So it goes

Like Von­negut said, “So it goes.” Poo-too-weet!

Happy birthday to me

Posted on by Patrick
A birthday cake with many candles

My birth­day’s fast approach­ing, and so Face­book, as is their wont, has tried to con­vince me to set up a fundrais­er on their plat­form. I’m not inter­est­ed in help­ing Face­book out with their rep­u­ta­tion, though, so instead I’m going to do it here on my own, much small­er platform.

If you’d like to do some­thing good for my birth­day, please donate to a char­i­ty of your choice. Any char­i­ty will do. If you can’t think of one, I’m fond of these:

Thanks, and hap­py birth­day to you all! (You know, when­ev­er your birth­day hap­pens to fall.)

Pho­to by Richard Burl­ton on Unsplash.

Hollow Bean 2024: The Costumes

Posted on by Patrick
Our Hallowe'en decorations: Snoopy holding up a sign that says "Boo!", and Linus, dressed as a pirate, saying "Happy Hallowe'en!"

From 5:30pm to 8:30pm last night[1]Which was, we real­ized, the 25th anniver­sary of the day we moved into the house, we had 16 trick-or-treaters show up at our place.

  • Har­le­quin with a lit­tle hat
  • Pig (he wore a burlap over­all and had quite the full-head mask going on)
  • Pikachu (it was her first Hal­lowe’en; when her mom said “What do you say?” her first guess was “Can­dy please?”)
  • A giant black dot
  • The Phan­tom of the Opera
  • Teen who likes can­dy ×2
  • Skull-faced clown
  • Zom­bie mobster
  • Deliv­ery dri­vers who brought us our tor­ta ×2
  • Stitch
  • Dead­pool
  • Min­ions ×2
  • Vam­pire

We turned off the light about 9:20pm, and we’ve got a bunch of can­dy left.

Foot­notes

Foot­notes
↑1 Which was, we real­ized, the 25th anniver­sary of the day we moved into the house

Hollow Bean 2024

Posted on by Patrick
A very dark photo of a Jack-o'-lantern; all we can really see is a glowing set of eyes, nose, and a snaggletoothed smile

“Explain,” said the inter­ro­ga­tion machine. “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.

Pho­to by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash.

The “The Two Seasons” incident

Posted on by Patrick
Janky text that spells out "You wouldn't properly license copyrighted material for a provincial English exam"

This morn­ing, on the radio, the very first news sto­ry I heard was about how the provin­cial Eng­lish exam got postponed[1]Or can­celed, who knows. because they had, to use Man­i­to­ba Edu­ca­tion’s words, “an issue regard­ing nec­es­sary per­mis­sions to use mate­ri­als.” And I laughed.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “The “The Two Sea­sons” inci­dent” →

Foot­notes

Foot­notes
↑1 Or can­celed, who knows.

Edmonton, 2024

Posted on by Patrick
A photo of yours truly, refereeing at the Edmonton International Judo Tournament

We flew out to Edmon­ton this past week­end. Arrived Thurs­day after­noon, got to the rental car place, which was—predictably—out of the com­pact cars that I rent­ed. For the same price, they gave us a Mustang.

(What a ridicu­lous car.)

High­lights of the weekend:

  • Hang­ing out with family
  • Teach­ing Gra­cie to play crib
  • Spend­ing 28 hours at the West Edmon­ton Mall, most of it at the Ice Palace where they set up the judo mats
  • Pass­ing my Nation­al B ref­er­ee evaluation
  • Pret­zels with cin­na­mon sugar
  • A walk with Juliana to see hoodoos in the city
  • See­ing Mary at the airport—she was fly­ing out to Edmon­ton on the same plane we’d just returned on 
  • Park ‘n’ Fly washed our car while we were away
The tournament venue: four mat areas on board on top of the Ice Palace rink
All the referees at the tournament
The ship in the West Edmonton Mall
A clamp and duct tape holding a pane of glass in place at the West Edmonton Mall
The crib board after Gracie beat me.

As always: it’s fun to trav­el, but it’s sure nice to be home. Tomor­row is gonna be laun­dry day.

Hollow Bean 2023: The Costumes

Posted on by Patrick
A handwritten list of the costumes from Halloween 2023

We had 17 Halloweeners[1]Hal­lowee­nies? ring our bell last night, which is two more than last year. A pleas­ant sur­prise, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing how cold it was.

The cos­tumes:

  • Iron Man
  • Pret­ty Princess
  • Uni­corn (these three were very young; the princess was most­ly being car­ried by Mom)
  • Mer­maid with a hand-knit Pikachu toque
  • Spark­ly Witch
  • Kid in Par­ka (he might have had a cos­tume under there; hard to say)
  • Kit­ty Cat
  • Plague Doc­tor in a fleece uni­corn onesie
  • Anoth­er Uni­corn (fleece one­sies might be the new parkas)
  • Witch
  • Skele­ton (x2)
  • Men in Black (x2) (I’m just glad they did­n’t neu­ral­ize us)
  • Shark
  • Zom­bie in a fleece bathrobe
  • Clown in a fleece bathrobe

At 9:15 we turned off the light, since there had­n’t been any­one at our door in over 45 minutes.

Seems we bought juu­u­ust the right amount of can­dy; there’s only a cou­ple bars left over for us. Phew.

Foot­notes

Foot­notes
↑1 Hal­lowee­nies?