Merry Christmas to all & to all a good life

Our backyard on Christmas eve.

Friends, let me wish you all a happy holiday season.  Today is the beginning of a nice, relaxing stretch of working less, spending time with friends, and setting my intention for the new year.

A lot has happened in the last year.  Much of which, I haven't shared until now.  For one, we bought a house in late October.  It's a cozy townhouse in downtown St. John's that includes a nice deck with a view of the harbor.  The place is over 100 years old, so it definitely has its wonky parts.  But all in all, it's pretty up-to-date.  (And there's plenty of room for guests should any of you care to visit.)  It's in much better shape than my place on Toledano.  And with the purchase of our new home, it feels like I'm able to close the door on what was lost in that house fire.

On the night we closed on the house was the first bit of nasty weather.  Nicole had been feeding a stray cat (shocking!), so we let her spend the night in our foyer.  And that's when she decided to deliver the kittens she'd been carrying--all seven of them!  At that point, it became impossible to turn the cat back out.  So we took occupancy of our new house with a mere 11 cats (that's "eleven") under our roof.  Here's a video of the kittens at about 4 weeks old.


Despite their helpless demeanor in the video, that quickly changed by the time their age doubled.  Here's the latest photo of them, eagerly tracking some toy.

Well in addition to the difficulties of moving, we were faced with placing eight cats.  (And by "we," I mean "Nicole.")  Fortunately, around Christmas, people go nuts for kittens, and Nicole quickly found great homes for all of them--even the mother!  Today, three of the kittens have been delivered, and the remaining four leave today.  The mother leaves by New Year's.  Thank God.  I had real concerns about having a house full of cats and nowhere to put them, but Nicole did a great job.

Observing the kittens' delivery was interesting.  It occurred over a seven hour period.  The entire time, the mother cat had this deep, open-throated purr.  When the seventh kitten appeared, she was near her mother's posterior where all the mother's nipples were getting some serious use.  So I gently moved the newborn to the free nipples, near the mother's shoulders.  When I did, the mother leaned up, ate the placenta, and chewed off the umbilical cord.  Then she leaned backed, resuming her deep purr with a vivid splash of bright red blood on her white chin.  She seemed to be in a state of contentment and peace that defied description, and witnessing it was incredibly visceral and mysterious.

This summer I had a really nice trip to Boulder, Colorado; Austin, Texas and New Orleans, and I happily was able to visit friends in each city.  Many thanks to Vanessa, Bart and Christy, and the Homans for their hospitality to us while we were in New Orleans.  We hope to make Mardi Gras this year, so hopefully we'll see each other then.

I wish all of you a happy, peaceful time during this week of holidays!

Stress & Distractions

Lately, I've found my life settling into some sense of normalcy for the first time since my time on active duty in the Army which began in 2004.  That is, I've got steady work and a stable home with little likelihood of seismic, life-altering events in the future.  And gradually, I've begun to take better care of myself, eating better, drinking less, exercising more regularly.  Recently, it even occurred to me that I should resume my meditation practice.

This shift revealed one of the chief coping mechanisms I employed during that stressful period--distraction.  I got through active duty by consuming too much bourbon, Playstation 2, and Reno 911.



Immediately after Katrina, I found myself, while completely exhausted, nonetheless staying up to all hours, refusing to sleep, and learned of other New Orleanians doing the same.  And in recent years, my once voracious news consumption has been replaced with a voracious comedy consumption.  The news itself seems like a joke, jokes with many set-ups but the same punchline--The wealthy and powerful are fucking over everyone else.  Now if I'm going to consume jokes, I prefer ones that will make me laugh over those that will make me cry.  Of course, what all of these practices have in common is a desire to avoid reality, to give myself something to think about that is immediately more pleasurable than the horrible circumstances around me.

Over the last few weeks, I've found myself once again in stressful circumstances at work.  There, we're on a tight schedule to turn an exercise in research and development into something that is operational and sell-able. So when I initiated the next task at hand, I thought it would take me a day.  One day became one week then two and three, and gradually, I felt myself move from frustration to confusion and then panic.  And as my stress escalated, I found my good habits eroded by those bad ones.  My distraction low point has got to be one of two events--seeing the Green Lantern movie or playing the old Atari game Adventure.  (Man, were those Atari games shitty.)

