Putting My Foot In My Mouth

Have you ever said something, and as soon as you did, question whether or not it was a good idea? I'm not talking about minor social faux pas like asking a fat women how far along is she, but something that had actual real world consequences that involved you paying sums of money that you otherwise would not have...and I'm not specifically talking about trying to bribe your way out of a traffic ticket, although that would qualify.
The other day I got a letter from my insurance broker informing me that they required an updated worksheet about my house in order to determine replacement value. I happened to be in town on a business day, for once, so I stopped by to have a chat with my broker. Now, when I bought my house, the realtor stated that the age of my house was unknown, but for some reason, put down the year 1953 as the construction date. I presumed this to be wrong based on a number of structural and architectural details that indicated (albeit to my non-qualified eye) that the house actually harkened back to my beloved design period the 1930's (hence why I love my house so much).
EDITORS NOTE: when I say my house is from the thirties I mean the main floor only. The upstairs is an 1989 addition.
I of course took so much personal pride in my innate knowledge of thirties architecture, that when the broker asked me if the house (main floor) was built in 1953, I did not even hesitate to respond that I believed it to be from "probably the mid-thirties". She asked me why I thought this, and I replied about the coved ceilings, large wood beams in the structure, and the prominent archway at the front door (also the pocket doors, and the consistent narrow fir flooring, plaster lathe walls…etc...). She hmmmmed for a while, typed some numbers in the computer, and informed me that this increased the replacement value of my home substantially. In fact, the difference between the 1930's and 1953 is about $30,000 (due to all that good wood that needs replacing). I tried to back pedal at this point, citing the purchase documents that indicated the 1953 date. However, she insisted that I look into this. Now, I wasn't to enthused about this task, as I thought it would be complex, but a simple call to the City Hall engineering department revealed that my house was in fact, as I had deduced, been constructed in the mid-thirties (1936 to be precise). So at least I have my pride, although it looks like my premiums are going to rise.
Oh, and judging from the lacerations on my lips, my toenails need a trim.

Monks ReVisited

I think these three guys are checking out the girl on the cell phone


Q: Why did the monks cross the bridge?

A: They were following the guy with the red towel on his head.
2 possible captions for this picture:
" I'm crushing your head...I'm crushing your head"

or

"Crikies mate…this ones a real feisty bugger...Terry get me bigger stick."

(Two TV references there kids...I hope you got both of them!!)


No matter how hard I try, I can't Photoshop that F@#%^%$ Cambodian in the white T-shirt out of this picture.

Why the lame humour with these monk photos you may ask....just introducing my new travel blog...see link on sidebar.

Zen and the Art of Zen Gardening

This Zen garden was an idea that I got a few months ago when my friend Brooke (and his partner Megan) got me a Lions Head Maple (Acer palmatum "Sishiashire") in exchange for my helping him develop his Christmas tree farm. You would think that constructing a Zen style garden would be a soothing, Zen like experience. There are a few notable exceptions to this in reality.
First off, I now have a time frame for completion. I'm having a backyard wedding (my own) on July 22, and the missus would like the yard to look nice. This creates time constraints, as I'm still working away from home. But this entry is a testament to what you can accomplish on a one day weekend if the sun is shinning.

Another non-Zen thing about my Zen gardening experience was the rather large dump truck that showed up at my house one sunny Saturday morning with my 8 yards of drainage rock (that’s ¾ inch gravel for those of you out there who’ve never gotten a load of rocks).

Beeping, belching diesel exhaust, and dumping a load of gravel onto the road in front of my house, the gravel people shattered the morning calm. My neighbours think I’m weird anyway, so I didn’t care too much. But the transport of all that gravel from front to back is an onerous task. Some could argue that the 80 some odd wheelbarrow trips could be considered meditative. These folks would be wrong.

Pain in the lower/upper/middle back and arms/shoulders blocks one from achieving Nirvana.

There is also lots of digging involved. Sod must be removed, and the removed sod and dirt must be put somewhere. In the past three years I’ve dug a lot of holes, and made some pretty big piles of debris tucked into corners…some would call them hills….but I’m running out of room.

Levelling the pond was frustrating, but even less Zen was the fact that when I back filled the hole with gravel, one of the corners of the pond liner buckled. Fortunately the lovely flat rocks that I gathered this afternoon cover this flaw. Actually gathering those rocks was kind of Zen. I have this source of natural materials where I get most things for my yard. It’s actually a large eyesore of a cut block off the highway into town, but it provides stones, shale mulch and foxgloves. Sasha always likes to run around, and it’s one of those places that reduces the number of doggy bombs in my back yard.

Another non Zen experience was breaking one of the solar lights while trying to stick it into the ground. Apparently you are not supposed to push on the head, or the part that screws into the post will buckle. A quick repair job got it back together, although it is not perfectly straight. My mantras on this project (and all projects) tend to be expletives....not so much chanting as muttering.

