Summertime

Summertime 

And the livin' is easy

Fish are jumpin'

And the cotton is high

People are fishing, that's for sure, but whether the fish are actually jumping, I don't know.  We don't have cotton growing around here, either, but Gershwin knew that fields of corn aren't as evocative as cotton standing tall under the scorching southern sun.

It is well and truly summer time in Canada, the Great White North.  Say 'Canada', and most people will call up visions of igloos, dogsleds, friendly people in toques drinking beer from a bottle saying 'eh'. Mukluks not flip flops come to mind. We're born with skates on our feet, we all speak French, and how wonderful to see the Rockies, the Great Lakes, and the Bay of Fundy any old time you want to. (We have had family come over from The Olde Countrye thinking it was possible to See It All during their holiday.  "Yes," they say. "We know it's big. But we've got a car, and a whole week!")

I have seen American tourists driving along the scenic route in their RVs, skis strapped to the top. This was in July. They brought skis in July! They didn't do a lot of fact checking while planning their holiday.

Here are some facts:  it is currently 30 degrees Celsius (86F), and this is a nice reprieve after days and days days of intolerable heat. You've heard the expression "So hot you could fry an egg on the sidewalk"? Well, it's so humid you could... steam broccoli - if only you could stand outside long enough to do it.

Winter withdrew from the land more than 3 months ago, and the only skiing happening now is on water. With its retreat, Canadians perk up. Neighbours long holed up in air-tight, climate controlled homes poke their noses out of doors, sniff the air for assurance of Spring, and reintroduce themselves to one another. Gradually the thermometer climbs; life manages to gain intensity and grow torpid all at the same time as we battle the heat in our appreciation of increased sunlight.

For two trying weeks at the pinnacle of the season, Canadians withdraw once more into air-tight, climate controlled homes. Many of us are now stretched 50 degrees (or more)  from winter extremes and feeling the demands of coping with both the highs and the lows (wardrobe alone is a major headache, but let's not get into that again) We bide our time, waiting to resume an interrupted life with the patience that comes with accepting nature always wins.

Meanwhile, summer's alter ego is in full flutter:  Road Work Season.  Municipalities are in a mad frenzy to upgrade and regrade street surfaces, dig up and replant sewer lines, or simply divert traffic while road crews stand around looking at big holes. Detours have detours. Pot holes have nesting colonies of Canadian Geese. Multi-lane highways are reduced to single lane dirt tracks suitable for adventure-type reality tv.

Did the American tourist with skis hopefully strapped to the RV expect to find any of this?  What he doesn't know is that no matter how much we grumble about our weather, Canadians love the changing seasons, and are proud of our hardiness.  We exult in the first hint of warmth in early spring, and embrace the first crisp mornings of autumn. Surely we can be forgiven for a little  mild summer crankiness?

Roll out those lazy hazy crazy days of summer

Those days of soda and pretzels and beer

Roll out those lazy hazy crazy days of summer

Dust off the sun and moon and sing a song of cheer

It was a day at the beach

I feel like a cruller that has been dusted with fine cinnamon sugar - sand lightly coats my arms and legs and face and... yep, there too - my scalp.  I know when I brush this mop, the half of the beach that hasn't fallen out of Four and Five's swim trunks will be coaxed out of my hair.

I should mention that the part of the cruller that is my back feels like it sat too long in the hot part of the oven; it's just a tad crispy.

Life's like a day at the beach, isn't it?  Sometimes you get sand in your hair. Sometimes you get burned. But in exchange you get sun and sand and surf. Not a bad deal.

Glue

We are now past the two and a half year mark of Pop's death.  What people said would happen, has happened: the grief has eased. It hasn't gone, it isn't really diminished though it has receded. It doesn't strike as sharply as it once did, but it still has a sneaky habit of popping out of nowhere, unexpectedly, in unguarded moments. It occasionally still brings companions: disbelief, and anger.

In the early hours of the morning, I was talking to Four (who is approaching his fifth birthday) about his recent visit to Oma's house.  He was telling me about the 'garner snake' they saw in the big field. He recounted the story about Opa not liking snakes, but that one time he killed one in the garden with the shovel.

Somehow in his young mind the snake became the reason for Opa's death. I tried to explain that the snake had nothing to do with it, that Opa's body just stopped working.  This little guy is usually like a faucet when he's upset. Tears pour over the rim of his eyes, landing on any surface nearby. He cries with the same gusto he does everything else in life. This morning he was trying so hard to not cry that my heart broke for him. 

"I wish God would give him back to us." he said. 

"I know." I agreed. "That would be a good thing. But being with God is the best thing."

"I wish I could be a super hero, so I could be strong and go up to heaven.  I could put Opa's body back together. I could glue all the pieces back and he would never have to die again."

If only we had that kind of glue.

To friend or not to friend

Isn't Google useful?  Ask it anything, and Google has an answer for you.  Not always an accurate answer, or one relevant to your question, but it is reassuringly consistent with offering answers.  For example, searching for information on the condor, the first 12 results (of "about 55,700,000 results") offers tidbits about Condor Airlines, Condor Hotlines, Condor Petroleum, the condor project - having something to do with HTC - a flight simulation game, Condor Ferries, a post production network (now with offices in South Africa and the Ukraine!), and, yes, a Wikipedia entry for the vulture itself.

Search results used to be called 'hits'.  I think hit is an apt term because sometimes you feel like you've been hit over the head by the sheer volume of information someone over at Google thought would be useful to you.

