TubaOrNotTuba

Over and over again, I proved myself that I have too much idle time. This afternoon, I began to wonder. How large was my family home. The one where some of my family still lives. The one built according to a standard floor plan developed around the time of the Second World War. And I have a number of ways to find out. The simplest way would be to go and drive over there with a tape measure and do my own measurements. Not so simple really because if property is 2 days away. I could also ask a family member but most of them are busy. Too busy for such a thing. I have a nephew who lives not far away who is in the trades as they say. He knows how to use a tape measure so that might be a possibility. Then I started to think outside the box. What if I went through the various for sale notices on the Internet and found a similar property. Remember it is a standard floor plan. Or I could call up a taxation notice because in many municipalities those are also available online. Let us be even more creative. I have an app that would allow me to call up a satellite image and to make a good approximation of the floor plan based on those photos. Or, I could search the archives that are out there of floor plans developed for the government back 80 years ago. What about if I called a local realtor to see if they had something similar in their archives. As you can see there are too many possibilities for me to act immediately or rationally. Remember I do not need to know how large the house was. This is just idle thought. In the end I will probably do none of the above. I will simply wonder for years to come. At least I know how large my own house is. I did those measurements years ago. And I recorded them in a number of apps because that’s what you do when you have too much time and too much technology available. I can even provide a 3D walkthrough of the house with imaginary furniture. But I won’t. Knowing that I can is enough.

Depending upon where you live, weather events are celebrated in unique ways. Here the local TV station shows us pictures of peoples’ front doors mirrored by snow. It’s kind of our thing. The current storm is just about over except for the clean up. It was an epic day. The simple stuff like schools being closed. The once in a century things like a by election being postponed. Close to here the snow plow got stuck. Really stuck. They had to send out a large snow blower to free the monster. And we have nothing compared to the people in the next province to us. When someone gets 150 centimetres of snow, life stops temporarily. Apparently visits to the hospital are down. All the trains ran on time but that was easy. We do not do trains anymore. Here, at our house the deck was cleared several times. And with enough snow moved out of the way the car is back in I think it’s normal place. The RV did not have enough traction to go anywhere. We have enough milk on hand to get us through probably the next round of snow. There will be one because storms can last for days. They even closed to local ski centre. Too much of a good thing. As for mail delivery and parcel delivery, we will never know. If they don’t come to your door you probably don’t have anything to worry about. No real traffic on the road outside. Don’t get me wrong. Winter is a wonderful season much better than the one we call mud. And for all those people that want to have fields to plow, wells to drink from next summer this snow is welcome.

People age. Some more graciously than others. Or is it gracefully I’m never sure. Similarly our appliances do the same thing. Shorter life stand spans but a similar curve. When you first pull them out of their boxes they’re eager. Like puppies. Then they settle news routines and you hope they will live forever but they rarely do. We’re at the point, after about a decade we’re starting to show signs of aging. The appliances, I mean. Or microwave oven has a mind of its own. Quite apart from the computer. Will it work on any given day? We no longer know. Always best to have a Plan B as they say. Today, the coffee machine started acting oddly. There is a vibrating pump inside the machine and when things get old the switches on the front no longer activate the pump do you know how bad a coffee can taste if it’s made without pressure? I do. Now, we do have some options. There is a small capsule machine that has limited number of doses available. But it’s not the beans I prefer. I also have some older drip machines around. Or better put, drip devices. We will have to decide what happens next perhaps, after good night’s rest, the coffee machine will jump back into its proper place in the routine. It is the machine we use most often in the house so it has kind of an important place. And with the right amount of money I can bring in a brand new one with a real warranty. We’re not there yet. We remain filled with hope. I shudder to think what will happen when one of the other more important appliances gives up will I have warm milk or dirty clothes or… I’m probably forgetting some devices. Anyhow that’s where I’m at right now.

