Amusing

Memories of JJ, 5 — Dietary quirks

Posted on by Patrick
Dad

Every­one’s got things they like to eat and things they’d rather not share a plan­et with. For instance, I love lasagna*/** and loathe turnips.

***

How do you eat your French toast? But­ter and syrup, right? Maybe some whipped cream and berries, yeah? Not Dad. No, he’d but­ter it, add salt and pep­per, and then slice it up and dip the pieces in straw­ber­ry jam.

I asked him once why he ate it that way. “When I was up North,” he told me, “I’d nev­er had French toast before. Some­one told me it was like scram­bled eggs mixed into toast. So I rea­soned that you put but­ter and jam on toast, and salt and pep­per on eggs.”

Try it. It’s deli­cious. (Rasp­ber­ry jam is also a great choice.)

***

Dad hat­ed yogurt. Hat­ed it. For years I would­n’t eat it, because I assumed he was right. (He told me once that it looked, and I quote, “like the end prod­uct of a sick horse.” But he enjoyed cot­tage cheese. Go figure.)

Also he refused to eat kiwis. “I’m not putting some­thing in my mouth that’s that shade of green.” I used to real­ly enjoy eat­ing them right beside him. I’d even exag­ger­ate the smack­ing sounds that are pret­ty much de rigeur when you eat kiwi.

(Hmmm. Read­ing this back, it appears I might be a ter­ri­ble son. Oh well. Je ne regrette rien.)

–

* I don’t much care for Mon­days, either. Maybe I’m Garfield.

** Also, Dad taught me how to make lasagna Flo­ren­tine, which is the best. Maybe I’ll make some this week.

My dad passed away recent­ly. I’m going to be post­ing lit­tle mem­o­ries of him for the next lit­tle while. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Memories of JJ, 3 — Keys

Posted on by Patrick
Dad

Let’s not talk about how he’d clean his ears with his keys, OK? Let’s just not.

Instead here’s a sto­ry from my days as a high-school student.

I was one of the nerds* that worked on the year­book. One day, at home, I real­ized I’d for­got­ten some­thing in the year­book office. It was­n’t any­thing of seri­ous consequence—I had­n’t left my French home­work or any­thing like that—but Dad had to go get some­thing from the wood shop, and so I went with him.

Dad had a mas­ter key to the school, because he was the type of per­son that had a mas­ter key to the place where he works. (I asked him one time why that was; he shrugged and told me “Peo­ple trust me” with a lit­tle lop­sided smile.) Once he’d retrieved what he need­ed from the shop, we stopped in next door at the year­book office… where his mas­ter key refused to work.

After a cou­ple min­utes of jig­gling the key and jig­gling the door­knob, he pulled out the key, exam­ined it up close (rais­ing his glass­es up his fore­head to do so), and said, “Huh.”

Then we went back into the shop, where he fired up the met­al grinder nor­mal­ly used to sharp­en chis­els. He filed off a lit­tle bit of his mas­ter key. Sparks flew, briefly.

The new­ly-reshaped key worked, and I was able to retrieve my for­got­ten item.

I spent the next few weeks try­ing to decide if Dad was a lock­smith man­qué or a wiz­ard. (Even­tu­al­ly I real­ized that a wiz­ard prob­a­bly would­n’t clean his ear with a key.)

–

* Dweebs? Geeks? What­ev­er, we had fun. Name me anoth­er group that got high** on rub­ber-cement fumes on their lunch break.

** Well, gid­dy, at any rate.

My dad passed away recent­ly. I’m going to be post­ing lit­tle mem­o­ries of him for the next lit­tle while. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

A curious juxtaposition

Posted on by Patrick

Just fin­ished reg­is­ter­ing my new toast­er oven (or “mini oven” as the com­pa­ny would have it). On the last screen, where I’m encour­aged to set a pass­word for my new account (one more I’ll prob­a­bly nev­er sign into again), I was asked two questions:

  • Do you want to receive occa­sion­al emails from the com­pa­ny about prod­ucts and ser­vices? (No. As usual.)
  • Do you own a Nespres­so™ machine?

Uh…

Curi­ous as to why they’d be inter­est­ed in my sit­u­a­tion vis-à-vis Nespres­so™, I did a quick Google search for [company name] nespresso. Turns out that the com­pa­ny makes com­pat­i­ble land­fill-chok­ing pods for the Nespres­so™ machine.

Live and learn.

Snoopy’s Christmas

Posted on by Patrick

For those that did­n’t care for yes­ter­day’s Giger delights, I offer this.

When I was a kid, we had this song (along with the oth­er two Snoopy vs. the Red Baron tunes, and a bunch of Roy­al Guards­men songs on the B‑side) on an LP with a pink card­board sleeve. I must have come pret­ty close to wear­ing the record out over the years.

I actu­al­ly still have the record (thanks, Mom!) but a) I don’t have a record play­er and b) it’s pret­ty bad­ly warped now, so  the last time I tried to lis­ten to it, it sped up and slowed down to a degree com­pa­ra­ble to the songs they play on Lip Sync Battle.

Fun fact: As a kid I assumed the sound effect on the line “The Baron then offered / A hol­i­day toast” was a toast­er pop­ping out toast. Now I know it’s a cham­pagne cork. Ah, youth.

The Greyhound Chronicles

Posted on by Patrick

This all orig­i­nal­ly appeared on Face­book, but not every­one’s on Face­book. (Hi, Mom!) So I’m post­ing it here, too, for you to enjoy.

