Tuesday, April 26, 2005
It’s the stupidity…
I have a job. I come to work pretty much every day. My job is NOT THAT BAD. But that’s about all I can say for it right now, “not that bad”, because it’s annoying the shit out of me. I feel the need to unburden what is left of my soul to the great black hole of the internet.
I work in Property Management. I manage condominiums, which is probably the lowest rung of property management. There are other properties you can manage, like rentals (which arguably is potentially worse than condominium management) (which they call “Residential Management” to distance themselves from the stink of slum-lord association), commercial properties, industrial properties and Office properties. Office properties are technically commercial properties, but still, when you’re managing a portfolio of office buildings, you get a little more respect because it’s probably a bit harder than the other stuff. Higher population density with more complex systems (HVAC, elevators, that sort of thing). And within all those categories is inter-mixing, so you can have a commercial condo, which would be a building built with a bunch of units that are owned individually by the owners with some common areas that a condo manager would manage. I even have several such buildings in my condo portfolio.
Anyway, lots of properties. All the properties out there that are not single-family dwellings (houses) need to be managed by someone because if you just leave it to the owners, they’ll all slit each others’ throats and the world would be messy with all that blood. Then I’d have to get a job in hazardous medical waste cleaning or something in order to make money. As it stands now, condominiums being what they are, I manage them as best I can. The main problem with this job is that they are lived-in by people who have no idea what they are living in (being condominiums). When someone buys a condominium, they are most likely buying it because it’s cheaper than a house or they have an aversion to shoveling snow. Other than that, they treat these dwellings JUST like a house and expect to live in them just as though they were living in a house, which is not the case.
See, in a condominium, you have close neighbors. You share walls (in most cases) and common areas. You have rules to abide by, called By-Laws. And all condominiums in Alberta are governed by the Condominium Act. Your By-Laws can’t contravene the Act, but they can support and specify. Basically, the By-Laws that affect the owners are called the “Owner responsibilities” or are headed by a nice sentence that says “An Owner SHALL NOT:” and then it lists what you can’t do. If people would just fucking learn to read, and read these By-Laws, my job would be a lot simpler. But people cannot read, or choose not to read, and are stupid and mean.
For instance, in a condominium, if you want to have a pet, you have to get Board approval first. FIRST, before you go to the pound and pick out the cutest little puppy that will grow into the world’s largest dog with big feet and a severe inability to distinguish between good jumping up and BAD jumping up (like onto Board Members). If you get a puppy without approval, then the Board has to be mean and tell me to be mean and tell you to get rid of it because you live in a fucking condominium, for Christ’s sake, and you can’t reasonably have a dog that big without a yard. And no, the common area out back of your unit is not your yard, it is shared by all the other people who live there, some of whom are afraid of dogs. Yes, even in this day and age, there are still some people who are afraid of dogs, or who just plain don’t like them.
Also, you have to pick up all the dog poop your dog poops IMMEDIATELY after he or she does it, because really, you live in an area where there are other people, and good god, that’s just gross. If you want your dog to shit everywhere and not have to clean it up, then buy a fucking house.
And, this should go without saying, but you can’t have your dog off-leash at the condominium. Even if you’re just taking him to your car, because then he sees the five-year-old across the street with an ice cream cone and barrels over there to knock the kid over and steal the cone, and then I have to deal with the kid’s mom who will be screaming bloody murder. And she will find a Board Member to yell at, and they generally don’t like that. And then I’ll have to tell you to get rid of the dog, and listen to you cry cry cry. And I will be sad, because I like dogs. I just don’t like stupid people.
In a condominium, you can’t play your stereo at volume “10”. You share a wall with someone else, and they probably don’t want to listen to Top Gun at midnight every night because you can’t get a date. If you do crank it up, and you get a mean letter from me telling you to turn it down, turn it the hell down or I’ll have to send you a fine, and then you won’t want to pay it because you’re already late on your stupid CRX payments because you bought a giant stereo for that, too, and you know the damn thing will get repossessed. If you want to crank up your stereo, move to a fucking house and soundproof your basement.
In a condominium, you can’t park wherever you want, either. If you’re in an apartment, you get your assigned or titled stall, and that is the only place you can park. Even if you get two roommates who each have a car or two. And they can’t park in Visitor parking either. If they’re staying there more than two nights a week, they’re not “visitors” any more, they pretty much live there. Buy or rent another parking stall, or better yet, buy a fucking trailer in the trailer park. Park on the front lawn like Ricky from Trailer Park Boys and fight with the trailer park supervisor. Yes, you. All of you. If you live at a townhouse complex, you probably have a garage (you’ll have to clean all your junk out of it so you can fit in your car) or at least a driveway, and that’s all you get. Your visitors have to either park in Visitor Parking or out on the street. I’m fairly sure that walking the 50 feet to your front door will NOT kill them. And if you park on the roadway that is clearly marked “FIRE LANE”, I will have to get your car towed, and then I will have to listen to you yell at me for 45 minutes because you were then late to your brother’s dentist appointment or something. And no, since the sign clearly said “violators will be towed”, we will not pay for your impound or towing fee.
In a condominium, if you break stuff that isn’t yours, and we know you did it, we’ll make you pay for it. Even if you are the builder or the builder’s contractor. For instance, I have a property in a rural village that is currently being developed by a jackass. Seriously, a big jackass. He wanted us to move the perimeter fence, which we did not want to move because it would be expensive. We talked about it, and agreed that if he wanted to move it, he would have to move it at his cost and adhere to the Village’s land-use by-laws, which state that at a stop sign, the fence has to be moved in 7.5M at each corner at the stop sign. Fine. However, this guy just plowed down the fence, and now I have to get it put back up (if I can find a fencing crew that will withstand the death threats this guy utters), the Condo will pay for it and charge all the costs back to the units the builder owns. And the builder also hired a lawyer who tells me he doesn’t think his client will have to pay for it, when his client essentially destroyed the real property of this Condo Corporation. I can’t make it any clearer than that, folks – you break it, you pay for it.
If you want to do something to the outside of your condo, like add in a flower garden, or put up wooden shutters on your windows, or put in garden gnomes, even if you think it will look really really nice and cute or kitschy, you have to ask for permission from the Condo Board first. If you do things without asking, we will have to make you change it back or take them away. If you do not comply, we can do it and then make you pay for it. All you need to do is write us a nice letter saying what you want to do, and then five or seven other people who live there and represent EVERYONE at the property (some of whom do not like garden gnomes) will decide if you can do it. Usually, we are alright with your flower gardens. And if the policy is “no satellite dishes”, then it’s NO SATELLITE DISHES. If you sneak up at midnight and put one on, I will just have to have it taken down and make you pay for it. Sorry, but that’s the way it goes. I sympathize, I really do. If you want the unhindered ability to garden and put up stuff on your dwelling, again, and I cannot stress this enough, buy a fucking house.
In a condominium, you have to pay “extra” for Condo Fees. Technically, we call them “Condominium Contributions”, and you contribute to the management of your condominium. You pay for your insurance in those fees in case someone sets fire to your building and it burns down to the ground. You pay for the landscaping so someone will come with a lawnmower to cut the grass and weed your yard once a week. You pay for the snow removal so someone will come and shovel your sidewalks (and no, they will not come on demand, they have a schedule and if you want to go to work early, you’ll have to walk on the snow to get to your car). You pay for all the paper that I have to send out to you because you don’t read the By-Laws. You pay for the guys who come and fix your roof when it’s leaking at 1a. You pay for all the other stuff that has to get fixed around the place over the next 25 years. And you pay for me, so I am here to listen to you call and cry about how someone else’s dog pooped on your lawn, and it could not have been your precious rottweiler who has been seen out off-leash only three times this month so far, so why should you be fined? If you do not pay your fees, I will place a caveat against your unit, and you will owe even more money since a lawyer has to do this, and they are way more expensive than I am. If you do not pay your fees, I will repossess your place. I will foreclose on your mortgage for the sake of $1,000. I am not kidding. It’s too bad that you spent all your money on a trip to Cancun for your little sister’s graduation, and then lost your job because you took too much time off. If you want to do stuff like that, rent an apartment or move back in with your parents.
Anyway, the sheer volume and intensity of the stupidity I have to deal with is clearly getting to me. Really, this job should be a LOT easier. Move in to a condo, read the by-laws, abide by them, and we’ll get along just fine. Then I can write letters to the Board Members, talk on the phone with contractors, drive around and look at my nice properties. That should be about it. There should be no stupidity.
I do not understand why people do not do the right thing. Register your vehicle. Pick up your dog shit. Keep your cats inside. Don’t park in the fire lanes. Keep the volume on your stereo down. Pay your condo fees. PLEASE. Living in a condominium is like living with your parents. There are lots of rules. And if you want to live there, you really have to abide by the rules, or you’ll be punished. It sucks. Condominiums are not for everyone.
That’s the bad part of my job. Dealing with the stupidity. The good part about my job is that the hours are flexible and I really am only accountable to my Boards, and sort of my boss, Dave, who is a pretty good boss as far as they go. He’s a little tight with the days off, but he’s pretty good about me not being here much in the afternoons since I still have to accomplish the same volume of work during less time in the office. I do get to drive around and look at my condos (when I have time, now that I have more of the stupid people to deal with). I enjoy resolving problems. I like approving the pets and talking to the people who were smart enough to ask permission. I like getting repair projects done. I don’t even mind meeting with the Boards in the evenings.
It’s the stupidity I mind.
I work in Property Management. I manage condominiums, which is probably the lowest rung of property management. There are other properties you can manage, like rentals (which arguably is potentially worse than condominium management) (which they call “Residential Management” to distance themselves from the stink of slum-lord association), commercial properties, industrial properties and Office properties. Office properties are technically commercial properties, but still, when you’re managing a portfolio of office buildings, you get a little more respect because it’s probably a bit harder than the other stuff. Higher population density with more complex systems (HVAC, elevators, that sort of thing). And within all those categories is inter-mixing, so you can have a commercial condo, which would be a building built with a bunch of units that are owned individually by the owners with some common areas that a condo manager would manage. I even have several such buildings in my condo portfolio.
Anyway, lots of properties. All the properties out there that are not single-family dwellings (houses) need to be managed by someone because if you just leave it to the owners, they’ll all slit each others’ throats and the world would be messy with all that blood. Then I’d have to get a job in hazardous medical waste cleaning or something in order to make money. As it stands now, condominiums being what they are, I manage them as best I can. The main problem with this job is that they are lived-in by people who have no idea what they are living in (being condominiums). When someone buys a condominium, they are most likely buying it because it’s cheaper than a house or they have an aversion to shoveling snow. Other than that, they treat these dwellings JUST like a house and expect to live in them just as though they were living in a house, which is not the case.