When The Weather Channel issues a special statement I take notice. When they continue to say that this one will be epic, I sit up with both eyes open. If they go a step further and mentioned snowfall amounts in excess of 1meter, I started to worry. What is an issue right now from them is probably the most strongly worded forecast that we have had in the last decade and I know it is a forecast; we will not know until it’s all over, whether or not this was just hyperbole. But I do trust the weather people they are usually given to speak with a measured tone. It does help that the upcoming storm is actually forecast for south of here. You know like a day to the South. I am smart enough to know when to stay home and that is exactly what I am going to do. I like my house. It is warm and dry in here and if we do get a meter of snow with the wind I will not test my limits by going camping in a tent. However not everyone is as fortunate. We have tent cities now. Something not even promised back in the good old days. You know, if you don’t be good I’ll make you go to sleep in a tent, no this is real. All we can do is wait and see. Hope that this is just a warning. Somehow, the concept of going from no snow to a meter in the trees is foreign. The kind of weather that people get in the mountains. But I live close to sea level and the biggest hill around here… we don’t have a big hill around here. So I will keep you up to date and if my house is lost in the drifts I will try to send directions on how to find me. I must not panic. I must not panic. See. Almost like a mantra. My spirit is calmer already but I do wish I had a few sled dogs.

Let me start by getting the important question out of the way. No shadows were spotted outside. No fat rodents, either. That puts a real hole in the forecasting models. Next. We did have an interesting phone call today from the people that provide dogs to needy humans. I know dogs are also needy but that’s beside the point. As conversations tend to do we moved on to other topics. Adaptive technologies. The colour mentioned a special spatula that is 2 sided and will keep you from losing your burger why you prepare the thermometer they will tell you in a loud voice whether or not the cooking temperature has been achieved. And the only question I could ask myself is, how many burgers do you need to eat in a year before you need search tools. Perhaps a different diet is required. A grilled cheese sandwich would also give you that little bit of protein. But what do I know. I have not used the barbecue since it was taken over by a colony of wasps. One whole season of poorly cooked meat avoided. We’re now trying to decide whether or not we want to put the barbecue back in service. Some great opportunities to burn ourselves if you know what I mean. Is this the time to go vegan? I will have to think that one through. Also does a talking thermometer talk all the time. Like if you set it down does it just keep saying over and over again the same sentence. Almost enough to send me off to the arms of Amazon to see what it would cost to have such an interesting piece of kit in a drawer. I wonder what my neighbours do. Do they throw the steak on the grill and wait for the order to become so strong that they want to call the fire department? I really should have asked more questions during the phone call because the colour seemed to know more about this sort of thing than I. Do they train dogs to recognize when meat is cooked? I mean from my background the dog will eat it no matter what the state blue pink red brown black. At least with a grilled cheese sandwich you can have a decent chance I’ve not ruining an expensive meal. And as for a rodent sitting outside my door. No. It did not happen. I have been told that it snowed today because it’s winter.

I never life without a schedule. Almost. I still have to deal with the sunrise and sunset and this season but for the rest of it, everything is available on the web somewheres. At the time I choose. With the single exception of my local news and weather. No big deal. There is not much news around here. But the biggest distraction is the filler. By that I am referring to the two and three minutes interludes between sections of the program when they play this loop. A time when they could be presenting commercials but choose not to. And the loop has one very distracting feature. It is non musical. The phrase lengths are determined by some algorithm that has nothing to do with what the original composer intended. Very distracting when you like to keep time by tapping or dancing around. Throw in an added bar here and there and people will fall. I suppose that could be one way to create news content. There’s probably some deep, significant reason. Probably related to the contracts they signed for advertising content. But I really wish that someone would take the time to actually listen to what the rest of us here have too listen to, while they’re off enjoying ads. See if they appreciate the musical madness. It actually makes me think of those videos you see where dogs play the piano. Dogs are also not great musicians. I must not rant about things that I cannot control. I do have a mute button, which I use from time to time. And I could have to get all my news from newspapers. Is that still a thing? I have not seen a daily newspaper in years.

Some years ago I did a session as a tourist. Weeks upon weeks as a tourist. And one morning I arrived in the parking lot famous monument. A huge monument. The side of a mountain with faces. I’m sure you know where I mean. Like most visitors I joined the endless queues and admired the pageantry. So many flags. And through my time there I kept flashing back to a famous movie. No need to name it. I was convinced that I was on the site have a huge chase scene. I would have loved to explore but they take that kind of thing very seriously. No wandering. I was glad that they had taken the time to go on a chase and carry large movie cameras up and down the side of the mountain. It seems like a monumental feat. Today I learned that much of what happens in the world is an illusion. In particular what happens in cinema. Although the film crew may have been there as tourists, all of the real stuff was done on a mock up. A model. On a sound stage, elsewhere. There were no near brushes with death. In fact in one interview I learned that the monument had been tilted on its side so that the only way you could fall off was to truly defy gravity. I will probably never look at the footage in that movie in the same way again. There was also a scene where the star is being buzzed, over and over again, by a small plane. That too, never really happened. Somewhere else there are dishes. They flew the plane back and forth across the field. Then the actors jumped up out of those stitches and pretended to be dodge in the airplane. Even the corn stocks were a prop. From now on when I watch movies such as Titanic, I will ignore the big iceberg because it is not real either so many ways to trick us. So much is based on illusion even the text here did not really involve carrots. Just a note to my editor.

