Maybe I should read the paper more...

We don't get the local daily newspaper. We don't subscribe because His Nibs reads it at work, and I couldn't care less for the most part. I got into a discussion once with a former boss of mine - a former boss of mine, I should add, with whom I saw eye to eye on very little, and not just because I was about a foot taller. Anyway, I got into a discussion once with a former boss of mine about the reasons why I don't subscribe to the daily newspaper.

I don't like all the schlock in the paper, to begin with. The lame, half-assed reporting is one thing, especially when coupled with horrid grammar and terrible spelling. I am one of those people who often can't get past the bad usage to the meat of the story. Not reporting facts is another reason, which we've discussed on this journal before. I want my news sources to present the most unbiased stories possible. If I want left-wing rhetoric or right-wing fanaticism, I know where to find it. Or, for that matter, left-wing fanaticism or right-wing rhetoric. Take your pick.

The last time I got the daily newspaper, I looked at the classifieds once or twice, skimmed the inner-pages stories, and usually read one or two stories in depth. I flipped past the car ads, the grocery ads, the store ads, the business ads, etc., etc., etc., with reckless abandon. And that is the crux of the matter. It's the sixteen pages of advertising in a seventeen page newspaper that puts me off. My former boss went on a tear about

"you support creating jobs and a strong economy, right? And those advertisements are paying the wages of the people who work at the newspaper, not to mention all the people who work at the businesses that are advertised. Advertising creates revenue, which creates jobs."

or something to that effect.

I work in advertising sometimes - I do marketing work sometimes. I promote books, stories, publishers, writers...you know...nerd stuff. I don't want to pay for a paper that is less meat and more advertising. Most of the marketing/promotion I do is free distribution and it goes to schools and libraries and stuff. Or on billboards. Or those little windows on the backs of the toilet stalls.

I don't want to spend one or two bucks on something full of advertising. I want substance. That's part of the reason I get a lot of my news from Internet sources (and also because Internet sources are WAY more trustworthy than any other source of media. I only wrote that last sentence to see who skims the journal and who actually reads it) and from the radio. Sometimes I watch the evening news on television, but I don't like it at all.

So that's my explanation for not paying money for the daily rag that doesn't support local business (independent bookstores, local publishers, local writers) unless local business can spend big bucks on advertising.

Anyway, the point of this entry isn't 'why cenobyte hates free enterprise-loving media'. The point of this entry is something I heard on talk radio yesterday. Or the day before. The host was asking people whether those shoes with wheels in ought to be banned in school.

I thought about it for a while.

Then I thought, 'the minute you 'ban' something in school, you've essentially given free reign to kidlets to find new and innovative ways around the 'ban'. It gives them something to do. Kids are natural protestors. They, as DK said once, have this natural sense of injustice that seems to percolate in their little proto-brains beginning around age four. That's when you start hearing "but that's not FAIR!!", as if things *should* be fair. My answer? "Damn straight it's not fair. Lots of things aren't fair. I can't afford an endless current pool - that's not fair, is it? Best get used to it."

Anyway, the shoes thing.

It's such a goofy fashion trend that if you just let the little beggars go nuts over it for a while, it'll fade from fashion in a year or so. Who but me still wears penny loafers and saddle shoes? They were big when my mum was a kid. All the rage, she said.

I've been finding myself laughing and pointing at teenagers and some of their dorky fashions - the sideways baseball cap (which is supposedly also some 'gang' thing - who the hell can take any gang member seriously, or anyone else for that matter, when they look like Gomer Pile?), the falling-down pants, the hiphugging jeans over/under a belly 'pooch'. Good God.

Then I think back to my Jr. High days. People sported day-glo shirts and fingerless gloves and mesh shirts and boat shoes and God only knows what else. So all in all, the great slide rule of fashion hasn't really changed all that much. For the record, I laughed at the people sporting the 'latest fashion' in my jr. high/ high school too. I had a mesh shirt, though. It was army green. I wore it over my ripped up black tee shirt. I owned no day-glo (except some day-glo hair colours that didn't stick).

So. The wheels in shoes thing. One of the suggestions was to force kids wearing those shoes to wear helmets. [sigh] How sad.

You know the price tag on a pair of those things? Starts at about $150. No way in hell am I spending $150 on a pair of shoes unless it comes with the rest of the uniform, and involves my son learning a proper salute. He's more than welcome to save up his own money to spend it on crap like that though. Thank God I have a few years yet before I have to deal with that.


cenobyte on 29.09.05 @ 02:50 PM CST [link] [6 Comments]

Another rant about breastfeeding

...I know I shouldn't read those things. I know I'm just winding myself up. But I did it anyway. I read an article written by a lawyer about how insulted and disgusted she was when one of her clients started nursing 'right in front of her'. I read the reply from the breastfeeding mum. I read the reply-to-the-reply, which was terse, and rude (the lawyer made the comment that nursing in public is not constitutionally protected and that laws have been, will be, and should be, passed to ban it completely). She went on to say "I wish all of the people who spend their lives defending breast feeding would do something constructive, like attempting to provide nourishment for children who have very little."

I was *already* angry before I got to that last line - the 'post-script' to her comment (which was only about four lines long).

I'm really angry now. You know how I feel about nursing, and I'm sure you know how I feel about nursing in public. The lawyer's point was basically that she has the right 'to prevent someone from lifting up their shirt in [her] office, whatever the purpose'.

Okay. She has a point. In *her* office, *her* house, sure, she has the right to ask nursing mothers to feed their children somewhere else. She helpfully suggests the restroom (to which I've always suggested "I'll nurse baby there right after you eat *your* lunch there") or 'some other publically designated place'. I have been in people's homes and have asked if they're uncomfortable with my nursing. Sometimes the reply has been, "would you like somewhere quieter?", which I think is kind, and sometimes I take them up on it, especially if baby is tired or distracted. However, I did walk through most of a crappy retail chain store last weekend with The Nipper in his sling, having a good long snack at the 'buffet'. Not only did nobody notice, but The Nipper fell asleep.

