Month: August 2003

Popsicle

45 cents. Dad got the 45 cent orange popsicle. Four year old gets the 1.99 ice cream sandwich. Three year old gets the Rollo caramel centre for 2.19 or so. Cheapskate Dad gets the 45 cent treat. Watched the Montreal to Toronto VIA train roll in and out of the station with the kids as melting sugar water dripping down my chin. In grade 4, thirty years ago, they cost 7 cents. Was it a better world when pennies had value? If so, more TV channels make up for it.

I didn’t know it was legal to price stand alone separately packaged items under fifty cents. Sure sugar, water, orange colour and two sticks of pine should not be over fifty cents but when are things ever priced right? If I eat enough by the time I retire I can be a really crazy old cheapskate building models of the great castles of the Balkans in my garage with popsicle sticks.

Fitba

All his kids recovering from the blackout of 2003 blackouts.  Only grandkids 1500 km to his west.  Behind my mother’s voice on the phone, Dad can be heard shouting out his only real concern: “Who are they playing?”

Stenhousemuir, as it turns out, where they, the mighty Greenock Morton, won 2-0 away from home. Arsenal won, too, over an outclassed Everton – despite Arsenal being down a player after the reappearance of Sol Campbell’s boot’s desire to practice proctology. Sol is the best defender in England but has had a bad run of involuntary arse kicking lately. Caught the game on Rogers Sports Net. Oddly, here in Canada we can get more soccer than most anywhere: four live or nearish English league on two channels, German live, French live, Argentine, Spanish, Brazilian and Dutch on tape delay. I may spend another $2.99 a month this winter to get TeleLatino to pick up the Italian league.

Not just a slave to the tube, the August When Saturday Comes showed up yesterday and I am working through a small stack of fitba books from amazon.co.uk. One, Out of His Skin, is about John Barnes – one of my favorite players from the days of TSN’s Soccer Saturday – and the crap he had to put up with from his own Liverpool fans for having the gall to be both black and good at soccer. Even just 15 years after he entered the top level of the English game, it is amazing to this that this was the case watching the diversity of players on Arsenal. The implicit racism of the game is now seen more in the lily white composition of the fans in the stands. If you get ESPN Classics Canada, you can see Barnes play on certain Friday evenings in a few of the late 80’s early 90’s English FA Cup Finals they show from time to time. He taught me everything I know about crossing from the outside – everything I know…not what I can do.

Blackout Day 2

Highlights so far:

  • Woke up at 7:57 am. Alarm messed up.
  • Called at 8:01 am. Do not come to work but stand by in case needed by my boss the City to man a phone or something.
  • Watched private golf course across street water fairways 8:01 am to present.
  • Watched Howie Mandel on Regis and Kelly for 2 minutes. Considered why blackout such a bad thing.
  • Co-worker calls to say he is heading out to the cottage and planned supper off. Noticed lack of invite. Then again I can’t stand me for three days.
  • 11:00 am listened to Mel Lastman, Mayor of Toronto, talk of difficulties Toronto had faced. Noticed similarity to recent interview of Keith Richards discussing difficulties Toronto had faced.
  • Following good Toronto coverage from The Flea.

My plan for the afternoon is a search for a box of chilly clinky ales, conserving energy – not just the grid’s… my own, switch back and forth between local Canadian and US radio stations to follow the game of “blame the other’s electrical infrastructure” ping-pong.

Later:  No power from 3:30 to about 8:00 pm.  Molson Stock Ale plus wedge of lemon = Molrona.  Clear night so heat should clear down here by the lake.   Had a picnic supper in the park.  Big waves crashing in from the heart of the big pond to the south  west.   Stick some dulse up my nose and it could be Lunenburg.

Gee…another new word

Just when you thought it was safe to go out on the information super highway, we are now going to hear about “fisking” – a new word for a usenet-old practice of interweaving replying within the text of what is being discussed, used often in flaming. For the first round of response it is slightly useful as it directly relates a paragraph of response to a paragraph of original statement. It is useless for the next level of response and beyond as it creates a mess.

I hope “to fisk” gains some new meanings – to pointlessly create new words, to confuse a discussion through unnecessary structures…suggestions?

