Posted by zoom! on September 28, 2006, at 10:02 pm |
It was pouring rain tonight as I wandered through the puddles on my way over to Stuart’s. I figured it was gonna be one wet barbecue party. Imagine my surprise when I rounded the corner and saw what Stuey had done with the place. Is he the world’s best host or what?? And because I looked like a drowned rat when I arrived, TC gave me a beautiful new umbrella: the fancy kind with a push button!
Here’s a medical update from last week’s carving knife injury, along with a fresh injury this week:
We had so much fun at Stuey’s tonight. The feast, as always, was fit for royalty. In addition to roast beef, chicken, pork roast, scalloped potatoes, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, a blueberry flan and other goodies, we also had a 60s salad this week. Remember 60s salad? Iceberg lettuce! We dipped it in blue cheese dressing and reminisced about the good ol’ salad days before that ridiculous raddiccio came along.
Then the conversation turned to concerts, because several people had attended concerts this week. Carol, for example, had been to the Eric Clapton concert. “We had really cheap crappy seats,” she said, “and we talked about moving down to the lower level to better seats so we could see and hear better, but you know how it is when you get older…you’d rather just sit there.”
The highlight of the evening was the birth of our new choir. This clip is from earlier in the evening, but really, we were just warming up. This song followed “This Little Light of Mine” and “Kumbaya.” (Technical note: I’m new at this newfangled video clip stuff. If it’s all jerky and spastic and the video and audio aren’t properly aligned, play it a second time and it should be fine. No, really. Play it twice. And you also might have to double-click on the start arrow to make it start.)Sadly, my memory card filled up before we got to the showtunes and TV theme songs portion of the evening. I swear to God, Preston knows the words to every theme song of every show in the entire history of TV. We sang The Brady Bunch, Movin’ on Up, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, and much, much more. Much MUCH more.
We had no idea we were so talented before tonight. I gotta get me a bigger memory card so I can share even more of our newfound talent with you.
Posted by zoom! on September 28, 2006, at 10:50 am |
One day I was walking up Somerset Street, on my way to work, just like every other day. As I approached the intersection at Percy & Somerset, I noticed someone walking towards me. I thought it was Bob Purcell. I hadn’t seen or even thought about Bob for years. He was hunched over and shuffling towards me. As we drew closer, I realized it wasn’t Bob after all. We passed each other directly across the street from the Kelly Funeral Home.
The Kelly Funeral Home, incidentally, is where I’ve always imagined I will go when I die. I think of it as “my” funeral home. I’ve walked past it every day for years and years. I’ve been to many wakes there. I’ve always liked the way the people who work there shovel the sidewalk in the morning, instead of waiting for the little sidewalk plow to do it. I used to (okay this is a bit embarassing) use the Kelly Funeral Home for a practical joke which involved giving someone a message that Myra Maines had called for them, along with the phone number. They’d call the number, and it would be the Kelly Funeral Home. My victim would say “Could I speak with Myra Maines please?” Get it? Ha ha ha ha ha! The staff at the Kelly Funeral Home were very good sports about it. So that’s where I want to go when I die. (You’re all invited.)
Anyway, there I go, digressing again. So I thought I saw Bob Purcell outside the Kelly Funeral Home, but it wasn’t him after all. Bob was a hardcore derelict with almost-a-PhD in economics who had come to Canada during the Vietnam war. I wondered, briefly, how he was doing these days, and then I forgot all about him again.
That night, when I got home from work, I cracked open the Ottawa Citizen and read all my favourite bits – local news, letters to the editor, astrology, Dear Abby, comics, obituaries….
Guess whose obituary was in the paper? Guess where the body was resting?
Posted by zoom! on September 27, 2006, at 9:51 am |
I’ve been feeling uncomfortable with the post about my son’s 24th birthday ever since I wrote it, because it casts my son’s father in such an unfavourable light, and that seems unfair. Like all of us, John has qualities in addition to his flaws.
