Life

Well, it’s cold­er here today than it has been in a month or more, but at least the Sun was out all day.  The tem­per­a­ture was about ‑11C, which is real­ly not that bad, unless you’ve got­ten soft in a win­ter where the tem­per­a­ture rarely dipped below about ‑4.

Every­thing seemed more slip­pery today, too.  I lost my foot­ing about a dozen time, but I did­n’t fall, at least.

Mmmm, weath­er.  Is there any­thing more Cana­di­an to talk about?  (Well, I guess there’s the election…)

We had freez­ing rain last night. It’s a lit­tle weird, since that’s usu­al­ly an Octo­ber and April phe­nom­e­non, with Jan­u­ary being the part of the year where it’s reg­u­lar­ly cold­er here than it is at the north frig­gin’ pole. This win­ter is beyond mild and into the spooky-warm category.

The car was glazed this morn­ing; it took near­ly ten min­utes to scrape holes in the ice big enough to see through. And walk­ing on the side­walks was treach­er­ous; every­thing was cov­ered in peb­bled ice that offered about as much trac­tion as a sheet of curl­ing ice.

Crazy.

Lat­er–And now it’s snow­ing. Just a light snow, but who knows? It could devel­op into some­thing heav­ier, or it could move on and leave us with min­i­mal accumulation.

It’s the short­est day of the year, here in the Northen Hemi­sphere. From here on out the days just get longer.

Maybe some­day I’ll be head­ed to work after the sun has risen, and go home before it sets. At least I’ve got win­dows to look out of dur­ing the day.

I don’t know why I was think­ing about this one today, but here it is.

Geog­ra­phy Primer—At the uni­ver­si­ty where I work, my cow-ork­ers and I often sit on an indoor bench on a fair­ly well-used path­way dur­ing our cof­fee breaks. This allows us to all sit together—there are about eight or ten of us on the bench at a giv­en time, usually—and it also affords the peo­ple-watch­ers among us a rich tapes­try of stu­dents to observe. Okay.

The Set-up—The uni­ver­si­ty has a pro­gram called EAP, or Eng­lish for Aca­d­e­m­ic Purposes—essentially Eng­lish as a Sec­ond Lan­guage. We have a sig­nif­i­cant pop­u­la­tion of for­eign stu­dents attend­ing our fair school, from places like Tai­wan, Chi­na, Malaysia, Mex­i­co, and so forth, and some­times they need help with their Eng­lish. All right.

The Sto­ry—I’d noticed in par­tic­u­lar that one girl, from Mex­i­co (at least I assumed she was from Mex­i­co; I’d heard her talk­ing with friends on sev­er­al occa­sions, in what sure sound­ed like Span­ish) seemed to be giv­ing me the eye on occa­sion. I admit, I was flat­tered, but I’m also married.

So one day, for what­ev­er rea­son, I was alone on the bench for my cof­fee break. I can’t remem­ber exact­ly why, but most like­ly I was ear­ly or my cow-ork­ers were late. Any­way, a fel­low Uni­ver­si­ty employee—let’s call her Kate—swoops in, sits down next to me, and says, “We have to talk.”

Alarm bells go off in my head. I’m friends with Kate, but she’s got two jobs at the U: Admin­is­tra­tive Sec­re­tary to the Pres­i­dent, and Sex­u­al Harass­ment Offi­cer. So when she says, in a seri­ous voice, “We have to talk,” my insides get a lit­tle crawly.

“O‑o-o-kay,” says I, the paragon of eloquence.

“I need to know your age and mar­i­tal sta­tus,” says Kate.

This con­ver­sa­tion has tak­en a left turn, I think. “Uh, twen­ty-sev­en and mar­ried,” says I.

“Yeah,” she says, “thought so.” She gets up.

“Wait on a sec­ond,” says I. “What’s this all about, any­ways?”

She says, “Well, there’s a cou­ple of girls from Mex­i­co.” (Did I men­tion that Kate also helped out with EAP? Well, she did.) “They were ask­ing about the guy that sits on the bench with the dev­il beard.” (I had a goa­tee at the time…) “And I tried to think, ‘dev­il beard’? Who would that be? And then I saw you here today, and…”

“Okay,” I say. “And?”

“Oh.” She smiles. “And they have wicked crush­es on you.” She sighs. “Well, got­ta go break some señori­tas’ hearts.”

And she walked away.

I’ve already doc­u­ment­ed my odd abil­i­ty to request songs. Today I used my super­pow­er to help a co-work­er score tick­ets to a concert.

Some back­ground: I have a co-worker–let’s call him Greg–who is the biggest fan of the band Queens of the Stone Age. He’s going to the upcom­ing Nine Inch Nails show, not to see NIN so much but to catch QOTSA, who are opening.

So last week, a radio sta­tion said that the Queens were going to do an acoustic con­cert before the show, and the only way to get tick­ets was to win ’em from the sta­tion. Greg’s been stream­ing the radio sta­tion at work since then, try­ing to get in and win the tick­ets. I was help­ing out ’cause, hey, why not?

Today he points at me and says “Go”, so I start dial­ing. Busy sig­nal, redi­al. Busy, redi­al. Ring ring ring, DJ voice: “You’re caller six, I’m look­ing for nine,” click. Well crap, so close and yet so far. But I keep try­ing. Busy, redi­al; busy, redi­al; ring ring ring, DJ: “Hi, what’s your name?” I pass the phone to Greg and he starts doing a goofy lit­tle Snoopy dance.

Yeah, he won the tick­ets. Yeah, he owes me lunch sometime.

Nice to know I’ve still got the touch…

Nano: mov­ing along. Behind, but who isn’t? (Okay, I know there are peo­ple who are already done…)

… “Describe their culture.”

“They have an impor­tant cel­e­bra­tion,” said E.T., “called Hol­low Bean. Every­one carves faces in fruit squash­es and dress­es up in sheets.”

“Who holds this celebration?”

“The chil­dren, who actu­al­ly rule the Blue Plan­et of Earth. They are more intel­li­gent than the old­er peo­ple and out­run them on bicycles.”

The machine whirled around him again. “And what is the pur­pose of this celebration?”

“To col­lect the all-impor­tant food.”

“Which is?”

“Can­dy.”

– William Kotzwin­kle, E.T. The Book of the Green Plan­et. 1985, Berke­ley Books.

Hap­py Hol­low Bean, every­one! And b. good.

The very def­i­n­i­tion of “slow news day”: Res­cued kit­ty feel­ing bet­ter.

We went to see As You Like It, per­formed by the local 7 Ages the­atre group. I quite enjoyed it. Kath­leen, who saw it last night as well, said that the per­for­mances were much improved. The fool Touch­stone stole the show, caper­ing and danc­ing, mut­ter­ing and mim­ing. As usu­al, it took me awhile to get the hang of Shake­speare’s Eng­lish, but once I was in the right mode I found that the sto­ry just ticked away like a smooth-run­ning gun. 

I can’t rec­om­mend the film My Sum­mer of Love; by movie’s end, I’d found not a sin­gle sym­pa­thet­ic char­ac­ter in it, and I want­ed to punch them all, from the girls to the moody born-again-but-not-real­ly broth­er to the neglect­ful father. Why o why do I only seem to end up show­ing the grim and dark and ulti­mate­ly depress­ing flicks?Anyways. Hope you all had a good week­end. Later!