Knitnut.net. Watch my life unravel...
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Posted by zoom! on September 16, 2008, at 6:02 pm |
 I had no plans for lunch today, so I just wandered about aimlessly, following my feet, which took me to Sparks Street, where I spotted a tiny little bird in trouble. People kept narrowly missing him because they didn’t see him down there amongst all the feet. There was a man hovering over him, trying to protect him from the hundreds of feet.
First things first. I took a picture.
Then I scooped up the tiny little bird in my hand, kissed him on his tiny little head, and held him against my chest.
The man and I exchanged one of those “Now what?” glances.
“Are you going to the Rideau Centre?” asked the man.
“No,” I said, “Why?”
“I think he might have escaped from a pet store,” said the man, “Maybe you could take him to the pet store there. Maybe they’d take him in.”
“Good idea,” I said, “But I’m going the other way. I’ll take him to the pet store on Bank Street.”
“It could be your good deed for the day,” said the man.
We thanked each other. The man headed east and the tiny little bird and I headed west.
He really was tiny. I held him very gently, with the fingers of my right hand forming a little bird cage around him. Every now and then he would flutter and try to escape, and then I’d kiss his tiny little head again and tell him shhhh.
I took him to one of the few remaining independent pet stores in Ottawa: Pet Circus on Bank, near Cooper. I like that store.
“I found this on Sparks Street,” I said.
“What is it?” asked the man suspiciously.
“A tiny little bird,” I said.
He reacted as if I’d said it was a vial of the avian flu virus.
“No!” he said, his alarm almost tangible, “Don’t bring it in here!”
It was too late. I was already in. He ushered me back outside, where he examined the tiny little bird.
“It’s a wild finch,” he said, “and it probably hasn’t weaned yet or fledged yet. There’s nothing I can do for it here, and probably nothing you can do for it either. The only people that can help you is the Wild Bird Centre on Moony Drive. But they don’t pick up birds, you’d have to deliver him.”
I was on my lunch hour. I had a meeting at 1:30. I didn’t have a car.
“Or,” he said helpfully, “you could take him to a nice park and put him as high up in a tree as you can. Maybe he’ll take his first flight and be just fine.”
 So that’s what I did. I took him to Dundonald Park at Somerset and Lyon and found a nice little tree. I opened my hand and he jumped onto my wrist and perched there for a few seconds looking at the tree. Then he hopped onto a branch. I took pictures while he hopped from branch to branch. He looked good. Really good.
And then the tiny little bird flew out of the little tree, way up high into the great big tree nearby. He looked fabulous!
I stopped by the pet store on my way back to the office to update the man. He said maybe the tiny little bird had flown into something on Sparks Street and was dazed and confused, and my intervention gave him enough time to recover without getting stomped or eaten.
I picked up a sandwich and went back to the office. I felt good all afternoon. I still feel good. Maybe this will make up for some of my bad bird karma.
Posted by zoom! on September 15, 2008, at 6:16 pm |
Marion Dewar, still active and energetic at the age of 80, died today after falling in Toronto where she was attending the International Film Festival.
My earliest encounters with Marion Dewar were when she served as the school nurse at Earl of March Secondary School, where I was a student for awhile. I remember her as a wise, compassionate and generous soul. I was a shy kid and I had things I couldn’t talk to anybody about, but her door was always open, her smile was always genuine and she always had time for us kids. I didn’t talk to her about the things I couldn’t talk to anybody about, but there were days I just needed a place of refuge, and her office was it.
She went on to accomplish great things in community development, politics and the non-profit sector. In my opinion, she was the best mayor Ottawa has ever had, because she had that rare combination of vision, smarts and heart. We could use more politicians who bring those qualities to the table.
 Here she is with her son Paul, who is running for re-election next month as the NDP Member of Parliament in my riding, Ottawa Centre. I can’t even imagine trying to campaign and grieve at the same time.
Rest in peace Marion. The world is a better place because of you.
Posted by zoom! on September 14, 2008, at 6:12 pm |
 See this woman here? Her name is Sadie and she’s 92 years old. We were at the same party in Montreal yesterday and Sadie plucked a low-flying wasp right out of the air with her bare hand and crushed it. Then she wrapped it daintily in a napkin, placed it on the table, smiled sweetly, and went back to eating her shrimp dipped in marinara sauce.
Posted by zoom! on September 13, 2008, at 10:11 am |
I tend to avoid fashion because it’s so easy to go so dramatically wrong without even knowing it. I still cringe whenever I remember my pink crimpolene hot pants outfit, complete with black patent leather boots, which I wore every time I wanted to look especially good in grade nine. I am actually blushing at this very moment.
