April 2007

thoughts on food

I should start doing breakfast portraits again! Except I'd rather just eat the damn thing. It's seasoned rice bed with turkey bacon, sliced boiled egg and cheese on top, all heated up, and grapefruit on the side. Water and chai tea complete the repast. Yesterday I was planning to spend the evening helping Dan to grout tile. It's a gruelling job, takes a lot of energy, so I ate accordingly through the day. I also expected to bike to work and back. Well first thing that got cancelled was the bike ride. I had to do errands that spanned the city in a short space of time in rain, including hauling a 25 pound paper bag of grout powder, and it was raining. Nevermind, I'm still doing three hours of grouting, right? Lots of scrubbing in that, plus carrying buckets of water around. We eat supper, a half a sub with icecream on the side (hey, that icecream didn't make a mess in my guts...)

Get to the jobsite and Dan spends it cleaning cracks, gluing down carpet edging, and generally everything but putting me to work. He really only wanted my company. ~sigh~ I sat on my fat ass the whole time stealing wifi from a neighbor, surfing and chatting on my little PDA

So when I got home I removed the exercise and some the other half of the sub that I didn't eat, from my calorie counter. I was still WAY over. I had to march up and down those damn stairs for 30 mins late at night to make up the difference. Yuck. At least I found a good movie on google video to keep me busy. This morning I'd gained a pound so I guess I wasn't entirely successful. Still, I'm lower than earlier this week so the weight loss is continuing. I don't like how fussy my body is. Humans should be able to tank up more at one time and portion it out but my body wants me to fuel up constantly in smaller meals. That's hard to do healthily.

twit twit tawoo

Twitter is doing my blog a lot of good. I sit there typing briefly into twitter and think that I should elaborate on my blog. I mean, it's not like anyone really cares, but I guess I need to feel heard. With Dan working 14 hour days 6 days a week I need an outlet again. I hope he cuts back soon, I'm getting truly worried about him. He's living on junk food. I should bring him a submarine sandwich tonight. I might do that, it would be a solution. For the day anyway. We won't be going to the auto show. He's putting work first and there isn't time. I'd have to go today anyway because tomorrow I have to put in 3 hours at the theatre and sunday I have to go in twice. I fucking hate that fucking job these days. There's so little reward in it for the amount of intrusion it brings to my life. When I slip and let myself whine there someone always says it's hard on everyone when a show is in. I just shut up instead of pointing out that for them it's a living, for me it's pocket change. The only place to go from there is "and I quit." I don't want to do that to them and they all already know perfectly well how close to quitting I am. They could never replace me, and if I can just stick it out another week it'll die down to summer hours. I've been promised that there's no shows at the old theatre next year, just classes and rentals and admin cleanup till they move into the new building. That means just 2x a week which I can handle ok and it sounds like they won't bother reducing my salary to reflect the reduced workload. That would be a nice gesture, since it'd be my 10th year with them. Ten years. Whew. For me that's a serious milestone. With my Asperger's keeping any job over 2 weeks was always a pipe dream.

I started this blog thinking I should explain about "the twits" and "the birdies" so for anyone not already in the know, I own birds. There's petey the senegal parrot (his pic is on my website somewhere but they all look alike anyway) the two canaries, two zebra finches, and five society finches. I need to call the pet store and see if they want some more young birds, the three kids are well grown enough to go to the store. I was going to take pics of them all and paste them together into one image to share with you but the fucking twits won't sit still long enough to photograph them. I lost patience. The few times they'd sit still they'd be piled up on the nest hiding each other. Fuck it. (can you tell I'm still frustrated?) Fucking twits. Why do I call them the twits? Well they used to just be the birds before Petey came along. He's in a class by himself. He is not a twit, you see, he's a smart little boy. Smart as my dog for sure, maybe more. Then there's the others. They're all in the finch family, even the canaries. Canaries are smarter than finches but they're still pretty flighty and stupid. They all make little twitter sounds and flit off at the slightest provocation. Twits. Stupid flighty creatures that twitter all day.