Okay, what is my point here?

My point is that yes, okay, there are people who are uncomfortable around breastfeeding, although I will never understand why (people have tried to explain it to me, but it still makes no sense). For the most part, I figure that's their problem, not the mums'. When you're in their home or office though, it's not a *public place*, is it?

The other thing that got my ire up was that in this article, the lawyer-lady basically accused breastfeeding mums and activists of breastfeeding not because it's best for baby, but because they want the attention...."the problem with many nursing mothers [is] it's more about the image than about the child".

To this I replied, WTHF!!???

It boggles the mind. Really. Who nurses their babies because "it's the cool thing to do"!? We nurse our babies because that's what our booblies are for.

[sigh]

Boggles.


cenobyte on 27.09.05 @ 05:36 PM CST [link] [6 Comments]

New Duds

I now own a pair of dungarees!

I haven't worn jeans in probably about seven years. Not since before The Captain was a zygote.

And, in keeping with my Modus Operandi, I now own a fetching pair of men's black jeans. It's very odd to wear jeans when you haven't in nearly a decade. They're just ...different... from any other kind of clothing.




cenobyte on 26.09.05 @ 12:31 PM CST [link] [Come away, O Human Child]

Stupid Stupid Stupid

To the stupid asshole who put wallpaper up in the southeast bedroom of my house:

What in the name of bleeding Jesus were you thinking when you *tacked up the wallpaper with silicone*!?? It's not like you did a particularly good job of putting up wallpaper in the rest of the room. Or the rest of the house, for that matter. Why take care to make sure that *that particular piece of wallpaper* was set in FREAKING SILICONE!? Every other piece of wallpaper is peeling from one or both ends. Don't get me wrong - I appreciate the fact that the glue you used to put the vinyl shit up was crappy enough that I can peel most of the wallpaper and backing off the wall in entire strips. I like that. Much nicer to remove than the quality stuff they put up in the 20s (that, for the record, you not only wrote on WITH MARKER, but you also put patching compound OVER TOP of it so that even if we'd wanted to salvage it, because it was quite nice, we wouldn't have had the option) that they should, in my opinion, build dams and anti-tank bunkers with. [note: if anyone out there has a ray gun or incendiary device that might take the stuff down, please call]

Now there's the one strip of silicone, about five centimetres wide and about fifteen centimetres long, that I have to peel off with a freaking nail file before I can properly patch the cracks (which you also seem to have used silicone on, but at least you finished it properly and it's flush to the wall) in the plaster.

Also, and I don't mean to be overly critical here, *DON'T PUT WALLPAPER OVER AN UNUSED ELECTRICAL BOX*. Want to know why? Because the people who move in to the house after you're finished your half-arsed renovations might want to take the wallpaper down. And you know how they do that usually? With steam and water and scoring devices. And you know what they find? They find an unused electrical box that probably at one point was the receptacle for a wall sconce, with old dusty wires capped by electrical tape, sticking out about 1cm from the wall, not covered over or filled in or anything. Haven't tested the wires yet to see if they're live; I'm suspecting they are, though.

Honestly. It really doesn't take that much work to properly cap the wires (or remove them, since it's in the upstairs and the electrical is just in the attic above) and seal up the wall. Really. I've done it before. Putting wallpaper over stuff like that doesn't fix it. It doesn't even really hide it. It just makes me angry.

And another thing. Who in the hell puts wallpaper on the ceiling, and what kind of butthead puts stipple over top of peeling ceiling wallpaper!? Who does that? Why, Lord, why?

I guess buying an older house is always an excercise in surprises, like discovering that your attic is inhabited by leprechauns or something. I'm just about at my wits' end, though, with the wallpaper removal. His Nibs has suggested we just drywall over the paper in The Nipper's room rather than peeling the goddamned wallpaper in there. I'm tempted to just coat the paper in gasoline and light a match, but I don't think our insurance covers 'fire cleansing'. I'll check that.

For everyone else in the peanut gallery, those of you who watch home renovation shows, and those 'I'll redesign your bathroom if you promise not to paint my floor puce and seafoam' shows, don't use silicone on the walls. There are dozens of kinds of patching compounds and adhesives that are water permeable so the people who inhabit the house when you're gone won't be screaming obscenities that would make sailors blush when it comes time to redecorate. And for the record, the wall being worked on is the window wall, and the window was open for ventilation, and I'd just like to say that it's *your fault* that those little children started crying and the octegenarians out for their constitutional gasped and looked around in consternation for the steady stream of oaths emanating from the ether.

Your fault.



cenobyte on 25.09.05 @ 12:17 PM CST [link] [1 Comment]

Rotten

So Mike and I thought the new picture was sick, yet hilarious. Sometimes it pays to hire a marketer/designer who's either out of the loop or just not all there.

Once we hired a designer to help us with a marketing campaign we were doing. Her design was something scab coloured that looked like it was sporting a large yellow woody. Yes, I said woody. We didn't go with that design, although I'm wondering now if maybe it would have done better than the one we did choose that was neither scab-coloured nor phallic in any way.

I remember the advertisement for [insert popular brand of MSG-loaded seafood "chowdah" here]. The visual was of a foggy shoreline. Just looked cold. Zoom in to a young kid shivering on the beach. Out of the mist appears a "weathered old salt in Sou'wester and cable-knit sweater".

"Arrrrr ye cold, Jimmy?" he asks in a gruff (but jovial) voice.

The poor kid shivers in response.

"Then come up to me lighthouse, and I'll fill yer cheeks with cream!" The old salt says, clapping young Jimmy on the shoulder.

I don't know who those marketers were, but they clearly knew nothing about buggery. Or the terms associated with it. Anyway, I thought I'd hallucinated the commercial, because I think it only aired once, until a friend of mine, completely unprompted by me, asked "has anyone else here ever seen that commercial with the old pervert on the beach?"

