Friday, November 12, 2004
Two or three things...
Ok! It’s Friday today! I have the entire day to devote to blogging (unless my boss is reading this, in which case, I whipped this off yesterday when I wasn't working), so this is gonna be good, and if it isn’t, I’ll just erase this part before I post.
First off, yesterday was Remembrance Day. I know the Yanks call it Veteran’s Day. I have no idea if it has the same symbolic meaning down there as it does here (perhaps The Mac could shed some light on that), but even up here in Canada, people don’t treat it with the sort of respect I would expect. I would hope that yesterday, most Canadians took the day off to reflect on the sacrifices that were made to put us where we are today. I know a lot of businesses now offer their employees a choice between Remembrance Day and an extra day off at Christmas, which is probably the most disrespectful and selfish idea I’ve heard in a long time. Maybe ever. It’s hard to measure selfish ideas, though, because there are so many of them, and yeah, I can be as selfish as the next guy – I totally admit that. But there are some things you just do not do. You do not punch out the guy who shoves his way into line in front of you at the coffee shop. You cannot haul off and smack the parent who’s screaming at her kids who, in turn, are screaming back in the middle of the grocery store. Selfish ideas that just need to be filed under “think, do not do”. Of course it would be nice to have a day to spend shopping or cavorting or sleeping or out skiing in the middle of November.
One of the things you do not do is spend Remembrance Day frivolously. I was never in a war. I was never called on to shoot at people on the other side of a line. I never lost a relative in my time to a war. But I can imagine what it feels like, and should, every year, at least once a year on Remembrance Day, and try, just try to feel even a little bit appreciative of the freedoms I enjoy every day and take for granted, because of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
The idea of war strikes me as particularly horrendous. Who ever thought of that? I mean, great – let’s line up our best, strongest, most vital citizens and get them to kill and/or be killed by the best, strongest, most vital citizens of our opponents over there. I understand that there are conflicts between groups of people. I get it. What I don’t get is how in the world either side of any conflict could possibly think sacrificing its (again) most vital citizens would be a good idea - even if that side won, it would be without a very integral portion of its population. I don’t know if leaders delude themselves and think “well, our guys will probably not get killed – we’ll win!” and are then able to commit hundreds or even thousands of lives to a bad plan, or what. A better idea might be an arm-wrestling match, or chess or some sort of contest between the leaders of the groups in conflict. Then, everyone would vie for the best, smartest, strongest leader, which is probably something we should all be doing anyway. Although I really can’t see Paul Martin (our Prime Minister) doing all that well in an arm-wrestling match with, say, anyone else. Heh. We would even have been worse off if we still had Chretien in office.
Whatever – war happened. It still happens. We need to, every single one of us, stop and think about it for a minute each year, at the very least out of respect for those who willingly, voluntarily, gave up their lives and well-being for freedom.
The war I choose to remember is the American Civil War (for a lot of reasons I won’t go into here). This isn’t to suggest that I prefer it in any way over other wars – it was a particularly brutal, harsh war in which a nation’s most essential population was completely sacrificed by both sides. Not that any of the great and terrible wars weren’t – WWI and WWII were equally brutal and horrible – the just seem a little further away from me. The World Wars were fought on foreign soil, places I’ve never been and will never see, against enemies that seem even more foreign. The Civil War was fought close to home, for freedom against a portion of America that thought slavery was acceptable and necessary to their economy. Atrocities against people THE SAME AS those who committed them were heralded as acts of war. Family members would end up on opposing sides of the conflict. Can you imagine shooting your brother or father or uncle because of that? I can’t. Well, I can, but I don’t like it. The freedoms gained in that war are a cornerstone of what we now take for granted in our daily lives. (This isn’t to say that I don’t understand or appreciate the freedoms fought for in WWI & WWII.)
Anyway, every year, on Remembrance Day, I remember. My heart breaks for all of the brave, beautiful men who were thrown into the machinery of war and never came out the other side. My soul aches for the families who lost a part of themselves. And I hope never to see this happen in my day to my family. I could never imagine a world in which, say, my father or brother or boyfriend, or even sister were sacrificed for anything – I’d prefer to die myself before I saw that happen. It shouldn’t happen to any family at all, really, and I guess I don’t understand how it does. How can we not resolve our disputes some other way? How can just the mere threat of war not dissuade conflict from proceeding? There simply isn’t anything worse than that.
