TubaOrNotTuba

Dorothy said it best. We’re not in Kansas anymore. At least I am not. This was a road trip day and now I am over in the next province in a motel trying to decide whether or not I can do the blog with the sound of the bathroom fan in the background. Probably. The whole trip went without any real measure. I spent the whole time wondering where I was because I could not read any of the signs. There was local radio but they also managed to forget to give the towns names. And so we did the whole afternoon and then arrived in a small town just in time for supper. Mine involved brisket so it was good. I do take measure or issue with the music though this is another one of those areas that has hardwired their souls to Nashville. The music is fine but you could cut the accent with a knife stir it around put it back on the slice of bread and no one would be any of the wiser. I wonder why they do that. I mean, I listen to music from all over the world and Nashville is the only place that puts on a fake accent for every song they do. I’ve taken the time to listen to some local TV. They don’t talk like that. I’ve listened to some radio and they don’t talk like that. It’s only in the musical studio. Do they get paid by the syllable? Oh well, by the time I figured it at all, time to move on to something else. Tomorrow we have some repairs set scheduled on the RV and so given the way things work I will spend the morning here on the free Wi-Fi waiting for the day to finish. No need to go and sit in the garage. Did I notice anything along the way? No, nothing other than the fact that the traffic goes from nothing to heavy just like that. I will probably sleep very well tonight because I was up early and the usual dose of coffee was missing from my diet. One of the downsides of travel.

Being a consumer is really really tough. Not only do we have a myriad of choices but we have an equally large number of people out to take our money. Nothing for something. I watched a national show dealing with ticket sales. Not because I want to buy tickets or have any intention of doing so because I’m always curious. How many ways can you empty someone else’s pocket. And believe me the large companies have it all figured out. We make laws calling them anti trust but in reality if you are there first with a good idea to take someone else’s money, the chances of the law ever stopping you, are low. When the venue and the contracts and the cost of tickets are all set by someone else, you as a consumer can only sit back and hope to watch. That expression Nosebleed seats? It’s real. In the larger venues they will sell you something close to the roof and then let you pretend you saw what was going on down below. Meanwhile down below, those are platinum prices. Let that mean what it will. Certain parts of the world have put into place legislation to protect the buyer but in certain other parts of the world the seller owns the government. Rather obvious when you check on it. No rules are too big to not be broken. You may guess that I am not in the part of the world where going off to a ticket site and spending $1000 for a couple of hours with thousands of others is something that happens often. I am not in the market and it has been reinforced by watching consumer programs. I also learned that sites where you can buy at a bargain cost open box or returned goods, supposedly being sold by large companies are often nothing more than a joke web pages created by companies to sell goods that are inexpensive to produce. Before you drop your money try to get your hands on the object. It’s the weekend forgive me if I seem a little anxious.

How many gadgets do you need in your life? Let me narrow that down. How many gadgets do you need in your kitchen? Let me narrow that down how many gadgets do you need in your refrigerator? Let’s try this one again. If you go out to buy eggs how many do you buy at a time? Unless you run a kitchen the odds that you will buy dozens and dozens at a time is probably very low. For some reason the industry has standardized on a dozen as a great number for the kitchen. Even though after one meal you’ve already reduced that amount to probably half. So let’s imagine you’re trying to store eggs in your refrigerator period. How many eggs do you want to keep around. Probably depends on your diet and your willingness to feed the fox is. Please don’t snicker there are people that feed foxes. And I imagine raccoons without knowing it. Assume that you have a dozen eggs and you buy a container to keep those eggs safe in your refrigerator. The next question is for how long. If you’re treating this smartly you probably never have a dozen eggs on hand for more than one day at a time the number goes down and down until you finally go to the store and buy more. I have never tried to keep hands because that strikes me as way too much work. Although the foxes might like the idea. But assuming you’re in your travel trailer and you have a dozen eggs. What is the first thing you should do? I suggest making an omelet. Reducing the number of eggs so that you can store the rest easily and minimize breakage. For those of you who are unfamiliar raw eggs are messy. And if you decide to hard boil them first then you start trying to decide how you tell which ones are uncooked. I know, there are tricks. I hope they’ve given you some food for thought. If you bring home a dozen eggs start by cooking some because it doesn’t is too many at a time. And what about those stores that will sell you eggs by the unit? That’s just another way of keeping their problem out of your home temporarily.

As we slowly shuffled from room to room we kept our feet close to the floor. A particular dance peculiar to see but necessary in this house because we have radiant floors. And the real question today was whether or not the temperature had dropped inside or out. If we were more scientific we would have thermometers and we do but each one gives a different reading and now all we can do is watch for changes. The invisible comfort of water beneath our feet leaves more questions than answers. Is the system working as it should. We have done this before. Several years ago a circulating pump failed and the only reason we knew was that they were cold spots. Many cold spots. Today we’re not at that decision point. Should we call in the HV AC technicians? Not yet wait until next week. Meanwhile you do realize you’re dealing with older people. We are more fragile. Sensitive to temperature changes. Hence the shuffle in bare feet. Face it there is nothing logical in play right now. Just sensations. At least spring is here and the odds of the house freezing solid are taken off the calculation table. No sense of danger. I feel like getting back under the covers I’m waiting for the afternoon. What is odd about our heating system is that there are places that are warmer than others. Near the counter walls or by the refrigerator. Hard to see why a system being heated from a central system would have such variations. I know, minor variations. A degree or two at a time. Just like the ones shown on our multiple thermometers. We really should do something about that. Set up a system where we can actually know if something has changed. I did go downstairs and touch the heating manifold but it was hot and I’m less sensitive to such things. At least there is no big storm on the way. The risks of living in the north. Meanwhile there’s lots of coffee because we know our priorities.