'how many can there be?' I asked myself, and then asked my friend, "what was it a commercial for?"

"Pedophelia, as far as I can tell," he replied. "Some wizened old sailor telling a poor frightened looking kid that he'd take him up to his house and fill his cheeks with cream. Iew."

I would give someone's left nut to have that commercial.

What are some of your favourite ill-thought-out adverts?


cenobyte on 23.09.05 @ 03:25 PM CST [link] [7 Comments]

You see that?

You know what's cool about living in a small town? I do.







...yes, I was very tempted to leave the entire post at that. Wouldn't that have been witty of me?

Yesterday, I went to get fuel, and realised after the attendant had already started washing my windows that my purse was on the kitchen table. I blushed, got out of the car, and mentioned that I was a complete idiot and had left my purse at home and would they take a cheque or could I run home and get it?
"You live in town?" the guy asked.
"I do. Do you want my address?"
He looked at me funny. Probably thought I was trying to put the moves on him. "Uh, no. Why don't you just go home and get it?"

I goggled. I got in the car, ran home, and got my purse. When I got back to the fuel station, the fellow said, "Good thing you didn't get all the way into town and realise you'd left it then, huh?"

Later, I went to the post office. I walked in the door, and the post office lady said, "Oh, you have a package! I'll just go get it while you get the card." Because she knows me.

Our kitty-corner neighbour is The Captain's kindergarten teacher, and the kids living across the street from us in two directions are his age. One is in his class, one is in grade one. The Captain is going to a birthday party this Saturday at which the mum has ordered a truckload of sand to be dumped in their yard on the farm, and she's going to give the kids hardhats, little shovels, and other 'construction stuff' and let them run around in the yard all day.

That's what's cool about living in a small town.

Plus you can get iced cappucino if you like, and the butcher doesn't charge too much. Er. Separate thoughts there. You don't get iced cappucino from the butcher. Well, you probably *could*, but you might not want to.



cenobyte on 22.09.05 @ 11:15 AM CST [link] [4 Comments]

Other Stuff

It's not that I mind so much receiving a bill for an ambulance ride. Even though they didn't *do* anything, and I had to explain to the EMT trainee what an IUD is and what it's for (and for the record, I went in to detail about what it looks like and where it's placed and how it gets in there and what happens if it moves around). It's not even that I mind so much that they didn't even flash the lights or wail the siren. It's the fact that the bill is nearly TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLARS.

Next time I need an ambulance, I'm going to call a taxi. The taxi only costs fifty bucks.

Granted, my health insurance pays for the ambulance ride. Granted, I didn't really *need* an ambulance; His Nibs *could* have woken up the kids and driven me in to town, stopping every fifteen minutes to hurl or poop, and praying we didn't drive off the road with fever chills.

Maybe I should sell those morpheine tablets the doctor gave me for $150 a pop. Then I'd make $25 on the deal.

No, what I really mind is the fact that if we're going to claim to be a socialist province, then we should try to be a socialist province.


cenobyte on 21.09.05 @ 10:46 AM CST [link] [9 Comments]

Beavers?

All right, so pardon me my filthy mind, but I get the giggles when I get a letter from Cub Scouts Canada saying "thank you for enrolling your son/daughter in Beavers. Please bring your Beaver to [insert meeting place here] at [insert time here], and make sure your Beaver is wearing the proper uniform."

[snicker]

It gets better. You know what the first thing is that Beavers do when they gather? They do a Tail Slap.

[snort]

Then they do these little air quotes things and chant : "Beavers! Beavers! Beavers! - Sharing! Sharing! Sharing!"

[rotflmao]

I couldn't stop laughing last night. All the other mums thought I was just giggling at the cuteness of it all, but honestly, they just don't have a filthy enough mind.

[snicker]

The Nipper is currently taking little bits of cat food and putting them down the heating vents. This is a step up from eating them. He's also starting to make more signs - this morning I said, "look! There's your ball!" and he made the sign for "where". Then he saw the ball and pointed to it. He uses the sign for "drink" (he is my boy, after all), and sometimes uses the sign for "potty".

Anyway, I was a bit surprised at how...girly...Beavers seems to have become. The Captain's "Beaver Leaders" (who are mums, which is cool) are called "Bubbles", "Rainbow", and "Sunshine". Which, I suppose, one could argue, are perfectly good names for senior Beavers. [snicker]

In Brownies, I had "Brown Owl" (we called her "Brown Hole", because we couldn't stand her - I was only in Brownies for the better part of one season. I wanted to be in cubs, but they wouldn't let girls in. I suggested I enroll as a boy, and they didn't think that was funny), "Grey Owl", and "Tawny Owl". I always thought that was a little odd, because in real life, owls would most likely make a quick snack of brownies (both the baked kind and the faerie kind), but what do I know? The only badges I got were "collecting", "dancing (for Hula)", "reading" and "helping". I got the helping badge for showing the other brownies how to fix a bike chain that had derailed. I did not get the "braiding hair" badge, the "cleanliness" badge, nor did I get to be a "sixer" or a "seconder". Back in the day, the brownie uniforms were these kinda cool, kinda stupid brown dress-like things. We also had these hideous yellow-and-orange flame coloured neckties. We had to wear brown knee-high socks. We had little leather pouches not unlike sporins (mine got ruined fairly quickly when I put a piece of chewing gum, recently chewed, in it "for later") in which you kept your 'dues' (25 cents/week) for 'faerie circle'. That's where you all get in a circle and sing some dorky song about faerie rings and mushrooms. Not the good kind of mushrooms, either - the kind you sit on to hand over your dues for brownies. Sigh. Once you progressed from "tweenies" (now called 'sparks', I believe), you got a sash. I never made it out of 'tweenies'. Not after the 'we're going to Hawaii' fiasco. I think I've mentioned that before, but if not, maybe another time.