Every morning I feed all the pets and change their water. The twits get a spoonful of a mash made with grated carrots, cooked couscous mixed with hungarian egg drops pasta (cooked in water) and boiled egg with the shell. I will give them greens if I'm out of mash. I wash up the dishes from last night and breakfast then wash the bird dishes and refill with water or mash accordingly. Bunnies get pellets in the morning and sarah gets a spoonful of home-made dog food, or some Cesar stuff if I forgot to take her stuff out of the freezer. Cesar dog food is one of the few that has real ingredients and no wheat gluten but they don't include fresh raw veggies in the mix so I wouldn't consider it a complete meal. Petey gets a bowl of freshies. He's got bird pellets and oddments in his main cage, but he gets an assortment of fruits and veggies out of the fridge every morning and really values this mix. Oh, the rabbits, yes, there's 3 of them, freddy is quarantined in the living room due to antisocial tendencies (she attacks all other rabbits on sight) and Flora and Toby are consequently constrained to the basement because if they come upstairs, big old Freddy attacks them. Currently they're locked in a small dog kennel because Toby has the insane idea that he needs another toilet corner and he's destroying the new laminate floor to assert his opinion. We lock them both up if we don't know for sure which one's to blame because either one has been implicated at various times. One may be locked up, then the other will do the dirty. It's quite depressing to have this going on. The cage isn't any kind of a decent place to spend a day. They can barely turn around in there. If this goes on for long we'll have to upgrade the jailhouse.

Critical Mass (not)

How to explain Critical Mass. I don't think even the originators could fully explain the idea. Firstly, it's a bike rally. Secondly, it's a cyclist rights rally. Then, it's a rally to take back the streets. Somewhere around there is a philosophy of obnoxiousness, almost as if to exact revenge on drivers. I don't agree with that part. Especially not when you're all of 6 people strong! Even in groups of a hundred I doubt you'll see the majority agree with deliberately obstructing traffic here in saskatchewan. However, we did take a whole lane during rush hour, causing any amount of road rage in the vehicles behind. Drivers revved and spun their tires in passing and when the parking lane was clear they passed on the right at high speed too. Rather dangerous really. I talked the group into moving to the right. The girl pointed out that the middle lane "was more assertive" at which I pointed out that assertive didn't have to equal obnoxious. She said "yes, but we have a right to be in that lane." "No," I replied, "the law says we must stay as close to the right curb as safely possible." She was surprised to learn this. There certainly is a great need in this city for education all around. Next week we'll try and organize another and maybe get it bigger. We could do better but I think we're going to have to pull away from the obnoxious revenge side of the concept and focus on the demonstration side. "We're here, we have a right to the road, you will make room for us."

So after riding around for an hour pissing off motorists we ended the ride and went our separate ways. I was asked by one young man how long I'd been winter biking. I told him about 1983. Later I realized he was probably younger even than that, although he was too polite to say it. Hee hee. I'm getting old I guess. It's strange to have been doing something as an adult longer than other adults have been alive. I certainly don't feel like an older generation at all. Probably because I opted out of parenting.

Living life fully

Today the installer came and set us up with HD for our TV. It comes with a 60 day freebie of every channel they offer, including the sit com rerun channels. All in the Family, Threes Company, Gilligan, oh you know, all those old tv shows. I love them! My favorite entertainment is silly sit coms. The HD stuff is great too, Dan will really enjoy it. Frankly there are too many channels. I'll be glad when the 60 days is up and it's easier to find what's playing and choose what to watch without feeling like I'm missing out something on another channel!
Went to work today and had an argument with the controller about the helmet bylaw. She infuriated me. On the one hand she told me she didn't think I'd read the studies because I obviously didn't want to hear anything that disagreed with what I wanted to hear, then shut me out when I tried to tell her facts that support my position! She was so disrespectful about it. I told her that if the law required her to report her diet and exercise every day or face penalties, and face penalties if she doesn't meet targets, would be the same as telling me I have to wear a helmet regardless of my own risk assessment.
The wind today was at my back going in, but at my face coming home. Fortunately the hills and gravity were opposite so that made the trip easier. I will be heading out in a bit to a Critical Mass bike rally at the university. I've set up my bike stereo. I was going to bring my bubble machine too but in a wind this strong it would be a waste of soap. Most of the bubbles would be popped by force of wind and the rest torn away too fast to appreciate. Earlier I looked out the window and saw a woman flying her little dog as a kite... ~grin~
Dan is working steady. I don't like him being gone so much and I feel guilty about him working so hard when I don't. Still, he does choose it. He sets his own hours and has the right and choice to say no or "I can't get it done that fast." If he doesn't, then I shouldn't feel too guilty. I just try and keep the home support as high as I can. Speak lovingly, tell him I miss him and when he comes home, be happy to see him and bring food. That's what a man needs when he's out there working so hard anyway. He does it for me, after all. Well, for us, but if it was just for himself he wouldn't have the heart to keep going. I did put my foot down about one thing though, he must quit work each night by 10pm. I think he'll make himself sick if he keeps going till well after midnight as he's wont to do on his own. He doesn't limit himself. Classic alcoholic problem really. Just because he's sober doesn't mean he isn't an alcoholic. If he's not limited some, he will get depressed and worn out. I don't think he should even work that late, but he seems to be managing and he does take Monday's off. I'll try in a few weeks to convince him to mandate a second day off a week, after he sees how this work is going to remain steady for the long term. Right now he thinks it's a short term rush. He's going to need the time off before he'll accept being told to take the time off, and in fact will appreciate being able to blame it on his wife rather than implications of personal weakness.
I need to put some time in doing bill payments. I haven't really had the time since the cheque went in though. Yesterday too much time at the theatre, today with the theatre and the HD installer and now the CM ride, maybe tonight. Ok, enough writing.