See, in a condominium, you have close neighbors. You share walls (in most cases) and common areas. You have rules to abide by, called By-Laws. And all condominiums in Alberta are governed by the Condominium Act. Your By-Laws can’t contravene the Act, but they can support and specify. Basically, the By-Laws that affect the owners are called the “Owner responsibilities” or are headed by a nice sentence that says “An Owner SHALL NOT:” and then it lists what you can’t do. If people would just fucking learn to read, and read these By-Laws, my job would be a lot simpler. But people cannot read, or choose not to read, and are stupid and mean.
For instance, in a condominium, if you want to have a pet, you have to get Board approval first. FIRST, before you go to the pound and pick out the cutest little puppy that will grow into the world’s largest dog with big feet and a severe inability to distinguish between good jumping up and BAD jumping up (like onto Board Members). If you get a puppy without approval, then the Board has to be mean and tell me to be mean and tell you to get rid of it because you live in a fucking condominium, for Christ’s sake, and you can’t reasonably have a dog that big without a yard. And no, the common area out back of your unit is not your yard, it is shared by all the other people who live there, some of whom are afraid of dogs. Yes, even in this day and age, there are still some people who are afraid of dogs, or who just plain don’t like them.
Also, you have to pick up all the dog poop your dog poops IMMEDIATELY after he or she does it, because really, you live in an area where there are other people, and good god, that’s just gross. If you want your dog to shit everywhere and not have to clean it up, then buy a fucking house.
And, this should go without saying, but you can’t have your dog off-leash at the condominium. Even if you’re just taking him to your car, because then he sees the five-year-old across the street with an ice cream cone and barrels over there to knock the kid over and steal the cone, and then I have to deal with the kid’s mom who will be screaming bloody murder. And she will find a Board Member to yell at, and they generally don’t like that. And then I’ll have to tell you to get rid of the dog, and listen to you cry cry cry. And I will be sad, because I like dogs. I just don’t like stupid people.
In a condominium, you can’t play your stereo at volume “10”. You share a wall with someone else, and they probably don’t want to listen to Top Gun at midnight every night because you can’t get a date. If you do crank it up, and you get a mean letter from me telling you to turn it down, turn it the hell down or I’ll have to send you a fine, and then you won’t want to pay it because you’re already late on your stupid CRX payments because you bought a giant stereo for that, too, and you know the damn thing will get repossessed. If you want to crank up your stereo, move to a fucking house and soundproof your basement.
In a condominium, you can’t park wherever you want, either. If you’re in an apartment, you get your assigned or titled stall, and that is the only place you can park. Even if you get two roommates who each have a car or two. And they can’t park in Visitor parking either. If they’re staying there more than two nights a week, they’re not “visitors” any more, they pretty much live there. Buy or rent another parking stall, or better yet, buy a fucking trailer in the trailer park. Park on the front lawn like Ricky from Trailer Park Boys and fight with the trailer park supervisor. Yes, you. All of you. If you live at a townhouse complex, you probably have a garage (you’ll have to clean all your junk out of it so you can fit in your car) or at least a driveway, and that’s all you get. Your visitors have to either park in Visitor Parking or out on the street. I’m fairly sure that walking the 50 feet to your front door will NOT kill them. And if you park on the roadway that is clearly marked “FIRE LANE”, I will have to get your car towed, and then I will have to listen to you yell at me for 45 minutes because you were then late to your brother’s dentist appointment or something. And no, since the sign clearly said “violators will be towed”, we will not pay for your impound or towing fee.
In a condominium, if you break stuff that isn’t yours, and we know you did it, we’ll make you pay for it. Even if you are the builder or the builder’s contractor. For instance, I have a property in a rural village that is currently being developed by a jackass. Seriously, a big jackass. He wanted us to move the perimeter fence, which we did not want to move because it would be expensive. We talked about it, and agreed that if he wanted to move it, he would have to move it at his cost and adhere to the Village’s land-use by-laws, which state that at a stop sign, the fence has to be moved in 7.5M at each corner at the stop sign. Fine. However, this guy just plowed down the fence, and now I have to get it put back up (if I can find a fencing crew that will withstand the death threats this guy utters), the Condo will pay for it and charge all the costs back to the units the builder owns. And the builder also hired a lawyer who tells me he doesn’t think his client will have to pay for it, when his client essentially destroyed the real property of this Condo Corporation. I can’t make it any clearer than that, folks – you break it, you pay for it.
If you want to do something to the outside of your condo, like add in a flower garden, or put up wooden shutters on your windows, or put in garden gnomes, even if you think it will look really really nice and cute or kitschy, you have to ask for permission from the Condo Board first. If you do things without asking, we will have to make you change it back or take them away. If you do not comply, we can do it and then make you pay for it. All you need to do is write us a nice letter saying what you want to do, and then five or seven other people who live there and represent EVERYONE at the property (some of whom do not like garden gnomes) will decide if you can do it. Usually, we are alright with your flower gardens. And if the policy is “no satellite dishes”, then it’s NO SATELLITE DISHES. If you sneak up at midnight and put one on, I will just have to have it taken down and make you pay for it. Sorry, but that’s the way it goes. I sympathize, I really do. If you want the unhindered ability to garden and put up stuff on your dwelling, again, and I cannot stress this enough, buy a fucking house.
In a condominium, you have to pay “extra” for Condo Fees. Technically, we call them “Condominium Contributions”, and you contribute to the management of your condominium. You pay for your insurance in those fees in case someone sets fire to your building and it burns down to the ground. You pay for the landscaping so someone will come with a lawnmower to cut the grass and weed your yard once a week. You pay for the snow removal so someone will come and shovel your sidewalks (and no, they will not come on demand, they have a schedule and if you want to go to work early, you’ll have to walk on the snow to get to your car). You pay for all the paper that I have to send out to you because you don’t read the By-Laws. You pay for the guys who come and fix your roof when it’s leaking at 1a. You pay for all the other stuff that has to get fixed around the place over the next 25 years. And you pay for me, so I am here to listen to you call and cry about how someone else’s dog pooped on your lawn, and it could not have been your precious rottweiler who has been seen out off-leash only three times this month so far, so why should you be fined? If you do not pay your fees, I will place a caveat against your unit, and you will owe even more money since a lawyer has to do this, and they are way more expensive than I am. If you do not pay your fees, I will repossess your place. I will foreclose on your mortgage for the sake of $1,000. I am not kidding. It’s too bad that you spent all your money on a trip to Cancun for your little sister’s graduation, and then lost your job because you took too much time off. If you want to do stuff like that, rent an apartment or move back in with your parents.
Anyway, the sheer volume and intensity of the stupidity I have to deal with is clearly getting to me. Really, this job should be a LOT easier. Move in to a condo, read the by-laws, abide by them, and we’ll get along just fine. Then I can write letters to the Board Members, talk on the phone with contractors, drive around and look at my nice properties. That should be about it. There should be no stupidity.
I do not understand why people do not do the right thing. Register your vehicle. Pick up your dog shit. Keep your cats inside. Don’t park in the fire lanes. Keep the volume on your stereo down. Pay your condo fees. PLEASE. Living in a condominium is like living with your parents. There are lots of rules. And if you want to live there, you really have to abide by the rules, or you’ll be punished. It sucks. Condominiums are not for everyone.
That’s the bad part of my job. Dealing with the stupidity. The good part about my job is that the hours are flexible and I really am only accountable to my Boards, and sort of my boss, Dave, who is a pretty good boss as far as they go. He’s a little tight with the days off, but he’s pretty good about me not being here much in the afternoons since I still have to accomplish the same volume of work during less time in the office. I do get to drive around and look at my condos (when I have time, now that I have more of the stupid people to deal with). I enjoy resolving problems. I like approving the pets and talking to the people who were smart enough to ask permission. I like getting repair projects done. I don’t even mind meeting with the Boards in the evenings.
It’s the stupidity I mind.
Monday, April 25, 2005
Once upon a weekend…
Man. Those things go quickly, the weekends. You wait all week for a weekend, and then it happens, and then it’s over, and you’re back to waiting around for another one.
So we just had one (a weekend, in case you didn’t get that from the whole preamble). It started on Friday, when I left work at the early hour of noon to go and get some cheese. Yes, cheese. I said cheese. I couldn’t just go to the grocery store for this cheese, it’s special cheese you have to get from the cheese shop. Kefalotyri cheese. It’s Greek, and you use it to make FLAMING CHEESE (whereby you set it on fire, and it tastes wonderful). This flaming cheese is so great, in fact, that I burned the hell out of my hand, but I don’t care and will probably even do it again the next time I get to make flaming cheese. Usually Rob does the lighting-on-fire part, but the burning of my hand occurred during the melting process. You melt the cheese in butter (yum) and while I was flipping it over, it splattered down into the butter, which was launched in its burning melted state onto the back of my left hand. The burns are just on the verge of blistering. But I will not hesitate even at the next time. It’s worth it.
Anywhoo, where was I? Oh. Friday afternoon, after the cheese-procurement, I went to the gym to be tortured by my friend, T, and we worked out our legs. My legs were sore afterwards, and very tired. Then I went home and napped on the sofa until our friends Taron came over for dinner. Rob barbecued a beer-can chicken. Rob is a marvel of culinary knowledge. He knows lots of good recipes that seem effortless and fantastically tasty. Like this beer-can chicken. You take a chicken, shove a beer can up its butt, and season it on the outside, set in barbecue (standing upright, so don’t get one that is too big for the barbecue), and cook. Rob even injects his with barbecue sauce since I got him a giant chicken/turkey injector set.
So our dinner was very good. And we sat outside for a while until it got too windy. Then, Taron left and I went inside to watch TV, only I had had way too much to drink by then, so basically I just cried sad tears all the way through Joan of Arcadia (shut up) because the evil has made itself known, and that just makes me sad. Stupid evil. I mean, it’s not enough you have to combat the perils of everyday life without someone messing with you ON PURPOSE? You have to throw an actual evil in the mix so they’re deliberately making everything go horribly wrong? I don’t understand. Which is I suppose one of my larger problems in life. I just don’t understand. Or, maybe I understand, but I certainly don’t want to. I may not believe in god, and think it’s a fantastic fairy tale, and wouldn’t it be great if it was true, but I’m not so sure I don’t believe in deliberate, actual evil. I’ve seen enough of that around. I would rather just believe that the evil was the fairy tale.
ANYway… after that, I watched Third Watch, only I don’t remember much of it so it’s a good thing my tape was running as I watched and yelled at the screen. I remember the yelling. Rob’s friend Greg came over to hang out with Rob, who I think was cleaning the kitchen throughout most of that, and then we all went outside to sit around the fire.
The next morning, I felt like I had been hit by a truck. No headache, thankfully, but definite the kind of whole-body soreness that comes from too much rye. So I didn’t want to get out of bed. We were supposed to maybe go rock climbing with Rob’s friend Greg, but I did not want to go. Rob went, even though he had a headache. They drove off merrily in the Tiny Car, as I sat leaned-over on the sofa, wishing I could go back to sleep. I missed most of a glorious day by sitting inside.
