There’s not much of interest to report around here. So how would you like to hear about my neighbours and their garbage issues again?
Remember the group of Israeli youth who moved in and were better-than-average neighbours except they couldn’t figure out the complexities of Ottawa’s garbage system?
Well, they left. And they were replaced by another group of Israeli youth who also can’t figure out Ottawa’s garbage system. How’s that for a coincidence? Even weirder, the new group took over the old group’s jobs. We saw them working at Carlingwood mall, doing the exact same jobs the old Israeli youth used to do.
“What happened to the people who used to work here and lived next door to us?” asked GC.
“They died,” one of them replied. And then he threw back his head and laughed, so we laughed too. Hmmm.
The new people seem nice. Happy. Enthusiastic about everything. One day we saw one of them out back shovelling snow with a dustpan. No kidding. It had snowed like crazy for two days and he was trying to dig out the car with a dustpan. I don’t even know why, since the car had been dead for months. The old Israeli youth left it behind when they left, because it wouldn’t start. They told us it was a rental, but it seemed odd that they would leave a dead rental car out there for so long.
So anyway, about the garbage. The old Israeli youth couldn’t master the garbage, even though we tried to explain it and got written resources from CCOC to share with them. Eventually we had to simplify it for them by suggesting they just put everything in green garbage bags and forget about the recycling and organics bins, but they still couldn’t manage it.
What their back yard will look like in two years if nothing changes.
The new Israeli youth can’t do it either. Their little postage stamp back yard, which adjoins my little postage stamp back yard, was filling up with bags and bags of garbage. The final straw came when they tossed a package of raw chicken on top of it.
GC went to visit them. He told them that garbage day is every second Monday, and as luck would have it, that was tomorrow. If they put their garbage out front, a truck would come and take it all away. They thanked him enthusiastically and said they would do it.
And they did! They put out six green garbage bags!
The only problems were 1) they put it in their front yard instead of on the curb, 2) they put it out after the garbage truck had already passed, and 3) they only put out the garbage that was in their house; their back yard is still full of garbage.
But it’s a start, right?
(You know what would be really great? If the Israeli youth made friends with the occupants of the Pink House, which has the nicest, tidiest garbage on my street. You could eat off their garbage!)
I’m leaving for Toronto later today to attend a conference. I’ll be staying in a no-frills hotel down the street from the fancy hotel where the conference is being held. Normally I’d be worried about forgetting to pack my medication or my shoes or something, but this time I’m worried about bed bugs, since Toronto is the bed bug capital of Canada.
I’ve checked the Bed Bug Registry: there have been two reports of bed bugs at the hotel where I’m staying, and one at the fancy hotel where the conference is. I’ve watched three youtube videos about how to inspect a bed and a hotel room for bed bugs. I’ve packed a small but powerful flashlight for carrying out such an inspection. I’ve watched a video about how to process your luggage upon your return home, to kill any undetected bugs that hitched a ride with you.
You know, the internet is a terrific resource for finding stuff out, but sometimes you find out stuff you’d rather not know. For instance, did you know that library books are a vehicle for the spread of bed bugs? Someone with bed bugs reads in bed, and puts the book on their bedside table, where bed bugs crawl in and hitch a ride back to the library and then to the next borrower’s house. Bestsellers pose the biggest risk, since they get around more. But even an unpopular book can be risky because DID YOU KNOW that a bed bug can live six months without a meal?? (A meal, incidentally, is human blood, and they prefer to feast on your face, neck, upper torso or hands.)
I also read about a lawyer who specializes in bed bug cases. He won’t permit his clients to come to his office because he doesn’t want bed bugs. Instead, he meets them in the Starbucks across the street. Nice.
If you really want to avoid bed bugs, you have to avoid hotels, libraries, coffee shops, used furniture, movie theatres, public transit, apartment buildings, New York City and any other place where people congregate or where there’s upholstered furniture. In other words, you can take precautions but it’s impractical – and possibly impossible – to go to the lengths necessary to completely prevent bed bugs.
Even worse – as hard as it is to prevent them, it’s even harder to get rid of bed bugs.
It makes me itchy just thinking about it.
Not that I’m obsessed with bed bugs or anything, but a quick search reveals that this is the fifth time I’ve blogged about them.
Anyway. Remember that Night Gallery episode where the earwig crawls into the guy’s ear and eats its way through his brain, causing him excruciating pain? It finally crawls out his other ear, and the doctor says the good news is that the earwig is gone, but the bad news is that it laid thousands of eggs inside his brain. Apparently the actor who played the victim was dying of stomach cancer when it was filmed, and he stopped taking his pain meds in order to more convincingly portray someone in excruciating pain.
This is what I see: Simon is on the floor of his house. He’s holding a baby toy in one foot and chewing on it. Oboe is on his rope perch, preening his feathers. Kazoo is sleeping in her house, a hanging baby toy draped over her back. Duncan is sleeping on the back of the couch, right behind my head. Rosie is sleeping in her crate, with her arm around a stuffed reindeer. GC is doing something on his computer. Everybody is quiet. Life is good.
