Spectator sports and little variety
Canadian autumn. That wonderful season where the grass grows slowly, the trees are in full bloom, the light is changing and every sport possible is on TV, all at the same time. Not just TV; out and about, you can find a place to spectate without any real effort. Baseball, hockey, soccer, football – I haven’t missed any, since golf isn’t exactly in the same mindspace. We’ve even got a huge tennis championship underway in the city.
That’s not important, though. Son #1 went to watch a championship ball game last night, and that’s one thing I would never have forced him to do. All of his own accord. Son #3 has the corner on martial arts right now, and if I offered him a sword he’d be a dangerous person for all and sundry. Son #2… I’m not really sure. Too old for tooling around on a bicycle and too poor to own a car. I guess running for the bus counts as an organized recreational activity.
I convinced son #3 to come grocery shopping this afternoon. Lately, there’s been an undertone that the menu is monotonous around the family restaurant. My retort should be that keeping the prices fixed has a dampering effect, but instead I thought he should see for himself that we really don’t have that many options available in our local markets. How many kinds of canned peas do you need?
Even the meat counter comes down to a certain subset. From left to right: sausages, chicken, hamburger, beef steak, pork chops and some veal that costs more than you want to know. Oh, and the fish counter, where the fillets are uniformly packaged and the scallops are frozen. Not much going on there.
