TubaOrNotTuba

I am in a bit of a quandary. I think that I’ve run out of eggs. Not that I was looking for them but I may be out. And from what I learned on the news there is an issue. Eggs are rising in price. Perhaps not here i haven’t checked. But south of the border they have an issue so much so that the president has tried to address it. Not fix it. Address it. Here’s the thing if I was to decide to just raise my own eggs it is more difficult than I remembered. You first have to get some hands and teach them how to lay eggs I guess. And then you must collect those eggs on a regular basis and figure out how to tell whether or not the egg’s gone bad without opening it. As for getting those hands that is also an issue. From what I learned there is something called avian flu. And when you’re collecting your eggs you could catch that flu. For that reason they do not recommend that you start your own flock. At least without learning a whole lot more about being an egg farmer. And so I will hold off. I will wait until the president figures how to lower the price of eggs which he does not seem to have mastered yet. And then once the price of eggs goes down I will hope that we follow suit up here in Canada. Those trends follow one another. I certainly do not want to be subject to another sort of influenza. Hence I will abstain from raising any hens in the basement or the backyard. Can you buy eggs that are frozen? I had really never considered that possibility. You can buy almost everything else in the frozen food section so why would eggs be any different. Without fresh eggs I will have to for goal making cake or baking cake. Too much risk of burning my hands. I had forgotten just how dangerous life can be. Title getting eggs

Like most people I am a member of an extended family. And this month has seen a large change in my position. My undefined job. Back when I was still in my single digits two of my ancestors left. As you might guess I did not get much preparation for what that job entailed. And now this month I have become a grandparent. Twice. I have no idea what that will entail going forward. I will be learning this new job. A lot of responsibility. I will have to wait and see what my job role will be. I do offer my congratulations to both families. I do ask them to grant me one of those blanket pardons for what I do not do well. It comes from that idea that we really should prepare better for things that will happen to us in life. Meanwhile I extend my hand to welcome the new members of the family. And now I find myself with little to add. I am on the cusp of a new step in my life. Ill prepared but willing to learn. Maybe I should go and learn some new songs to go with my job. Something that qualifies as a lullaby in several languages. There must be a few. Outside I think that I hear voices but that is probably my imagination. Too cold for anyone be walking around on the front lawn. Yes we have a minimum of snow cover and the temperature is right where it is supposed to be at this time of year. Much colder then one would want under other circumstances. I will probably not have to travel anytime soon so I can just enjoy that new delivery of coffee beans. We cut that one a bit close. Getting down into the capsules that we keep in the van. And I have a number of varieties of fresh fruit in the fridge. Maintaining my levels of vitamins period. At least I think that’s what they do. We did not learn much about nutrition back in the good old days.

One of my preferred quotes from a movie would have to be that one that is spoken in a fever dream. Specifically there is no place like home. How true is that? I am not ready to cross any border soon. I am waiting for the dust to settle. Or snow. The people next door are crazy. Do your own research. I do listen to the news and I do read and I realized that for the next little while the dust is going to stay up and it is going to mask reality. Instead I prefer to simply look outside and watch the birds and the trees. Today the snow plow came. I am unsure of what actually triggers his visit. It is not like we have a lot of new snow. But I guess he knows better than me. If you leave it lie it will get hard to move. Call it seasonal icing. And until we move into warmer times. No reason to head off and explore new territory. I had a good year last year. By my calculations, we spent better than 35 days out there. Away from home. Depending upon regular refueling to keep the van heading along the road. And no we never ran out because we have a view of travel that is if you will conservative. No pushing our limits. Who knows? Next year might be completely different hello I somehow doubt that. I have only a short list of where I would like to go and what I would like to see. Most of it is within a day of my driveway. Not going to see the world with that sort of restriction. I guess I am now relying upon others. Waiting for visitors to bring me stories from beyond my home. Just like it was in the Middle Ages. As you can guess I am not likely to go to the airport and expand my travel. Never developped that expensive habit. What about you? Are you someone who is apt to travel just for the sake of it? What have you seen that I might find amazing?