ANYHOW, Brownies is a lot different now. Apparently, the little beggars are taught the cool things now, like camping, building fires, knife throwing, you know, all the essentials. One of the reasons I quit was that I really couldn't stand people trying to teach me to be all the things my mother was trying to teach me not to be (subservient to men, gracious home-makers with no ambitions outside breeding and cleaning, and whose greatest dream was to get married (to anyone), have buckets of children, and die knowing you'd never expressed your opinion in any stronger way than by saying "Well...." at the dinner table). They got mad at me whenever I asked when we got to learn 'the cool stuff, like building things and making fires'.

"Women don't do those things," Brown Hole told me. "And well-behaved girls grow into well-behaved women."
"Uh, I don't want to be a well-behaved woman," I mentioned. "I want to know how to take care of myself."
"You'll never need to take care of yourself," Brown Hole countered, "because that's what your husband is for. Well. You'll need to know how to be clean and beautiful for him, of course."

And that was the moment my little six-and-a-half year old brain snapped.

"Are you serious?" I asked.

She glared at me. "Now why don't you tell us about what you're collecting for your collecting badge?" She spit between gritted teeth.

"Uh. Well. Buttons."
"You're collecting buttons?"
"Well, my mum has this doll collection she gave me, but I don't really like do..."
"DOLLS! Oh wonderful! Bring your doll collection next time. EVERYONE will want to see it."
"Yeah," said my Best Friend Sarah sarcastically, "EVERYONE."

I got the badge, not because I collected dolls, but because my mother had begun asking people to bring a doll in traditional clothes back for me from wherever they travelled. She wanted me to have a good representation of many world cultures. I had dolls from the Ukraine, South Africa, Mexico, Holland, Ireland, England, Russia, and Korea. I never played with them - wasn't allowed to and didn't want to - but I got the badge.

The point here is that I'm insanely jealous of The Captain, who, in his first day of Beavers, got to build a sturdy wooden box with a nylon-rope handle. "For your stuff", his Rainbow said.

You know what I built in Brownies (and not on my first day, neither)?

Yarn braids. Perhaps 'built' is the wrong term. I made yarn braids. Not macrame. Not knitting. Not crochet. Yarn braids. No knots involved. Nothing useful at all. Yarn braids. Sure am glad I know how to braid yarn. That's come in handy SO MANY TIMES.

That summer I worked on the ranch for my Aunt and Uncle, one of my jobs was to rebraid the lead shanks. I used NONE of the knowledge I'd learned in Brownies. I'd taken a book out of the library in high school to learn various kinds of rope braiding and knot making (I've forgotten many of the knots).

Anyway, it's good that he's interested and excited. To hang out with Beavers. And do the Tail Slap. With Bubbles, Sunshine, and Rainbow. Should get him prepared for that trip to the nightclubs in Calgary about fifteen years from now, if only in filthy-minded metaphor. [grin]


cenobyte on 20.09.05 @ 08:58 AM CST [link] [14 Comments]

big surprise

Big surprise #1 for cenobyte:

It costs less for a formal plate service supper at most hotels than it does for a 'sandwich and dessert buffet-style'. Twice as much for the sandwich and dessert trays. Hrm. That's new. And unexpected.

Big surprise #2 for cenobyte:

Some people go through wedding plans *more than once* in their lives.

Big surprise #3 for cenobyte:

Your face really doesn't 'stick like that'. Damn.


cenobyte on 18.09.05 @ 12:13 PM CST [link] [3 Comments]

Gaaah

You know what really burns me up?

Forgetting the thing it was that was really pissing me off what I was going to write about in my journal. That just picks my bum.

Stupid forgettery.




cenobyte on 17.09.05 @ 04:52 PM CST [link] [1 Comment]

Irate

Tonight on CBC television, there will be a documentary on Terry Fox aired. This documentary was planned and scheduled months and months ago, for the 25th anniversary of the Terry Fox run. Unfortunately, the documentary was produced by Canadian Media Guild members who were locked out by the CBC, and re-contracted to produce this documentary. I heard a representative from the CMG talk about it yesterday on a talk-radio program (since I can't stand the crap that CBC is putting out with all its talented employees locked out). Anyhow, the CMA rep wondered why the CBC hadn't given the documentary to another station. The CMA had contacted Terry Fox's family and asked if they would mind terribly if the documentary was postponed, due to the CBC lockout, and they have been trying to appeal to the CBC to do so. I urge you to instead watch the CTV movie that will be aired tomorrow night, and the documentary on CTV on Sunday night.

The CBC responded by saying the employees in question were not locked out employees, but were independent contractors hired for the purpose of producing this special to benefit the Terry Fox Foundation. These employees, and their independent contracting company, were also contracted on a regular basis by the CBC up until August 15th, as were many other employees without permanent positions. This is part of the basis of the labour dispute; that CMG employees have a right to "real careers" rather than contract positions. There's a lot more information about the CMG position here. Information about the CBC's position is available here.

The whole 'labour dispute' is pissing me off, not just because I'd rather chew off my own feet than listen to the shit they're playing on the radio these days. Granted, I'm not the biggest fan of every show they produce, but I miss my CBC. I've woken up with CBC every day for the past fifteen years - ever since my mother got me my own clock-radio and I had the option to listen to something *other* than the indefatigable "JJ Cennon". CBC was always on in my house on the weekends, and if you spent any time at all in the combine at our farm, that's the only station the radio had. That's just a little reason why I'm pissed off. I'm pissed off because CBC is still getting government funding, but they're sure as hell not paying their employees. They're not providing proper services to Canadians, and *there's no new Degrassi episodes!!!*

Okay, I'm being a *bit* facetious about Degrassi.

The fact remains that if CBC isn't going to do its jorb, maybe it shouldn't be getting guvviment cheese. On the other hand, once you lose guvviment cheese, you don't tend to get it back, and it seems to me that CBC is putting its entire future in jeopardy. If the silly pseudo-powers-that-be at CBC ruin public broadcasting in Canada, I might just take that money I had earmarked for food at the wedding reception and buy myself something with which it would be appropriate to hole oneself up in a clocktower. High-powered water balloons, say. Or possibly the very best dung bombs money can buy. And then I'll find myself a clock tower close to where the pseudo-powers-that-be, er, be, and I'll let fly.

