Assorted Nonsense

Hey, I’m still on vacation… gimme a break!

I’m busy swimming, skating, building furniture, eating sausages, drinking Bailey’s Irish Cream, installing computers, fixing other computers, playing Axis and Allies, hanging out with Schmoopies, watching Heroes, sleeping in, drinking Valpolicella, eating chocolate, getting great deals on Boxing Day specials (500 gig hard drive, two computer desks, one printer stand), did I mention spending lots of money…?

But I’ll be back blogging soon…

… or Happy Holidays, if you prefer…

Another post from the original Assorted Nonsense, which I’m reposting because it’s rather pertinent to this time of year… don’t take these times for granted, though, they change all the time… best to phone the rinks involved and confirm.  And if you hear of any changes, lemme know and I’ll change them here:

All info updated Dec 24, 2007

Sorry about the specific geographical nature of this post. But this has been a source of aggravation for some time. We like to go skating as a family, but we’re always hard pressed to find skating times at the various local public arenas. I finally found out a bunch of public and family skating times today; I’m going to post them here for future reference, and also so that anyone else who might be looking for such times online might have access to them:

Public and Family Skating Times

Iroquois, Whitby 500 Victoria W 905-668-7765

Sunday 2:00 - 3:45PM

Tuesday 4:00 - 5:45PM

Friday 8:00 - 9:45PM

Saturday 3:00 - 4:45PM

Sunday 2:00 - 3:45PM

Christmas Skates at Iroquois:

Wed Dec 26: 11:00 - 12:30, Sat Dec 29 3:00 - 4:45, 

 Sun Dec 30 2:00 - 3:45

Special New Year’s Eve Bash Mon Dec 31 7:00 - 10:00 PM

Legends, Oshawa 1661 Harmony 905-436-5455 *

Monday 10:00 - 11:20 AM

Tuesday 4:00 - 5:45 PM

Wednesday 8:00 - 8:50 PM

Thursday 1:00 - 2:20 PM

Friday 7:00 -8:20 PM

Sunday 4:00 - 5:50 PM & 1:00 - 2:50 PM

McKinny Centre, Whitby 905-655-2203

Friday 4:15 - 6PM

Saturday 8:30 - 10:15PM

Christmas Skating at McKinny:

Friday, Dec 28 1:15 - 2:45, 4:15 - 6PM

Sat Dec 29 8:30 - 10:15PM

Sun Dec 30 11:15 - 1:00PM

Vipond, Brooklin

Wednesday 4:00 - 5:45 PM

Saturday 2:00 - 3:45

Sunday 2:00 - 3:45PM

*No skating Dec 24th & 25 at Legends & Special Holiday Schedule in effect from Dec 22 until Dec 30th

If I have any of these wrong or forgot anything, please let me know!

According to CBC Radio’s Metro Morning, the concept of blogging is ten years old today. Also according to Metro Morning, the way to get host Andy Barrie to check out your blog is to mention Metro Morning on your blog.

So… hi Andy! Thanks for dropping by.

Speaking of Andy, as many of you know, I work for CBC Radio, and Andy is one of the few on air personalities with whom I’ve never worked. I do have a story about him, though:

One day back when he first came to us from private radio I happened to be working down in his area in CBL. For some reason a get-together of all CBL employees happened in the afternoon so a bunch of us gathered in a big room for snacks and conversation. Andy wasn’t there, but naturally talk soon turned to him. Just for fun I asked the head of CBL how much Andy would be making. The entire room went silent as she answered, “More than you.”

Everybody laughed.

A tiny bit offended at what was essentially a put down (I was working as a lowly tech at the time), I replied, “You don’t know that.”

Everybody laughed again and somebody said, “touche”.

Of course the joke was on me, because he was making at least twice what I was making at the time. He’s almost certainly still making more… but it isn’t about money, is it?

At least, that’s not what I got into public radio for.

This is worth twenty minutes of your time.

I just stumbled across a blog post that contained the following in the comments:

“…back to CBC, especially CBC-AM — it isn’t perfect by any means, and sometimes it tries to chase popularity a bit too much, but when it knows what it’s doing it’s fantastic. I like Ideas, myself, weekdays at 9 p.m., and also we’ve got a couple goddamn funny radio shows on there. And, hey, I like that we can all tune into the same thing, all over the country.