water flowing

We had one of those water filters that screws on your tap and juts out the side. Awkward as hell, really. Our excessive water pressure kept blowing out the seals and we kept forgetting to switch it back before going to hot water. All in all it was causing us a headache. We'd gotten hooked on the filtered water though. So we saw them for a hundred bucks at the store, inline single stage water filters. You plumb them in on the cold water line that goes to the tap. Dan took his heavy duty drill and pounded away at the stainless steel sink till a hole was created large enough for the side-faucet for the filter. It uses it's own faucet. While he went to work I sat down under the sink and installed the extra tap line and filter. You unscrew the plastic line from the pipe cutoff valve and install another shunt with a side valve that leads off, a T joint. Then you put the old faucet line back on and run piping to the filter you've fastened into the cupboard, and then a last line up to the faucet on top. The only part that's tricky is making sure all threads are taped and tight enough and that all washers are properly seated. It's really not complicated, although it could confuse someone who isn't logical.
At any rate, the thing is lovely. Convenient and stylish, the sink looks much classier with the extra tap on the side. Now we can have drinking water whenever we like regardless of what we're doing with the main faucet. We did a great job installing it! I'm so lucky to have found such a fine man to marry.

We fought the law and law lost...

Yes we fought the law and the law lost! Seriously!
Saskatoon was going to put in a helmet bylaw. I got up to fight it. Last year and again this year, in council and committee I stood up and told them what I thought of it. Between my passionate and reasoned words and the wealth of data another fellow in town wrote, coupled with a number of other sensible and passionate people, we won. Read about it here: Canadian Cyclist article. How cool is that?