Now I’m not saying I wear a shroud of despair every day and mope around – I live freely, I love my life, I’m happy. In fact, a part of me chooses to forget about it for a good deal of the year, or to leave it buried beneath the surface – I can get at it if I need it, but hopefully, I won’t need it and I can just live my life, happily, not thinking about it every day. In fact, this brings me to the second part here.
Second blog topic: Man, is Rob ever a fantastic cook. Rob routinely cooks us dinner. I don’t know if this is because I’m lazy about dinner – whatever’s in the freezer will usually do, and most of the time, I don’t really have the time to devote to trying to cook a gourmet meal – but Rob can whip up the best-tasting meal in under an hour and he makes it seem fairly effortless. Yesterday, for instance, he did up a fantastic little roast on the rotisserie in the barbecue, along with this potato dish he does that is quite amazing (probably due in no small part to the amount of butter it contains…). Afterwards “we” made soup – I boiled the water. He also made chocolate chip muffins. From a mix, sure, but he made ‘em, which is probably more than I would have done. I would have thought about them, wondered if I had the ingredients, figured I didn’t, and left it at that.
Things Rob has cooked me to date: Steaks, potatoes, beer can chicken, chili, pork chops, hamburgers, roast beef, pasta, and muffins. Oh, and bacon. We have a lot of bacon. Usually out camping, but sometimes not. Rob is a great cook.
However…the dark cloud to go with this silver lining is that I have managed to gain a little bit of weight through all of this. I suppose eating more regularly is probably part of it. Eating more food in general is another likely culprit. Eating more fattening food is definitely to blame. In an effort to cut back, I am really trying to eliminate snacking from my repertoire. No more cheezies. No chips or chocolate bars. Even the muffins are iffy, unless I use them as part of a meal’s worth of food – I can snack on the muffins if I have a smaller breakfast or lunch. Stupid regulating food intake – it’s making me hungry. And knowing I’m not supposed to snack seems to make me want to do it even more. You’d think that with walking the dogs twice a day, I’d be in better shape. Christmas is coming, and Christmas parties, and that means Christmas Party Dresses… Oh, and Christmas food – and Christmas deserts, and candy, and all that snacking…
May you all remember well, eat well, exercise well and be healthy.
First off, yesterday was Remembrance Day. I know the Yanks call it Veteran’s Day. I have no idea if it has the same symbolic meaning down there as it does here (perhaps The Mac could shed some light on that), but even up here in Canada, people don’t treat it with the sort of respect I would expect. I would hope that yesterday, most Canadians took the day off to reflect on the sacrifices that were made to put us where we are today. I know a lot of businesses now offer their employees a choice between Remembrance Day and an extra day off at Christmas, which is probably the most disrespectful and selfish idea I’ve heard in a long time. Maybe ever. It’s hard to measure selfish ideas, though, because there are so many of them, and yeah, I can be as selfish as the next guy – I totally admit that. But there are some things you just do not do. You do not punch out the guy who shoves his way into line in front of you at the coffee shop. You cannot haul off and smack the parent who’s screaming at her kids who, in turn, are screaming back in the middle of the grocery store. Selfish ideas that just need to be filed under “think, do not do”. Of course it would be nice to have a day to spend shopping or cavorting or sleeping or out skiing in the middle of November.
One of the things you do not do is spend Remembrance Day frivolously. I was never in a war. I was never called on to shoot at people on the other side of a line. I never lost a relative in my time to a war. But I can imagine what it feels like, and should, every year, at least once a year on Remembrance Day, and try, just try to feel even a little bit appreciative of the freedoms I enjoy every day and take for granted, because of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
The idea of war strikes me as particularly horrendous. Who ever thought of that? I mean, great – let’s line up our best, strongest, most vital citizens and get them to kill and/or be killed by the best, strongest, most vital citizens of our opponents over there. I understand that there are conflicts between groups of people. I get it. What I don’t get is how in the world either side of any conflict could possibly think sacrificing its (again) most vital citizens would be a good idea - even if that side won, it would be without a very integral portion of its population. I don’t know if leaders delude themselves and think “well, our guys will probably not get killed – we’ll win!” and are then able to commit hundreds or even thousands of lives to a bad plan, or what. A better idea might be an arm-wrestling match, or chess or some sort of contest between the leaders of the groups in conflict. Then, everyone would vie for the best, smartest, strongest leader, which is probably something we should all be doing anyway. Although I really can’t see Paul Martin (our Prime Minister) doing all that well in an arm-wrestling match with, say, anyone else. Heh. We would even have been worse off if we still had Chretien in office.