So, in the interests of fairness and balance, I present to you a list of John’s better qualities:
Posted by zoom! on September 25, 2006, at 7:57 pm |
Yesterday I was walking along wind-whipped Somerset Street on my way to buy a jicama. I saw a panhandler I like because she’s always got a smile for me even though I never give her money. But she wasn’t smiling: she was fighting back tears. One of her friends stopped to talk to her, but she wasn’t talking. I kept walking.
But then I turned around and went back, and I put $5 in her hat. “I know it’s only money,” I said helplessly, “But I hope it helps a little.” She reached up and grabbed my hand, and pulled me down to the curb with her. And then she threw herself into my arms and sobbed like a child. What could I do? I sat there on the curb, holding her and rocking her back and forth while she wept.
That was the good thing I did. But the bad thought was “I hope she doesn’t have lice,” because our hair was touching. I felt ashamed of myself for thinking that.
Her friend sat beside her, on the other side, and said nice things. He told me I was very nice. He told her it was going to be okay. Then her boyfriend came along with a Tim Horton’s cup with water in it for her. Her boyfriend barked at her to stop crying. Her friend told her boyfriend to smarten up and don’t be such a jerk and try for once to be a bit sensitive. Her boyfriend shouted “She’s MY old lady, don’t tell me what to do, we’ve buried half our friends, everybody dies, there’s no point crying about it.” Her friend said “Karen, I don’t know why you put up with him.” Karen just kept her face buried in me throughout this exchange, while I watched with interest. A kind-looking man with long white hair dropped a $10 bill into her hat while we sat there, and she saw it. “Wow,” she said, “Thank you.” But she said it so quietly, almost to herself, and he was already gone.
She stopped crying and she sat up and took her $10 bill, and she seemed better. She told me her name was Karen. She’s from the Northwest Territories. She said she was sad because her friend Tony had died; he’d been hit by a truck while hitchhiking to Belleville. She said too many of her friends had died, and she was scared she was next, and Tony was just a wandering old hippie who didn’t deserve to die.
I asked her if I could take her picture, and she said only if I told her she looked beautiful. And then she smiled, and she DID look kind of beautiful. I took her picture.
She wanted me to take a picture of her with her boyfriend, so I did. This is Karen and her boyfriend:
Posted by zoom! on September 24, 2006, at 4:18 pm |
Today is my son’s birthday. It’s not just any birthday either, it’s his golden birthday: he turned 24 on the 24th.
We have a long-standing tradition for James’ birthday. Every single year, I make his favourite meal, which is beer-batter chicken balls, and we invite his Dad for dinner. (His Dad and I split up 23 birthdays ago, but we’ve remained on pretty good terms, all things considered.)
Here’s the weird part: The birthday celebration is a smashing success on odd-numbered years, and it’s a bit of a disaster on even-numbered years.
Just to give you a couple of recent examples: In 2002, John showed up for James’ birthday dinner party an hour late, with eight of his buddies from the bar in tow. (Some of his buddies, to their credit, quickly realized they had inadvertently crashed a dinner party, and offered to leave, but instead I turned it into snacks for 12 instead of dinner for 4. Not because I’m so nice, but because if those uninvited guests had left, I’d have been left with the drunkest and most obnoxious of the uninvited guests, and John of course.)
The next year, 2003, John arrived on time and by himself, with a potted plant. We had a lovely dinner of beer batter chicken balls, and then the three of us looked at old photo albums of when James was growing up.
2004 was probably the worst of all the even-numbered birthday celebrations. James was feeling sick and couldn’t eat. John showed up late and jaw-droppingly drunk. He wasn’t hungry, he wasn’t coherent, he gave all his beer batter chicken balls to the dog, he put his feet on the table and knocked over his beer (and then he just sat there looking at it spilling over everything) and, as a birthday present, he gave our son all the loose change in his pocket. The next day he phoned James to apologize for not showing up. James assured him he had been there, and John was not only surprised but actually pleased with himself for not missing it. I suggested to James that we not invite John the following year, but James said, “Aww, it wouldn’t be the same without him.” And I said “That’s why I’m suggesting it.”