That evening, I met up with T and we went to this Aids Calgary benefit thing. I’m not much for the chic scene, but I went anyway. I tried to get out of it, briefly, but ended up reconsidering and had a fairly good time. It was a party sort of thing, held at an “undisclosed, secret location”. Yeah. Except that the secret location was printed on the tickets, and if we’d looked at them, we would have seen that it was mere minutes from my house. Instead, I did not know that, so I met T downtown and we had some drinks there. We were then bussed to the secret location. And immediately upon entering, we were accosted by many many people wearing feather boas, who were selling those same feather boas for $10/ea. Eventually, T gave in, knowing that if we had ON a feather boa, the rest of the feather boa sellers would give up and leave us alone. It was a wise move on her part.
The show was a sort of dance type show. Mostly modern dance music, mostly modern dance steps. There was one “sensual acrobatic” section that was pretty neat. And the silent auction stuff was interesting, but the problem with that stuff is it’s never stuff you need, and it always gets way overpriced by, like, the third bid. I did not bid on anything. The ticket to the whole evening was expensive enough and enough of a donation to a cause I’m not all that keen on in the first place. If I have extra charity money, it goes straight to the nearest animal-related charity, never mind the people. The people can take care of themselves. It’s the animals we need to worry about.
At any rate, when that was over, I got Rob to pick me up and then I watched most of Jurassic Park III. Not the worst movie I saw this weekend (I had seen it before, so don’t judge). The worst movie I saw this weekend was Jerry Maguire while I was recovering on the sofa Saturday afternoon. I have no idea why anyone liked that movie. I kept on waiting for it to get all good, only it never really did. The Mac says that Cuba Gooding Jr. won an Oscar for his performance in that movie, and although he was certainly a supporting actor, I have no idea why that movie won anything or was even nominated. Stupid, stupid movie. That’s three hours of my life I’ll never get back.
On Sunday, I got up and the day was glorious. It was sunny and warm outside, despite previous forecasts of rain. And I let all the animals go outside for some quality frolicking time. I made pancakes, chatted with The Mac, and sat out on the patio for a while. I even did some yard work (I raked the lawn in the back). Once the lawn was nicely raked and looking neat, the NoodleDog dug a big hole in it, right in front of me. And as I stood there, incredulous, he looked at me as though nothing was wrong. It was then that I started shrieking “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!” and hauled him away. “Bad digging. No digging in the yard!” He just looked mildly annoyed with me.
We collected ourselves, and ran a few errands. We gathered up the doggies and went to get Rob’s dad, and then headed over to my parents’ house so we could all go to the Spring Thaw show ‘n shine. We looked at cars for nearly two hours, and it was fun. The day was fantastic – I don’t think there has been that good a day for the Spring Thaw in years.
We returned to my parents’ homestead and sat on the deck in the sunshine, chatting, and then had a great chicken dinner. The day was nearly perfect.
And now I have to wait a whole ‘nother five days to get to the next weekend, which I understand from the long-range weather forecast will not be perfect (cool and wet). I wish that the weekends were four days long, and the work-week three. I wish that I had skipped work today to lounge in the yard with the dogs, or snooze in the sunshine with the cats. Mostly, I wish it was Friday so I could get going on the next weekend, rain notwithstanding.
That’s it. I’m going to go and buy a lottery ticket.
So we just had one (a weekend, in case you didn’t get that from the whole preamble). It started on Friday, when I left work at the early hour of noon to go and get some cheese. Yes, cheese. I said cheese. I couldn’t just go to the grocery store for this cheese, it’s special cheese you have to get from the cheese shop. Kefalotyri cheese. It’s Greek, and you use it to make FLAMING CHEESE (whereby you set it on fire, and it tastes wonderful). This flaming cheese is so great, in fact, that I burned the hell out of my hand, but I don’t care and will probably even do it again the next time I get to make flaming cheese. Usually Rob does the lighting-on-fire part, but the burning of my hand occurred during the melting process. You melt the cheese in butter (yum) and while I was flipping it over, it splattered down into the butter, which was launched in its burning melted state onto the back of my left hand. The burns are just on the verge of blistering. But I will not hesitate even at the next time. It’s worth it.
Anywhoo, where was I? Oh. Friday afternoon, after the cheese-procurement, I went to the gym to be tortured by my friend, T, and we worked out our legs. My legs were sore afterwards, and very tired. Then I went home and napped on the sofa until our friends Taron came over for dinner. Rob barbecued a beer-can chicken. Rob is a marvel of culinary knowledge. He knows lots of good recipes that seem effortless and fantastically tasty. Like this beer-can chicken. You take a chicken, shove a beer can up its butt, and season it on the outside, set in barbecue (standing upright, so don’t get one that is too big for the barbecue), and cook. Rob even injects his with barbecue sauce since I got him a giant chicken/turkey injector set.
So our dinner was very good. And we sat outside for a while until it got too windy. Then, Taron left and I went inside to watch TV, only I had had way too much to drink by then, so basically I just cried sad tears all the way through Joan of Arcadia (shut up) because the evil has made itself known, and that just makes me sad. Stupid evil. I mean, it’s not enough you have to combat the perils of everyday life without someone messing with you ON PURPOSE? You have to throw an actual evil in the mix so they’re deliberately making everything go horribly wrong? I don’t understand. Which is I suppose one of my larger problems in life. I just don’t understand. Or, maybe I understand, but I certainly don’t want to. I may not believe in god, and think it’s a fantastic fairy tale, and wouldn’t it be great if it was true, but I’m not so sure I don’t believe in deliberate, actual evil. I’ve seen enough of that around. I would rather just believe that the evil was the fairy tale.
ANYway… after that, I watched Third Watch, only I don’t remember much of it so it’s a good thing my tape was running as I watched and yelled at the screen. I remember the yelling. Rob’s friend Greg came over to hang out with Rob, who I think was cleaning the kitchen throughout most of that, and then we all went outside to sit around the fire.
The next morning, I felt like I had been hit by a truck. No headache, thankfully, but definite the kind of whole-body soreness that comes from too much rye. So I didn’t want to get out of bed. We were supposed to maybe go rock climbing with Rob’s friend Greg, but I did not want to go. Rob went, even though he had a headache. They drove off merrily in the Tiny Car, as I sat leaned-over on the sofa, wishing I could go back to sleep. I missed most of a glorious day by sitting inside.
That evening, I met up with T and we went to this Aids Calgary benefit thing. I’m not much for the chic scene, but I went anyway. I tried to get out of it, briefly, but ended up reconsidering and had a fairly good time. It was a party sort of thing, held at an “undisclosed, secret location”. Yeah. Except that the secret location was printed on the tickets, and if we’d looked at them, we would have seen that it was mere minutes from my house. Instead, I did not know that, so I met T downtown and we had some drinks there. We were then bussed to the secret location. And immediately upon entering, we were accosted by many many people wearing feather boas, who were selling those same feather boas for $10/ea. Eventually, T gave in, knowing that if we had ON a feather boa, the rest of the feather boa sellers would give up and leave us alone. It was a wise move on her part.
The show was a sort of dance type show. Mostly modern dance music, mostly modern dance steps. There was one “sensual acrobatic” section that was pretty neat. And the silent auction stuff was interesting, but the problem with that stuff is it’s never stuff you need, and it always gets way overpriced by, like, the third bid. I did not bid on anything. The ticket to the whole evening was expensive enough and enough of a donation to a cause I’m not all that keen on in the first place. If I have extra charity money, it goes straight to the nearest animal-related charity, never mind the people. The people can take care of themselves. It’s the animals we need to worry about.
At any rate, when that was over, I got Rob to pick me up and then I watched most of Jurassic Park III. Not the worst movie I saw this weekend (I had seen it before, so don’t judge). The worst movie I saw this weekend was Jerry Maguire while I was recovering on the sofa Saturday afternoon. I have no idea why anyone liked that movie. I kept on waiting for it to get all good, only it never really did. The Mac says that Cuba Gooding Jr. won an Oscar for his performance in that movie, and although he was certainly a supporting actor, I have no idea why that movie won anything or was even nominated. Stupid, stupid movie. That’s three hours of my life I’ll never get back.
On Sunday, I got up and the day was glorious. It was sunny and warm outside, despite previous forecasts of rain. And I let all the animals go outside for some quality frolicking time. I made pancakes, chatted with The Mac, and sat out on the patio for a while. I even did some yard work (I raked the lawn in the back). Once the lawn was nicely raked and looking neat, the NoodleDog dug a big hole in it, right in front of me. And as I stood there, incredulous, he looked at me as though nothing was wrong. It was then that I started shrieking “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!” and hauled him away. “Bad digging. No digging in the yard!” He just looked mildly annoyed with me.
We collected ourselves, and ran a few errands. We gathered up the doggies and went to get Rob’s dad, and then headed over to my parents’ house so we could all go to the Spring Thaw show ‘n shine. We looked at cars for nearly two hours, and it was fun. The day was fantastic – I don’t think there has been that good a day for the Spring Thaw in years.
We returned to my parents’ homestead and sat on the deck in the sunshine, chatting, and then had a great chicken dinner. The day was nearly perfect.
And now I have to wait a whole ‘nother five days to get to the next weekend, which I understand from the long-range weather forecast will not be perfect (cool and wet). I wish that the weekends were four days long, and the work-week three. I wish that I had skipped work today to lounge in the yard with the dogs, or snooze in the sunshine with the cats. Mostly, I wish it was Friday so I could get going on the next weekend, rain notwithstanding.
That’s it. I’m going to go and buy a lottery ticket.
Monday, April 18, 2005
A failed foray into nouveau cuisine
It was my sister’s boyfriend’s birthday yesterday. In my family, birthdays are celebrated over dinner, sometimes at my parents’ house, and sometimes at the restaurant of the birthday-haver’s choosing. Lala and her boyfriend, Shane, have been together for almost ten years. No, they’re not married – that’s another story for another day.
However, having been together for so long, they have moved into the yuppie phase of their lives. Some people are destined to be yuppies, some of us are not. I don’t think anyone could ever classify me as a yuppie. I’m no longer “young”, for the first, nor am I all that “upwardly mobile”. I mean, I have a reasonable job. I like it because it’s flexible and I can pretty much set my own hours as long as I get my stuff done, in order to avoid having people yell at me. I probably won’t ever get fired. Lala and Shane are young and upwardly mobile, and they give off that impression when you talk to them, see their house, etc.
Lala and Shane like to dine out, as well. Sure, Lala cooks. She’s one of those no-fat people. Beautiful, but no butter, no ice cream. She makes cookies with no butter and reduced sugar, and adds in raisins and cranberries and all those sorts of things that are supposed to be healthy. I, on the other hand, cannot eat raisins and cranberries, and I like me some butter with my plain white bread.