This post isn't about Google, however.  I brought it up because I want to bend your ear about that social networking megalith, Facebook. I was curious about how many people use the thing, and found numbers in the hundreds of millions. Yikes!

I'm not a Facebook hater.  Well, not entirely.  It has its conveniences and benefits, and can even be fun. (It used to be a whole lot funner before all the 'improvements', but that's not the purpose of this post either.) I like that fact that it brought an old friend from school back into my life. I appreciate  the way it allows multiple friends and family members to take part in the same conversation. Maybe I didn't need to know that one person bought an aquarium online at three in the morning, but the silver lining of that information overload is the next time I see that person, I'll know to ask about the new fish endeavour. 

I recently had an interesting exchange with someone I don't know on the wall of a mutual friend.  Something he said caught my attention and I was curious about his background, so I clicked over to his page to see if he shared any info. I just about lost my eyeballs with the force of my disbelief at seeing how many 'friends' he had. 

Hold onto your eyeballs, cause this might shock you: he was a mere handful away from seventeen hundred.  How does your brain not leak out of your head every single day with the effort required to remember that many names? I know many people have a different Facebook philosophy from my own. They like to be friends with everyone, including anyone who may have posted a comment one time on another friend's wall. I feel guilty when I see names of people in my friends list I haven't 'talked' to in a while. I cannot imagine the amount of antacid I would need to handle not talking to 170 people, let alone 1,700! I used to be friends with a United supporter in Wales I met on the Red Devils fan page, but when I saw that little message that tells you who has a birthday coming up and it took me a very long time to remember who he was, I jettisoned him. Unfriendly of me, wasn't it? A friend of a friend sent a friend request, and when I took some time to think about it, he told me it wasn't a big deal, it was only Facebook friendship. Exactly, I thought.  It's only Facebook friendship, so why bother?

There are six requests sitting in my notifications right now, waiting for me to decide to friend or not to friend.  If these were people I actually felt friendly about I wouldn't have hesitated.  Likewise, if they were people I didn't know at all I wouldn't hesitate to press 'ignore'. These are people I have a tenuous link with: work colleague from years ago, family relation I haven't seen in donkey's years, someone I used to know through the church I used to attend.  

What's the protocol?  Am I obliged to accept their Facebook friendship? If I ignore their request, do I send them a note as well? (Saying what? Thanks, honoured and all that.... but, no thanks?)  What's your approach to the great question: to friend or not to friend?  Do you friend everyone? Do you communicate regularly with everyone on your friend list?  Are there people on your list you would unfriend if you could find a charitable way to do it?

Maybe Google has the answers.

The Fretted Fritters

A friend and I are going to start a rock band.  We're calling it The Fretted Fritters.

Don't ask... it seemed perfectly rational at the time.

We will embark on our Near and Narrow tour in an old chip truck. We will probably toss fritters into the crowd (fries, too if things go well financially).  Don't worry, we've thought of the law suits.  We'll post signs at our venues that say:

Caution, items thrown from the stage may be hot.  

The Fretted Fritters assume no responsibility for dry cleaning costs; wear white at your own risk.

We've found a hole in the recording market (where fried food hits the road with women who tend to worry too much).  This is an untapped niche.  We'll make millions! (of heart burn victims) Musical ability is not relevant. We may not even bring instruments. But we expect David Letterman to call any time now.

Thanks for the laugh, Miss Sarah.  We're definitely on to something!

Of steamer trunks and peanuts

I've just been there and back again.  Again.

I get in my car, and four and a half hours later I'm there.  That is actually one of the best part about it: it takes four and a half hours. The time is proportionate to the distance which allows psychology to catch up to geography. There is time  for thinking (or even better, not thinking). There is opportunity to shift gears and switch internal maps.  By the time you get there, you're prepared to be there.

Oh, yes, I know.  A flight to Mongolia takes much much longer than four and a half hours, but consider the adjustment required. The mind knows that Mongolia is half way around the world, so it flounders in confusion when the body arrives there in the same calendar day. "This morning I had cow's milk in my cereal, now they're putting yak's milk in my tea!" It's a shock to the system.

A few years back, I flew from my new city to the old city, roughly 600 kms away. Despite the hoopla of taking off and the landing pattern, I was driving away from the airport a mere hour later.  That's not enough time to turn off the seat belt sign or hand out peanuts!

I remember feeling confused (fairly normal) and disoriented (no comment), thinking to myself, "I didn't know we had a Hunt Club Road!" and, "Wait, what's the theatre doing there?" "How odd, that university looks just like the one in...hang on!" It takes a while for this poor brain to catch on, you see.

If it weren't for the fact that it requires being on water, I think ocean liner is the way to travel. None of this mad rushing ahead, arriving before you have actually left. (Time zones are so tricky.) Think steamer trunks and shuffle board... think rolling waves and sea sickness.  Never mind the ocean liner; let's take to the rails instead. None of that pesky heaving about on the sea, and if you don't mind a few stares you can still use the steamer trunk.  Best of all, by the time you get there, you're ready to be there.

Looking good, United!  Looking good!

Nemanja Vidic doing his job

Manchester United played a friendly against the Seattle Sounders (MLS).  United, of course, obliterated trounced,  annihilated,  tore apart, beat Seattle 7-0.  That's right: Seven - Nothing.

Here's hoping this is portentous of the season to come.