Back

Back. Nice to see the typo twins chimed in over the weekend. I don’t know why I don’t care too much about spelling but I don’t I think it was all the teachers who made so much about it but didn’t seem to have anything to say with their perfect grammer. Couldn’t have been. That being said, I am sure it is on my “permanent record” so I should start feeling bad any day now.

Tales of the road? Not really many:

  • Vermont’s unoffical state bird is apparently the Crow – gotta love that. The law says the hermit thrush. Who picks a hermit as an emblem?
  • The nicest vista on a highway is the view at the top of the hill on I-83 just west of Barre heading for Montpellier, Vt. – layer upon layer of Green Mountain each one a little more faded than its next nearest neighbour.
  • Tim’s is a welcome site whether in South Portland, Maine or Cornwall, Ontario.
  • I had the best raw oysters ever from the Portland Public Market – each one was about a ten-chew half-cup of living sea animal. Dandy with a Shipyard ale.
  • Burlington’s Church Street is kinda losing it having an Old Navy and a Borders and losing its own independent bookstore – was it Hickson & B****? Heidi will know. That being said, Borders has a heck of a music section. Everyone I know under 30 will think me a fool for buying 145 US bucks worth of art on 1990’s media.
  • The Gulf of Maine at 60F is better swimming at Higgin’s Beach than 70F water farther north or south.

Use mapquest.com

The road back was pretty much off the highway again so I can’t say we broke any speed records. Interesting how the Thousand Islands here seem more than anything a continuum of the Lake Champlain and even New Hampshire’s busy lakes region. Best drive back twisty road – New Hampshire’s 25A west to the beautiful little village of Orford on the Connecticut River, shown here.

The Road Taken

New Hampshire has redeemed itself. For years bad thinks happen everytime I am driving through New Hampshire – people giving me the finger, getting lost out of Dover because the “Live Free or Die” folk don’t like spending on road signs. I only drive through New Hampshire – like New Brunswick. Last evening at 7:00 pm, we blew a tire on highway 4 at the westerly Durham exit and New Hampsire came through big time.

I can change a tire. I cannot change a tire when the tire jack and lugnut wrench was left in PEI in a house I have since sold. We started to walk into town down the highway on ramp. First, a guy about 19 in a pick up driving the other way goes down the ramp into Durham, goes around and up our ramp to meet us as we are walking down. He drives us into town calling on his cell phone to all the VW owners he knew. We make about 5 stops with no luck. 25 minutes minimum.   He leaves us with a happy wave at the cop shop where we call for help (being after hours). This guy has just done this one a Friday eveing coming home from work at the Portsmouth Jiffy lube. Someone raised that kid right.  Didn’t get the name but thanks.

Next, the cops call Smitty’s Towing and in 15 minutes we are back at our car where for 30 bucks on my VISA, the nephew of the owner – about 23 – replaces the tire with our doughnut in about 47 seconds. Tells us all about the town as we are driving back, how the University of NH sucks up property taxes, how they came second in NCAA hockey last year, tells us about being a tow operator in Durham (picked up two DWIs Thursday night) and gives us directions on to Portland via back roads to stay under 50 mph. Again, someone raised this kid right.  Again, didn’t get the name but thanks.

The trip was made by this.  Less than one hour delay.  Before that the highlights were the drive on NY highway 3 through to Saranac Lake; the 10 mile drive up and over the Green Mountains east of Middlesbury where you can pretend you are in a car ad pumping second and third gears through hairpins at a 12% ascent and decent; seeing Middlesbury College founded in 1800 sitting in a landscape of rolling farms with the lake to the west and the mountains to the east.  Also ate beef jerky for the first time.  Ate a whole bunch and then worried for an hour whether a entire pot roast was rehydrating in my gut.   Buy a VW, by the way. Whole drive was less than 30 bucks Canadian for the gas. My car is a ’93. And make sure the jack and lugnut wrench are in the back.

Route: Kingston to Cape Vincent to Watertown to Saranac Lake to Lake Placid (avoid) to Westport to Champlain Bridge to Middlesbury to Concord to Dover to Gorham to South Portland: left house at 7:35 am, got to Ross’s at 10:20 pm.   Off to the tire shop today.