I believe there are two kinds of fashion-impaired people. The kind, like me, who don’t even try to be fashionable because we don’t trust ourselves to get it right and we don’t want to look ridiculous; and the kind who pursue fashion for its own sake with no regard for what suits their bodies, and who consequently sometimes look ridiculous.
Even though I feel a deep kinship with other fashion-impaired people, every now and then some stranger’s fashion faux-pas strikes me as so horrifyingly interesting that I feel compelled to surreptitiously take a photo of it.
And so it was at the Umo Cafe on Somerset Street on Wednesday.
Do you think she knows that this is what she looks like from behind when perched on a stool? If you were her friend, would you say something?
Posted by zoom! on September 11, 2008, at 5:26 pm |
I wanted to post a video clip of my wasp extermination, but in the end there was nothing to see. Instead, there was a series of miscommunications and embarrassments.
Here’s how it unfolded:
1. Two weeks ago my neighbour, Brian, pointed out the wasps. They were nesting right next to his parking space, in a wooden box on my property.
2. I blogged about it. I sought advice and conducted research.
3. I bought a product – adhesive spray – but did not use it.
4. I procrastinated some more.
5. I emailed my friend D, a former exterminator, who said this wasn’t a DIY project. “Once the first one stings you,” he said, “a pheromone is released that signals all the other wasps to attack you. Each wasp can sting repeatedly. You will not be able to get out of there fast enough.” He referred me to a company which we will discreetly refer to as ABC.
6. I procrastinated another day or two, played telephone tag with ABC for a couple of days, and finally booked an appointment for Wednesday morning.
7. The ABC technician – we’ll call her Hilda – phoned Wednesday morning. “Did you know,” she said, “that the wasps will disappear on their own? First frost, they’re gone. You didn’t hear it from me but if you want to save $150, call the ABC office and cancel your appointment.”
8. I called ABC. I said “Someone called me this morning and told me the wasps will go away on their own in a couple of weeks.” The woman said she would check into it and call me right back.
9. GC arrived unexpectedly with breakfast and coffee. He was disappointed to hear there might not be a show. We wondered if the show alone would be worth $150. We both secretly hoped there would still be a show.
10. ABC didn’t call back so I called them. “Hilda will be over shortly and she shouldn’t have told you what she told you,” she said, “Besides, first frost might not be for six weeks yet.” I asked her why she thought Hilda told me that. (Because, you’ll remember, all I said was that somebody told me. It could have been a friend or anybody.) She said “Because nobody here called you, and you said she, so I knew it had to be Hilda.” Clearly she just assumed that ‘somebody’ meant ‘somebody from ABC.’ Faulty logic had, unfortunately, led her to the correct conclusion.
11. I started to worry Hilda was gonna be pissed at me for ratting her out to her employer.
12. Hilda arrived and parked right next to the wasp box. She was in her truck writing something in her book. I went outside. I looked over at the wasp box. THERE WERE DEAD WASP NESTS LYING ON THE GROUND NEAR IT!
13. I inspected the four wasp nests: they’d all been destroyed. I immediately suspected my neighbour, Brian, got fed up with waiting for me to do something and took matters into his own hands. This could only mean that Brian was pissed at me too!
14. Hilda got out of her truck. She was a sturdy exterminator with a tough exterior and she looked pissed off in a cool professional kind of way. She fixed me with a withering gaze. I turned to jelly and fell all over myself trying to apologize. “I didn’t tell them you told me,” I cried, and then I babbled for several minutes, trying to explain. She looked at me like she thought I was a bit daft, and then she softened slightly.
“Okay,” she said, “Where are the wasps?” This is when I went into Part II of my apology, showing her the dead wasp nests and apologizing for not having any wasps for her to exterminate. I sensed she was feeling a bit sorry for me because I’m obviously such a loser I couldn’t even keep my wasps alive until the exterminator arrived.
15. Hilda called ABC. “I’m with Zoom now,” she said, “but her neighbour already took care of the situation.” She got off the phone and told me the charge would be $75. A wasp flew by. Hilda plucked it out of the air with her bare hand and squished it dead.
16. I felt wilted and withered and embarrassed by all the mix-ups, but as a conscientious consumer I couldn’t pay $75 for the killing of a single wasp. Hilda told me she wasn’t allowed to leave without payment. I called ABC and stated my case. To make a long story short, my case escalated to the office manager who then conferred with Hilda, and, in the end, he left it up to Hilda whether to charge me or not.
17. Hilda very kindly wrote ‘No Charge’ on the work order. And then she sprayed the inside of the wooden box to prevent the wasps from moving back in.