2005 rolled around, and of course John was invited. You don’t mess lightly with tradition. By this time, James was living in Toronto, and he and his girlfriend came down for the birthday weekend. While I was out shopping for ingredients for the beer batter chicken balls, I ran into Waffle. “Hey,” said Waffle, “It’s James’ birthday!” I was surpised he knew that. “Oh yeah,” he said, “I saw John this morning, and he was nursing a beer very slowly; he’s determined to stay sober for the birthday dinner. He hasn’t forgotten last year.”
The beer batter chicken balls were very good, everybody had an appetite, and we played board games after dinner. It was a lovely evening.
So here it is: another dreaded even-numbered year. But the tradition has changed this year. James and Tara are living in Ottawa again, and Tara wanted to have the dinner at their place this year. So that’s what we’re doing. It should be interesting to see if the pattern holds true now that the tradition has been altered. I’m about to head over there now. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Posted by zoom! on September 23, 2006, at 1:32 pm |
I only heard about Red Friday a few minutes before it started. I’m sure it started out as something non-partisan and non-political, but Lowell Green was promoting it on his right-wing, redneck morning radio show and to me it just reeked of mindless American copycat patriotic fever. [click photos to enlarge]
IÂ was within spitting distance of the Prime Minister, but I restrained myself.
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 The pretend Mountie flashed me the thumbs up and I flashed him a peace sign.
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 The Right doesn’t get out to demonstrations and rallies much, and I guess it proved a bit much for some of them. Thank goodness there was somewhere to sit and rest their weary bones!
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I only saw one person I know there. He offered me a red jacket, but I declined: I was happy in black. He’s not a redneck but he supports the troops, whatever that means in this day and age. I think Bush has co-opted and totally corrupted the meaning of supporting troops. Anyway, I think I snapped this picture of him when the speaker asked everybody to cheer for the buses lined up behind us. Yay buses! What’s the world coming to when we cheer buses and boo the NDP?
 I like peace, so this quiet, peaceful little gathering at the foot of the hill made feel better.
Posted by zoom! on September 22, 2006, at 6:26 pm |
I was tired and felt a bit like I was coming down with something last night, and so I almost didn’t go to Thursday Night at Stuey’s. I was glad I did, because all it took was some outstanding food, brilliant company and two Stellas to make me feel completely rejuvenated and healthy. [Click photos to enlarge.]
 There were a few things that set last night apart from all the other Thursday Nights at Stuey’s, including a bonfire, a feisty little party animal, an a carving knife injury! (Stuart showed us his 21-inch walrus penis too, but I forgot to take a picture. Next time.)
It was decided last night that Pat would start podcasting a daily rant. This is going to catapult her to Instant Internet Infamy, because Pat is truly one of the best ranters of our generation. But first we have to figure out how to podcast.
Here are some highlights from last night:
 The Bonfire:
The feisty little party animal:
The carving knife injury:
(By the way, I apologize for that cheap attention-getting headline.)
Posted by zoom! on September 21, 2006, at 1:19 pm |
I hope I die in an interesting way. Ideally, my death would involve an ironic twist of fate, something that would make my friends chuckle in spite of their grief. Some of these deaths* contain some of the elements I would hope for in a death. Others, however, are just overkill.
Debby Mills-Newbroughton, 99 years old, was killed as she crossed the road. She was to turn 100 the next day, but crossing the road with her daughter to go to her own birthday party her wheel chair was hit by the truck delivering her birthday cake.
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Peter Stone, 42 years old, was murdered by his 8-year-old daughter, whom he had just sent to her room with no dinner. Young Samantha Stone felt that if she couldn’t have dinner no one should, and she promptly inserted 72 rat poison tablets into her fathers coffee as he prepared dinner The victim took one sip and promptly collapsed. Samantha Stone was given a suspended sentence as the judge felt she didn’t realise what she was doing, until she tried to poison her mother using the same method, one month later.