Any anno­ta­tions are in ital­ics, and most­ly they pro­vide con­text or commentary.

1.

Dec. 7th, 5:20 PM

I love pay­ing a $3.50 “con­ve­nience” fee and then hav­ing to catch a cab to the air­port to get on the bus. A fine use of irony there.

At this point I had­n’t left my sis­ter’s house yet. I had no idea. None.

2.

Dec. 7th, 6:51 PM

I’m at the depot ridicu­lous­ly ear­ly. Got my tick­et. Found out my bus is delayed by 90 minutes.

If I’d known I was­n’t in a hur­ry, I’d have told my cab­bie to not both­er run­ning those three red lights.

Thanks for the noti­fi­ca­tion, Grey­hound. You suck.

Any Wpg folks, if you’re bored, swing by and say hi.

One did. Thanks, Michelle!

3.

Dec. 7th, 8:07 PM

I won­der if the dude with the Aus­tralian accent run­ning the met­al detec­tor over every­one who will be board­ing the north­bound bus ever looks out the win­dow at the snow, sighs, and thinks about the choic­es he’s made.

One of my Aus­tralian Face­book friends assured me that he does.

4.

Dec. 7th, 8:22 PM

I just now saw a sign telling me that I can save 10% on a Har­vey’s burg­er if I take my bus tick­et to the air­port terminal.

I was loath to leave the bus ter­mi­nal, on the chance that my bus would some­how mag­i­cal­ly show up, and I’d miss it. Also, if you’re try­ing to lure me away, you’ll have to do bet­ter than Harvey’s.

5.

Dec. 7th, 9:05 PM

Dou­glas Adams point­ed out that it’s no coin­ci­dence that no lan­guage has ever coined the phrase “as pret­ty as an air­port”. Dit­to bus terminals.

Self-explana­to­ry, I trust.

6.

Dec. 7th, 9:23 PM

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

Like­wise self-explanatory.

I also post­ed a com­ment: “Grey­hound, you owe every­one in this ter­mi­nal a refund on their ‘ser­vice’ fee.”

7.

Dec. 7th, 10:00 PM

In line. Grey­hound suuuuuuucks.

They herd you through “secu­ri­ty” before they load the bus. It’s pret­ty fun­ny, since peo­ple get­ting on at stops along the way aren’t sub­ject­ed to a met­al detec­tor. Also, in the Win­nipeg ter­mi­nal, you can leave the “secu­ri­ty” area and return with­out a sec­ond check. Just so long as you don’t move your car­ry-on bags out.

8.

Dec. 7th, 10:18 PM

They’re still call­ing it the 8:30 bus to Bran­don. It’s 10:18 PM now. #grey­houndIs­Ter­ri­ble

9.

Dec. 7th, 10:39 PM

The Thomp­son bus arrived after the Bran­don one. Guess which one is board­ing first. Go ahead, guess. #ffs

10.

Dec. 7th, 10:43 PM

A dude has decid­ed he’s not get­ting on the bus now. Cue the clown show of retriev­ing his checked bag.

He got yelled at for mov­ing his car­ry-on bags from the “secure” area. He decid­ed that the high­way con­di­tions were still too bad to trav­el. (He was part­ly right; as is tra­di­tion, the high­way was ter­ri­ble from Win­nipeg to Portage la Prairie.)

11.

Dec. 7th, 10:54 PM

I’m on a bus.

It’s almost 11 pm. This is the 8:30 bus.

Nev­er again, Greyhound.

The ear­ly bus was sched­uled to leave Win­nipeg at 8:30 PM and arrive in Bran­don at 11:10 PM. The late bus was to leave at 11:00 and get in at 1:50.

The ear­ly bus left Win­nipeg at 11:00 PM (ish) and arrived in Bran­don around 1:30 AM. I don’t know the fate of the late bus.

12.

Dec. 7th, 11:00 PM

As we got rolling, I noticed that the front seat held two cool­ers of human blood, help­ful­ly labelled Please Expe­dite With­out Delay.

13.

Dec. 7th, 11:40 PM

A mid­dle-of-the-night bus ride down a snowy Trans-Cana­da between Win­nipeg and Bran­don? Yeah, The Trag­i­cal­ly Hip seems like the right soundtrack.

Coda.

Dec. 8th, 1:52 AM

Home.

Epilogue.

Dec. 8th, 9:29 AM

They just got in touch via Twit­ter and sug­gest­ed I check their bus track­er next time. I tried that. Appar­ent­ly “Win­nipeg” does­n’t exist.

I snarked a bit on Twit­ter, too. The help­ful peo­ple at the Grey­hound Help account obvi­ous­ly did­n’t real­ize I was talk­ing about Grey­hound Canada.

This also felt a bit like the post-cred­its scene, the last joke in a rolling farce.

On the up side: at least I did­n’t sleep on the floor of the ter­mi­nal, like the one guy loud­ly pro­claimed he had the pre­vi­ous night. Accord­ing to him, the tem­per­a­ture dropped overnight in the ter­mi­nal — almost cer­tain­ly a cost-sav­ing mea­sure — and no one was will­ing to turn up the heat.

At least I had a good book to read. (Sto­ries of Your Life and Oth­ers, re-titled Arrival to cap­i­tal­ize on the movie, a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries by Ted Chiang.)