I just wish they hadn’t killed off their science-fiction radio-play show from a few years back, I thought it was really impressive. The first broadcast featured a play made from The Cold Equations, and it was outstanding. Think what they could’ve done with, I don’t know, a serialization of Foundation, or something! So much material to pick and choose from, I can’t believe it didn’t fly. I met Spider Robinson recently at a party, and just missed buttonholing him about this: “come on, Spider, call CBC up and tell them you’ll host that show! You know you want to!”

I may still tell him that.”

Got a serious pang reading that.  He’s talking about Faster Than Light, a pilot I produced with Robert J. Sawyer a few years back.  It had been my intention to adapt a wide variety of classic science fiction stories in future episodes.  Alas…

The pilot, which aired on Sunday Showcase, received excellent listener response.  The deputy director of the department championed the show to the Program Director.  When told how much mail the show had received over a short period of time, the Program Director responded: “You see, that’s the problem with a show like that.  Once you put it on the air you’ll never get it off!”

That Program Director didn’t last long.  Sadly, neither did Faster Than Light.  But it’s great to know that someone out there liked it.

It still ticks me off that:

A. the good Ol U.S. of A. was being difficult at Bali

B. idiots are killing their daughters because they’re not dressing the way they want them to and

C. that I lost the original version of this blog.

Okay yes, I realize that that’s nowhere as serious as A and B, but unlike A and B it is something I can do something about.

Now, I thought I had the blog all backed up, but it looks like all I had backed up was the structure and look of the thing.  Because I’ve changed providers, all my tables have become inaccessible to me, and although I could be wrong, it seems I can’t reproduce my original posts and comments without those original tables.

But it turns out it may not matter after all.  I’ve been able to retrieve some material via google searches and finding cached versions of my posts.  And just today I remembered about the brilliant Wayback Machine archival site.Turns out a good portion of Assorted Nonsense has been archived there.  They’re missing the first four months, there’s some weird duplication and inexplicable absences, but they’ve got a good portion of the thing.

So I’m a fair bit happier about the loss of my blog than I was.  

And now, just because I can, here’s yet another glimpse of the original version of Assorted Nonsense, lost lo these last two months.  This was a post called Taxi Radio (hey, I never claimed any of the blog was actually WORTH preserving):

I just took a taxi home. The cab driver was listening to 680 on the AM dial, which used to be CFTR in Toronto. Maybe it still is.

Do people still listen to AM, I wondered? Obviously they do.

I said, “What is that you’re listening to?”

He said, “Dunno. News and stuff. I like to hear the news.”

“Do you ever listen to CBC Radio?” I asked, just for fun.

He said, “What’s that?”

“99.1 on the FM,” I said. I didn’t tell him that’s where I worked.

He switched to 99.1. It was ten to eleven on a Saturday morning. We heard some strange kid’s music.

The cab driver laughed. “Good one, buddy!” he said, and switched right back to what he’d been listening to before.

…here’s the story of how we acquired our third cat (an absolute delight to have around the house despite her curious habit of throwing up everywhere on an almost daily basis):

 I want to tell you about my cat. Actually, I have three cats, but the one I want to tell you about is named Blossom. The story begins with my father-in-law, who decided to move out of his house in the country into an apartment in Moncton, New Brunswick. He needed a new home for his eight year old cat… Blossom. So my wife generously decided to add Blossom to our already (in my opinion) full roster of felines.

They decided to fly Blossom from Moncton to Toronto. They drugged her and packed her up and somehow it became my responsibility to pick her up at the airport, after work.

I’m at work on the day and it’s four o’clock in the afternoon and I’m starting to feel ill. Stomach flu kind of thing. I tough it out to the end of my shift, but I can’t go home. No, I have to go pick up this cat at the airport. But before I do that, I’ve also agreed to pick up a Disney doll as a birthday gift for a friend of my girls. I’m feeling increasingly sick, but I hightail it off to the Eaton Centre or whatever they’re calling it these days to pick up the doll. Then it’s back on the subway to where I’ve parked the car, and off to the airport.