I've been keeping up with picket line news, and I've been checking out CBC negotiations. Doesn't make me any less angry.

I heard a rumour that the fellow in charge of the CBC Board is the same fellow who was in charge when the country's book publishing policy was poked with sticks so many times it began to fall apart. Rumour has it he's one of the lead 'devolution' guys on the market. Oh huzzah. I don't know about that, though, since their first names are different. The CBC guy is Robert and the Heritage Canada guy was Victor. Maybe it's a conspiracy. Maybe it's the same guy going by his first and middle names, respectively. Maybe they're clones made by the small-cee conservative right wing culture-haters. Maybe they're twin brothers sharing a brain, a miracle made possible by Canada's incredible scientific research and development budget...(snicker). Maybe it's just two different people and the rumour mill was mistaken. Either way, I don't like what's happening.

You can read up on it here, on publicairwaves.ca. The same story is also available from Canadian Press via canoe.ca via CBC Watch. Or you can visit the CBC Picket Line site to get their point of view.

On a completely unrelated note, I dreamt I was at a rodeo of some kind. And a former beau was there. I saw him in passing, and wanted to talk to him, but I couldn't find him. We had spoken the first day, when the rodeo was also Value Village (a very easy thing to believe, if you've ever worked at Value Village), because I'd had to get back to the 'ranch-style house' our family was renting for the week. I don't know why I had to get back; nobody was home. The next day I went out to try to find Beau again, in the throngs of people who weren't there yet, and all I heard was that someone had fallen from the grandstands the day before. Then the dream turned into a superhero-supervillain type dream where Beau was more of a nefarious no-goodnik hiding in crowds and popping his head up now and then to tease Our Hero (that'd be me). All in all I ended up getting confused as to what I was supposed to be doing in the dream, and I decided to wake up.

And on a completely unrelated note again, here is just a small sampling of the weird, weird stuff that's been happening at my house:
1) I have a moderately heavy brass inkwell. It's on top of my bookcase, near the back by the wall. I put it there because it would kill a cat or maim a child if it fell on them, and the floorboards under the bookcase tends to pop now and then if you walk over it 'just right'. I knew this, so I put the inkwell waaaay at the back where it couldn't slide off. Yesterday, I was coming in to the office to check my mail, and as I sat down (nowhere near the bookcase), I heard this loud 'scrape-klunk', and the cat took off at a dead bolt. I didn't know what it was, but then Mike came in a while later and picked up the inkwell off the floor. "What's this and why is it on the floor?" he asked. WEIRD.

2) I have a selection of vases on the shelf above the basement/hall doors in my kitchen. They, being made of glass, have been placed nearer the wall than the edge of the shelf. Yesterday, as The Captain walked through the door (and he wasn't stomping or running or jumping this time, for the record), one of the vases flew off the shelf, hit the floor, bounced, and landed right-side up. It didn't break, even though it fell from a distance of about ten feet and is made of extremely thin glass. It also didn't hit The Captain, thankfully. WEIRD.

3) Yesterday, the front doorbell rang. The Captain's new favourite thing is answering the door and the telephone, so he sprinted out there, and got there about the same time I did (I had been sitting on the couch with The Nipper, a distance of maybe eight feet). Nobody was there. Nobody was in the yard, nobody was on the walk. Nobody around. No cars leaving. No bikes. Nobody. Cue the crickets. WEIRD.


cenobyte on 16.09.05 @ 08:17 AM CST [link] [4 Comments]

Notarant

I haven't a rant in me. Not a single rant. Not even a little bit of a whine, or that niggling little crick at the back of one's neck one gets when one is about to complain about something. Okay, wait. I'm sure I can find *something* to complain about.

Hrm.

The oatmeal this morning was runny.

Uhhh...

...ummm...

In the immortal words of Buttery Bee: "Hit me in the face! I'm feelin' rowdy!" He's a riot at parties. A one-man riot at times.

Um. We now return you to your regularly scheduled browsing. Perhaps I'll read the news all day today and come up with something to discuss at a later time.

For now, let's think about feet.


cenobyte on 14.09.05 @ 08:29 AM CST [link] [6 Comments]

Splashback

The dinner was nice until those ubiquitous words at midnight: "Mama, my tummy hurts." With the instinct of a woman who vaguely remembers the sensation herself, she held a bucket under the youngster's chin as he sat on the toilet, convinced the problem was a particularly stubborn poop. As if on cue, the youngster filled the bucket with the flotsam of the evening's supper.

Unpredictably, the youngster was not afraid or in tears, perhaps because of the mother's reassurances, perhaps because the youngster wasn't quite entirely awake yet. At any rate, she sat the kid down on a stool, covered him with a blanket, and they sang quiet songs together until they were both sure the episode had passed. She made sure the boy had plenty of cool water to drink, and she tucked him back in to bed, apologising because this meant he'd have to miss school.

An hour later, as she was walking down the hall to go to bed herself, she sees her boy lean over the bed and aim for the bucket. To her amazement, he hits the bucket. She kneels in front of the bed, holds the bucket up for him, and turns on the light. She rubs his back, because these heaves sound particularly painful. They spend the next hour in the bathroom, making sure "it's all out now".

The heaves don't come until three hours later, and by this time, the boy's stomach is empty and his resolve is weakening. "I don't want to throw up anymore," he says, "so I think I'll just go back to sleep. Will you phone my teacher and tell her I'm too sick for school tomorrow?"

"I will," she says, "but maybe not at three in the morning. Maybe I'll wait until the sun comes up."

"Okay," her boy answers, "as long as she knows I'm not missing school because I'm sitting around watching commercials or something."

"I'll tell her you said that. Goodnight, love."