So that was my one day weekend of Zenscaping. Thank/praise Allah/God/Buddha that the sun was shinning.

Renovation Blues

The perils of bathroom renovations: the downstairs renos to match the Talavera hand painted sink we hauled back from Mexico two winters ago came to around $2000...this one promises to be cheaper, just some paint and some laminate tile at $4.49/sq foot....
Also we installed a new shower head….my advice...never attempt to install plumbing fixtures when someone is painting a wall 3 feet away (unless they are on the other side)...hilarity ensues as the boys at TV guide would say.
Had to remove the toilet to paint and put new flooring in (not that we've gotten around to the flooring), but as the bolts had been sitting for over a decade in a moist and acidic (some would say pissy) environment, they were, of course, seized. Had to cut them with a variety of tools in some very awkward and uncomfortable positions. I haven't hugged a toilet like this since the night before my first day at UVic in 1996, when I lost a battle with a bottle of sub-quality tequila...my student card picture from this year reflects the trauma... I hope my friend Daniel has recovered from the site of my naked torso and extremities gripped around the porcelain.
There is always a disgusting brown paste under any toilet... I've installed many... its a combination of beeswax and bathroom grime that sludgeifies over the ages. Maybe its the context, but it looks (and often smells) like crap. Not a pleasant pastime. Then there is the issue of moving a half-full toilet around your dwelling. Sasha was more than at bit confused when her big water dish migrated five feet to the left. Another few coats of paint and some chrome fixtures, and it should be lovely. I will be able to sit on a throne and revel in the beauty of what will be the nicest room in the house.

Hell (icopters)

I was channel surfing a few months back after a hard day at work, and i landed on what I believe was the first episode of "The Amazing Race". There were two guys on a high rise roof top, and they were waiting for a helicopter to pick them up. The one fellow turned to the other as the helicopter came in and said (quite unscripted I'm sure) "isn't this the most James Bond thing you've ever done?". They then proceeded to cruise around the sky scrappers of Rio...eventually landing on another tall building, finding their clues, or whatever. I thought to myself...that does look like fun...how exciting.
Ten i got to reflecting about my experiences with helicopters, and how the practical reality of anything, even flying machines, is never as bright as it is on TV (college, for instance, was nothing like shown on the tube).
I've done a lot of flying in the course of my career as a tree planter/forestry technician, but at very few points could I ever describe the experience as fun (exciting maybe, but excitement is just your bodies reaction to adrenalin, and adrenalin is primarily sourced in fear...the old fight or flight reaction to external stress factors).
My first experience with helicopters was cool, because it was my first time. A forty five second ride up a hill with a nice landing area (on a road actually). The people and trees look like little ants from the sky. But lately, the very thought of having to get into a helicopter fills me with dread. his is not because I'm afraid of flying (although I am), but the crap that requires helicopter access is in variably unpleasant. My last ride in a helicopter ( a couple of weeks ago) was a 1 minute glide up a hill to a nasty cut block. I got out on the pad, and cringed at the sea of slash. Lucrative at 40 cents a tree, and the $400 dollars I made in the next 7 hours eased the pain, but altogether a unpleasant way to spend a Thursday.

I had a month last year, in a place called "Deserted River" (I thought that quaint), where this was my routine every day. it was October, invariably cold and rainy, and most days it was a battle just to get off the hill, waiting for windows in the fog. We had a very good pilot, but the one time he had to land on a moving barge and take off both doors in order to get my co-workers was a little too James Bond for my blood (fortunately no one can hear you shrieking in a helicopter with no doors). I just closed my eyes and held on to the compartment ceiling as we banked sharply in 80km cross winds.
Then there are the times where you are expected to get out of the machine without actually landing...the so called hover exit. This can be stressful as any sudden jarring movements caused by you at a critical moment can actually pull the machine out of the sky...a gentle transfer of weight out of aircraft and onto stump is required. Worse still is the hover entry, which is the same thing in reverse. Try climbing into something at head height that has a tendency to shift as much as five feet in any direction without making the odd sudden weight transfer. Most pilots tell me I'm actually good at this, but as far as I'm concerned I've just fluked it every time.
Then there was the time that three of us were flying up a hill to hover exit on separate stumps (so my stress levels were high already just with the anticipation of that). It was a very hot day, maybe 38 degrees or so, and we had a lot of weight with the three of us) suddenly lights started flashing, alarms started bleeping, and the pilot started cursing...he then did the helicopter equivalent of a back flip and soared downhill at an alarming rate of speed that seemed almost like free falling, and landed. He very calmly informed us that we would have to go up one by one as the high temperatures thin the air or something and reduce lift. Now how would you like to go back up after such an ordeal and drop your body out of a still flying aircraft onto a stump? Feeling James Bondy? Adrenalin pumping enough for you. I'm a simple man... I prefer to walk.
Besides, you can't take your dog in a helicopter.