Traffic getting out of Toronto sucks bigtime. It’s bad enough going east to Whitby where I live, but west on the QEW to the 427 up to the airport is worse. Fortunately, there’s a plastic bag in the glove compartment that I can barf into if I begin to feel even worse. It’s stop and go until about half the way up the 427. I make it to the airport without woofing my cookies. Thinking all the while, I don’t even really like cats (more of a dog person, really).

I find the proper gate at the airport with the help of a friendly seventy year old fellow whose job it is to give directions. At the gate I ask an attendant if my cat is likely to be unloaded there. She says yes. I wait. Everybody gets off the plane, including several dogs. But no cat.

I approach the attendant and inquire about the cat. She says, you mean the cat was travelling alone? I say yes, it’s a very sophisticated cat. She says, well in that case you must pick the cat up at the special cat delivery terminal located approximately three kilometres west of the airport proper. I ask her how to get there. She has no idea.

I visit my seventy year old friend. He has never heard of the special cat delivery terminal. I revisit the attendant. She unearths a phone number for the special cat delivery terminal. I revisit my seventy year old friend, who lets me use his phone. I phone the special cat delivery terminal. I get an answering machine. I leave a message asking them to phone my seventy year old friend.

I wait. I refrain from barfing. I imagine being home in bed. I really want nothing more than to be home in bed. I refrain from barfing some more.

The phone rings. It is the guy from the special cat delivery terminal. He gives me directions as my seventy year old friend spreads an enormous map across his desk and marks on it with a red felt pen. I repeat the directions aloud. “Turn right at the second Sunoco,” I say. “No no no!” the guy says. “At the second Su NO co!” I’ve pronounced it wrong. Apparently you can’t get there if you pronounce it wrong.

The directions make little sense. I decide to take a cab. I approach a cabbie and he’s all set to take me until I mention the cat. “No cats!” he cries.

Armed with my seventy year old friend’s map, I hop in my van and pick my way across north Toronto in search of the special cat terminal. Lo and behold there’s the second Su NO co. I turn right and wend my way down an enormously long, desolate road, past large, eerie buildings and arrive after much head scratching at what can only be the special cat terminal, where, one can only suppose, they land the planes and disembark all the cats before taking off again to fly the human passengers three kilometres further on to the special people terminal.

Inside the special cat terminal is a long, L shaped desk at which several unsmiling people are busy clicking away at special computer terminals. I’m feeling even sicker if such a thing is possible and not a little annoyed. “I’m here to get my cat,” I announce to one unsmiling face. He gets me to fill out a form and tells me to go around the corner and wait and somebody will get my cat.

I fill out the form and go around the corner and wait for somebody to get my cat. I wait. I wait and I wait and I wait. I am waiting in a huge hanger type space, filled with mysterious boxes and zero human activity. Finally I hear a shuffling. I spy an elderly security guard approaching. “Excuse me,” I say. “I’m looking to get my cat. Can you help me get my cat?”

“Your cat?” he says. “I can’t get you your cat.”

“Look, I just want my cat,” I tell him. “I’m as sick as a dog and I’ve been trying to get my cat for about three hours now and I just want to get it and go home.”

“Come with me,” he says. “I can show you your cat.” And he leads me across this vast space to a special door, which he unlocks, and ushers me inside. And there’s Blossom, whom I recognize from visits with my father-in-law. Filled with relief, I pick up Blossom’s case and prepare to take her home with me.

The elderly security guard, seconds before a paragon of peacefulness, freaks out. “What do you think you are you doing?”

“I’m taking my cat home with me.”

“You can’t take that cat home with you!”

I can’t believe my ears. She’s right there… I’m holding onto her case, perhaps I could make a dash for it… I sigh, a sigh perilously close to a barf. “Why can’t I take my cat home with me?”

He gives me this song and dance about procedure and I’ve had enough. I storm back to the L shaped desk and all the dour faces and I shout, “Look! I just want my cat! Will somebody please give me my cat?” And I storm back to the place I had been told to wait.