Back in high school I was amazed that our classroom have a piano. It seemed so large and overly impressive. And then I got to university and that was a truly different world. We had rooms with pianos in them for practice. We had classrooms with pianos in them. And the members of the faculty had a whole house. One of those older city homes that had once been a mansion and that had changed role. It had some huge pianos with wonderful tone. And the director of the department even had an pipe organ in his office. Nothing overly large like you were finding at church but rather something that could be loaded in the back of a large truck and moved if ever needed. Of course it wasn’t. This was his toy. I still regret they never had a chance to try it out but that wasn’t my place. In fact the music faculty had a lot of assets that would be out of place in any other place. I think of my tuba which wasn’t really mine but I was the only user. I had a locked cupboard to send it away outside of class time and I think I had the only key because who else wants access to a tuba. As for smaller instruments we were at a level where the good stuff belonged to individuals. No more having to go to a wall rack and choose your weapon of the day excuse me I mean clarinet of the day or trumpet. If you were there you came with your own toys. Unless it was a tuba. I had to pay an annual rent for that. Something over the top like $15. I missed that time in my life where I had no other responsibilities except to make noise. That’s what people in the percussion department do according to those clarinet players. And as far as I know the really good assets are still in place a lifetime later. Most places do not have the money to buy new pipe organs at a whim. Even the tuba as I remember actually belong to the federal government. The military. They are the only ones with too much money in their budgets and buying a tuba was just something to do.

Thanks to satellite technology I have consistent Internet. Starlink. And along with consistent Internet I am able to fall down rabbit holes. Not hunting rabbits of course. Instead I have learned that I can watch old television drama from before my birth. As I said earlier a true time machine. The programs tend to follow a formula. But when you get that fact aside you have a chance to see what the world was like back in the good old days. Today I ended up in downtown San Francisco. A place where a policeman can hear an address and know exactly where it might be. A place where people always had a pocket full of change in case they need to call those police honest pay phone. No cells in those days. And when the police were called they showed up rapidly and in large numbers. The detective always had the right question which he would use rapidly to master whatever the situation. You hear that there are two men and leather jackets and within minutes you find them. A magical time really. Or was it just that rabbit hole. I have learned that when someone is shot they always die unless they don’t. I have learned that the Street car never runs into the badly parked police cars. Again almost magical. And I have learned that back in the days following the war almost everyone had done military service. So many men train to shoot a pistol accurately and to always come away without being hurt themselves. Soldiers of good fortune. I intend to explore other cities because this seems that the majority of cities also had police shows. Cheap advertising. And once you learn your way around the city it becomes home. Hardly I have not yet found a place that I have actually lived. It might be that there were no police in those places. Or that I haven’t found the right rabbit hole yet. I will continue to seek. Lots of time on my hands and high speed Internet.

Without a time machine I will not be going back to high school. However I can still call up memories. Late this afternoon when I watched an old episode of the Partridge family. One that went to air while I was still at my high school. It actually was better than I expected. Except for the music that did not age well. And the liner notes told me that a number of the principle actors are no longer around. That will make you feel old in a hurry. But I give credit to those who put together a program that we watched religiously. It was one of the safe zones. We knew the people involved and curiously we could imagine ourselves in an existence where the family owned a school bus. Believe me most did not. Even the hairstyles have held up well although it’s more than likely that they’ve come around again and again. Reading the comments section is better than the program itself. A lot of us watched that program and so going back gave me and so many others a chance to turn back the clock if only for 20 minutes at a time. I will not be seeking out other episodes soon. I do not want to spoil that little bit of dessert. And knowing that more and more I can watch old programs releases me from having to try and remember what the plot line was. Actually most of the plot lines were very simple. Something to allow advertising to come into our homes. And as for the fashions? Sadly I have none of those old clothes around. Perhaps I outgrew them. But it does distract one for an half hour at a time to try and put ourselves in a world that no longer exists. Because I was on one of those afternoons of watching old content I also went back to check out some of the programs that were big when I was in elementary school. The days when we had shows about tiny men that we attached to a handkerchief (parachute) and threw them up in the air until they got caught on the telephone lines. Not going to name the program but you can pick it out for yourself just.. a Google adventure. 

Over the years we have developed a very careful coffee dance. That refers to our routine of buying a large amount of unground coffee which we store in the freezer and then we go through until there is none left. As the bin on the grinder is filled for what seems like a final time we start making calls to our supplier who lives about twelve hours away by car. Too far to go for a random pickup. And so we place our order by telephone and a few days later a large box is droppe, shipped by the postals people. At that point our only task is to get it inside before the weather covers it up. We do a very good job. Now this time around we had decided that we would go to the source and pick it up during a road trip but that trip has not got a start date for good reasons . With that we made an early morning call to the supplier. And of course we ignored the change in time zone. No real matter we were not that early. But from here until the arrival of our box I will be cutting back on my daily number of cups of coffee. Probably better for me would say some. Now in the good old days my grandparents would buy a large can that would keep them going for who knows how long. My parents were more in favor of bags of tea and those you keep around indefinitely. It was only when I was a fully grown adult in the workplace that I developed my own need for Java. Went so far as to name one of our dogs. And over the years I have tried a number of different techniques. Right now we have gone full tilt machine. It grinds and it showers and comes online when I need it most. Almost magical. I cannot picture a life where the only excess is taken away and that would be easy to do. Just run out of coffee and have the supplier stop answering the phone. That would be painful.