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Megan Fry, 44 years old, is killed by 14 state troopers after she wandered onto a live-firing fake-town simulation. Seeing all the troopers walking slowly down the street Megan Fry had jumped out in front of them and yelled Boo! The troopers, thinking she was a pop up target, fired 67 shots between them, over 40 of them hitting the target. She just looked like a very real looking target, one of the troopers stated in his report.
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Helena Simms, Wife to the famous American nuclear scientist Harold Simms was killed by her husband after she had an affair with the neighbour. Over a period of 3 months Harold substituted Helena’s eye shadow with a Uranium composite that was highly radioactive, until she died of radiation poisoning. Although she suffered many symptoms, including total hair loss, skin welts, blindness, and extreme nausea and even had an ear lobe drop off, the victim never attended a doctor’s surgery or hospital for a check up.
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Michael Lewis, angry with his gay boyfriend, used the movie, Die Hard with a Vengeance as inspiration. He drugged his boyfriend, Tony Berry, into an almost catatonic state, then dressed him only in a double-sided white board that read Death to all Niggers! On one side, and God Loves the KKK. On the other. Lewis then drove the victim to downtown Harlem and dropped him off. Two minutes later Berry was deceased.
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Conrad Middleton, 26 years old, was killed by his twin brother Brian after a disagreement over who should take the family home after their parents’ passed away. Conrad had a nasal problem, and had no sense of smell. After the argument Brian stormed out of the house, then snuck back later, and turned on the 3 gas taps in the house, filling it with gas. He then left out a box of cigars, a lighter and a note saying, Sorry for the spree, have a puff on me, Brian. Conrad promptly lit a cigar, destroying the house and him in the process.
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*Sadly, these deaths didn’t actually happen. Fiction really is stranger than truth.
Posted by zoom! on September 19, 2006, at 6:56 pm |
Avast me hearties!Â
Did everybody have a good Talk Like a Pirate Day? I know I did. Some people needed a little coaxing, but were able to muster up a respectable ARRRRR! after we all ganged up on them and roared at them all day.
 Others, like Wendy, well, what can I say? You plant a little seed of an idea, and she runs with it. These are Wendy and Peter. They are doctors. Not medical doctors, just the kind of doctors who stayed in school a bit too long. Peter runs the place, and Wendy is a research genius/pirate wench.
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She’s not a pirate wench ALL the time, just on Talk Like a Pirate Day. The rest of the time she’s perfectly normal. This is Wendy last week. She was delighted to be returning to work after a month’s holidays. She sang. She danced. She celebrated. See? Perfectly normal.
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Talk Like a Pirate Day has something for everything, including our office knitting club. Lookie here maties: two Knit Like a Pirate websites!
We also downloaded the original Talk Like a Pirate song and played it over the speakers first thing in the morning.
I had lunch with David Scrimshaw today, who is very, very good at emailing like a pirate, and whose name is remarkably piratey, and who in fact reminded me just yesterday that today was Talk Like a Pirate Day, which is why my coworkers were back at the office watching Pirates of the Caribbean at lunchtime.
As I left the office after work, I passed by the smokers from the 8th floor and I growled almost automatically: “ARRRRR!”
They looked a little mystified: “ARRRR?”
“Arrr,” I said, “You know. Arrr. It’s Talk Like a Pirate Day.”
They had no idea, but they were naturals. They launched into Piratese like it was their first language.
Me, I’m tired of talking like a pirate. That’s why I’m not even writing like a pirate. But if I had me some rum, I’d be drinking like a pirate right now.
*Some names have been changed to protect the identities of people clearly identifiable in the photographs.Â
It was pouring rain tonight as I wandered through the puddles on my way over to Stuart’s. I figured it was gonna be one wet barbecue party. Imagine my surprise when I rounded the corner and saw what Stuey had done with the place. Is he the world’s best host or what?? And because I looked like a drowned rat when I arrived, TC gave me a beautiful new umbrella: the fancy kind with a push button!
I hope I die in an interesting way. Ideally, my death would involve an ironic twist of fate, something that would make my friends chuckle in spite of their grief. Some of these deaths* contain some of the elements I would hope for in a death. Others, however, are just overkill.
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