"Goodnight, Mama. Thank you for helping me not be so scared."

"You're welcome, my boy. You're very brave."

"Hey Daddy?"

"Yes, son?" asks the bleary-eyed man standing in the doorway.

"I think Mama is the smartest person in this house."




cenobyte on 13.09.05 @ 08:05 AM CST [link] [3 Comments]

Updates

So I'm working on updating some of the web pages from work. Niggly little jorb, that. It's not that I don't enjoy it, but to really to a good jorb, I find that I have to devote large blocks of time solely to programming, and that's kinda tough to do sometimes.

It's going well, and, as always, some of it is trial and error.


cenobyte on 12.09.05 @ 10:30 AM CST [link] [Come away, O Human Child]

Query

Porblem:

Friend's Da wants to put some .RAM files on a CD to be played on a CD player in a place that is Away from a computer. What program does he need to rip the .RAM files and convert them to .WAV or .MP3 so that they can be listened to in a regular car- or portable- stereo?

Some of the freeware programs he's tried already, but they won't recognise the file, which plays just fine on his RealAudio program.


cenobyte on 11.09.05 @ 01:30 PM CST [link] [2 Comments]

Power Sk8

The Captain has just given me a home-made laser that is to be used as follows:

I'm supposed to be defeating people and breaking through walls. I'm the designated wall breaker-downer. His laser booster is used primarily for defeating people. I'm only allowed to break through bricks and walls that have cracks. I have to aim at the cracks. I have to keep shooting them until they fall. If they don't fall down, The Captain is the only one with the sharp sword. He cuts the bottoms of the wall off until they fall down. Except we only use lasers in this game, and he's allowed to have two lasers, so I guess if there are indestructible walls out there, I'm SOL. He has a special wall breaker-througher laser, but I don't get that one. He gets it because he's the boss. I used to be the boss, but apparently I quit. I don't remember handing in my resignation. Perhaps I quit under duress. I wonder if there's an ombudsman in this operation.

He is taking power skating this weekend. It's so weird to sit in a hockey rink watching your kid skate in his full hockey regalia when it's 30 above outside. The rink is literally dripping, and over the ice hovers a thick fog. Unfortunately, the fog is almost exactly as high as The Captain, so until he's right in front of the window, you can't see the little bugger at all. He just kind of bursts through the fog.

And hokey dinah for sweat. That kid sweats like it's going out of style.

Anyway, I must go. Apparently there are some walls that need my paltry attempts at laser destruction somewhere around here. I'm willing to bet my laser doesn't even work properly. Probably "Made in Taiwan". Sigh. This must be the part of my life where I am relegated to 'sidekick' status.


cenobyte on 10.09.05 @ 11:57 AM CST [link] [Come away, O Human Child]

I cock.

I GET TO INTERVIEW ARTHUR BLACK!!!!!

How cool is that!? No, seriously, How Cool Is That?

That's pretty cool, that is.




cenobyte on 09.09.05 @ 12:32 PM CST [link] [5 Comments]

Ah, much better now

Now that the kidneys are in better working condition ("Hey mum, do you have any more of those rocks in your kidneys or did you pee them all out?" The Captain asked last night), I'm feeling much better. Not for having sat in the emergency room for four hours waiting for the people who'd just done the CT scan to get the results looked at by someone who knew what they were looking at. I finally gave up on waiting to see the doctor (if you ever have an emergency, it's best to have one after regular working hours, I find) and just asked them to fax the results to my family doctor, with whom I had an appointment in the afternoon anyway. I went to the appointment with my family doctor, who had just received the results (half an hour after I left the hospital), so I figure that was a pretty good turnaround time. I had to wait for about an hour to get in to the CT scan.

The CT scanner, by the way, is Ultra-Cool. It makes a very futuristic humming noise. I was in the Star Trek room, and said so, to the amusement of the radiologists. We had a good chat about Star Trek while we were waiting for the lab coat guy to do his lab coat guy stuff. What a great bonding experience.

Anyway, the health of the family is looking up. My doctor told me to eliminate dairy from my diet, as well as fruit juices, which, even though they don't have added sugar, do apparently have sweeteners added and aren't very good for you. Unless they're home-juiced with the pulp still in (I've been toying with the idear of getting one of those Fabulon6000 ultra-juicers with a diesel engine and three speeds for quite some time now - this cinches my decision). He also reassured me that it's a good idear to go and see a naturopathic doctor ("just check their credentials," he said, "and maybe find out where they've trained. The ones trained in Europe probably have a bit better education. Then again, even the guy with the lowest marks in medical school still gets to call himself 'doctor'! HA-ha-ha." Must be a doctor joke). He figures the kidney stones and my indigestion could be a result of a B-6 deficiency, common in pregnant and breastfeeding mums.

So I'm feeling much better, Mike's not green anymore, The Captain's off to school this morning, The Nipper's cough is loosening up, and Tau the Cat is the STINKIEST CREATURE IN CREATION. Ye gods. Hurgh.


cenobyte on 09.09.05 @ 09:19 AM CST [link] [2 Comments]

My Night

My Night
- by cenobyte

"Hi there, can you pick up some cough medicine for me and The Nipper on your way home?"
"Sure, if I don't hurl first."
"Oh dear."

His Nibs came into the house looking a very peculiar shade of green. He spent the next four hours or so within a stone's throw of the loo.

Got the kids to bed.

Had a backache. Thought, 'meh, what's new?' Chanced on having a hot soak in the tub, between His Nibs' attacks of humours. Baaaaad humours. Not funny.

"That's odd," thought I, "my backache isn't getting any better in this hot tub. Hm. Maybe something's wrong. Ow. That really hurts. Why, this feels a little like back labour. Ow. OW!"

"Honey," says I, to the pekid pea-coloured man in my bed, "I think I'm going to call the hospital. There's something really wrong with me".