little and big

Yesterday a small thing happened, though I took it big.  It seemed big, though it was stupid and petty.  Isn't it funny how we get lost in our microcosms?  
I went to the carwash to get the mud off my bike.  I went in to change my two for a one because usually it only takes one dollar to do my bike.  I went in and the guy I was waiting for kept wasting our time (it was a busy place) trying to offer to quickly spray off my bike.  In retrospect I should have let him then went ahead and washed my bike my way-- mistake #1.  Then he comes over to admire and chat about my bike.  I tried to be friendly about it but before long he was trying to bullshit me as though he were a know-it-all about things I knew perfectly well better.  Damn retired old men with nothing better to do…
So I finally shout him away, my mellow thoroughly harshed and my mind not really focused.  As I was washing on my first looney, not nearly as fast as usual I think, another old retiree with such a busy life shows up and starts pulling into my bay.  I start screaming at him to stop and back out but he yells that I don't need the whole bay so he parks his car half in and half out.  He won't back out.  I should have shut the doors, though nobody was doing that.  Mistake #2 I guess.  So the looney runs out and I'm not done, I put in another, periodically spraying the asshole sitting there rushing me, getting slower, wishing I had a whole pocketful of coins for the fucker.  I finish the last looney and grab my chamois out of my pocket to polish and dry things.  You know what?  They don't absorb water at all.  The owner comes along and gives me the bum's rush.  I tell him what's happened and how I wash my car, my truck also, and don't appreciate being treated rudely since I get no discount for having a smaller vehicle!  He makes politically correct noises at me and I leave, thoroughly discombobulated and miserable.  Heyyyyy, discombobulated is in the Spell-check dictionary!  Hehehehe.  Yes, I did spell it right.  So I did get my bike all spit shined and polished and beautiful.
So that was the little thing that seemed so big to me yesterday.
Today I sit and watch a movie about a true big thing.  It's called Hotel Rwanda and it's about the genocide of Tutsi people by the Hutu people in Rwanda.  It's an extremely intense movie about a terrible horrible thing.  Genocide, in case you only know the word, is not just a definition of racism.  It's not even only the totality of racism gone mad.  No, it's death is what it is.  Senseless horrible cruelty.  Not just killing, but putting the victim through the most anguish possible on the way there, for as long as you can.  One group of people identifies themselves one way, the other is defined as not them.  Be it religion, or ancient tribe, nationality or genetic features, people are sorted into groups.  One group gets more and better weapons so they become the dominant group.  
Genocide doesn't only make victims of the dead, but also of the living.  Those who do the killing are scarred worse, in fact, than those who die.  Better to die than to be a murderer.  How could you ever wash off the blood of thousands of victims?  How can you ever find peace in your heart when someone with eyes like yours is named a cockroach and considered fit only for abuse and murder?  
I watch this movie and know that while this story has been told and settled, the theme continues.  At this time, it is happening in many places in the world.  Mostly in Africa, but elsewhere it also continues.  It happened in the country I used know as Yugoslavia.  I happens now in Darfur.  It happens in Asia and it happened here when my own great country was formed on the bodies of the natives.
When we hear of it, we want so much to reach out, we who are just single people with little.  I know I do.  Do you?  I certainly hope you do.  But as in Rwanda, those of us who want to care do not know how.  A million living, breathing, laughing, loving people became so much meat on the road.  
Even now in Ethiopia, in Sudan, it continues.  People strong enough, brave enough and lucky enough to reach the refugee havens sit in the dry baking sun with nothing but the torn clothes they were wearing that hasty day when they packed, and they starve.  
We send money.  That is good.  It does help.  
What else can we do?  What about you and I?  I can write and speak to you.  You could be someone who hasn't reached out, hasn't given money to someone who works for them.  Another thing we can do is welcome our immigrants.  Those people who have traveled so far and seen so much they wish they could forget.  So brave and strong and hopeful to have made it through all those bullets and murder, they did not give up when loved ones fell to evil.  Welcome them, do not treat them as intruders who reduce your world.  They have passed tests of worth that you cannot even bear to hear about, let alone survive.  They are worth everything you could think, it is why they made it to your country.
I wish we could just send armies, some kind of soldiers who are not someone's dearest one, and they would go in and point guns around and yell orders and all the bad people doing bad things would lower their heads, say "yes sir" and "yes ma'am" and stop being mean people.  We just don't have that many armies.  Afghanistan and Iraq should serve as excellent examples of the futility of that approach.
There is truth that economic growth and advancement brings a nation out of brutality and barbarism.  When people are well fed and clothed and take pride in their homes, they don't turn to hating their neighbors.  I don't know, though, how to do that either.  
So here I was letting something so very petty harsh my mellow, while out there, this big drama, this serious and terrible evil, is doing so much more harsh to the mellow of so many people.  How do you find a moment of peace in the noise of gunfire across your city?  How do you find a joke to smile over when you know they're coming for you and you still don't know how to stop them?
So when you break a nail, or someone slaps another massive load of files onto your desk, eats your favorite donut or steals your bike, please remember, there aren't any men with machine guns lining you and yours up against a wall and calling you a cockroach.  No matter how bad it gets, it could be worse.  
It's okay to feel your feelings, don't get me wrong.  When you're bummed, you're bummed, and knowing someone else is more or less bummed doesn't help much.  Thing is, you stop being bummed a lot sooner when you lose the notion that God is out to get you or that you're unlucky or that all the bad stuff happens to you.  You get over it sooner, get back to finding things to be happy about. Trust me, if you are able to read these words, you are a lucky mofo.  You have access to computers, communication, electricity.  That alone sets you on top of the human pyramid.  Heck, being literate and having sight puts you up on the top!  You can read!  
So go live your life with all the passion you can.  Be in it and be it.  Live it, love it, rage in the machine, but remember, it's only a life.  It's not really real, or really as serious as it feels, and one day, you will only be what your loved ones remember.  Try and leave them remembering someone who knew how to brighten a day, rather than the serious one, or the wet blanket.

Flora gets busy

Flora Fiorinella Fehereghyazi still gets those spring urges even though everyone's been fixed in this house. Dear little girl obliged my camera and I happily captured this footage.

life update

I should really comment on my life of late. I've gotten my weight down to 165 and some of my older clothes, notably a nice suede jacket I own, are fitting again. This is good, very good. We're getting lots of work now. Too much in a way, although it's good to be earning income. I'm fighting a city hall initiative. They want to make a bylaw forcing everyone in any wheeled activity to wear a helmet. Today I spoke in front of the administration and finance committee for the 2nd time about it all. It's so very nerve wracking to do but I have to do something about it, as much as I can, because I'll be dodging cops if they pass and enforce this law. It goes to city council next and I'll need to prepare a new speech with new points to present yet again. I hate this. I wish more people would stand up and speak out because the weight of it for me is hard to bear. I wish we could fight it. I don't mind seeing them urge and even compell children and teens into helmets, but once you get to a certain age, it's just heavy-handed.

There's jobs to estimate, one client is pushing us to get his job estimated more quickly than we promised. There's the usual spring cleaning and yard work, and the theatre is ramping up for an extremely popular musical show to finish the season. I'm feeling somewhat stressed and trying to not pack too much into today. Even so I do have to vacuum, bake bread, and make birdy blend. Oh, and lasagna. Gotta make that too.

cool commercial!

When this commercial showed up I shouted in excitement and hunted it down online asap.
So here it is from my youtube collection.