Lala and Shane choose nouveau cuisine-type restaurants every single damn time it’s their turn to pick a place to eat. Shit, man. I can’t eat that stuff. We’ve been over that before, more than once. Plus, the restaurant of their choosing, “Muse”, was in Kensington, which is a neighborhood that would try the patience of the Pope, if we had one, and my comment to Rob when we got out of the car (after trying to find a parking space and turning the car around in the middle of the road, piloting it down an alley that was last attended to when I was a small child and whose potholes could probably digest the Tiny Car) was “This place just violates me every time I come here”. He thought that was pretty funny. It’s nice to know I have that sort of support, you know?
We got to the restaurant with an hour to kill (Lala and Shane also like to eat late), thinking we’d maybe sit at the bar and have some drinks or something while we waited. However, the menu was posted on the door to the place. I took a quick look:
“five-spiced duck leg with apple relish confit, reduced truffle essence” As an appetizer.
The menu also contained such phrases as “grainy mustard spetzle”, “rocket aioli”, “truffled popcorn”. What in the fuck is a truffled popcorn? Or a rocket aioli, for that matter?
So I’m not high-class. I never pretended to be.
We went to a little pub across the street and had a drink, and some garlic cheese toast while we waited. I kinda figured I should have eaten something that resembled normal food since that menu didn’t contain anything edible at first glance, but I didn’t, and that was my own mistake. Also, the little pub we were at was pretty much the opposite of the fancy restaurant – their idea of garlic cheese toast was a slice of white bread, cut in half, with a lot of melted cheddar on top and some green stuff (most likely parsley or maybe green onion chopped up really well) thrown in for effect. ONE slice. Not two, or a basket of two or three, but ONE single slice on a small plate. Yeesh. That lonely slice of white bread was a harbinger of doom.
Finally, we made our way back to the restaurant. I shuddered as we entered. We were led to an empty table surrounded by more empty tables. When Lala told me what time we were having dinner, she said it was the only reservation they could get that wasn’t 5p (which would have been FINE with me…). The joint was deserted, and we were the first of our party (consisting of Lala and Shane, my parents and us) to arrive. Rob ordered a beer, and I immediately ordered a scotch. Hey, I’m not high-class, but I can pretend when necessary, can’t I?
We must have read that menu over 500 times. I’m sure I did, anyway, scouring it for some semblance of something I would be able to eat. The regularly-listed soups, for instance, were all off the list since they all contained pretty much vegetable bases. Fine. Same for the salads – I usually don’t have salads. That whole “fruits and vegetables = extreme abdominal pain” thing, you know. The appetizers were baffling and cryptic. The main courses, at first look, assaulted my senses and confused me. I recognized “AAA Tenderloin”, but why would anyone want to molest it with three contradictory sauces? And the Yukon gold potato lasagne with lobster and scallops… maybe… but with American sauce? What is American sauce? Reduced Bob Dole? Oh, and dear god. The prices. Their only beef dish, the AAA Tenderloin with its multitude of strange sauces, was $40. Sorry, maybe this is just me, and the rest of you routinely pay over $30 for one dish of food, but in my world, I could go out and have an entire evening for $40. I’m just sayin’. I feel it’s not quite fair to pick the most expensive restaurant going and expect my dad to pay for my $40 meal by default. That’s just not cool. Sure, there are restaurants where I’d be more than happy to pay $40 for a meal, because I’d be getting exactly what I wanted, done the way I wanted, and I wouldn’t just be settling for something I could tolerate for that price. No way. Uh-unh.
OK. Maybe I’m being bitchy and difficult. The atmosphere was nice. The décor was nice. However, the place gave me the wiggins, and I felt very uncomfortable, and I was hungry. I had been looking forward to a nice dinner. Hell, my lunch was a pizza pop, had at 1p, over five hours earlier.
Having read the menu enough times to know that it contained nothing I could eat, I looked at the “specials” list, and there was a potato and leek soup that looked like it would suffice. I ordered that. I contemplated just giving Shane his birthday present and then running out the door, but Rob thought that might be a bit much, so we stayed. And had as much scotch as I could get the waiter to bring me. It seemed like everyone else had some problems with the menu, too, because four out of the other five people ordered the salmon, which came with spinach and sheep feta cheese risotto, a smoked tomato and some sort of olive reduction paste. I guess the risotto was alright, but Lala didn’t like the olive paste, and I don’t think Rob touched it, but he really liked the smoked tomato. My father, The Grumpaw, ordered veal (I think that’s what it was) accompanied by some sort of tuber – either carrot, sweet potato or possibly a foreign form of squash.
My potato and leek soup, which was bland an inoccuous, came with some sort of purple and white, 1.5”-round cake of the most foul-tasting gelatinous substance known to man. I accidentally touched it trying to get it out of the bowl of soup and then touched my finger to my mouth, and lo, it was horrible. I passed it on my bread-and-butter plate to Rob to see if I was going insane (probably from hunger), and he said it smelled pretty bad, but wouldn’t taste it. Neither would Lala. We all agreed that it was probably a thinly veiled attempt to poison me since I had complained about the menu. The chef must have ears everywhere.
Looking around the internet today, I found a menu from Muse from last year. It seems like it would have been more promising. I probably could have found one thing on that menu I could have eaten. Apparently, they change menus fairly often.
Dessert was birthday cake at my parents’ place after dinner. I opted us out of it because I was starving. Rob and I went and got Chicken On The Way to eat at home afterwards. Chicken On The Way has existed since the beginning of time, I think. It was there when my parents first moved to Calgary over 35 years ago. It was the first place they ate when they got here (ostensibly because they lived in Kensington and it was handy, Calgary being a much smaller place at that time). Chicken On The Way has not only fantastic fried chicken, but they also have the most amazing corn fritters. Little balls of corn-bread-type batter deep fried in the same fat as the chicken. Their fries are abysmally bad, unfortunately, but you don’t need the fries if you have the chicken and the corn fritters. That’s enough fat to cause a whole flock of coronaries right there. For, like, $10, you can get four pieces of chicken and a bunch of corn fritters. I feel it totally rational to compare Chicken On The Way, which has been around for over 35 years, to Muse, which has existed for only a couple, and has burned down during that time and has been rebuilt…
Fried chicken is fattening. I didn’t care. Eating after 9p is fattening, too. I didn’t care that I have been trying to lose weight. I was starving hungry. I have this thing with food, where if I don’t get to eat it when I’m hungry, I get to the point where I can’t actually put it in my mouth, and I can’t eat at all, and then I get a two-day headache from not eating. And I get cranky, which I’m sure Rob could tell you all about. I was well past the point of being hungry, and if I hadn’t eaten that chicken, I would have been in a state today.
So while I survived the experience, just barely, I would not recommend Muse to anyone unless they really like that sort of thing. Restaurants are kind of a personal preference, and if you get the wrong one, it can totally ruin your evening. I’m more of a local eatery kind of gal. I like burgers, and chicken sandwiches, and BLTs, and Italian food, or maybe Mexican food. Sure, add Greek food to the list, I can usually find something I can eat there since it’s mostly meat. I like Spanish food. I can hack Vietnamese food since someone explained it to me. I like seafood. I like steak. I like pork chops. Rice, pasta, bread, potatoes. I’m just a simple girl looking for something that doesn’t contain too many fruits and vegetables.
If you like international or nouveau cuisine, or that fusion type of stuff, then go. Enjoy. It seems like a classy joint. But it’s casual enough that they’ll treat you well even if you show up in casual-wear. I could see it being pretty romantic, as long as you can find something you can eat. Venture out, expand your horizons, good luck with the new experience.
I’ll be at the Chicken On The Way.
However, having been together for so long, they have moved into the yuppie phase of their lives. Some people are destined to be yuppies, some of us are not. I don’t think anyone could ever classify me as a yuppie. I’m no longer “young”, for the first, nor am I all that “upwardly mobile”. I mean, I have a reasonable job. I like it because it’s flexible and I can pretty much set my own hours as long as I get my stuff done, in order to avoid having people yell at me. I probably won’t ever get fired. Lala and Shane are young and upwardly mobile, and they give off that impression when you talk to them, see their house, etc.
Lala and Shane like to dine out, as well. Sure, Lala cooks. She’s one of those no-fat people. Beautiful, but no butter, no ice cream. She makes cookies with no butter and reduced sugar, and adds in raisins and cranberries and all those sorts of things that are supposed to be healthy. I, on the other hand, cannot eat raisins and cranberries, and I like me some butter with my plain white bread.
Lala and Shane choose nouveau cuisine-type restaurants every single damn time it’s their turn to pick a place to eat. Shit, man. I can’t eat that stuff. We’ve been over that before, more than once. Plus, the restaurant of their choosing, “Muse”, was in Kensington, which is a neighborhood that would try the patience of the Pope, if we had one, and my comment to Rob when we got out of the car (after trying to find a parking space and turning the car around in the middle of the road, piloting it down an alley that was last attended to when I was a small child and whose potholes could probably digest the Tiny Car) was “This place just violates me every time I come here”. He thought that was pretty funny. It’s nice to know I have that sort of support, you know?
We got to the restaurant with an hour to kill (Lala and Shane also like to eat late), thinking we’d maybe sit at the bar and have some drinks or something while we waited. However, the menu was posted on the door to the place. I took a quick look:
“five-spiced duck leg with apple relish confit, reduced truffle essence” As an appetizer.
The menu also contained such phrases as “grainy mustard spetzle”, “rocket aioli”, “truffled popcorn”. What in the fuck is a truffled popcorn? Or a rocket aioli, for that matter?
So I’m not high-class. I never pretended to be.
We went to a little pub across the street and had a drink, and some garlic cheese toast while we waited. I kinda figured I should have eaten something that resembled normal food since that menu didn’t contain anything edible at first glance, but I didn’t, and that was my own mistake. Also, the little pub we were at was pretty much the opposite of the fancy restaurant – their idea of garlic cheese toast was a slice of white bread, cut in half, with a lot of melted cheddar on top and some green stuff (most likely parsley or maybe green onion chopped up really well) thrown in for effect. ONE slice. Not two, or a basket of two or three, but ONE single slice on a small plate. Yeesh. That lonely slice of white bread was a harbinger of doom.
Finally, we made our way back to the restaurant. I shuddered as we entered. We were led to an empty table surrounded by more empty tables. When Lala told me what time we were having dinner, she said it was the only reservation they could get that wasn’t 5p (which would have been FINE with me…). The joint was deserted, and we were the first of our party (consisting of Lala and Shane, my parents and us) to arrive. Rob ordered a beer, and I immediately ordered a scotch. Hey, I’m not high-class, but I can pretend when necessary, can’t I?
