The nth oldest profession (matey).

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Does anyone else find it fascinating that there are still pirates in the world?  In 2004, there were 324 reported pirate attacks (about 1/3 of which occured in Indonesian waters).  While I was riding the bus, living in the suburbs, preparing for life in a cubicle, embedded in a world of many and diverse applications of concrete, there were other people who were growing up to become /pirates/.

And still with the same title for the job as in the 1600s.  Cobblers and haberdashers are few, but pirates are still going strong.  The mind boggles.

(I also find it very funny that the ad embedded in the middle of the news article on worldwide pirate attacks is for cheap tickets on a cruiseline.  Oh indiscriminate advertising, you’re high-larious.)  🙂

Posted in: ponderings

It’s important to keep these skills sharp.

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The EF just bought a bike stand, to further enhance his mad trials riding experience. While the bike stand is collapsible to a smallish size, it comes packaged in a rather large cardboard box.

Anyone who during their childhood had a neighbour who bought a fridge, stove, dishwasher or other large appliance, will realize the significance of a ‘rather large cardboard box’.

I had no choice.

So when the EF came in off the balcony, he found me in the hallway, in the box. Looking quite pleased with myself.

If only it had come packaged in bubblewrap… 🙂

Posted in: the EF

Ur in my laundry room, usin’ my quarterz.

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Communal laundry machines are no one’s friend. Well, possibly the environment’s friend. And possibly the friend of the inconsiderate goon who gets to parasite his way to cleanliness.

We share our laundry facilities with a number of other apartments. One washer. One dryer. The machines take only loonies and quarters (1 loonie, 2 quarters to wash; 1 loonie to dry). Fairly reasonable cost, but very /specific/ coin requirements. We also don’t live on the same floor as the laundry machines. In fact we are a number of flights of stairs away. And I have knee issues which make extra trips up and down stairs actually pretty unpleasant.

So I, rather obviously but brilliantly I thought, left a little stash of loonies and quarters down in the basement, so that I would never again get all the way down there and then realize I hadn’t brought the right change. Obvious. Brilliant.

/Unless/…

…you have neighbours who ‘steal’. To be fair, at least one neighbour who uses my stash of coins replaces them with twonies and dimes and such. But I have no doubt that there is somebody(s) else who use the stash but do not do a 1:1 swap. Actually, I rather suspect that they do a 1:0 swap.

Fekkers.

All that to gloss right past the point that they have no compunctions just using the coins which /suddenly appeared one day in a little container and which they know are not theirs/. Who does that? I mean, I could see doing it once, if I was desperate or… and I would most certainly replace the money I had taken. But this is becoming constant — to the point where there is almost ne’er a loonie or quarter to be seen (though a weird quantity of pennies).

Maybe I should start random laundry-related tithing. Sneak downstairs mid-cycle and sneak a sock or two off the top of their folding…

Posted in: rantish peeve

One ought, but one would require additional resources.

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“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
German dramatist, novelist, poet, & scientist (1749 – 1832)

Word to that, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Word. Hear a little song? Check. (Omara Portuondo is /on/ it…) See a fine picture? Daily Dose of Imagery has it covered (or I could always turn here, depends on what Goethe meant by ‘fine’). Speak a few reasonable words? Well, I certainly speak at various points during the day. And as a general rule, I try to keep myself reasonable. 🙂

But a good poem? Man.

Robert Priest from Now magazine on how most people are introduced to poetry: “It was one of the crueler inflictions of the school system. Teachers always seemed to choose the least age-appropriate and most inert verses, kind of like a dead virus meant to inoculate against any future infection of the poetic sort.”

Indeed.

I have found a few poems I enjoy. A couple by Walt Whitman. A couple by George Bowering. I seem to consistently enjoy the winning poem of the Toronto Poetry Slam. And the elusive one-poem-I-still-haven’t-got-a-copy-of by Eavan Boland (come to think of it, I think I often enjoy the poetry of Irish women. They’re my peeps).

But I lack a consistent and reliable poetry source. Which means an incrementally and continuously expanding hole in my Goethe assignment.

Got one today though. By Jelaluddin Rumi:

Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and Rightdoing

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn’t make any sense.

Posted in: ponderings

Pretty pretty flowers are not lethal.

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Random thought (@ 8:03am): By heavily scenting all of our products in scents which are chemically configured to relax, please, invigorate us, are we not screwing with our olfactory danger detectors?

E.g. Hair products which you can’t get on your skin smell like perfume, laundry sheets which are toxic smell like lavender and citrus, corrosive surface cleaners you have to wear gloves to use smell like “a sunny outdoors day”…

Posted in: ponderings

I didn’t know to love June Callwood.

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June Callwood was not a part of my world before she died.  She was mixed in amongst the ranks of ‘famous’ Canadians whose names are familiar but not especially meaningful to me personally.  Like Robertson Davies or Margaret Laurence.  Perhaps Adrienne Clarkson.  I had a sense that she was a writer, but I could not have told you what it was she wrote.

So when the EF and I were out for brunch on Saturday, April 14th, and the TV screen behind his head was flashing up CityPulse newsclips, I took more notice of how repetitive the cycle of “news stories” were, than I did of the story that June had passed away.

Then just after midnight that Sunday, I was having trouble sleeping, and turned on CBC.  Right at the start of an Ideas program.  Not their regularly scheduled slot, but CBC is doing all kinds of reorganizing madness at the moment.

Ideas was airing their tape of the 2002 Dalton Camp Lecture in Journalism, delivered that year by June Callwood.

