Category: Uncategorized

Long Sleep

A few years ago I decided that not getting sleep was not good. I yap about napping a lot but it is one of the few things I make a point of doing. And I am not talking about dealing with a cold. But I seem to have put my head down last night at 4:30 pm and pretty much snoozed until 7:15 am. I remember one 9 pm to 2 pm snooze years ago when I visited a pal’s place, a huge old manse, and they just let me go to see how long I would sleep. One other time, not long after having kids, I was at a business retreat and no one noticed that I slipped stay at 8 pm, barely getting up to find the last scraps of lunch. I think I tried to convince people that I had been in the “other” presentation but it turned out there was only one.

I read about second sleeps a few years ago, that there is some evidence for sleeping patters in the pre-inductrial past being different, more 7 pm to 1 am and 3 pm to 6 pm. There’s a wikiality post on it called “segmented sleep“. There seems to have been an article on the topic in an eggheady periodical as noted by this website as well as at the end of this article. Interesting to note that it is electric lighting that is blamed for the change and how dreams would have been more a topic of discussion. If dreams were as surreal then as today, they would have been more noteworthy in a pre-mass-entertainment and even pre-surrealism world as well.

Christmas Cards 2006

It must be the holidays. I made the julglogg this afternoon (Polish vodka, frozen mixed berries into mason jars for 30 days or so), got ticked over the number of “special events” the kids are already booked up for and remembered to pull out the old “send me an address and I will mail you a card” GX40 post from last year which goes like this:

So because I have finished the Christmas shopping way before the usual afternoon of the 24th, I actually pulled out the address book to do a few cards. Then I realized that the internet has destroyed whatever relationship I ever had with the global system of postal services. The “sent to” address lists ends in 1996 when I send out 12 cards. Good Lord. I could do a performance art piece on the current residents of the former homes of people I could have kept up with better. But that would be sad and this is Yule.

So if you know me and want a card, email me at christmas.card.from.alan@gmail.com. And if you don’t know me – and are not the sort of person Michael does not let come to the party – send me your address anyway. I will see how the cheap drug store cards are holding out. Who knows? Maybe I will stuff every fifth envelope with Canadian Tire Money.

So then I go to check out the email address and see Marian sent emails to it well into January long after I stopped looking at that Inbox. Sorry about that. Keep in mind I am really bad at following up these things but let’s give it a go for 2006.

Did Someone Say “Olympic Boycott”?

Been a long time since we have had an Olympic boycott based on political dispute. Surely it must be time now if only due to the passing of time and the natural lapse of memory. And surely we should be able to take the foot off the clutch and call for one if we are truly going to lead the way on human rights in China. Because that is what we are going to do, right?:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says his government will not abandon “important Canadian values” by toning down criticisms of China’s human rights record to improve trade relations with Beijing. Harper made the comments to reporters on Wednesday after being apparently snubbed by Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Just wonder, you know, what important Canadian values we might be discussing and whether they get us all the way through the game of chess or whether we just give them an airing now and then.

Socks and WD40

Seeing this is cut and paste day from the MSM [Ed.: the dastards! Give me more.], this digital world meets the Darwin awards is a decent morality play for the day:

…a university professor needed help after he tried to fix a squeaky desktop computer by squirting it with WD-40 oil. The squeak went away, but so did his data.

I once, during my spotty teens, used astringent face cleaner on my Elvis Costello lps so I feel their pain. If is a darn good thing that we do not have to clean CDs or Mp3s but does anyone think of the layoffs in the lp-cleaning industry? Where are they now? And those who made that K-tel lp flipping storage device. What of those?

Good Long Term Thinking

As opposed to the sports of long term planning that will restore the quality of the environment to 2017 standards by 2086, this is interesting to see out of the UK if only as it is indicative of how properly done there is no need to fear the boogieman of a social security gap in the future:

Governments are often accused of thinking short term. But a pensions reform Bill, included in the Queen’s Speech, is one of the most consciously long term bits of planning seen for some time. Looking ahead to 2050, its main aim is to provide a higher level of state pension for many more people over the coming decades. The big idea is that the link between the basic state pension and earnings will be restored some time after 2012 and the state pension age will be raised to 68 by 2046.

It has been a long time since there has been much of a boo said about Canada’s retirement funding stability which leads me to the idea that the funding is actually stable as was promised in the early 90s when the bad old ways were turned around by those wizards the Liberal Party of Canada, who will still never get my vote as far as I can see so don’t even bother.

Tales From The Green Valley

Got a little Christmassy last night watching Tales from the Green Valley on TVO last night, a 2005 BBC production, in which a number of academics with good teeth live in a 1620’s Welsh farm and display how civilized it all would have been without the ignorance, disease, constant use of alcohol and religious fanaticism. But all very good and worth watching. Here is one participant’s website. It were the December episode that drew me back to the deep mid-winter:

To celebrate Christmas 17th-century style the farmers cut a giant yule log, find traditional decorations, brew contemporary tipples, and put all hands to cooking up recipes from the age of Shakespeare, like mince pies with real meat in them. At the same time they must find time to tend the livestock, make some winter clothes, and build a hovel, a period wood store.

But they did butchered a pig and made with it plump sausages and many a pie. ‘Twas the “contemporary tipples” that was of interest, the infusion of herbs in spirit that got me thinking of storing up something of a julglögg, then I reckoned it might be a pyment or metheglin. It reminded me of when at King’s I was in charge of the Gunpowder Punch in 1984 for the Christmas Readings: 7 parts red wine, 2 parts port, 1 part brandy simmered with old apples and spices.

Taking care of this in November leaves time in early December for some careful cheese planning. Oh, and I better buy a snow shovel, too.