We must have read that menu over 500 times. I’m sure I did, anyway, scouring it for some semblance of something I would be able to eat. The regularly-listed soups, for instance, were all off the list since they all contained pretty much vegetable bases. Fine. Same for the salads – I usually don’t have salads. That whole “fruits and vegetables = extreme abdominal pain” thing, you know. The appetizers were baffling and cryptic. The main courses, at first look, assaulted my senses and confused me. I recognized “AAA Tenderloin”, but why would anyone want to molest it with three contradictory sauces? And the Yukon gold potato lasagne with lobster and scallops… maybe… but with American sauce? What is American sauce? Reduced Bob Dole? Oh, and dear god. The prices. Their only beef dish, the AAA Tenderloin with its multitude of strange sauces, was $40. Sorry, maybe this is just me, and the rest of you routinely pay over $30 for one dish of food, but in my world, I could go out and have an entire evening for $40. I’m just sayin’. I feel it’s not quite fair to pick the most expensive restaurant going and expect my dad to pay for my $40 meal by default. That’s just not cool. Sure, there are restaurants where I’d be more than happy to pay $40 for a meal, because I’d be getting exactly what I wanted, done the way I wanted, and I wouldn’t just be settling for something I could tolerate for that price. No way. Uh-unh.
OK. Maybe I’m being bitchy and difficult. The atmosphere was nice. The décor was nice. However, the place gave me the wiggins, and I felt very uncomfortable, and I was hungry. I had been looking forward to a nice dinner. Hell, my lunch was a pizza pop, had at 1p, over five hours earlier.
Having read the menu enough times to know that it contained nothing I could eat, I looked at the “specials” list, and there was a potato and leek soup that looked like it would suffice. I ordered that. I contemplated just giving Shane his birthday present and then running out the door, but Rob thought that might be a bit much, so we stayed. And had as much scotch as I could get the waiter to bring me. It seemed like everyone else had some problems with the menu, too, because four out of the other five people ordered the salmon, which came with spinach and sheep feta cheese risotto, a smoked tomato and some sort of olive reduction paste. I guess the risotto was alright, but Lala didn’t like the olive paste, and I don’t think Rob touched it, but he really liked the smoked tomato. My father, The Grumpaw, ordered veal (I think that’s what it was) accompanied by some sort of tuber – either carrot, sweet potato or possibly a foreign form of squash.
My potato and leek soup, which was bland an inoccuous, came with some sort of purple and white, 1.5”-round cake of the most foul-tasting gelatinous substance known to man. I accidentally touched it trying to get it out of the bowl of soup and then touched my finger to my mouth, and lo, it was horrible. I passed it on my bread-and-butter plate to Rob to see if I was going insane (probably from hunger), and he said it smelled pretty bad, but wouldn’t taste it. Neither would Lala. We all agreed that it was probably a thinly veiled attempt to poison me since I had complained about the menu. The chef must have ears everywhere.
Looking around the internet today, I found a menu from Muse from last year. It seems like it would have been more promising. I probably could have found one thing on that menu I could have eaten. Apparently, they change menus fairly often.
Dessert was birthday cake at my parents’ place after dinner. I opted us out of it because I was starving. Rob and I went and got Chicken On The Way to eat at home afterwards. Chicken On The Way has existed since the beginning of time, I think. It was there when my parents first moved to Calgary over 35 years ago. It was the first place they ate when they got here (ostensibly because they lived in Kensington and it was handy, Calgary being a much smaller place at that time). Chicken On The Way has not only fantastic fried chicken, but they also have the most amazing corn fritters. Little balls of corn-bread-type batter deep fried in the same fat as the chicken. Their fries are abysmally bad, unfortunately, but you don’t need the fries if you have the chicken and the corn fritters. That’s enough fat to cause a whole flock of coronaries right there. For, like, $10, you can get four pieces of chicken and a bunch of corn fritters. I feel it totally rational to compare Chicken On The Way, which has been around for over 35 years, to Muse, which has existed for only a couple, and has burned down during that time and has been rebuilt…
Fried chicken is fattening. I didn’t care. Eating after 9p is fattening, too. I didn’t care that I have been trying to lose weight. I was starving hungry. I have this thing with food, where if I don’t get to eat it when I’m hungry, I get to the point where I can’t actually put it in my mouth, and I can’t eat at all, and then I get a two-day headache from not eating. And I get cranky, which I’m sure Rob could tell you all about. I was well past the point of being hungry, and if I hadn’t eaten that chicken, I would have been in a state today.
So while I survived the experience, just barely, I would not recommend Muse to anyone unless they really like that sort of thing. Restaurants are kind of a personal preference, and if you get the wrong one, it can totally ruin your evening. I’m more of a local eatery kind of gal. I like burgers, and chicken sandwiches, and BLTs, and Italian food, or maybe Mexican food. Sure, add Greek food to the list, I can usually find something I can eat there since it’s mostly meat. I like Spanish food. I can hack Vietnamese food since someone explained it to me. I like seafood. I like steak. I like pork chops. Rice, pasta, bread, potatoes. I’m just a simple girl looking for something that doesn’t contain too many fruits and vegetables.
If you like international or nouveau cuisine, or that fusion type of stuff, then go. Enjoy. It seems like a classy joint. But it’s casual enough that they’ll treat you well even if you show up in casual-wear. I could see it being pretty romantic, as long as you can find something you can eat. Venture out, expand your horizons, good luck with the new experience.
I’ll be at the Chicken On The Way.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Our Trip, cont’d
Daaaamn. Ok. So I talked (briefly) with The Mac on Monday evening, because I had just been making dinner. I don’t usually do this, because Rob does it all the time nowadays since my going to the gym takes up the two hours between work and dinner. But Rob had gone out for beer, which I know he likes, and I got home before him, which is practically unheard of these days, and I was hungry, and thought I’d be nice and make dinner. Seriously, the dinner-making was more for him than me, but I was hungry…
And then I noticed I had a few minutes there. While the dinner was cooking, and I didn’t particularly feel like cleaning anything or turning on the TV and getting sucked into a stupor for the remainder of the evening, so I called The Mac. I had called to chat it up, because I haven’t talked to him in a while (because we were away, which I’ll get to in a minute). Anyway, just as I started chatting with him, Rob came home. And I always feel AWKWARD when I’m on the phone and Rob is puttering around in the house, like I should be talking to him or helping him or doing something more like cleaning or chores or whatever.
So The Mac and I chatted for a while, and there was a brief discussion about a disturbing story wherein bald eagles in the vicinity of Vancouver are being discovered, dead, without heads, and I certainly hope whoever is doing this gets punished somehow, preferably by vigilantes, and if they’re interested in poetic justice, they’ll flay the person or people alive, leave them bound on the ground and then release some bald eagles so they can pick at the person or people until they are dead dead dead. And I told The Mac about a “cougar attack” in Southern Alberta, probably in the Kananaskis somewhere, except I couldn’t exactly remember where, and how that news report was RIDICULOUS. Because the guy who had been “attacked” got, like, one puncture wound and some scratches, from TWO COUGARS while he was out walking with his “friend” (although one other news report called her his “girlfriend”, so she’s gonna be mad at one of the news stations, and I don’t know which one). So this guy, he gets attacked, see, and he “threw the cougar fifteen feet” so he could escape. Heh. Fifteen feet? Man, you couldn’t throw Smudge Fifteen feet, and she’s little. Mostly because she’s wriggly, but still. A cougar weighs in the neighborhood of 75-100 lbs, and throwing that fifteen feet, all wriggling and growling and trying to EAT YOU would be just impossible. I’m just sayin’…
But I had to go and finish dinner, and I told The Mac I’d call him the next day, which was last night, and then I couldn’t do it. I was out last night watching Rob play pool, because that’s what a girl does to support her man. She watches him play pool.
So sorry, Mac. I’ll call you the next time I can, I promise!!
Anyway, back to our little trip East. We had just left off after catching the first raccoon. Well, the next morning, there was a second one in our live trap. No skunk, mind you, but another raccoon. We had put the trap out on the grass, and this poor guy must have been in there a while, because he thrashed the hell out of the trap digging up a lot of grass and dirt, and he had dirt ALL OVER his cute little face. We got some good pictures of that guy and his release. We took him to the same place as the first one, and let him go. And sure enough, he fell into the same stream, climbed up the same bank, and ran away into the same forest. I hope they knew one another and were friends, and were glad to be reunited.
We spent a couple of days mostly inside because it rained on us. There was a big pile of cut wood waiting to be stacked, but because it was raining, it wasn’t a great idea to stack it. We explored the attic, we played some games. We had ourselves a little cribbage tournament. On the Saturday, we took the car into town to get some groceries, and maple syrup for friends here, and what happened? We got a flat tire.
We pulled into the parking lot to a church, and Rob put on the spare, as I negotiated with Budget Rent-a-Car about what to do. Their first response was “well, stay where you are, and we’ll bring you a new car from Montreal.” To which I replied “No.” Because we were about two hours away from Montreal, and that would be a stupid idea, plus it would take forever for them to find us. Then, the woman I was talking to suggested, “why don’t you put the spare on and drive in to the rental car place?” To which I replied, “No. We won’t be doing that, either,” because the spare has a 100-km safe tolerance rating. I talked to several more people. I tried to find the nearest Budget franchise, and one was located about 30 km away in Sherbrooke. I contacted the Sherbrooke Budget, and that guy was incredibly rude. “We don’t do that,” he said, “and our garage is closed.”
I rolled my eyes so much I thought they would come out of my head and start rolling around on the dashboard of our disabled car. Finally, I talked to someone who had an idea of what they were talking about (they had read the emergency manual, because apparently, no Budget car has ever had a flat tire to date, and I was the first client who had to go through this process so that the call center operators could get some experience), and they told me to just get the tire repaired.
The tire had a large-ish hole in it. We took it to Canadian Tire, which was the only place open at 4p on a Saturday. The guy there did not speak very much English, so I had to dust off my French and really get into it, and do you think I could remember the word for “flat”? No. But it’s “creusé”, in case you’re interested. The guy was a little iffy on whether the tire could be repaired, and his schedule was filled up for that afternoon, so we left the tire with him and limped away on the spare. He said he’d call if he could get it fixed before the end of the day and the shop closed. We went and had a beer in a bar, waiting to see if the guy would call, which he didn’t. We went back to the farm, defeated, and then had to go back to town in the morning to get the tire.
Since we were going into town anyway to get the tire, we decided we’d have breakfast at Eggsqui’s. Eggsqui’s is a little breakfast diner. There are apparently several of them in the area and scattered throughout Quebec. The Mac and our sister and I had breakfast there once, and they put this custard on everything. The waffles, the French toast, the pancakes… My sister was disgusted. Even more so, when The Mac took her discarded custard, which she had deposited in her unused coffee cup, and DRANK IT!! We drank no custard this time around, and Rob and I just had a nice breakfast instead. And then we picked up our repaired tire, Rob put it back on the car, and we were on our merry way.
We caught another raccoon that evening, and drove him out with mostly the same fanfare to the same location as the other two. He was released and the event was documented with pictures. We had to make it quick, though, because we found out that releasing live raccoons basically into other peoples’ yards is sort of frowned-upon.
The skunks, who had moved on from the farm due to the increased activity (raccoon trapping, yelling, much activity in and outside the shed), and we figure they just went down the road to my Uncle Eric’s place. Because when we drove by, there was the unmistakable scent of skunk right at his place.