I was planning on just listening to a few minutes before the EF came to bed.  But when he came through about 10 minutes later, there was no way I could have turned the radio off.  So we listened to the full thing, all 52 minutes and 24 seconds of it.

Do you know what it’s like when you are at a speech or a lecture and it feels like magic?  All you want is for everyone else to be able to be there, because you’re in this bubble of surreality where the words of the speaker are so poignant, so perfectly timed, so essential that you feel like they’re poking right through to the inside of you.

The last time I remember that happening was when I went to see David Suzuki speak at Convocation Hall.  Part of the magic is the rapt audible silence of the engaged audience.  Everyone in the room feels the same way as you, and all you all want is to keep that feeling from fading.

It can hit you two or three times as hard when what you’re hearing/reading/seeing seems to have been delivered to you by fate.  When it is not only perfect eloquence and inspiration, but perfect eloquence and inspiration for exactly where you are in your life right now.

June’s speech is one of the best things I have ever heard.  It makes me feel galvanized.  It makes me want to do better.  It makes me wish I could have thanked her.

It is currently available on the Best of Ideas Podcast.

Posted in: ponderings

It is a hardship I must bear.

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It is the destiny of some people to have weird things happen to them on a regular basis, so that they might tell others about these things later, and allow those people to feel comforted by the relative normalcy of their own lives.

I am one of the ‘weird things’ people.

I just got a green bean stuck (incredibly painfully) under my fingernail. Like a little vegetable splinter.* Break that down and think about it. A green bean. Stuck. Under my fingernail.

This is not atypical of the injuries I receive on a regular basis (so frequently that when the EF hears me squeak “ow!” from the other room, I can hear that his otherwise caring “are you okay sweetie?” is being delivered through a smile…).

*I was scrubbing a pan, and the green bean had been baked on and, apparently, transmutated into a shard of pain.

Posted in: food and drink

PJ Progression.

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I am home-based these days (as opposed to cube-based). Which makes me so happy I don’t have the words.

Home-based means you don’t run out the door in the morning. It means you don’t have to shove yourself out of bed. It means homecooked food, flexible days, and the ability to say “it’s gorgeous today! I’m going to go outside.” (<-how broken is it if in a whole day you can’t /go outside/ for 2 minutes).

It also means a certain… laxness to the wardrobe. In my previous positions, the contracts have usually made at least a passing mention to ‘appropriate business attire’. In my last contract, that’s actually the exact phrase. In the midst of: “…shall conform to the Client’s business policies, standards and conventions, including personnel standards. These include… appropriate business attire.” And when I’m working in an office, I adhere to these rules.*

But my kitty enforces no such rules. Her only standard is “something that means I can loll about on your knees without you throwing me off”. Her bar is low (which makes sense, as she’s really short — har dee har).

And my EF also doesn’t seem to give a toss. He has this whole “but you’re always beautiful” attitude which never ceases to amaze me. (<-and also leads me to test him. I like to seek him out when I’m at my most unsexy and be all “what about now?”. The little bugger always says yes.**)

Which leaves me entirely to my own whims and inclinations. MWAHAHAHA…

But I observed the other day that outside of “comfy”, what I end up wearing is less ‘planned’, and more ‘evolved’.

I get up in the morning around when the EF does, make him coffee and something for breakfast (usually). And then he leaves. And what I /should/ do is have a morning routine. A whole shower, make-the-bed, wash the dishes, get dressed sort of thing (not in that order). But I don’t. Almost unfailingly blameable on the computer. Because I make myself breakfast, and instead of eating it and then getting on with my day in a focused way, I sit down to “just reply to that one email”. Then I reply to a few emails. And check my rss feed. And watch something on YouTube. Work on a project. Chat with someone(s) on GMail. And before you know it, it’s noon:30 and I’m still going through my day by cobbling it together.

And, by extension, my outfit.

I start of in some form of pj. And then in amongst the emailing, rssing and breakfasting, I gradually add and replace layers until I end up enough clothes of the right variety that I can call myself “dressed”.

Take yesterday. Where by mid-afternoon I was wearing the socks I threw on in the morning (when I got out of bed to make EF breakkie), a pair of his torn sweatpants (which I adore and have officially adopted), a tshirt, a pair of loafers (my feet were chilly), and a small cashmere cardigan I bought secondhand.

Not one of these items matched. Though a good many of them were clean (<-it’s all about the small victories). Pale pale mauve sweater, black shirt, heather grey sweatpants with a fluorescent yellow and pink Nike logo (and bleach stains), white socks, hemp loafers. Oh, and a clip to keep my hair out of sight and mind.

Cuh-luh-assy. 🙂 For some reason, I just don’t look like the lady in the Ikea catalogue in her home office. But I think I’m okay with that, as she looks like she’s lost all perspective on appropriate use of caffeine.

*Though at my last job, I did somehow got the reputation of having a little too much ‘personality’ in my Friday wardrobe (there is nothing wrong, and very much right, with a Kozyndan tshirt of a bunny wearing headphones). And a smidge too little Yorkville in my weekly wardrobe (I will not wear heels to work. I will wear appropriate, good-looking shoes. But you’ll find me wearing heels to appease a boss over my cold dead flats-wearing body.)

**That is not to say he’s a love-blind idiot. If I make a something-in-my-teeth face, and my hair is greasy and I’ve just spilled pasta sauce down my front, he will concede that I’m not looking my “best”. 🙂

Posted in: kitteh, life stuff, ponderings, the EF