Oh, and aboutthat second picture...this is what pilots refer to a a "hostile" pad. Try stepping onto that first thing in the morning.

Comming to a Tim Hortons Near You

This is an insight into what I find humorous….seriously the sight of a plastic bombshell (Barbie strapped with explosives) makes me howl…every time. She’s dating Al Quiada Ken and wants to fit in with Osama and the boys. Or maybe she thinks throwing pies in Stephan Harpers faces isn’t going far enough. (editors note: technically "faces was a typo, but on reflection I think it was my subconcious expressing how we all feel..is he a caring man, or is he SATAN?)

Seriously though…did anyone really think that terrorists were attacking Toronto doughnut shops??? I’m really surprised that police were dispatched to the scene…I would have thought that there would have been enough already there to handle the situation.

By the way, I stole this image from some other guys website. I give him no credit. My views on intellectual property copyrights are [pretty clear cut. I only listen to illegally downloaded music, I burn every movie I rent (usually before I watch it), and I’m pretty sure ( and would testify to this in court) that the central premise behind the De Vinci Code was first laid out by me in a small Sunday school gathering in 1986 (hence my excommunication from the United Church of Canada).

Okay, that last bit was a lie…I was excommunicated for other reasons.

Another BC Ferry Disaster

Has enough time elapsed since the sinking of the Queen of the North to make fun of BC Ferries aging fleet? Probably not, but I've never been one to stand on ceremony.
Last Wednesday, after a long day of work, I raced to the Earls Cove ferry terminal, just in time to board the 4:25 sailing to Saltery Bay. Tourist season is heating up, and there were more cars in the line up than I've seen this year. The Ferry rounded the bend around Nelson Island, and then proceeded to sit 200 yards from the dock, for about 20 minutes...the crowd grew anxious...bordering on irritated. Slowly the word filtered down that the front doors on the ferry were stuck and that passengers would not be able to drive off. Then, without warning, the ferry pulled away, and did a sweeping turn, docking backwards. Everyone in the line realized that this meant that they were going to unload...backwards. I young man on a bicycle came off, pushing his bike backwards to cheers from the crowd, the a couple of Telus pickups, also driving of in reverse. Then it got interesting. There were a total of nine large semi-tractor trailers that had to negotiate the ramp. Do you have any idea how long it takes to back a vehicle of that size off of a boat? Well suffice to say that the ferry did not start boarding until 6:05, and pulled out at 6:20, a mere ten minutes before the scheduled 6:30 sailing.
People who use ferries regularly (like myself: 10 ferry rides in the last 5 days), and tourists alike (some who had never been on a ferry before), felt jubilant. A collective adversity overcome. They fixed those doors, and although two hours later than I had planned, I got to drive of facing forward on the other side, which was better than the alternative...they were going to back us on to the boat. I can only wonder how long the very large rental RV with the German driver would have taken.
As a consolation to those who were so long delayed, they did not charge for coffee...my salad was still full price. On the upshot, because I was still at work (technically) I got to bill some overtime for watching this spectacle, which I honestly can admit, was worth watching.
As for the picture above, remember, that huge truck is coming off.

Antique Hunter Roadshow Psycho-Killer

Sundays are all about hunting, whether it’s fluffy tailed deer, Iraqi insurgents, or antiques. Sometimes you don't even realize that you're hunting until your prey seizes you in the corner of a musty antique shoppe.
Usually I'm out hunting toasters, but sometimes you need something to display your toasters on. Sometimes it's close enough to your girlfriends birthday to justify random $350 purchases ...sometimes it's just Sunday.
Maybe it was the time change that put my usually thrifty mood aside...maybe I was just bored. Anyway this is what I ended up with today. It's Art Deco Canadianana, and although it has been repainted, it follows the original colour scheme, although the new yellow is a little creamier (you can still see the old colour inside). It goes well in the kitchen (the picture makes it look to big for the wall, but that is just the lack of a wide angle on my camera). Goes good with the green, and looks nice with a toaster of the same vintage aboard.
Things from the thirties always appeal to my...I don't no why, but depression era architecture, furniture, and appliances hold a special appeal. It's like the lack of optimism about life got transferred into design.
The cabinet is now full of casserole dishes and the cupboards now store all of Kira's cookbooks. It didn't sit vacant for long; the things I buy never do. I'm like a kid on Christmas; have to play with your toys immediately. Sundays need a project, and the drywall mud in the upstairs bathroom needs time to dry before sanding, and as always, it's too wet in the yard to do any serious digging. So why not re-arrange your kitchen...probably needs it anyway.
It's got a few flaws, the right hand cupboard door has a serious sticking problem that I can't seem to fix, and there’s a few paint chips missing here and there, but when a man offers you a discount for cash, who's going to be picky.