It’s not always this peaceful. We’ve had a whole whack of celebrations over here lately. First there was Christmas, and then Rosie’s 3rd birthday on December 27, Simon’s 2nd birthday on January 3rd, and Duncan’s 12th birthday on January 4th. (If we don’t know their exact birthday, which is usually the case, we celebrate their birthday on the day we adopted them.)
Duncan and Rosie got new dog beds for their birthdays. Big comfy ones. Simon got a hanging toy with a million dangly bits that he can chew on and destroy. The thing about parrot toys is they exist for the sole purpose of being destroyed. Simon needs a steady diet of destructible toys, and a constant rotation of new things through his cage to keep him busy and happy.
Kazoo’s older, and she isn’t all that interested in toys unless she can see that there are peanuts in them. She’ll spend hours at her foraging wheel, trying to free a peanut.
One good thing about living with birds is that even in the dead of winter, there are signs that spring is right around the corner. As soon as the days started getting longer Kazoo started preparing for mating season, just in case some handsome Double Yellow Headed Amazon comes along and sweeps her off her feet. She intends to build her nest in the bookcase, but first she has to chew a big hole in it. She only gets one or two bites in before we climb up there and bring her down, but, as you can see, it adds up over time.
If you show Kazoo an egg, she’ll tilt her head to the side and stare at it with one beady amber eye, while her pupils repeatedly shrink and dilate. She is fascinated by eggs, especially during mating season.
Speaking of eggs, Billie the lovebird laid two of them last week in her seed bowl. Billie and Lester live at GC’s house, and GC has been thwarting their reproductive efforts over the past few weeks. They spend their days shredding newspaper into thin strips, carrying it up to the food bowl, and fashioning it into a nest. Every morning GC returns, cleans their house and gets rid of their nest. Nevertheless, they still managed to lay two eggs, which he promptly removed. Billie and Lester remain undeterred.
Speaking of undeterred, Oboe is head-over-heels in love with GC, who, if you recall, had mixed feelings about Oboe. I’m pleased to report that Oboe’s single-minded determination and persistence paid off: he has successfully won GC’s heart. GC now kisses him, tickles him, tucks him into bed at night, and tells everybody how cute he is.
GC and I tried to squeeze lots of activities into our Christmas holiday, because the more you do, the bigger and fuller your holiday feels. Among other things, we went cross-country skiing a couple of times, out at Stony Swamp (Trail 26). It’s gorgeous out there, especially under the canopy created by fresh snow on evergreen trees. It’s like skiing through a magic tunnel.
One of the things I like best about cross-country skiing is you get to play outside in the winter woods, but you’re comfortable and warm.
The other thing I like about it is that if you go in the morning, you feel virtuous for the rest of the day. I like feeling virtuous.
As if to make things even more idyllic than they already were, a deer frolicked across the path right in front of us, and chickadees landed on our outstretched hands. We felt like Saint Francis of Assissi and Snow White. All we needed was seven little monkeys in faux shearling coats.
Tomorrow I go back to work after eight days of Christmas holidays. I’ve got the Sunday feeling big time today. Sigh.
Posted by zoom! on December 31, 2012, at 9:34 am |
Sometimes GC and I go months without going to the movies, but this week we went three days in a row.
First we went to the James Bond movie, Skyfall. It wasn’t a must-see for either of us, but it was the one with the most convenient show time when we first thought of catching a movie. We agreed it was a 6 out of 10 and I can’t think of anything else to say about it.
The next day we went to see Les Miserables. GC gave it a 7 and I gave it a 3, which reflects the fact that he likes musicals and I do not. I don’t like them because all that singing keeps reminding me that it’s not real life, so I can’t get into the story. But I figured I could put up with a little singing and dancing if it was a good movie otherwise.
The thing is, this movie is ALL singing. They sing every conversation, and often badly, with a camera zoomed halfway up their nostrils while they weep and caterwaul. (Just about everybody got a scene in which they got to weep and sing simultaneously in giant close-up view, and the only one who pulled it off was Anne Hathaway singing “I dreamed a dream,” which made me cry.)
But overall, this movie is long, drawn out, and overwrought, with few redeeming features, and I found it irritating. If you don’t like musicals, don’t expect Les Miserables to change that. But if you do like musicals, they say this is a pretty good one.
The third day we saw the Quentin Terantino flick, Django Unchained. I thought this one was the best of the three. It was a blood-and-guts, comic-western revenge-fest. Christoph Waltz as the dentist-bounty-hunter was lots of fun. This film was consistently entertaining and sometimes funny, and nobody sang a damned thing, which was fine by me.
I gave Django Unchained a 7; it would have been an 8 without all the over-the-top gratuitous gore. I had to close my eyes altogether for one scene, and there were several other scenes I wished I’d closed my eyes for. Also, the N-word was said so many times in this movie that it was stripped of its power. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
Posted by zoom! on December 24, 2012, at 8:20 am |
We went to an Apocalypse party on Friday night, where I got into an interesting discussion with my friend Andrew about Darwin the Ikea Monkey. Andrew has tried to completely ignore Darwin. He has seen the headlines, but has refused to click on them. He managed to know nothing beyond the fact that something called the Ikea Monkey was trending in social media.