Whatever – war happened. It still happens. We need to, every single one of us, stop and think about it for a minute each year, at the very least out of respect for those who willingly, voluntarily, gave up their lives and well-being for freedom.
The war I choose to remember is the American Civil War (for a lot of reasons I won’t go into here). This isn’t to suggest that I prefer it in any way over other wars – it was a particularly brutal, harsh war in which a nation’s most essential population was completely sacrificed by both sides. Not that any of the great and terrible wars weren’t – WWI and WWII were equally brutal and horrible – the just seem a little further away from me. The World Wars were fought on foreign soil, places I’ve never been and will never see, against enemies that seem even more foreign. The Civil War was fought close to home, for freedom against a portion of America that thought slavery was acceptable and necessary to their economy. Atrocities against people THE SAME AS those who committed them were heralded as acts of war. Family members would end up on opposing sides of the conflict. Can you imagine shooting your brother or father or uncle because of that? I can’t. Well, I can, but I don’t like it. The freedoms gained in that war are a cornerstone of what we now take for granted in our daily lives. (This isn’t to say that I don’t understand or appreciate the freedoms fought for in WWI & WWII.)
Anyway, every year, on Remembrance Day, I remember. My heart breaks for all of the brave, beautiful men who were thrown into the machinery of war and never came out the other side. My soul aches for the families who lost a part of themselves. And I hope never to see this happen in my day to my family. I could never imagine a world in which, say, my father or brother or boyfriend, or even sister were sacrificed for anything – I’d prefer to die myself before I saw that happen. It shouldn’t happen to any family at all, really, and I guess I don’t understand how it does. How can we not resolve our disputes some other way? How can just the mere threat of war not dissuade conflict from proceeding? There simply isn’t anything worse than that.
Now I’m not saying I wear a shroud of despair every day and mope around – I live freely, I love my life, I’m happy. In fact, a part of me chooses to forget about it for a good deal of the year, or to leave it buried beneath the surface – I can get at it if I need it, but hopefully, I won’t need it and I can just live my life, happily, not thinking about it every day. In fact, this brings me to the second part here.
Second blog topic: Man, is Rob ever a fantastic cook. Rob routinely cooks us dinner. I don’t know if this is because I’m lazy about dinner – whatever’s in the freezer will usually do, and most of the time, I don’t really have the time to devote to trying to cook a gourmet meal – but Rob can whip up the best-tasting meal in under an hour and he makes it seem fairly effortless. Yesterday, for instance, he did up a fantastic little roast on the rotisserie in the barbecue, along with this potato dish he does that is quite amazing (probably due in no small part to the amount of butter it contains…). Afterwards “we” made soup – I boiled the water. He also made chocolate chip muffins. From a mix, sure, but he made ‘em, which is probably more than I would have done. I would have thought about them, wondered if I had the ingredients, figured I didn’t, and left it at that.
Things Rob has cooked me to date: Steaks, potatoes, beer can chicken, chili, pork chops, hamburgers, roast beef, pasta, and muffins. Oh, and bacon. We have a lot of bacon. Usually out camping, but sometimes not. Rob is a great cook.
However…the dark cloud to go with this silver lining is that I have managed to gain a little bit of weight through all of this. I suppose eating more regularly is probably part of it. Eating more food in general is another likely culprit. Eating more fattening food is definitely to blame. In an effort to cut back, I am really trying to eliminate snacking from my repertoire. No more cheezies. No chips or chocolate bars. Even the muffins are iffy, unless I use them as part of a meal’s worth of food – I can snack on the muffins if I have a smaller breakfast or lunch. Stupid regulating food intake – it’s making me hungry. And knowing I’m not supposed to snack seems to make me want to do it even more. You’d think that with walking the dogs twice a day, I’d be in better shape. Christmas is coming, and Christmas parties, and that means Christmas Party Dresses… Oh, and Christmas food – and Christmas deserts, and candy, and all that snacking…
May you all remember well, eat well, exercise well and be healthy.
