TubaOrNotTuba

Finally. Even though the snowfall was light, hardly an impediment to transport, minds better placed than mine decided that it was time to take a break. By 06h05, the school board website had a notice up, I’d received my phone call as part of a chain, and there was a directed email. Our presence would not be required in the office. To be fair, snow continued to fall during the dy, and without taking a a trip on the open highway, I can’t speak to the potential for danger. I did use the time well, managing to complete the week’s efforts in the two online courses. And now, with the day closing, I am ready for the usual relaxation of the weekend.

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Every once in a while, I have a moment of fortuitous something. Call it what you will; my leaving for work at the scheduled time saved me hours. The snow storm that the Environment Canada people “forgot to tell the mayor about”, although nothing more than some fine powder, brought this city to its knees. So much for “Nordicity”. Hills that couldn’t be climbed. Cars that couldn’t get out (or cars that could). The roads were a mess, and in some cases a trip across the city turning into hours of challenge. My own bus had a seven minute delay. Yes, I noticed.

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In popular culture, hell is hot. Permit me to present an alternative take on things.

Public transit relies on two important parties; on the one side, the rider. On the other side, the bus. Do whatever it takes, but get the bus to the rider, at the appointed time, and take her where she wants to go. Otherwise, it’s all for naught. On Thursday, my bus didn’t come by. I waited thirty-five in -35, and then I took an alternate route. I called client service, and they were polite. Nothing more. Pass by Friday. Pass by a weekend. Start another week, and the same bus did not come by. Similar MO.

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With a good coffee beside me, and YouTube open; time to play a bit of “six degrees” and see where we end up. Here we go.

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It’s dark, and it’s cold, and I wonder if I could repurpose the beast. Not likely. It doesn’t blow, and I have to provide the push. My lawnmower. Time to bring it inside and keep it (out of sight, out of mind) through the upcoming winter. I’d suggested the task to someone else; he misunderstood, thinking I wanted it to do a final tour of the property under a drizzle. No. The grass will die, and next spring we’ll chop it into something similar to fertilizer.

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Hat’s off to the designers of our current car. Today, in a rare test of load capacity, we were five adults and a dog, on the road for about four hours. The car nver bottomed out, or protested on the hills, or ran out of gas at an inopportune moment. Go, Rogue go.

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The stressful part of the day is finally over. Now I just have to decide which part of the day gave the most. Was it the hours of travel through qusi darkness on road that might have been filled with romping deer? Or was it the hours of meeting total strangers at a stressful moment in anyone’s life? I’m perhaps reacting to a combo.

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The long summer stretch is over. What with Jake locked in a container, some of us were getting a little worried. I mean, one of those big boxes looks pretty much like another, and there’s a lot of country beyond the Rock. But all is good. After his release from that Mexican prison…

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Back in the summer of ’67, we learned a song. I can still remember most of the lyrics, and one line in particular has stayed with me. “Now we are twenty million”. An easy way to teach population statistics to a generation. A benchmark. Today, CBC passed along the news (no song this time), that “we are thirty-five million”. A little less rhythmic, and a lot more neigbours. Nobody went north; we just packed the people closer together in the downtown core.

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Finally got around to testing software on the set of photos I took last summer. To my surprise, even a 360 “in the round” picture doesn’t match standing there in the breeze. Technology. I’m going to post a simple panorama shot, just as a proof of concept.

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