Who makes your furniture? Or a better question who made your furniture? If you are fortunate you live in a home where the materials of the furniture in your home meant to last. I have pieces of furniture that are not as old as me but getting there. In sharp contrast I remember my first couch. A gift from a friend. Made from foam covered in fabric. You could literally lift the whole thing with one hand. Of course that couch did not last and returned to the street because I imagined that is where it came from. Something abandoned by someone who is in the process of moving out of their apartment. In fact I remember when we used to make the rounds. Checking out the street corners after the annual moving day to see what treasures had made it to the curb. Today I watched a video about the changing furniture industry. There was a time when furniture was made by craftsmen. The largest problem with good furniture is that it is heavy. In our modern world where stores go in and out of business, I noticed that the best furniture stores in my town offered to deliver the products they sold. Few people have delivery trucks in their driveway. The industry for many has moved to something called flat pack where a pile of cheap pieces are placed in a cardboard box and sent to you to be put together. Looking at you IKEA. Unless you are very careful you will not be keeping that IKEA table for any more than a few years. Designed to be used and thrown away. If someone asked me should you go into the furniture industry and learn to do it properly I would have to say no. Very few people have the time or the money to do the job properly. I think the next time I go into a furniture store I am going to look more than once at what was involved in the manufacture. Something assures me that MDF will not be a major selling point.

If you have a quiet afternoon might I suggest trying to do a timeline of your life. When you are 20 the job is simple. Other than the obvious distractions of life you can get it done in that afternoon. With very few gaps I hope. Fast forward another half century and the task becomes more complex. Also the lines start to overlap. When I was 20 I believed that 50 years was a long time. Fast forward 1/2 century and the task becomes more complex. The details start to fade and blur. In fact all I can really say is that by 70 I am still alive. Things are still going on despite my best efforts to move to the sidelines. Why was I not told this earlier? Of course you can blame it on those around me. My grandparents were probably still alive and they were not going with the idea that death was imminent. My parents were still going strong after them and death was not imminent. For me at 20, the road seemed to be endless. I intend to keep trying to get the details in the right order even if nobody else really cares. This is my task and this is my timeline. You do yours. As I look outside with the rain falling and the amount of snow on the ground equivalent to what I would have seen on the first day of winter back then I have to assume that I cannot predict with certainty anything. All I can do is to make sure I get the details down while I still remember them. Otherwise the timeline becomes a work of fiction. With underlying facts of course but still completely uncertain. Again I suggest that you do your timeline while you still have control over the narrative. That way when they decide to make a full feature film about your life the details will be constant and nobody can argue about who you were or what you stood for. Just a thought. What I would like to know is whether or not animals go through the same process. Is each day for a dog just an endless search for treats. And yes I have asked and I received no answer. Dogs failed to share the details.

I admit it. I have never really considered what happens to foodstuffs that are considered to be surplus. Past date if you will. Almost everything in the modern supermarket has the best before date. When that date is reached someone on staff is given the task of disposing of the food stuffs. We can think of the easy ones. A banana that has gone black. Bread that has to be reduced in sale price. And meat I guess. But almost everything else in the fruit stuff produce section or anything else that comes with a date must be handled with care. This morning I watched a news story about how a food bank handles the surplus they receive. That is one way that stores have found to get rid of their problem of what to do with the leftovers. In this case tons of avocados that were judged to be just a bit too small to sell. The staff had a great idea. They found a source of chips and then they offered their clients a recipe to make guacamole. Nothing wasted and nothing gained except perhaps some new clients for the chips. I have no idea what that means in terms of quantity but the article did mention that they had tons of fruit that needed to be disposed of. Someone swallows the cost. Probably less than we think because the whole idea of retail is to pay less for what you get and receive more for what you sell. Even avocados. Take a few moments to think about the different quantities that the average supermarket has to handle on a daily basis. A certain amount goes to waste. There is probably someone on staff whose task is to reduce waste to an acceptable level. Nothing is wasted if you can find someone else to take your product. Even at a perceived loss. For the store they just write that back into their financials and for those that frequent the food bank they may get a better quality meal then that box of dried pasta.