Now to his credit, he didn't launch into the myriad things that could be or are wrong with me. He just said, "I'm sorry", which was odd, because it certainly wasn't his fault. I called the hospital. Described the mind-numbing labour-like pains I was having on my right side. Started in the back. Moved across my hip and into my groin.
"How would you rate this pain?" asked the Helpful Nurse.
"Somewhere between almost not bearable and fucking awful?"
"On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst pain you've ever felt?"
"Okay, well, let's just say my labour pains were about a seven or eight on that scale, I'll put this at a six or seven."

After a few more questions, she determines that I ought to get in to the hospital within the next four hours. I realise the following:
Mike can't drive me. He's upstairs having a hot and sweaty date with the contents of his stomach.
I can't drive me. I'm in the process of trying to 'visualise' my way through searing pain.
The Captain can't drive me. He's in bed. Plus, he's only five and can't reach the pedals.
The Nipper can't drive me. He's in bed too, and hasn't quite got full control of his hands.
I don't know anyone in our town well enough yet to ask anyone to drive me.

I call 911 and tell the kind 911 lady that I'm experiencing sudden extreme pain. She calls the ambulance. I hobble around at home, walking through the pain like one does when one's in labour. The ambulance guys arrive. I feel like a dolt, standing on the street waving them down. In the ambulance, I explain my symptoms to the EMT student and the actual EMT. I apologise for having to call them all the way out here. They say they don't mind, especially when I'm not bleeding, barfing, or peeing in their bus. Or worse.

We arrive at the hospital. I then tell the kind nurse about my pain, which by now has subsided to maybe a three or four on the above mentioned scale. She (the nurse, not the scale) asks me to take a seat in the waiting room. I did. I tried making up stories and commentary for Riff and his lovely wife Raff who were sitting beside me (remind me sometime to tell you the terribly politically incorrect vegetable joke sometime - Riff and Raff had the voices from the joke); the hoity-toity upper-middle-class twits across the way, and the beautifully rotund pregnant woman with her one-legged boyfriend (not a euphemism). But the pain came back. Not wanting to be a noodge (is it noodge or nudge or what?), I politely waited as long as I could, walked around a while more, then went to the nurse's desk.

"I'm sorry to be a bother," I said, "but the pain is suddenly quite a lot worse than when I came in. Is there somwhere I could curl up into a little ball and whimper?"

She smiled kindly and put me in a bed in a hallway. I've always wanted to be the patient in the bed in the hallway. The guy in the room across from me was chained to his bed (he also had two of his very own prison guard escorts), and gave a rousing play-by-play (*and* colour commentary, for the record) of his proctological examination, complete (what proctological examination would be complete without) with asides as to now knowing why his 'lady friend' screamed when he did that. 'Being a prisoner,' I thought, and then didn't follow that thought up much further, due to the pain in my back. The lady in the other room across from me had the flu or something similar. She had a Scots accent, and was invoking The Father as waves of nausea floated over her. I felt very sorry for her. At one point, I heard something drop to the ground, and this little polite Scottish voice say, "oh, and I've dropped it. And I need it. Oh, Heavens, I can't get it, not there, no no. Oh dear. Oh my. Oh dear. Oh Lord, Oh dear." Then she found the call button and said, when the nurse buzzed her to see what the problem was, "I've gone and dropped something and I need it because I need to be sick in it..." Very sweet. If not for the huge "DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING IN THIS ROOM OR CERTAIN DEATH AWAITS YOU" signs, I might have stumbled in to help.

Anyway, eventually my turn came around; the nurse gave me a risque little hospital gown and a warm dressing jacket to go over it, and weird little paper slippers to change into. I had to pee in a cup and give them vials of it. Then I was back to waiting.

Felt a bit better, though.

The doctor came in, asked me a few questions, then left to check the lab results on my pee. Came back in a while later.
"I think you probably have kidney stones," he said. "You may have even passed one tonight. We'll need to do a CT scan, but if you're not in pain anymore, we'll just send you home and you can come back tomorrow morning for that. I'll send some pain medication home with you to take if you need it."

That's it.

Kidney stones.

Let me just tell you this one thing.

Gentlemen, if you'd ever like to know the *kind* of pain that women go through in labour, get yourselves some kidney stones. It's a very similar kind of pain. Not as long, and not as intense, but then again, the end product isn't as much fun either.

Stupid kidney stones.


cenobyte on 08.09.05 @ 02:56 AM CST [link] [8 Comments]

Uppicus Datidus

*Health Update**

Right.

Well.

Yesterday I was feeling dizzy and feverish still, so His Nibs took the day off work, which was very sweet of him, especially since he has gobs of work to do. Today, I'm not feeling as feverish and dizzy, but I am feeling chills, weakness, and rather startling urges to visit the loo. Which I heed, I might add.

On the upside, there's no word I've yet encountered that properly describes the emotional elation at realising one is able to fart without leaking.

Perhaps I should invent one.

Or maybe there *has* been a word invented that means just that. I bet if there has been, it's 'frabjous'.


cenobyte on 07.09.05 @ 11:16 AM CST [link] [7 Comments]

OH YUK

So, on the heels of the coughing palsy that our house has been afflicted with over the past couple of weeks, yours truly woke up on Sunday night/early Monday morning thinking, "that's odd. I feel like I might hurl". After a trip to the bathroom, all seemed to be well, no barfing...but then as I lay down again, I thought, more definitely this time, "no, I'm quite certain that I'm going to hurl."

And so I did.

Visciously.

Many, many times.

I'm not sure if it's an intestinal flu or something I picked up from eating raw eggs or something I picked up from having an IUD, but whatever it is, BOY is it terrible. Chills, fever, alternating between the two...I'm tempted to say it's a flu because whenever I get a virus, the back of my neck gets incredibly sore, and the back of my neck is incredibly sore.

So I'm cancelling all of my appointments for the day - I missed the Duck Derby yesterday - The Captain's young friend came by and they went together with His Nibs, while I stayed home, lying on the floor, letting The Nipper crawl all over me and watching football.