18. I tried to slip her $20 for her trouble, but she refused to take it. “Buy yourself a drink on me,” she said. “No, you buy yourself a drink on ME,” I said, pushing the bill at her. She waved the money away, got in her truck and drove off. I wondered if she refused the money because she thought I was just dumb enough to call the office and get her in trouble over that too.
And that’s the story of how I got rid of my four wasp nests. I guess I’ll buy Brian a bottle of wine with the $20.
Posted by zoom! on September 9, 2008, at 8:00 pm |
Because today was garbage day in Centretown and look what I found!
It’s practically art all by itself without any help from me. But if I had a car, this would be sitting in my living room right now, whatever it is.
Tomorrow I’m going to take dry socks to work and leave them there for a rainy day because today I walked to work in the rain and then I spent all day in cold wet socks.
On the bright side, my colleagues said my hair looked good. We all agreed that that we like that slept-in, wind-swept, bed-head look because none of us knows how to do our hair.
When I travel with my older sister I’m always in awe that she has a whole suitcase full of hair tools and styling aids. She’s in awe that I bring coffee and a coffee maker. (That’s because I went to Greece for three weeks once and found out that there are whole countries with no coffee in them.)
Anyway. I do travel light, but I usually remember my pants.
Posted by zoom! on September 8, 2008, at 6:17 pm |
Okay, here’s one of those Small World stories for you.
You guys are all familiar with Elmaks, right? He’s the original Swap Box artist. He sometimes leaves a clue on this blog when he’s going to put up a new swap box or other street art (like If Larry O’Brien Ran Bethlehem and the Last Supper which incorporated my cat, Duncan). I’m a big fan of Elmaks and his art, but I’ve never actually met him or talked to him.
 Well. My nephew T just moved from his dad’s home in Ottawa to his mom’s home in Nova Scotia on Saturday. He arrived in Nova Scotia with an unpainted Swap Box. My sister, Mudmama, asked him where he got it. It turns out Elmaks delivered it to him in Ottawa so he could decorate it and install it on a Nova Scotia telephone pole! (Mudmama and T are going out tonight to scout out the perfect location for the Swap Box, and will be blogging about it once it’s installed.)
Naturally I asked how T and Elmaks were connected, and it seems that Mudmama’s ex-husband’s current partner’s friend is also friends with Elmaks. So there ya go. It’s a teeny tiny world.
 Since I’m on the subject of Elmaks and street art, I ran across this the other day on Elgin Street. I don’t know if it’s an Elmaks original or not, but I like it.
TAGS:
Posted by zoom! on September 7, 2008, at 4:42 pm |
Yesterday I met up with some local bloggers for brunch, and, about midway through the meal I was assigned the task of taking minutes.
I’m tempted to add Minute Taking to the list of things I’m not especially good at, but I might have done better had I known from the beginning that I would be taking minutes. As it was, I was a bit of a sloppy, intermittent, cryptic minute-taker.
Here are my notes, such as they are, faithfully transcribed and reconstructed from my Hipster PDA, which captures mere snippets of a small sampling of the rich and diverse conversations taking place all around me:
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M2 steel rusts easily so you have to keep your tool oily
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Bulldog balls aren’t as cute after the bulldog isn’t a puppy anymore
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The contents of Milan‘s backpack
- take unlucky pants out of house
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scrumping: to steal apples for the purpose of making cider
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blogging as a recovery tool; information, popular culture and community
- Hipster PDAs (Almost everybody pulled out their Hipster PDA when the topic was raised, except Woodsy who pulled out a very nice notebook which she referred to as her Hipster PDA. Eyebrows were raised. But then everybody got distracted by Milan’s ingenious Hipster PDA Accordian File Expansion Pack.)
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Cohabitation: Yes or No?
- The big morel mushroom hunting expedition
- Urban Panther‘s brother, the organizing expert Someday Syndrome. (I swear I saw Megan quiver at the words “organizing expert.”)
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Most popular search terms by which visitors arrive at our blogs: gay love, women’s change rooms, human bingo, 22-inch penis, radial symmetry
- Protecting your content (blog posts, photos, etc) from getting ripped off on the internet: Should you bother trying?
- The way to deal with four wasp nests is to mount four cans of wasp spray with braces and hinges, each one aimed at a nest, and connected via a series of timers to a control panel in the house. Four similarly mounted webcams would capture all the action for live blogging coverage.
- Bras
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Should you refrain from putting photos of your kids on the Internet because some pervert somewhere might get turned on by your kid’s picture and use it for masturbatory purposes? Or should you not worry about icky acts over which you have no control and which have no apparent consequences?
Today I had breakfast with Robin and I was telling him about brunch.