I do not recall actually receiving the cat or exiting the building. I can only hope the process was carried out peacefully and with a minumum of vomit. I do recall travelling home on the 401 with Blossom on the passenger seat beside me. I spoke to her soothingly. As tired and as sick as I felt, I suspected she felt even worse. I tried to be friendly, to welcome her to her new home, to make her feel better. I don’t know that I succeeded.

But I did get her to her new home. Where she lives with two new cat enemies, er, friends.

All three of whom I’m allergic to.

I hit page 170 of my novel-in-progess (working title ”A Time and a Place”) today.  That’s 170 final draft pages.  It’s going to come in at about 340 pages so I’m halfway through the puppy.  I do have it written all the way to the end; this is essentially the final draft that I’m writing.  It’s still time consuming though, painstakingly so, especially considering I’m tackling it about 35 minutes at a time twice a day five days a week, on the Go Train.  I do the odd bit at home, but it’s difficult to find the time there considering our hectic family schedule.

If I manage a page a day for the next 170 days I’ll finish it in just over half a year.  But it’s pretty rare that I finish an entire page a day.  Usually I manage a paragraph or two.  So I’m probably looking at at least another year on this.  Fortunately I love working on it.

A friend suggested that maybe I don’t want to finish it, and that’s why it’s taking so long.  I can assure everyone that is not the case! I desperately want to finish it.  But I want to finish it properly.  And it just takes a long time to do that.  Can I even be certain that it will be good (let alone work) once I’m done?  Sadly, I can’t.  I like it so far, but that’s far from a guarantee that anyone else will.  However, I have long since reconciled myself to the fact that ultimately I’m writing this novel for myself.  If anyone else likes it (let alone purchases it), that will be gravy.

One reason I desperately want to finish it is because I already have a sequel in mind.  In fact, I have it all mapped out.  The first portion of the sequel was broadcast on CBC Radio in 2002 on Faster Than Light… a little radio play called Captain’s Away.  I proposed it as a series but I expect I proposed it to the wrong person.  Alas, it was never picked up.  So I’d really like to do it up as a novel.

Here’s a snippet of some final draft “A Time and a Place” just to whet your appetite… um… or convince you not to bother with it.  (Here’s hoping for the former):

XI 

      It was awful – the light too bright and the sounds too loud.  I cried out and curled up into a ball to protect myself.

      “Wildebear!  Can you hear me?  What’s the matter with him?”

      “He’s not used to it.”

      “Will he be all right?”

      “He should.”

      “Should?”

      “He might not.”

      “Will he or won’t he?”

      “That’s what you’re here for, doctor.  To see that he’s okay.”

      “Hmph.  What happened to him?”

      “Not much.  Plenty.”

      “That’s an infuriating thing to say.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      “Don’t be sorry – just don’t say anything like that ever again.”

      “I can’t promise that I’ll” –

       “Okay okay, just — where was he, anyway?”

      “Where he needed to be.”

      “Oh for crying out – Wildebear!  Wildebear, it’s me, Humphrey.”

      I peeked out from between my arms to see who was talking.  Humphrey – the name sounded familiar.  He had a lot of meat on him, this Humphrey.  He’d make a sumptuous meal.  And I just happened to be starving.  Although a part of me knew that there was something very wrong with the idea, I unfurled myself in anticipation of a feast.  Catching a glimpse of one of my front paws, I was shocked to discover that it was almost completely hairless.  My God!  Was I ill?  I emitted a most un-T’Klee like whimper and curled back up.

      “Physiologically he’s all over the map,” a voice said.  “His pulse is racing and his serotonin levels are dangerously low.”

      It had come from my front foreleg.  Something shiny and gold was attached to me.  I tried to lick it off.

      The creature Humphrey leaned down to touch me.  Instantly I whirled on it, but something was the matter with my reflexes.  Before I could deliver the coup de grace the Humphrey creature grabbed hold of me and held fast.  I found myself in the embarrassing position of having been captured by my own prey.  It was like having been bested by a bandaloot.  I hoped that none of my brothers were around to see. 

      Except that… I had no brothers.  It was Cat’s brothers I was thinking of. 

      And I was not Cat.

      Was I?

      “Damn it Wildebear, what were you trying to do?  Slit my throat?”