We walked down to his place on the Monday, just to see how things were. We walked along the brook, fell in once, crossed a big tree to get to the other side, and made our way onto his property. His dog, Rex, barked an enormous bark at us, but gave away his friendly intentions by wagging his tail. He was so excited to see people that he continued wagging his tail as he sat on it. Once he realized we were friendly, he came bounding down to see us. Rex is a Shepherd/Rottweiler/other stuff cross. He is huge. He’s over 100 lbs and his feet are almost as big as my hand. He leaned against us, sitting on our feet, just begging to be petted, and he smelled like skunk.
We wandered around my uncle’s place for a bit, and then left poor Rex all by himself and made our way back to the farmhouse. It had started to rain again, of course, but we were pretty happy anyway. The next day, Rob and I went down to Eric’s to walk his dogs. Eric also has an old Shepherd/retriever/other stuff cross, named Sasha, who is about 15. Poor Sasha wheezes when he walks, and had a wound on his foot, but he was pretty game about going for a walk. We walked up Eric’s logging road into the woods.
Halfway down the road, we took note of an old hollow Maple tree, with a lot of droppings beneath it. We speculated as to what might be inside, and heard scratching from within. Rob stuck his digital camera into the hole, aimed upwards, and took a picture, complete with flash. You could see, from the picture, that it was a porcupine’s home, and the porcupine was IN. Rob took a few more pictures, trying to get a better view. The porcupine didn’t budge, so we kept on going.
We noticed, as we went along, little tufts of white fur. And a tuft of fur that was attached to a hunk of skin. We wondered what could have happened there, a struggle between rabbit and coyote, perhaps, or a deer and coyote or something… and were answered near the end of the road where it meets the brook, when Sasha started rooting around at the side of the road and came up with a calf’s head. Eric had lost a calf, stillborn, earlier in spring, and had ostensibly dragged it out as far as he thought necessary and tossed it into the bush. Sasha would not give up the head. And we also found the remains of the carcass, all picked clean and looking like something out of Predator 2, when the alien rips the head and spine out of a body and holds it up triumphantly as a trophy to take home. Heh. But ew. Rob tossed it back away from the road into some scrub where the dogs would be less likely to get at it. At the very end of the road, across the brook, we saw a moose wandering off into the forest. So many critters!!!
When we got back from our walk, Eric was home, his job at a cottage washed out by the rising lake water. We helped him cut some wood instead for a while, and then went back to the farm for lunch. Life on the farm revolves around meals, which may be why I’ve gained so much weight in such a short time (cry, cry).
That afternoon, we took a tour around the lake to the other side, where my grandparents’ parents were from. It was sunny and beautiful, and a very nice afternoon.
Of course, when we got back to the farm, Rob noted we had another flat tire. Not the same tire, mind you, a totally different one. And it was 5:30p, so all the shops in town were probably closed. So I called around trying to find someone to repair it (not even bothering to try and call Budget again…), and found that the Luc Gagné garage was open until 10p. That Luc Gagné is a man ahead of his time, I’ll tell ya. Rob and Eric took the tire out, and Therese, my grandmother and I all cooked dinner and watched Dr. Phil. My grandmother really likes Dr. Phil.
The next morning was our last, and the most heartbreaking part of the trip. I love to go there, but I also hate it a little because it reminds me of where I’d really rather be. And when I have to leave, my heart breaks and I cry. I hate crying. We left at 9a, even though our flight wasn’t scheduled to leave Montreal until 1:30p – Rob said we needed the extra time in case we got another flat, which I could see, but still. It was another hour I could have spent there, lingering and wishing.
The traveling was long and tiring. I read Rob part of my book while we were waiting at the airport and on the planes, which I have to finish reading to him because it’s a funny one. We got home at 5:30p Calgary time, and Rob’s father picked us up at the airport. We finally got home to our house around 7p (since we had to stop at my parents’ place to get our vehicle), and the pets seemed slightly disinterested to see us. I guess they had been spoiled with our friend’s company there a lot more of the time – she goes to school and works, but her schedule is a lot more flexible than ours’, and she walked the dogs THREE times a day. So they were sad to see her go, I’m sure.
And it’s a week later, and we’re still not totally unpacked, and the house is NOT cleaned up, and I’m still tired from traveling.
What I need is a vacation.
And then I noticed I had a few minutes there. While the dinner was cooking, and I didn’t particularly feel like cleaning anything or turning on the TV and getting sucked into a stupor for the remainder of the evening, so I called The Mac. I had called to chat it up, because I haven’t talked to him in a while (because we were away, which I’ll get to in a minute). Anyway, just as I started chatting with him, Rob came home. And I always feel AWKWARD when I’m on the phone and Rob is puttering around in the house, like I should be talking to him or helping him or doing something more like cleaning or chores or whatever.
So The Mac and I chatted for a while, and there was a brief discussion about a disturbing story wherein bald eagles in the vicinity of Vancouver are being discovered, dead, without heads, and I certainly hope whoever is doing this gets punished somehow, preferably by vigilantes, and if they’re interested in poetic justice, they’ll flay the person or people alive, leave them bound on the ground and then release some bald eagles so they can pick at the person or people until they are dead dead dead. And I told The Mac about a “cougar attack” in Southern Alberta, probably in the Kananaskis somewhere, except I couldn’t exactly remember where, and how that news report was RIDICULOUS. Because the guy who had been “attacked” got, like, one puncture wound and some scratches, from TWO COUGARS while he was out walking with his “friend” (although one other news report called her his “girlfriend”, so she’s gonna be mad at one of the news stations, and I don’t know which one). So this guy, he gets attacked, see, and he “threw the cougar fifteen feet” so he could escape. Heh. Fifteen feet? Man, you couldn’t throw Smudge Fifteen feet, and she’s little. Mostly because she’s wriggly, but still. A cougar weighs in the neighborhood of 75-100 lbs, and throwing that fifteen feet, all wriggling and growling and trying to EAT YOU would be just impossible. I’m just sayin’…
But I had to go and finish dinner, and I told The Mac I’d call him the next day, which was last night, and then I couldn’t do it. I was out last night watching Rob play pool, because that’s what a girl does to support her man. She watches him play pool.
So sorry, Mac. I’ll call you the next time I can, I promise!!
Anyway, back to our little trip East. We had just left off after catching the first raccoon. Well, the next morning, there was a second one in our live trap. No skunk, mind you, but another raccoon. We had put the trap out on the grass, and this poor guy must have been in there a while, because he thrashed the hell out of the trap digging up a lot of grass and dirt, and he had dirt ALL OVER his cute little face. We got some good pictures of that guy and his release. We took him to the same place as the first one, and let him go. And sure enough, he fell into the same stream, climbed up the same bank, and ran away into the same forest. I hope they knew one another and were friends, and were glad to be reunited.
We spent a couple of days mostly inside because it rained on us. There was a big pile of cut wood waiting to be stacked, but because it was raining, it wasn’t a great idea to stack it. We explored the attic, we played some games. We had ourselves a little cribbage tournament. On the Saturday, we took the car into town to get some groceries, and maple syrup for friends here, and what happened? We got a flat tire.
We pulled into the parking lot to a church, and Rob put on the spare, as I negotiated with Budget Rent-a-Car about what to do. Their first response was “well, stay where you are, and we’ll bring you a new car from Montreal.” To which I replied “No.” Because we were about two hours away from Montreal, and that would be a stupid idea, plus it would take forever for them to find us. Then, the woman I was talking to suggested, “why don’t you put the spare on and drive in to the rental car place?” To which I replied, “No. We won’t be doing that, either,” because the spare has a 100-km safe tolerance rating. I talked to several more people. I tried to find the nearest Budget franchise, and one was located about 30 km away in Sherbrooke. I contacted the Sherbrooke Budget, and that guy was incredibly rude. “We don’t do that,” he said, “and our garage is closed.”
I rolled my eyes so much I thought they would come out of my head and start rolling around on the dashboard of our disabled car. Finally, I talked to someone who had an idea of what they were talking about (they had read the emergency manual, because apparently, no Budget car has ever had a flat tire to date, and I was the first client who had to go through this process so that the call center operators could get some experience), and they told me to just get the tire repaired.
The tire had a large-ish hole in it. We took it to Canadian Tire, which was the only place open at 4p on a Saturday. The guy there did not speak very much English, so I had to dust off my French and really get into it, and do you think I could remember the word for “flat”? No. But it’s “creusé”, in case you’re interested. The guy was a little iffy on whether the tire could be repaired, and his schedule was filled up for that afternoon, so we left the tire with him and limped away on the spare. He said he’d call if he could get it fixed before the end of the day and the shop closed. We went and had a beer in a bar, waiting to see if the guy would call, which he didn’t. We went back to the farm, defeated, and then had to go back to town in the morning to get the tire.
Since we were going into town anyway to get the tire, we decided we’d have breakfast at Eggsqui’s. Eggsqui’s is a little breakfast diner. There are apparently several of them in the area and scattered throughout Quebec. The Mac and our sister and I had breakfast there once, and they put this custard on everything. The waffles, the French toast, the pancakes… My sister was disgusted. Even more so, when The Mac took her discarded custard, which she had deposited in her unused coffee cup, and DRANK IT!! We drank no custard this time around, and Rob and I just had a nice breakfast instead. And then we picked up our repaired tire, Rob put it back on the car, and we were on our merry way.
We caught another raccoon that evening, and drove him out with mostly the same fanfare to the same location as the other two. He was released and the event was documented with pictures. We had to make it quick, though, because we found out that releasing live raccoons basically into other peoples’ yards is sort of frowned-upon.
The skunks, who had moved on from the farm due to the increased activity (raccoon trapping, yelling, much activity in and outside the shed), and we figure they just went down the road to my Uncle Eric’s place. Because when we drove by, there was the unmistakable scent of skunk right at his place.
We walked down to his place on the Monday, just to see how things were. We walked along the brook, fell in once, crossed a big tree to get to the other side, and made our way onto his property. His dog, Rex, barked an enormous bark at us, but gave away his friendly intentions by wagging his tail. He was so excited to see people that he continued wagging his tail as he sat on it. Once he realized we were friendly, he came bounding down to see us. Rex is a Shepherd/Rottweiler/other stuff cross. He is huge. He’s over 100 lbs and his feet are almost as big as my hand. He leaned against us, sitting on our feet, just begging to be petted, and he smelled like skunk.
We wandered around my uncle’s place for a bit, and then left poor Rex all by himself and made our way back to the farmhouse. It had started to rain again, of course, but we were pretty happy anyway. The next day, Rob and I went down to Eric’s to walk his dogs. Eric also has an old Shepherd/retriever/other stuff cross, named Sasha, who is about 15. Poor Sasha wheezes when he walks, and had a wound on his foot, but he was pretty game about going for a walk. We walked up Eric’s logging road into the woods.
Halfway down the road, we took note of an old hollow Maple tree, with a lot of droppings beneath it. We speculated as to what might be inside, and heard scratching from within. Rob stuck his digital camera into the hole, aimed upwards, and took a picture, complete with flash. You could see, from the picture, that it was a porcupine’s home, and the porcupine was IN. Rob took a few more pictures, trying to get a better view. The porcupine didn’t budge, so we kept on going.