I, on the other hand, followed Darwin’s story closely, because from the moment I first saw him in his little faux shearling coat, I was in love.
As a child I always wanted a monkey. A chimp, actually. I wanted to dress him up in little striped overalls and a railroad conductor’s cap and high-top sneakers. Fortunately no actual chimpanzees were harmed in the making of this fantasy, and I outgrew it when I got my real live human brother at the age of 12. But I still have a residual soft spot in my heart for the idea of pet monkeys wearing cute clothes. Not the reality, but the idea.
Anyway. The discussion at the Apocalypse Party wasn’t about whether people should have pet monkeys (they shouldn’t) or whether pet monkeys should wear faux shearling coats (oh yes!), but whether the Ikea Monkey had any business being in the news in the first place. Not just the Ikea Monkey, but the fake baby-snatching eagle, the Dutchess’s morning sickness, and pretty much everything celebrities do and say.
Andrew believes that frivolous, trendy memes have no place in the news, and by accepting them as news we are complicit in allowing ourselves to be collectively distracted and distanced from real news that actually matters. We are not paying attention to serious problems that need us to fix them. He might even have mentioned something about the fall of the Roman empire.
So who decides what’s newsworthy? Is it the news industry? Or are they taking their cues from us? When we click on a headline, are we saying we want more of this kind of news? Because if we consume news the way we consume most other things on the net, we’re probably saying we want short, snappy, entertaining news that demands very little of us in terms of mental effort or action required. And that kind of news is easier and cheaper to produce than thoughtful, well-researched pieces.
Ikea Monkey notwithstanding, I think Andrew’s right. What do you think?
Posted by zoom! on December 12, 2012, at 7:53 am |
I’d almost forgotten what it was like, cramming everyday life into the little pockets of time around the edges of work. I’m sure I’ll get better at it, but so far I’m pretty tired and I’m scrambling to get things done.
Then there’s Christmas. I’ve been watching from a safe distance on facebook as my friends make 17 dozen gingerbread men and build dollhouses and plan parties and decorate rooftops and wrap all their hand-made gifts in hand-made paper. So far all I’ve done is take Duncan for his Christmas photo shoot.
I’m ahead of the game on Christmas shopping though, but only because I did it online.
The thing is, I get up at 6:00, leave the house at 7:15 and by the time I get home from work at 5:45, I’m beat. I spend an hour with the animals, then we eat, then I spend a couple of brain dead hours Christmas shopping on the couch, and then it’s bedtime. I usually manage to squeeze in some online Scrabble too.
I have dreams of cleaning my bathroom before Christmas (well, not of actually cleaning it, but of it being clean.)
I’m not complaining, because I’m very happy to have a job and a paycheque and not to be job-hunting. Besides, I managed to fit a job into my busy schedule for 18 consecutive years before I got laid off, so I know it can be done.
We do get out from time to time. We went to the opening of Great Big Smalls at the Cube Gallery on Thursday night. And when we left, we accidentally found the most interesting store at 1283 Wellington Street – it’s called Emulsify, and it’s a brand-new olive oil and balsamic vinegar store. They have all these barrels of exotic flavours of oil and vinegar, and you can sample them. We bought an 18 year old garlic & cilantro balsamic vinegar – it’s thick and delicious. So far we’ve had it on chicken, salads, and roasted veggies.
We’d never even heard of an oil & vinegar store before, but not two days later I saw that Dr. Dawg had stumbled across a completely unrelated but strikingly similar store in the Glebe.
I’ve gone to a bunch of craft shows, too. On the Chinatown Craft Walk I bought a Stephen Harper puppet from the woman who makes politician puppets. I have always coveted Meg’s Larry O’Brien puppet, which is now a collector’s item. (Once a politician is booted from office, she stops making that model, and they become collector’s items.) Anyway I couldn’t decide whether to get a politician I liked or one I disliked, and she urged me to get one I dislike. There were so many to choose from! I picked Harper and she smiled sweetly and said “Would you like me to shove him in a bag for you?”
(Later I began to wish I hadn’t gotten Harper, since I feel physically ill whenever I even see a picture of the man. GC came up with the brilliant idea of stuffing the puppet and using him as a pincushion.)
Posted by zoom! on December 10, 2012, at 8:00 am |
We accompanied Duncan to his Christmas photo shoot with the lovely and talented Jamie Wolfe Phillips from Digital Impressions. It was a fundraiser hosted by Duncan’s vet clinic – the Merivale Cat Hospital – in support of the Cat Rescue Network.
Now we have to choose our favourite photo from among these four and we can’t decide because we like them all. (I’m a Libran, so I’m notoriously and predictably indecisive, but GC is a Leo so he has no excuse.)
At any rate, we’ve decided to let you – the unofficial Duncan Dogcat Fan Club – decide which photo will be printed, framed, and hung on the living room wall.
You’ll find the poll at the bottom of this post. (If you’re reading this in email or a blog reader, you’ll have to come over to the blog to vote.)
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