Of course, I have fixed the problem at work which is why I'm taking time to write this.  But what's interesting to notice is how, when difficult circumstances arise, those difficult circumstances can overwhelm the entirety of my reality.  In this case, while work was proving frustrating, the rest of my life was fine; it just didn't feel fine.

On the local front, Nicole and I are experiencing the bizarre local weather of June--almost constant, pea-soup-like fog with temperatures never getting higher than 12 C/ 54 F.  I'm not thrilled with it, but I tell myself at least I'm not sweating my ass off.  Nicole has a bigger problem with it.

But speaking of sweating our asses off, we will be in New Orleans from July 22-30.  We hope to see you then.

Old Sci-Fi Films

When I was in Seattle, I picked up the book The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies.

Naturally, that's led to my watching some sci-fi films I hadn't seen before.  (That was the whole point.)  Here are some of them.

La Jetee

This French short was the basis of Terry Gilliam's great Twelve Monkeys, and just as Gilliam is a wildly original filmmaker, director Chris Marker made some original aesthetic choices as well.  Most notably, this motion picture has no moving pictures, just a collage of stills with an audio track (mostly narration).  Yet it works, and the choice actually seems like a shrewd way for an indie filmmaker to work around the issue of special effects.  Here it is on youtube with English narration:



Colossus:  The Forbin Project

"Colossus" is the story of the US military's handing control of its nuclear arsenal to a massive, artificially intelligent computer, Colossus, and like many stories' beginnings, "it seemed like a good idea at the time."  The story is compelling, complex, and clearly a precursor to 1983's WarGames, though much darker.  Conveniently, it, too, is available in its entirety on youtube:



Fahrenheit 451

Given that this film is based on a Ray Bradbury book and directed by Francois Truffaut, it seems set up to be great.  It's not.  It fails on so many levels I stopped watching after 30 minutes.  First, the tone and cinematography of this one are really terrible.  I've never watched Truffaut's films, though I've always heard great things about them.  But the staging of the opening sequence seemed so amateurish that I'm not in a rush. And putting the story on film exposed the absurdity of the book.  I mean, if you're going to burn about 50 books in a dry environment, you don't need a flamethrower.  A single match will do just fine.

Soylent Green

I approached this film well aware of its notorious ending.  What I wasn't prepared for was what a prescient, chilling presentation it is of the future (i.e., now present day).  Set in 2022, the world swelters under the effects of global warming.  Food is scarce.  Unemployment is rampant.  The masses struggle to survive; the wealthy are unaffected.  Does this sound familiar?  Watch this film.  Watch it again!

Since "Star Wars," sci-fi has been my favorite genre, but lately, I find it uniquely relevant to our lives.  Only sci-fi can capture the relentless effects of science and technology on our lives.  These effects don't just change our external realities; they change our consciousness, too, as human interaction evolves away from face-to-face contact, toward web surfing.  Unfortunately, it appears our mastery of science has far outpaced our ability to use it wisely.

A Great Weekend

Last weekend was a great one, and this one's not bad either, because it's 50% longer than the typical weekend.  But back to last weekend . . .

In my last post, you heard me talk about the poker game at the Rose and Thistle and how I'd found it frustrating at times.

The Rose and Thistle, where they believe in double awnings.

Last Saturday, I went back, determined to play looser.  Basically that meant hanging around in nominal hands (ie, having maybe a low pair), while others are raising like crazy.  Turns out I won the game and $280.  That is the single greatest victory of my life!  OK, not really, but at the time it did feel pretty damn good.

Actually, strictly speaking, I didn't win the game either.  Another player (Jeff, my nemesis) and I were in the top two.  The guy running the game gave us the option to simply split the pot.  While I would have liked to have played heads up, I took the option, because that evening I had to hurry off to the Ferryland, Newfoundland.

Our new friends, Michael and Donna, had invited us to attend a live music event in Ferryland and then spend the night in their cabin.

Michael's an interesting guy.  Like me, he grew up in the southern US (White House, Texas) and married a Canadian girl.  He's also very liberal, so we've had a lot interesting discussions about Southern culture and whatnot.  Another wrinkle, though, is that he's also British.  His parents are from the UK, and their work took them all over the world.