We noticed, as we went along, little tufts of white fur. And a tuft of fur that was attached to a hunk of skin. We wondered what could have happened there, a struggle between rabbit and coyote, perhaps, or a deer and coyote or something… and were answered near the end of the road where it meets the brook, when Sasha started rooting around at the side of the road and came up with a calf’s head. Eric had lost a calf, stillborn, earlier in spring, and had ostensibly dragged it out as far as he thought necessary and tossed it into the bush. Sasha would not give up the head. And we also found the remains of the carcass, all picked clean and looking like something out of Predator 2, when the alien rips the head and spine out of a body and holds it up triumphantly as a trophy to take home. Heh. But ew. Rob tossed it back away from the road into some scrub where the dogs would be less likely to get at it. At the very end of the road, across the brook, we saw a moose wandering off into the forest. So many critters!!!
When we got back from our walk, Eric was home, his job at a cottage washed out by the rising lake water. We helped him cut some wood instead for a while, and then went back to the farm for lunch. Life on the farm revolves around meals, which may be why I’ve gained so much weight in such a short time (cry, cry).
That afternoon, we took a tour around the lake to the other side, where my grandparents’ parents were from. It was sunny and beautiful, and a very nice afternoon.
Of course, when we got back to the farm, Rob noted we had another flat tire. Not the same tire, mind you, a totally different one. And it was 5:30p, so all the shops in town were probably closed. So I called around trying to find someone to repair it (not even bothering to try and call Budget again…), and found that the Luc Gagné garage was open until 10p. That Luc Gagné is a man ahead of his time, I’ll tell ya. Rob and Eric took the tire out, and Therese, my grandmother and I all cooked dinner and watched Dr. Phil. My grandmother really likes Dr. Phil.
The next morning was our last, and the most heartbreaking part of the trip. I love to go there, but I also hate it a little because it reminds me of where I’d really rather be. And when I have to leave, my heart breaks and I cry. I hate crying. We left at 9a, even though our flight wasn’t scheduled to leave Montreal until 1:30p – Rob said we needed the extra time in case we got another flat, which I could see, but still. It was another hour I could have spent there, lingering and wishing.
The traveling was long and tiring. I read Rob part of my book while we were waiting at the airport and on the planes, which I have to finish reading to him because it’s a funny one. We got home at 5:30p Calgary time, and Rob’s father picked us up at the airport. We finally got home to our house around 7p (since we had to stop at my parents’ place to get our vehicle), and the pets seemed slightly disinterested to see us. I guess they had been spoiled with our friend’s company there a lot more of the time – she goes to school and works, but her schedule is a lot more flexible than ours’, and she walked the dogs THREE times a day. So they were sad to see her go, I’m sure.
And it’s a week later, and we’re still not totally unpacked, and the house is NOT cleaned up, and I’m still tired from traveling.
What I need is a vacation.
Friday, April 08, 2005
Aaand, we're back.
Having arrived back home on Wednesday evening, I am finding it difficult to get time here at work to write about my adventures over the week we were in Quebec. So I’m making time. I am taking valuable time out when I should be making calls to utility companies, developers and contractors and unit owners, to write this blog. Appreciate it, y’all.
Last Wednesday, we embarked on our travels. We got up at the ungodly hour of 4a, got ourselves together, fed all the animals and told them to be good, and made our way to the airport, via my parents’ house. We are not people who take cabs to the airport like the rest of you. No, that is not for us. Instead, we drove the Jeep to my parents’ place, where we transferred to my mother’s minivan, and were chauffered to the airport. We made our flight.
Usually, and not that I travel all that much by air, I sleep on the airplane. I find it extremely difficult to stay awake under the lulling effects of the engines’ dull roar and the pressurized air. In fact, typically, as soon as I get on the plane, I close my eyes, and when I open them, I’m in a new city. It’s great!
However, on this particular flight, we were seated directly behind two small unruly children, both boys. Their mother, after shepherding them through takeoff in what can only be described as an irresponsible manner, traded seats with her equally inept husband and went to sleep. Ostensibly used to being exposed to the little demons’ incessant screaming and yelling. I found myself completely unable to sleep. I was forced to read my book and glare at the row in front of me. At times, I had to hold myself back from whacking my book across the head of the deficient husband when he not only endorsed the yelling, but gave the demons a noisy electronic game to play. The parents in this case were entirely to blame. They were without a doubt BAD parents. I could go off on how it’s unreasonable in our society that you need a license to drive, a license to get a dog, but not to have a child. Or many children. Many children who will grow up to be serial killers or perhaps politicians.
When the flight was mercifully over, we collected our bags and obtained a rental car (at a good discount!) and set off to the townships. We did have to stop for lunch, however, and Rob had been told he had to experience Poulet St. Hubert, Quebec’s answer to Swiss Chalet. Rotisserie chicken. After that brief interlude, we were back on the road and we made it in to Magog at around 5p, where we shopped for groceries.
I will elaborate as to why we needed to get groceries. It’s not that my grandmother is a bad cook. Neither is my mother. However, if I’m going to either of their houses, I need to bring my own food. They are vegetable-lovers, and cookers of expired foods, so if you want to eat well, you have to pack-in fresh goods. It’s the only way. Also, the meals on the menu for the stay would have been good old home country fare, from back in the day before you had modern markets with pre-packaged foods and fresh bread, like pot roast (using possibly expired meats), cooked vegetables (carrots and broccoli that disintegrate at the touch of a fork), moist hams, etc. And truly, it’s not that I’m knocking that sort of thing, I just can’t personally stand to put a forkful of that sort of thing in my mouth, chew it and swallow. The process fails somewhere short of swallowing. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.
So, fully loaded with groceries for the rest of the week, we made our way to the farm (about 20 minutes further into the countryside), where we were met with a fully-cooked dinner (the aforementioned roast of some sort of unidentifiable beef, which tasted alright, but I was already stuffed from eating lunch at 2:30p).
We were informed that a raccoon had been in the shed the night before and had gotten into some pies. The farmhouse was constructed with a shed to the side and rear of the house, and the back door of the house leads into the shed, which then has a door to the exterior along with a wood pile for stocking the wood stove. In the shed, there are two extremely large freezers that probably weigh more than my Tiny Car empty, and probably weigh more than the Buick when full. They are always, always full. There are probably things in those freezers older than I am.
My grandmother has always been a dog person. So much so that she has professed to hating cats most of her life. I know, I know, I’m not sure how that could be. But you’ll be glad to hear that has changed. The barn cat had kittens last year, and on a previous visit, my mother worked at domesticating them, and that seems to have worked to an extent. They come into the shed to eat, and one of them even comes into the house to be petted and played-with. They are extremely cute and furry, one is a tabby sort, and the other is a tortoiseshell that Rob says looks like a wookie with all that fur. The tabby is Charlie, and the wookie is Felix. They were recently spayed (trapped and taken to the Frontier Animal Society to be spayed for free), and Felix remembers the incident clearly and is distrustful of strangers, which makes her all the more attractive and interesting to Rob, who just wanted to see her up close all week. Charlie is friendly and came into the house a lot for food and games all week. My grandmother loves these cats.
However, in order for them to get into the shed at all times and gain access to their food, she leaves the shed door propped open with a little wooden wedge. This, of course, is not at all selective about what gets allowed in, so the raccoons were able to get in as well, and if you’re not too familiar with raccoons, they’re cute, but extraordinarily mischievous and can cause a lot of trouble with their little hands and opposable thumbs.
The first evening was short, we were tired, and went to bed early.
The next morning, however, the birds were singing, the sun was shining and we got up to venture outside. After a breakfast. A hearty breakfast. I’m immune to breakfasts because they mostly contain a lot of fruits or fibres, both of which are not on my list of foods to eat, so I just get a breakfast shake. Rob, on the other had, had porridge. And toast. And fruit. And juice. And coffee. After that, we went outside to walk around the buildings, see the farm and maybe wander up to the forest North of the pastures.
We made our way over to the greenhouse to start our tour. Halfway there, I yelled “SKUNK!” because there was, get this, a skunk. Just ambling along. Not all that concerned with our presence. We followed him at a distance, and saw him go underneath a pile of wood and corrugated metal that has been there for years. We could not get him to come back out, not even with me jumping on the pile of stuff. After a while, we grew disinterested and started exploring the buildings.
We went into the barn – a big old three-story structure, that housed cattle in the bottom back in the day, hay and a chicken coop on the main floor, and above all that, there was a ramp up to the upper story so you could unload the haywagons (when everything used to be in use). The barn is now home to a lot of old furniture and stuff people kind of want to keep, but not at their own residences.
We went into the old toolshed, where Rob looked at the tools, and the machine shed, where we looked at the machines. We walked over to the henhouse, which used to be two stories, but since the top floor has collapsed down onto the bottom one, it is only one story. The collapse was quite spectacular, as I understand it, with the supporting walls just giving right out and the top compressing them neatly down, so it looks like it was created as a single-story structure. Everything inside the top floor seems intact, right down to the places where the hens used to nest and lay eggs. This is where the cats live, mainly. There are usually three or four cats around, and with the addition of Charlie and Felix, there should be about five or six, but we never saw the black tomcat, or the other gray cat, and we only saw the mother coon-cat on the second-last day of our visit. It’s spring, so presumably the males could be out carousing, but you never know. There are lots of wild critters around that could eat cats. And we did find the body of a cat, probably one of the older gray cats that had lived on the farm for years.
Sloughing off that tragic find, we ventured out farther and farther. Spring had just come, and the fields were still covered with snow. It was a nice day, though, so we didn’t care – we just trudged our way through them across the brook on a little bridge and up to the forest. It was wild and cool in the forest, and we saw raspberry canes and fallen trees. It sounds ridiculous, but that forest is alive.
Back to the farmhouse for lunch, where we saw the skunk again. He seemed unconcerned we were there and trundled off over a hill. We lunched and went into Magog so my grandmother could nap. She’s nearly 93, so she needs the afternoon naps to stay sharp for dinner. In Magog, we wandered and shopped a little and found ourselves a little bar where we could have a beer and relax and talk. It’s so comfortable being there. I mean, it’s not that I’m not comfortable here with Rob – I am – it’s just that the whole place out there really feels like home, and I really feel like a kid when I’m out there.
Dinner that evening was pretty good – we cooked, although my grandmother couldn’t resist adding in some scalloped potatoes to accompany my chicken and pasta meal (they’re good, but they don’t necessarily go together). And after dinner, we opened the shed door to see if Charlie wanted to come in to visit us, and sure enough, there was a skunk out there, probably the same one we had seen several times throughout the day, eating the cat food. SKUNK!! IN THE SHED!! We hoped he’d just leave (I “shoo”ed at him a bit), but I guess he came back overnight and camped-out under the house. The smell of skunk was so strong in the house, we decided we’d have to get the live trap from my uncle and try to catch him. This probably would have worked, but there were some complicating factors.