      Humphrey.  Humphrey!  It was my old friend Doctor Peter Humphrey – and I had been about to eat him!  What had I been thinking?  Awfully confused, flitting back and forth between two identities, one human, the other a cat, I could not have said with any degree of certainty who or what I was just then.

      “You should think about cutting your nails once in a while,” Humphrey muttered.

      A thin red line had emerged on the side of Humphrey’s neck.  My attempt to dispatch him had come altogether too close for comfort. I started to apologize, but couldn’t seem to get the words out — talking involved using whiskers I no longer possessed.

      Humphrey let go and stepped back.  I desperately tried to pull myself together.  I had no fur, no whiskers; I was, therefore, not a cat.  I was a human.  And humans spoke with their –

      “Humphrey!  I – I’m so sorry.  It’s – it’s good to see you alive!”

      He touched a finger to his neck.  The tip came away red.  “Little thanks to you.”

      I rose to my feet and took in my surroundings.  We were in a small room blanketed in luxurious pillows and blankets.  Frills, tassels, reds and purples abounded.  The furnishings would not have been out of place in a Sultan’s tent… or that of a T’Klee.  Humphrey and I were not the only ones in the room, I saw.  Iugurtha was there as well. 

      I began backing slowly away.

      “You’re scaring him,” Humphrey told her.

      “It’s not me he should be afraid of,” she said.

      And with that everything fell into place.  Suddenly I knew precisely who I was, where I was, and what I had just been through.  It seemed incredible, but I had just spent several days, possibly weeks, living inside the mind of an alien cat.  I had witnessed the subjugation of a people I had come to love by a race of horrible monsters.  After an experience like that it was a wonder I was anything resembling sane.

      “Wildebear.”

      “Yes, doctor.”

      “You’re licking the backs of your hands.”

      “Ah.”  I stopped and considered.  “So I am.”  Then, because there really was no better way to relieve stress, I resumed licking in earnest.  “Please don’t ever throw me through the gate again,” I told Iugurtha in between licks.

      “Once should suffice,” she said.  “What is your opinion, Doctor?  Is he in good health?”

      “Nothing a little bed rest and years of psychotherapy won’t fix,” Humphrey replied.

      Mention of rest made me realize how exhausted I felt.  I excused myself, curled atop several of the fluffiest pillows I could find, and purred myself to sleep in a matter of seconds. 

On Saturday I was looking after the girls.  In a quiet moment I decided to check out Facebook.  Now, I have to confess that I’m not a big fan of Facebook.  I have a blog and that’s quite enough for me, thank you very much.  However, from time to time people send me messages on Facebook and I feel obliged to read them and perhaps (if I’m feeling generous) provide some manner of curt response.

So I checked it out and lo and behold several people had sent me various forms of test.  It just so happens that I LOVE tests (just ask any of my high school teachers) (this entire sentence, by the way, is a test to see just how well you detect sarcasm).  There was a test on optical illusions, so I took it and scored ridiculously high, 19 out of 20.  It wasn’t a very hard test.  If you think I’m bragging, prithee read on, for humiliation awaits, I assure you.

Buoyed by this success, I ventured onto the next test.  Bear in mind that my girls are playing quietly in the adjacent room at this time.

It was an IQ test.

The directions specify that I should be alone with absolutely no distractions.  Oh what the hell, I think.  How hard can it be?  I click START.

Right away I’m in trouble.  Turns out the damned test is timed.  Not a problem if the girls don’t interrupt me.  And they are fine… until about three minutes in.  E comes to me with a question.  My concentration is shattered.  No matter… I forge on.  K starts a fight with E.  E complains to me.  E starts a fight with K.  K complains to me.  The cats are meowing.  They too are complaining.  I should be paying attention to them all, but I am not.  Instead I am writing a stupid online test that I failed the moment I began, because I ignored the initial instructions: BE ALONE WITH ABSOLUTELY NO DISTRACTIONS.

I was a moron right from the get go.  And the results of this test confirmed it.

I know what my IQ is supposed to be.  Or rather, what it was before I had children.  I’ve had it tested twice for high school and once for university and taken the odd informal test since then.  I know the exact results in each instance.  I was once reasonably intelligent.

On the plus side, I can now quantify exactly how much stupider I am in the presence of my two offspring…