That night in Ferryland was nice.  There was a lot of nice music, the place was packed, and people were dancing and drinking like there's no tomorrow.  We left at midnight, and there were still two more acts to come.

We spent the night in Michael and Donna's quaint cabin with the wood-fired stove and got up the next morning and went for a walk.  Below you'll see a slideshow of the gorgeous countryside.

Speaking of good times, Nicole and I sent off the documents on the lawsuit after the house fire.  As most of you guessed, the settlement amount for indeed for less than two million, even less than one million.  The settlement was in the $10-20,000 range.  Certainly, that's a not a trivial amount of money.  But compared to the fact that the company destroyed my home, it doesn't quite seem like adequate compensation.  But then that's why lawyers are so demonized in the US, to make it almost impossible for regular people to gain adequate compensation when injured by the wealthy and powerful.  Mission accomplished!  (Note:  the wealthy and powerful always use lawyers.)

And in other good news, I got word at work that I'm going to be promoted.  

Catching Up

The demand for a new blog entry has become overwhelming, so here I am, scribbling just to please you, dear reader.

Basically, for the past two months, it's been a bit of a grind--a lot of get up, go to work, chill out a bit, rinse, repeat.  That's OK, but it's a quick way to burn through two months.

One of the ways I've been chilling out is playing poker at a local pub.  I think of myself as a decent player.  I played regularly in Texas and continue to on-line, not gambling in either case, just for fun.  Here, though, I find the style of play . . . different.  A lot of wild bets are being laid.  The last time I played I came as close as I ever have to an outburst in a game ("outburst," ahem, in a bad way).  It's been a few weeks since then.  I might try again today.  I have made some friends and acquaintances through the game, and that was the main point.

I did miss the wedding of my good friend Matt to Veronica, a fact I'm not happy about.

Photographer

Nicole and I were looking forward to it a great deal, an opportunity to visit friends and family in New Orleans and beat the snow for a while.  But when the time came, money was simply too tight.  Ah well.

Speaking of snow, my slideshow of St. John's Winter Wonderland should be working here.  (And mine of the Battlestar Galactica exhibit is here.)   There's a lot less snow in St. John's now.

Yesterday evening, on my way out of work, I noticed this scene from my office building.  The snow in the sun had largely melted, while the remaining snow matched the evening shadow of our building.  One of our office administrators got a big chuckle out of my interest in this, but being from the South, I'd just assumed that snow melted uniformly as it warmed up.  That's how it does melt when there is snow in the South.  But having spent several winters in Canada, I can tell you that snow in shady spots can linger for months.  (I find it interesting.)

I'll also tell you that we have a third cat, Mouse.

Mouse, on the left, relaxing with Ella.

Generally, I'd never intended to have a third cat.  But basically, this little street urchin ingratiated herself with Nicole (an easy task) while I was in Texas for a semester.  That and none of my Toronto friends would adopt her, especially John and Ann.  She's a sweet cat, though, and I'm glad she's no longer on the street; she's the luckiest stray cat in Ontario.  She's a grey tabby like Oleanna, but they're very different cats.  Oleanna was long and sleak; Mouse is short and stubby, a furry little bowling ball.  Oleanna was very affectionate; Mouse is still a bit skiddish with that.

That link for Oleanna is to a blog entry about the anniversary of my house fire.  Apropos of that, I can tell you that just last week we reached a settlement against the company whose product started the fire.  I'll blog more about that later.  For now, I welcome your guesses about the size of the settlement:
Free Website Poll

The soundtrack for this blog entry was my friend Alex's nice, mellow music available here.

My Trip Out West

A couple of months ago, I was thinking about the people we know living out west.  Lisa and Elana had just moved to Vancouver.  My friend Tony had been in Seattle for a few years, as had Phil and Morgan.  I thought it'd be nice to have a vacation out there and visit both cities and all those friends.  Then, a few days later, my boss told me about the American Meteorological Society conference in Seattle and that we ought to go, and that was that.

One thing for sure, I didn't want to fly directly to Seattle because I didn't want to expose myself to the TSA's abusive practices.  My plan was to fly to Vancouver on Friday, hang out with Lisa and Elana over the weekend, and then take the train down to Seattle.  Unfortunately on Thursday afternoon I got a call that Lisa's mother was about to pass away, and that they had to hurry back to Toronto.