The first day we set the trap out, we caught Felix. My grandmother let her go, though, while we were out and about, so Rob missed seeing her up close. Then, that evening, we caught Charlie. Man, she was not happy about that. We set it back out that evening and before bedtime, we caught a raccoon.
The raccoon was small, and his mask hadn’t fully formed, so maybe he was a juvenile. Rob had never seen a raccoon up close, and I have to admit I don’t think I’d seen one alive that close either, and man, those things are cute. Little pointy noses with lots of whiskers, and little hands and lots of fur. We took him down the road about a mile or so, and let him go. We documented the entire affair with pictures, and as he escaped to relative freedom, he made a quick break into the darkness of the forest. We trained our flashlight on him, and Sploosh! He fell right into a little stream, probably entirely unexpected, then dragged himself up onto the bank and out of sight.
We got back to the house, and could hear coyotes up in the back woods. Coyotes are an eerie sound – they sound like insane people screaming. It was eerie, and dark and I wanted to go back inside because it had started to rain. Rob said to me “Why don’t you meet me around back of the house? You go that way, and I’ll go around this way to set the trap.” I just looked at him. I mean, had he never seen a horror movie in his life before? I don’t watch them that much, and even I know better than that. As soon as he realized what he’d said, he laughed at me. We stood in the rain and the dark and laughed about how silly we are.
Well, that’s it for now – I really have to get some work done before I leave for the day (it’s Friday, come on. I’ll be out of here by noon). I’ll have to tell you about the rest of the trip next time. Until then, watch out for skunks and raccoons…
Last Wednesday, we embarked on our travels. We got up at the ungodly hour of 4a, got ourselves together, fed all the animals and told them to be good, and made our way to the airport, via my parents’ house. We are not people who take cabs to the airport like the rest of you. No, that is not for us. Instead, we drove the Jeep to my parents’ place, where we transferred to my mother’s minivan, and were chauffered to the airport. We made our flight.
Usually, and not that I travel all that much by air, I sleep on the airplane. I find it extremely difficult to stay awake under the lulling effects of the engines’ dull roar and the pressurized air. In fact, typically, as soon as I get on the plane, I close my eyes, and when I open them, I’m in a new city. It’s great!
However, on this particular flight, we were seated directly behind two small unruly children, both boys. Their mother, after shepherding them through takeoff in what can only be described as an irresponsible manner, traded seats with her equally inept husband and went to sleep. Ostensibly used to being exposed to the little demons’ incessant screaming and yelling. I found myself completely unable to sleep. I was forced to read my book and glare at the row in front of me. At times, I had to hold myself back from whacking my book across the head of the deficient husband when he not only endorsed the yelling, but gave the demons a noisy electronic game to play. The parents in this case were entirely to blame. They were without a doubt BAD parents. I could go off on how it’s unreasonable in our society that you need a license to drive, a license to get a dog, but not to have a child. Or many children. Many children who will grow up to be serial killers or perhaps politicians.
When the flight was mercifully over, we collected our bags and obtained a rental car (at a good discount!) and set off to the townships. We did have to stop for lunch, however, and Rob had been told he had to experience Poulet St. Hubert, Quebec’s answer to Swiss Chalet. Rotisserie chicken. After that brief interlude, we were back on the road and we made it in to Magog at around 5p, where we shopped for groceries.
I will elaborate as to why we needed to get groceries. It’s not that my grandmother is a bad cook. Neither is my mother. However, if I’m going to either of their houses, I need to bring my own food. They are vegetable-lovers, and cookers of expired foods, so if you want to eat well, you have to pack-in fresh goods. It’s the only way. Also, the meals on the menu for the stay would have been good old home country fare, from back in the day before you had modern markets with pre-packaged foods and fresh bread, like pot roast (using possibly expired meats), cooked vegetables (carrots and broccoli that disintegrate at the touch of a fork), moist hams, etc. And truly, it’s not that I’m knocking that sort of thing, I just can’t personally stand to put a forkful of that sort of thing in my mouth, chew it and swallow. The process fails somewhere short of swallowing. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.
So, fully loaded with groceries for the rest of the week, we made our way to the farm (about 20 minutes further into the countryside), where we were met with a fully-cooked dinner (the aforementioned roast of some sort of unidentifiable beef, which tasted alright, but I was already stuffed from eating lunch at 2:30p).
We were informed that a raccoon had been in the shed the night before and had gotten into some pies. The farmhouse was constructed with a shed to the side and rear of the house, and the back door of the house leads into the shed, which then has a door to the exterior along with a wood pile for stocking the wood stove. In the shed, there are two extremely large freezers that probably weigh more than my Tiny Car empty, and probably weigh more than the Buick when full. They are always, always full. There are probably things in those freezers older than I am.
My grandmother has always been a dog person. So much so that she has professed to hating cats most of her life. I know, I know, I’m not sure how that could be. But you’ll be glad to hear that has changed. The barn cat had kittens last year, and on a previous visit, my mother worked at domesticating them, and that seems to have worked to an extent. They come into the shed to eat, and one of them even comes into the house to be petted and played-with. They are extremely cute and furry, one is a tabby sort, and the other is a tortoiseshell that Rob says looks like a wookie with all that fur. The tabby is Charlie, and the wookie is Felix. They were recently spayed (trapped and taken to the Frontier Animal Society to be spayed for free), and Felix remembers the incident clearly and is distrustful of strangers, which makes her all the more attractive and interesting to Rob, who just wanted to see her up close all week. Charlie is friendly and came into the house a lot for food and games all week. My grandmother loves these cats.
However, in order for them to get into the shed at all times and gain access to their food, she leaves the shed door propped open with a little wooden wedge. This, of course, is not at all selective about what gets allowed in, so the raccoons were able to get in as well, and if you’re not too familiar with raccoons, they’re cute, but extraordinarily mischievous and can cause a lot of trouble with their little hands and opposable thumbs.
The first evening was short, we were tired, and went to bed early.
The next morning, however, the birds were singing, the sun was shining and we got up to venture outside. After a breakfast. A hearty breakfast. I’m immune to breakfasts because they mostly contain a lot of fruits or fibres, both of which are not on my list of foods to eat, so I just get a breakfast shake. Rob, on the other had, had porridge. And toast. And fruit. And juice. And coffee. After that, we went outside to walk around the buildings, see the farm and maybe wander up to the forest North of the pastures.
We made our way over to the greenhouse to start our tour. Halfway there, I yelled “SKUNK!” because there was, get this, a skunk. Just ambling along. Not all that concerned with our presence. We followed him at a distance, and saw him go underneath a pile of wood and corrugated metal that has been there for years. We could not get him to come back out, not even with me jumping on the pile of stuff. After a while, we grew disinterested and started exploring the buildings.
We went into the barn – a big old three-story structure, that housed cattle in the bottom back in the day, hay and a chicken coop on the main floor, and above all that, there was a ramp up to the upper story so you could unload the haywagons (when everything used to be in use). The barn is now home to a lot of old furniture and stuff people kind of want to keep, but not at their own residences.
We went into the old toolshed, where Rob looked at the tools, and the machine shed, where we looked at the machines. We walked over to the henhouse, which used to be two stories, but since the top floor has collapsed down onto the bottom one, it is only one story. The collapse was quite spectacular, as I understand it, with the supporting walls just giving right out and the top compressing them neatly down, so it looks like it was created as a single-story structure. Everything inside the top floor seems intact, right down to the places where the hens used to nest and lay eggs. This is where the cats live, mainly. There are usually three or four cats around, and with the addition of Charlie and Felix, there should be about five or six, but we never saw the black tomcat, or the other gray cat, and we only saw the mother coon-cat on the second-last day of our visit. It’s spring, so presumably the males could be out carousing, but you never know. There are lots of wild critters around that could eat cats. And we did find the body of a cat, probably one of the older gray cats that had lived on the farm for years.
Sloughing off that tragic find, we ventured out farther and farther. Spring had just come, and the fields were still covered with snow. It was a nice day, though, so we didn’t care – we just trudged our way through them across the brook on a little bridge and up to the forest. It was wild and cool in the forest, and we saw raspberry canes and fallen trees. It sounds ridiculous, but that forest is alive.
Back to the farmhouse for lunch, where we saw the skunk again. He seemed unconcerned we were there and trundled off over a hill. We lunched and went into Magog so my grandmother could nap. She’s nearly 93, so she needs the afternoon naps to stay sharp for dinner. In Magog, we wandered and shopped a little and found ourselves a little bar where we could have a beer and relax and talk. It’s so comfortable being there. I mean, it’s not that I’m not comfortable here with Rob – I am – it’s just that the whole place out there really feels like home, and I really feel like a kid when I’m out there.
Dinner that evening was pretty good – we cooked, although my grandmother couldn’t resist adding in some scalloped potatoes to accompany my chicken and pasta meal (they’re good, but they don’t necessarily go together). And after dinner, we opened the shed door to see if Charlie wanted to come in to visit us, and sure enough, there was a skunk out there, probably the same one we had seen several times throughout the day, eating the cat food. SKUNK!! IN THE SHED!! We hoped he’d just leave (I “shoo”ed at him a bit), but I guess he came back overnight and camped-out under the house. The smell of skunk was so strong in the house, we decided we’d have to get the live trap from my uncle and try to catch him. This probably would have worked, but there were some complicating factors.
The first day we set the trap out, we caught Felix. My grandmother let her go, though, while we were out and about, so Rob missed seeing her up close. Then, that evening, we caught Charlie. Man, she was not happy about that. We set it back out that evening and before bedtime, we caught a raccoon.
The raccoon was small, and his mask hadn’t fully formed, so maybe he was a juvenile. Rob had never seen a raccoon up close, and I have to admit I don’t think I’d seen one alive that close either, and man, those things are cute. Little pointy noses with lots of whiskers, and little hands and lots of fur. We took him down the road about a mile or so, and let him go. We documented the entire affair with pictures, and as he escaped to relative freedom, he made a quick break into the darkness of the forest. We trained our flashlight on him, and Sploosh! He fell right into a little stream, probably entirely unexpected, then dragged himself up onto the bank and out of sight.
We got back to the house, and could hear coyotes up in the back woods. Coyotes are an eerie sound – they sound like insane people screaming. It was eerie, and dark and I wanted to go back inside because it had started to rain. Rob said to me “Why don’t you meet me around back of the house? You go that way, and I’ll go around this way to set the trap.” I just looked at him. I mean, had he never seen a horror movie in his life before? I don’t watch them that much, and even I know better than that. As soon as he realized what he’d said, he laughed at me. We stood in the rain and the dark and laughed about how silly we are.
Well, that’s it for now – I really have to get some work done before I leave for the day (it’s Friday, come on. I’ll be out of here by noon). I’ll have to tell you about the rest of the trip next time. Until then, watch out for skunks and raccoons…
