no comments or you’ll never see another cookie from this house. But enough of the digressing, it’s time for digesting!

Weird Family...sayings

Okay everyone, I’m going to say this right up front. My wife is a fantastic person – smart, beautiful and close to being a saint. That last part is because she actually married me and has put up with me for this long. She still says that alcohol had nothing to do with it…

I love her dearly and what I am about to tell you should in no way, at all, whatsoever  be considered a criticism. Never in a million years. Been married long enough to know better. That being said, I’ll let you know now, my darling wife has some very weird sayings in her family.

I’m talking about sayings along the lines of “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it” (or in my case, “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it”). Another is “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”. Both sayings are well understood, even by folks who have never heard of them before. Easy to pick up, easy to remember.

Ahhh, cars...

A while ago, I talked about having new drivers in the house. It brought to mind all the memories I have of the vehicles I’ve owned over the years.  Everyone has that special one or two and they are a source of pride, amusement, gossip, envy, pain and heartbreak. For me, mine have been all of these things, sometimes at the same time.

The first car that I really have fond feelings for was a 1970 Toyota station wagon. Yeah, I didn’t know they made station wagons either.

Cool ideas - worthy of a story

Time travel experiment demonstrates how to avoid the grandfather paradox (Update)


(PhysOrg.com) -- Among the many intriguing concepts in Einstein’s relativity theories is the idea of closed timelike curves (CTCs), which are paths in spacetime that return to their starting points. As such, CTCs offer the possibility of traveling back in time. But, as many science fiction films have addressed, time travel is full of potential paradoxes. Perhaps the most notable of these is the grandfather paradox, in which a time traveler goes back in time and kills her grandfather, preventing her own birth.


I'm thinking this could be such a good thing for some of us. Think of the possibilities for getting out of trouble. Forget the anniversary? Zip back a few days, put a reminder into the smartphone to pick up flowers and voila! Saved! How about that term paper that you forgot in University? The one that would have saved your final mark? Head on back to a month before the due date and leave a copy on your old desk for submission. You might as well leave a note to yourself reminding you not to drink the whole bottle of rum the next night, to avoid those awkward moments at the Police Station...


Then again, you might not be as interesting as you are now without those past experiences. And let me tell you, you ARE an interesting sort...

February Blues

It’s wonderful to see more sunlight these days. Even though February is the shortest calendar month of the year, it seems to take the longest to go by. I don’t know why that is, but I’ll take a stab at trying to figure it out.

I’ve heard a lot of people saying February is tough because there’s no real holiday to look forward to. Christmas, Hanukkah and New Year’s have gone by and there’s nothing until Easter, which this year starts late April. That’s why the Alberta Government made up our very own February break, calling it Family Day. I applaud this day, simply because I’m a big fan of days off.

Be that as it may, when you factor in the arrival of the Christmas credit card bills, lack of sunlight, and the beginning of tax season, it sure looks like February is out to get us all. Maybe that’s why they only made it 28 days long...

I think it’s also because the storms in February always seem to have more of a bite to them. The rosy glow we had in November and December has given way to the redness of frostbite. Having to put on everything you own to keep warm outside has lost its thrill. It seems to take longer to defrost your windshield in the morning, especially after the freezing rain from the night before.

The only thing that seems to run counter to the slow pace of this month is when I have a deadline to meet. That’s usually when I would like another few days added on to every month of the year, come to think of it.

Ah, well. February is only 28 days long and now we’re just at the halfway point. It must be why the ancestors made Valentine’s Day a February celebration. The chance of a quick kiss and the presence of large amounts of chocolate can make most people happy. Lots and lots of chocolate. Maybe a few extra kisses as well.

You know, February isn’t so bad after all.

So much for keeping up...

Okay, who made the time go by so quickly already? We got the tree down and back into the garage just after New Year's, vacuumed the carpet and today I look at the calendar and apparently, it's now January 16th.
I thought there was a rule that time only sped up on your weekends and/or holidays, or the two weeks prior to school starting. That's the way I remember it, anyway.


I'm looking at my desk and see that work has been done, so I know time has passed somewhat productively. I think.

New Year and all that goes with it...

A gentle and relaxed start to 2011 so far. I hope it continues to be zen-like for the next few weeks. Nothing like having three projects requested (i.e. dumped in your lap at the last minute) just before Christmas to ramp up the excitement!


I can't see the Zen state happening though. As I sit here and try to make this post somewhat legible, the calendar on my wall keep sneaking into my peripheral vision, mocking me. School starting for two out of three, appointments in a few days, deadlines looming and seminars to create - the usual things I try to ignore until the reminder on my phone goes off. It's invigorating to have the adrenaline rush through your body when you realize you have three days of work to do in one day, don't you think?


Possibilities are still endless and I guess that's what keeps me going. The chance to learn more and experience new things will forever be my downfall and my inspiration. So for those of you that think I'm crazy, you may be right.


Fun, isn't it?