I was able to reschedule my flight to Sunday morning--early Sunday morning.

The view from my first flight on the trip.

But that also meant I would do all the traveling--from St. John's to Vancouver then down to Seattle--in one day, 22 hours of straight travel.  Several things made the trip easier, though.  I made the trip across the continent in only two flights.  I had exit-row or bulkhead seats for all of my flights.  And on the plane, I was able to watch most of the NFC championship game.  It was a long day, but it could have been worse.

In Seattle, I only had one chance to get together with Phil.  Unfortunately on that day, he injured his eye pruning some grape vines.  (What a wino!)  So we weren't able to get together.

I wasn't able to get together with Morgan either; she was sick that week.  When I told her where I was staying, she said my hotel was right in her neighborhood.  I thought it might have been a few blocks to a few miles from her place.  No, when I stepped out of the hotel and looked to my right, hers was the first building I saw.  I walked by it several times a day, yet strangely we didn't get together.  Ah well.

I was able to get together with Tony, though.

Tony, after I said, "Smile."

On Tuesday, he took me to a bar with 100+ beers on tap.  Then Thursday night, we went to the Science Fiction Museum, where they had a Battlestar Galactica exhibit.  You can see my slide show of the exhibit here.

The Sci Fi Museum's exhibit of the Tree of Life from Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, a film I highly recommend.

After the museum, we did some old-school bar hopping in a cool Seattle neighborhood whose name escapes me due to the old-school bar hopping.  We had a great visit.

In Seattle, a single of Bailey's in a regular tumbler.

(Let me now point out how impressed I was by the generosity of the Seattle bartenders.  Having grown accustomed to Canadian pours, I ordered a double whiskey; I got a full tumbler of booze.  Canucks, I love ya, but this is one area the Americans have over you.)

The view from the train.

As I've documented, the next morning did not go well, yet that had little to do with the night before.  Fortunately, Elana was able to pick me up at the train station.  Sadly, Lisa's mother did pass away that week, and she'd stayed in Toronto to attend to family business.  Elana and I had a great visit, though, and it did involve alcohol.  It also involved an early flight the next morning as well.

BLOG FLASHBACK:  Previously on UITGWN, I described how the circumstances precipitating my marrying Nicole had involved a trip to Vancouver and Seattle.  While in Vancouver, Nicole and I had brunched in Havana, a cool restaurant.  So when Elana and I were bar-hopping in her cool neighborhood, I was shocked to see and recognize the place, which I'd all but forgotten.  "I've eaten there," I said, which surprised her because she'd just learned about the place.  At the end of the evening, I dragged her there for dessert, which means she watched me eat creme brulee' as we each had one last white Russian.

Havana.

After the border incident on my trip with Nicole, I had returned to Seattle without her and went to a neighborhood bar to drink my sorrows away.  The next morning, I woke up late, still a little drunk, and had to speed through the Seattle rain to return my rental car and make my flight.  Last week as I walked to the Sci Fi Museum, I walked past the place, the 5 Point Bar.

5 Point, a friendly bar worth photographing but not worth crossing the street for.

It was odd to have this trip out west echoing that momentous trip from several years ago.  END FLASHBACK


So on this trip, I saw 40% of the friends I'd planned on.  That's less than I'd hoped, but I enjoyed all my time with them.  I noticed, too, how booze figured prominently in this blog entry.  That's telling me something . . . my friends like to drink too much.


Now I will leave you with a slideshow of the winter wonderland that's befallen St. John's.  Click here.

My shitty morning

This morning, I:

• Realized I'd left the book I bought last night in Tony's car, which is my fault.  But when I tried to call him, for the first time ever, got his answering machine.
• Tried to check into tomorrow's flight on West Jet and got jerked around by the web site, constantly getting conflicting information.  A simple web site outage would have been disappointing; that was infuriating.  I still don't know if I'm checked in.
• Had the worst taxi ride of my life.  Here's how you know your taxi driver sucks--he sits for a five count once the light has turned green and cars have passed him.  The guy was argumentative, slow, and took an absurd route to my two-mile destination.  Thank Christ I had the sense not to tip him.  My parting words to him were "Fuck off."
• Because I was flustered and running late, I missed that Tony had tried to bring my book to the train station.  (What a mensch.)
• Found a large, obnoxious party jamming up the boarding of the train.
• Once uderway, I bought breakfast at the dining car and tried to mellow out.  Once settled back in my seat, I discovered I'd failed to get a spoon and had to march back to the dining car for one.
• I started playing on-line poker and hit a royal flush, the best hand possible.  I've played thousands of games and never even seen a royal flush before, and this morning I got one.  Then shortly after that, I got disconnected from the game and lost.
• In Everett, Washington, the train picked up three, cap-wearing douchebags who've sat across the aisle from me.  They showed up with a case of Coors Light in the train; it was 8:30 am.  Now I get to hear their fat-girl jokes and crying-stripper stories. 

Douchebags on a train, the right-most one being the douchiest.

And I have yet to go through Canadian customs.

Update:  Douchebag #1 cracks his first Coors at 9:52 am.

Update #2:  I guess I jinxed myself with my Canadian customs comment, because naturally, I got pulled aside coming through customs, even though I'm a Canadian permanent resident, have a Canadian driver's license, and a Canadian health card.

I'm now mellowing out at Lisa and Elana's.

A Tale of Two Days in My City

Wednesday was only the second sunny day we've had in 2011.  Fortunately, Nicole and I had the good sense to take time to appreciate it on my lunch break.  We went to the top of Signal Hill and enjoyed the view.

It was good that we enjoyed that beautiful Wednesday, because this was Thursday.

Over a foot of snow fell on Thursday.

 The cold wasn't so bad, but getting around was a scary proposition.  St. John's is full of steep hills that don't make for great driving conditions when covered in snow.  In fact, on Thursday, a snow plow plowed into two cars parked on my street (which is very steep). 

When I moved here, my transportation plan for the winter was to live in downtown and have practically everything we need within walking distance (check!) and take the bus to work (no check).  For several months now, the bus drivers have been on strike.  And while I'm sympathetic to the union, I can't help but feel like they've overplayed their hand.  The strike's going on this long has trained people to get along without them and perhaps demonstrated that they're not that valuable.  Drivers, cut a deal and get back to work!

But back to the snow--I had the good fortune of putting my Firebird in storage before all of it hit.  But the guy storing it lives just out of town at an elevation even higher than Signal Hill, so there was some snow at his place.  When I got out, here's what I saw.

My size-12 boot print among the moose prints.

Moose prints.  First, I was impressed with the sight of them, how smooth and round their edges were and how nearly symmetrical they were.  Then once the mechanic confirmed it, I was impressed that I had correctly identified them in the first place.  

The snow's still lingering for now, though fortunately, it's not falling like it was on Thursday.  And really the cold's not bad either.  Now that things have settled down, I'm enjoying it.

 

A Great Time in Toronto

So after visiting Nicole's parents in Midland, we went down to Toronto for a few days.  While living in the city was a bit of a grind, we had a great time, simply hanging out there and visiting friends.

First we went to our favorite Toronto bar, the Communist's Daughter, to hang out with our favorite bartender, Michael Louis Johnson.

The Communist's Daughter, which was once Narare' Snack Bar

There, as always, we got into an interesting discussion, during which I met a visiting journalist Michael DiGregorio.  DiGregorio was there to write about the death of a local bicyclist and cycling in the city in general, a subject near and dear to my heart.  So we had a fascinating conversation.  He told me about a recent documentary, Scapper, he did which I'd also love to see.  Here's the trailer for it.


The next day, Nicole and I bounced around Queen Street West during the day and saw "Fair Game" at the Bloor that night.

On our last day in Toronto, we were able visit with several of our friends--John and Ann, Derek and Linda--as we had a delicious meal at le Papillion.  Linda's brother, Jed, was there, and later our friend Michelle joined us at Derek's house.  Here's a typical segment of our goings-on there:


As is always the case with such visits, we didn't get to see everyone we would have liked.  So if we missed you, we hope to catch you next time.  And we found that, refreshingly, Toronto is a much easier city to visit than it is to live in. 

This time off has been good; contrary to my intentions, I haven't touched my worked since Christmas Eve.  But tomorrow, I go back to work, and I'm looking forward to it.