My goal for 2005 was to have 1000 portfolio worthy images online by the time New Year’s Eve rolled around. I’ve only got 819 images at this point. That means I’ve got 31 days left to take 181 pictures. That’s only about six pictures per day, right? Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it?
Yeah, sure.
A little colour gravity for Kate:
Whenever I meet someone new and they ask me how long I’ve been in the area, they invariably follow it up by asking me something along the lines of, ‘and you moved out here?!?’ It’s the inflection they give the question that tells the whole story, however. They might as well be asking…
“You eat your own feces?!?”
“You smoke how much crack?!?”
“You just married your own sister?!?”
You get the idea.
The concept that someone would move out into this area, by choice, leaves most folks gobsmacked. Truthfully, this area isn’t so bad. Yeah, some of the locals are colourful, but you tend to find that wherever you go. I still have fond memories (not) of the moron couple who lived across the street from us in Edmonton with their goddamn boxers — they never would keep those fucking dogs out of our yard and away from our kid. I can also remember a drunk passing out right in front of me in a puddle his own puke during the bus ride to work one morning. And let’s not forget the obnoxious panhandlers who camped out in front of my office building each and every day.
So, yeah, I don’t mind it out here. In fact, living in rural Alberta is pretty damn cool, and anyone who thinks otherwise is probably the type who would marry their own sister.
For my Texan friend , who longs to walk out his front door and take frost pictures of his own in the not too distant future:
Thanks for everything, Noah.
My daughter’s cousins (once removed) are allergic to peanuts. I know that it’s a deadly allergy, but I didn’t realize it was quite this deadly. We’ll be making sure that Ashlyn hasn’t been anywhere near peanut butter within a week of being allowed near her cousins after reading that CBC item.
You haven’t really appreciated hoar frost until you’ve listened to it. That’s right, listened to it. It will fracture and fall off tree branches and power lines once the sun comes out and the frost starts to melt. It cascades off the branches and tinkles together producing a sound that can only be described as–
Magical.
I spent ten minutes outside my home listening to the sound of nature playing her own xylophone this morning, and I enjoyed every second of it.
Yesterday started at 7 am when the alarm clock rolled into bed with us and started tickling me. We have a real alarm clock, but who needs one of those when you have a four year old in the house? The problem with the four year old is that when you smack the snooze button it smacks you right back.
Weather prognosticator
I’m prone to atmospheric migraines, or more precisely, migraines triggered by sudden barometric pressure changes. My doctor once told me that this could have something to do with my brain’s ventricles being a bit enlarged when compared to those of a normal person. All I know is that when I woke up yesterday morning it felt like Ol’ Beezlbub himself was trying to have conjugal relations with my skull using a railroad spike.
I looked up the weather forecast and discovered that our mild weather was going to change to sleet and snow today, but I already knew that.
Karma chameleon
I installed a new printer for a customer yesterday morning. Her old printer, a Lexmark, had died on her. The unit had a faint whiff of burned wiring about it and there was nothing I could do to make it work again. I probably could have brought it back to the shop and had at it with the voltmeter to check for fried components, but why spend $100 fixing an old printer when you can buy a new one for $67 that comes packaged with $50 worth of toner cartridges? So now the customer has a new all-in-one printer/scanner/copier and another large chunk of plastic will wind up in our landfill. It’s depressing.
The customer was surprised that I only charged her $25 (including GST) to install the unit and that I didn’t put any markup on the printer itself. For me, it all comes down to karma. I didn’t have to work very hard, so I didn’t charge all that much. I find that padding bills is an exceedingly efficient method for generating bad karma. What goes around comes around, and all that. Lord knows I don’t need to have my greed revisited on me threefold the next time I have to take The S.A.W. to the mechanic for some repair work.
Salmon dill croissant
After installing the printer I headed into Consort to see another client. She had an old computer that needed cleaning up and a new system that needed to be installed. It only took me an hour or so to whip the old computer into shape and the new system didn’t take that much effort, either. The owner of the computers was also the owner of a bed and breakfast located directly across the street. They had a bit of food leftover from lunch so a salmon dill croissantand a bowl of beef vegetable soup were sent over for me.
The crescent was fresh and tender without any chemical aftertaste to it, and the salmon mixture itself was proportioned just right with the mayonnaise and dill spicing. It was flavourful without being overpowering. The soup wasn’t as thick as I prefer it (I like thick soups), but it was obviously made from scratch using vegetable stock and had a rich flavour to it. I was impressed.
They only serve lunch three days a week, but it’s nice to finally find some quality eating out here. I had truly begun to despair and was figuring I’d have to open my own restaurant soon if there was ever any hope of fixing the problem.
Raisin scones
…and then again, maybe not. I encountered my first culinary disaster in the new home yesterday evening. We still haven’t been able to find the box we packed our cookbooks in when we moved, and this is nearly six months after the fact. I usually use the scone recipes from The Joy of Cooking, my old standby which is almost bulletproof. Instead I used a recipe I found on the Internet.