Yay Edmonton.

I urge you all to try this someday, just for the experience (not a pleasant one), if you haven't already: coughing uncontrollably while barfing and experiencing explosive diaherrea all at the same time. It's marginally different from the intense pain of e-coli (which I know Terry and cenobyte have both experienced, although I think Terry's experience was somewhat more...er...intense), in which actual FIRE passes through one's intestinal system. Similar in that the traditional pose of someone suffering from e-coli is sitting on the biffy with one's head in a bucket. Different in that this last horrid flu didn't cause any real kind of pain. Just annoying and slightly disgusting symptoms.



cenobyte on 06.09.05 @ 07:27 AM CST [link] [2 Comments]

Wheezing cough of impending death

So His Nibs gave a cough to The Nipper who gave the cough to me. It's extremely unpleasant - chest congestion, weird need to clear your throat all the time, and these sudden, extremely painful coughing sprees that feel like you're choking. Ugh.

No fever, no snot, which is a bonus.

But, depending on which side one sleeps on at night, one could wake up the entire household with one's coughing.

We do not, in fact, have bats in our belfry. I went up the attic to check today. We do have a crib (it's a very nice crib - painted blue, if you're interested) and some 'hinsulation', and there are some bits that need patching up there, but once we get some floorboards down it could be a very nice reading space. To share with all the junk that we have that doesn't have a home. That stuff counts as insulation, right?

Anyway, no bats.
Some spiders, but no bats.

And, I may have forgotten to mention, I have these weird lumps on the back of my neck. Sometimes they're about the size of a golf ball or an egg, and at those times they're very painful. Most of the time they're not much bigger than a dime, and though they're sometimes incredibly itchy, they are painful to the touch.

They're not muscle knots, either.

Yes, I'll be getting the doctor to check them out. I have a list of 'complaints' that I need him to tell me either: "you're getting old. Get used to this kind of stuff."; or "Good LORD! That's not natural! We'd better lance that!" Some of my complaints are 'just weird' - every now and then certain parts of my body go numb. Some of them are probably perfectly explainable - "your shin hurts because you've been cracking it against the stool every day for three months". As TUO once told, me, it seems common sense to 'save up' all your aches, pains, and complaints, and when the list gets to a certain point (maybe more than a page, depending on the size of your printing and the dimensions of your notebook), you go see a specialist. Apparently she has the same frame of mind for her car woes.


cenobyte on 04.09.05 @ 12:51 PM CST [link] [Come away, O Human Child]

A poll

Okay, Court of Public Opinion (quite different from "Court of Pubic Opinion", which is what I initially wrote), I have a Question for you. If you received a Wedding Invitation with the following phrase on it, and knowing that the invitation in question came from cenobyte et al, please indicate whether you would find said wording insulting, witty, in poor taste, or a good way of saying what there's no real good way of saying.

"The couple would prefer not to receive gifts. They are registered at the Bank of Montreal, if you would like to give them something."

P.S. BPM-IV, I asked around. Very few people know what "presentation preferred" means.

Okay sailors, weigh in!


cenobyte on 03.09.05 @ 11:46 AM CST [link] [9 Comments]

First Day

:satisfied:

Well, that's done then.

I managed to make it through without crying, even when, right at the gate to the schoolyard, The Captain slowed right down, staring at all the children, and said in a very small voice, "I'm scared".

"I know," I said, "and that's okay."

He held tightly to my hand, weighing the pros and cons of this new part of his life, and was very, very quiet.

Then his teacher came over, and she remembered his name, which is freaking amazing (having it emblazoned in big letters on his bookbag probably helped), and the first thing he did was to try to open his bag to give her the cheque I had sent with him ("first thing when you get to school," I said, "make sure you give Mrs. Holman this money."). What a sweetie. She took him under her arm, introduced him to another girl, and away they went into the school.

I keep telling myself, 'it's not so different from daycare; what's the big 'porblem' here?'.

But it is. It is.






cenobyte on 02.09.05 @ 09:10 AM CST [link] [6 Comments]

Last Day...

Well, The Captain's last day of being a 'littlekid' is now done. He's all tucked in, but not asleep because he's so excited about school tomorrow. We went to the school together this morning so that he'd know which door to go to, which class was his, where to put his shoes, where the bathrooms are, etc.

- or, on a different note, -

The Captain's first day of school is just around the corner. He's going to have so much fun, he's going to learn and make new friends and ...

...oh good, he's out of bed...

I'm just not good at this.

All week I've been looking at him and remembering the first time I held his tiny hand, as he lay in an isolette in the intensive care unit, with tubes sticking out of him and needles sticking in. I've been thinking of watching him roll over, and being so proud of him when he could just sit up on his own. The days he crawled into bed with me (back when he still needed help to get on the bed) and cuddled in the mornings, the times I slept on his floor because the monsters wouldn't quiet down. I've been remembering his soft baby face, his pudgy fingers...the latter stuffing pesto-covered noodles into nearly every orifice in the former.

I know this is a forward-looking time. I know more joy and happiness are coming.

Allow me this melancholy indulgence.

It goes by so God-damned fast. It goes by while you're working, while you're sleeping, while you're sitting with him on your lap, reading to him. Softly, silently, almost enough that you don't notice. But then one day you're holding his hand and walking him away from your nest and all you can think about are those times (that still happen, mind) that you cradled him in your arms and rocked. Yeah, you can still do that, but his legs stick out at odd angles now, and he damn near chokes you with the rocking.

And this is the silly part - suddenly you realise you can't get it back. I mean, you knew all along - intellecutally you knew, because you've always known, that once it's gone, it's gone. Memory is good, but not the same.

Anyway, this song more or less sums up how I'm feeling right now. Er, except put in all kinds of 'boy' references. Well, you get the pictures.

Puffy-eyedly yours,
cenobyte


cenobyte on 01.09.05 @ 08:49 PM CST [link] [2 Comments]