“Milan brought a book about using mushrooms to save the planet,” I said, “and he showed me a picture of an ant that walked on a particular kind of mushroom and the ant got spores on his feet and then he ended up somewhere way up high and a mushroom grew out of his feet,” I said.
“Are you sure?” asked Robin.
“No,” I said, “but it was something like that.”
(Feel free to address any inaccuracies and omissions!)
Posted by zoom! on September 6, 2008, at 9:46 am |
The other night GC and I went to a free cooking class at Loblaw’s. Neither one of us had ever been to a cooking class, and it was kind of trippy. You sit at long tables, like in science lab, and watch the chef cook.
 He’s got a mirror over his entire workspace so you can see inside all the bowls and pans and stuff. He’s also got a helper chef who is almost invisible and who prepares everything for him and cleans up everything after him as he works. I could really use one of those helper chefs.
The chief chef was Michael Dunn and for sixteen years he was a senior chef at Buckingham Palace.
“Now,” he said with a wry smile, “I work at Loblaw’s, mixing pasta with bottled PC salad dressing.”
 I would have liked to have learned more about how he ended up here from there. Maybe he burnt the scones and was sent away from the Palace in disgrace, banished to the Canadian wilds. Or maybe he fell in love with a visiting scullery maid from Canada, and followed her home to Ottawa.
But, instead of telling us about his love life, the Chef told us about the Queen and her kitchen. For example:
- Every day the Queen is presented with three choices for each of the following day’s meals.
- The Queen is not a picky eater.
- The biggest meal of the day at Buckingham Palace is lunch for the 350 palace staff.
The Queen has a lot of chefs, but they’re not all tripping over each other because some of them are frequently traveling with the Queen or other royalty. One time the Queen visited US President Ronald Reagan, and the Queen’s chef was preparing a meal for Elizabeth and Ronald. The Secret Service entered the kitchen and demanded to inspect all the food. The chef said “If it’s good enough for the Queen of England, I’m quite sure it’s good enough for your President,” and shooed them out of his kitchen.
It’s important for a Loblaw’s chef to be able to tell stories, because otherwise it might be a little bit boring watching him make a kid-friendly pasta salad mixed with bottled PC salad dressing.
After he was finished cooking it, we all ate a small bowl and it was pretty good. Then we had dessert: parfait glasses filled with layers of vanilla yogurt and berries and pecans and coconut. (I claimed a nut allergy so he made a special nut-free one just for me.) (I don’t think I’m actually allergic to nuts: I just gag when I eat them because I hate them so much.) (Except pistachios and cashews: I like them.) (And slivered almonds.)
Posted by zoom! on September 4, 2008, at 1:21 pm |
I’m home sick today. Poor me, I’m a mess. But I’m not as much of a mess as my coffee table. The rest of the room is a little disheveled too, but the coffee table is where most of the action is.
Here, take a closer look.
 Actually the real mess around here is the wasp situation in that salt-and-sand storage box out back. I have been slowly and methodically psyching myself up, doing my research, and thoroughly inspecting the situation from all angles.
This included opening the box since it has never been opened in the two years I’ve lived here. (I had the brilliant idea of opening the box, but GC was the one who took the deep breath and actually yanked up the lid and flung open the doors! It was very exciting. He’s allergic to wasp stings.)
I’m glad I didn’t just plunge impulsively into this one. I’m glad I’ve been procrastinating taking my time and being wimpy thorough, because you know why? If I had just grabbed the can of spray adhesive and started spraying the nest, I would not have realized this was only one of AT LEAST FOUR wasp nests in and on that box. I might have succeeded in gluing one of them shut and trapping its sticky occupants inside…but I would have left myself wide open for counterattack by the venomous occupants of the other three nests.
Now that I know this, of course, it changes everything. This is a tactical and logistical operation on a scale never before encountered.
First things first: This operation needs a military code name, like Operation Sticky Stingers, or Operation Saltbox Wasp Incapacitator. You get the idea. (Suggestions, as always, are welcome.)
Second things second: How do I launch a coordinated attack on all four of these nests while simultaneously filming the operation for you?
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I had no plans for lunch today, so I just wandered about aimlessly, following my feet, which took me to Sparks Street, where I spotted a tiny little bird in trouble. People kept narrowly missing him because they didn’t see him down there amongst all the feet. There was a man hovering over him, trying to protect him from the hundreds of feet.
So that’s what I did. I took him to Dundonald Park at Somerset and Lyon and found a nice little tree. I opened my hand and he jumped onto my wrist and perched there for a few seconds looking at the tree. Then he hopped onto a branch. I took pictures while he hopped from branch to branch. He looked good. Really good. 
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