Well.
I made the dough into an 8 inch round circle as directed and scored it 12 ways. I then placed it in the oven at 400 degrees and baked it for 15 minutes so that it was golden brown on the outside. The only problem was that the blessed thing was still raw in the centre. The baking directions would have worked if I had made a bunch of individual scones, but not for one large lump of dough.
I think I will have another go at the recipe this evening, except I plan to substitute orange juice for the 3/4 cup of milk and I’ll swap out the raisins for cranberries. I’ll also cut the dough into small triangles so that it should bake properly this time around. In a way, this makes me happier. Chefs, in essence, are cooks who aren’t content just to follow recipes, but need to hack them.
They’ll turn out better this time around. I’m sure of it.
Mandarin tea
Last night we had Hill’s Brothers mandarin tea, which I greatly enjoyed, but that my wife felt was merely okay. The night before we tried the cherry blackberry tea that she was enamored with and that I could have passed on. This is par for the course. On movie night she tends toward Bridget Jones (gah) and Steel Magnolias (GAH!) whereas I gravitate towards Die Hard and The Matrix.
I guess opposites really do attract.
Let’s hear it for Sears
A large chunk of my Christmas shopping was done online last night at the Sears Web site. My wife has already been warned not to pick up the parcel when the local Sears outlet calls under penalty of death (or worse, being forced to watch Die Hard). Along with her presents, I ordered my wife a new pair of winter boots and one of those do-it-yourself home hair shaving kits with the snap on combs for myself.
The fact of the matter is that we don’t have as much money as we did back when we lived in Edmonton, and we need to cut a few corners that we wouldn’t have bothered with before. That’s where my haircuts come in. Jennifer prefers me to have longer hair in the front with the sides and back buzzed, and she’s mortified at the thought of me wearing a haircut that leaves me looking like Pugsley Adams. Given a choice between a stylish hairdo and having a few extra bucks for processing film, well, just call me ‘Pugs’, okay?
The Rodeo Song
Ray left a message on my anwering machine last night saying that he had just purchased a pickup truck and can now be considered an official Albertan. I find that surprising because I thought up until now that you can’t legitimately claim to be a real Albertan unless you’ve spent several days wandering the streets of Montreal in a drunken stupour wearing a t-shirt that says ‘SPEAK ENGLISH OR DIE’. Not that I’d, um, know anything about that. Cough cough.
In any case, revealing himself as the owner of a pickup truck is probably the worst tactical error Ray could have made. If he thinks that our previous requests have been obnoxious, just you wait until you hear what we send him out to Home Depot for before his next visit to Casa McCormick.
Nancy is the one I feel badly for as Ray’s taste in transportation is probably doing nasty things to her Torontonian sensibilities. Talk about culture shock.
A man from the city is out plowing his field and gets his tractor stuck in the wet ground.
A farmer driving by stops his truck and walks to the fence to call over the city feller. You need a mule to plow such wet ground he says.
“Where can I buy one?” he is asked.
Well, I just happened to have one for 100 dollars he says.
“I’ll take him,” says the other man as he counts out the money.
I can’t bring him over today. I don’t work on Sunday morrow OK?
“Sure.”
The next day the truck pulls up and the old farmer gets out. He says, “sorry, bad news.”
I went out after breakfeast and the mule was dead.
The city feller says just give me my money back then.
“Can’t, spent it already!”
“Well… unload the mule then.”
“What ya gonna do with him?”
“Raffle him off!”
“Naw, ya cant raffle off a dead mule!”
“Just watch me us! City fellers know a few tricks.”
One month goes by and the city feller and farmer run into each other at the barber shop.
“What did ya do with that dead mule?”
“Raffled him off, sold 100 tickets at two dollars each and made 98 dollars profit.”
“Didn’t anyone complain?”
“Just one guy so I gave him his two dollars back!”
Rush Limbaugh and his chauffeur were out driving in the country and accidentally hit and killed a pig that had wandered out on a country road. Limbaugh told the chauffeur to drive up to the farm and apologize to the farmer.
They drove up to the farm, the chauffeur got out and knocked on the front door and was let in. He was in there for what seemed like hours. When the chauffeur came out, Limbaugh was confused about why his driver had been in there so long.
“Well, first the farmer shook my hand, then he offered me a beer, then his wife brought me some cookies, and his daughter showered me with kisses.” explained the driver.
“What did you tell the farmer?” Limbaugh asked.
The chauffeur replied, “I told him I was Rush Limbaugh’s driver and I’d just killed the pig.”
A farmer was milking his cow. He was just starting to get a good rhythm going when a bug flew into the barn and started circling his head. Suddenly, the bug flew into the cow’s ear. The farmer didn’t think much about it, until the bug squirted out into his bucket. It went in one ear and out the udder.