One thing that studying my family tree has shown me is that I am not nor have any of my ancestors being entrepreneurial. Looking back from father to son to grand father or is it father to grand father anyhow going back through the generations and looking forward none of us had that gene that made us want to take other people’s money. Taking other people’s money is not the same as accepting a wage. I am rather thinking about those we’re constantly trying to find ways to increase their own net worth. I have not nor will I ever be a rich man. In fact I am always drawn to wonder about those who are able to turn a dime into a dollar or more. When I was young, doing the normal things like clearing a driveway of snow I took a minimum amount of money for a modicum of effort. When I worked during all those years at real jobs someone else set the salary and I accepted it at face value. I never wanted to cheat someone nor did I feel that their money belonged to me. I would be lost in a world of rich people. Or I would become victim. I was watching something about international finance and I learned that there are certain cultures that place high value unconvincing others to hand over their money. If I had been a farmer I would probably feed the family. I would not spend my time trying to figure out how to convince someone else to give me more money for that potato. I’m glad that I never had the urge to call myself an artist where selling my production becomes a production in itself. I was asked why I have not tried to monetize this blog. Simple answer. It goes against everything I believe in. Like my father. Like my grand father. Simple folks in a simple world. It does limit the amount of leftovers on my plate. We have been watching videos of dogs and I’ve learned that the lab will eat at every opportunity. A true entrepreneur or Robert Berry. Take your pick. Our last dog was the antithesis of a greedy animal. Anyhow that is my reflection from today.

As I had mentioned we are far from the end of winter. Today some light snow that was driven to movement. Not exactly drifting but pretty close. We have also noticed a slight change in our satellite dish. The device is magical. It finds passing birds that we don’t even know about and it also responds to weather. There is a heating element inside so the snow cannot build up but this is the first time we have seen icicles forming. Just warm enough to melt the snow just cold enough to freeze back. Now those magical pillars that used to format my parents place. As big around as my leg and to remove them you used a small axe. Or hoped the gravity would kick in and takedown the icicle without taking down a section of roof. A carefully measured game when you are a young man. Such things depend on where you live. I had seen them in Ontario but almost never in Quebec. Here, not yet. That might be one of the things that I miss but with water freezing less often. No big displays of ice and no possibility of building a fortress. I used to have a degree of mastery shovel. I did it all. I cleared off roofs. I cleared walkways. I built tunnels in the banks. Never was given to using salt, or sand. Here, I have in certain seasons gone to collect small sacks of sand from the beach. Enough to sprinkle on the driveway. This year again not yet. It is amazing today depending upon technology fit for science fiction to get my little pile of icicles. And for what it’s worth I am happy to leave the heating cycle on. That way, I will not be out there with a broom trying to break something. Oddly enough, the birds have not figured out that there’s a warm place to sit.

While discussing the weather with family members who live away from here I realized something. We are at the end of January and this might be the easiest winter of my life. So far, the Big Blue tractor has visited one time. Only. And that happened more to show that the service was still there. No real need. In sharp contrast, people in the far South have had more snow. Places like Florida. Now I know, we are a long way from being out of the woods as they say. Many weeks to go with ample opportunity for heavy precipitation. But I do worry. Will I be forced to ration water next summer? That is a real possibility. Meanwhile, the ocean is ice free. No need for that pesky scheduled shift that used to put the ferries in the dry dock from before Christmas. That changes a lot of the math in the industry. If you have to run a big fuel hungry ship for many more months in the year then you’re bottom line is going to be affected. The number of available passengers falls far short of the number of available berths. Also when we lack sea ice we run an increased risk of erosion. Our beautiful beaches may pay the price of a soft winter. But no matter. I have no control. Who knows? Next week could be very different for us. In this house, skis and snowshoes and other winter sports apparatus are considered to be important. If you have never tried to go on dead grass with snow shoes then you just need to stop by here. Again, it does not really matter. Four months from now we will be able to start our usual spring and summer season. Street shoes and light shirts. Quite different from when I was very young and the snow covered the wires on the Telegraph lines. I really should find some old pictures to show my children.