Do you remember that first aid kit that your mother kept around the house. The one with band aids and that whole spool of salve and just things that you didn’t ever think you use. Well it turns out that for doctors there’s a whole other level. They actually make specialized first aid kits for EMS. Enough equipment to do roadside surgery. I find that so interesting because it is so far outside my level of training. I mean I can apply a Band-Aid with the best of them but please do not ask me to fix your broken leg and stop the bleeding as we sit beside your car. Not going to happen. Call someone else in emergency. What brought this to the front was an ad in a video. I know I should pay for ad free video but I’m too cheap. This was a medical video with inserted ads for things that a doctor might want. Magical. I worked with computers and we had none of those things even though it would have been nice to have. Imagine a little kit with an extra motherboard. Or something to fix a broken hard drive. Or even spare power supply. That would have been helpful where I worked. Instead I had an inventory of parts from old machines. I wish I could include a photo because my cubicle was filled to the level of my shoulders. I would arrive in the morning insert myself into my chair and then hope that nothing fell on me during the work day. In a better world we would have had a storage space for such things but we didn’t so when something was no longer of primary use it went to the secondary storage under my desk. I could probably have made a working machine with that pile of parts but I never did. Budgets were good and if we needed something there was a number you could call and the courier would drop it off at the front door. However unlike people who sell me appliances in my home those delivery people never took away the old stuff. It just accumulated until someday on a spring afternoon I would be told to move what I could out to the back door to go to I assume a landfill. Not the best model for the environment but you do what you do. That’s why knowing the doctors can have specialized first aid kits is inspiring. Someone is actually thinking outside the box on this one. Just for the record I cannot afford to buy one of those kits. You have to have a salary at a doctor’s level. But if I ever make a movie I will try to get one of those in the background shots at least. And with that I’m going to turn this back to a text in waiting. The way I handle most days.

The national news gave me a message that I hardly expected. We have children coming to school hungry in Canada. You may believe that we are rich compared to other parts of the world but there are still some corners of our life that are shaded. Here’s the thing. The government has just promised maybe a billion dollars to feed children in the morning before classes. Not all children. Those in need. Our failure is much larger than I expected. Or as politicians would say what’s a billion dollars form a good cause. I was unaware of student hunger when I was growing up. If you came to school without having breakfast that was your fault. Fussy or finicky as my mother would say. End it all would even out by the next day when you would have eaten enough food to fill that hollow in your stomach. We did not consider student hunger as an issue. So what happened along the way? I am unsure. I will make a guess that schedules for parents have become too tight. Get the kids out the doors before you go to work. And if they are fussy that is their problem. You’re not going to follow them down the sidewalk with a jelly sandwich. From the news report I learned that going to school hungry is a true issue. You do not learn well on an empty stomach. I have no idea how I made it through university because going for breakfast was just too much effort. Maybe I would have been a better student. That the government is willing to put their money where our mouths are is promising. And if the school is going to set aside the time before classes for people to actually sit down and eat that shows that we have some idea of how this whole thing works. Did I have breakfast this morning? Yes actually but I’m old, I know that with breakfast I can go all the way to supper. And I have no classes to worry about. My own children? I do not know because I would be always out the door to catch my bus before they left to catch their bus. Tightening schedules. In the old days there was porridge and if it didn’t stick to your belly it stuck to the pot. Or you had cereal in boxes. In fact some years most of the available space in the cupboard was taken up by half full cereal boxes. Lots of choice. I should ask my kids if they remember going to school hungry because maybe they do but they’ve never mentioned it in the decades since. Things even out by supper time. And I noticed that most of the news broadcast mentioned the city we’re all bad things seem to happen. World hunger is a big issue hunger before lunchtime less so. But what do I know. We did not do life that way.

This is where I throw in a hint that I am not too old to dream. Not referring to what goes on at night when I should be asleep. This is more where will I go when I travel. According to the calendar we could actually leave home sometime in the next month. And in anticipation we have been watching videos to see where we might like to go. Something within a few hours travel of here. Getting close to when I can say: Oh yes next week we’re going to that place. There are so many places to go. All of them require a bit of effort but I have the time so why not. I just need to make sure that I get my eye drops replaced and find a water bottle and make sure that I pack a charger for the iPad. Details right? Actually if things go according to plan we might make it back to Newfoundland for the first time in decades. I doubt that things have changed radically because that’s not the way that place works but we will travel with different intentions. Us in an RV as opposed to us in a car. It will change where we put up each night. And where we eat probably. I understand the RV is equipped to cook. Well rather equipped for someone else to cook. I am a passenger. But I can eat a hamburger with the best of them. If we find ourselves down by a shore we can simply pull out something from the fridge and get a meal on the table in short order. Will we? Yes this time around I think so we could be back before any of the family comes for the summer. Months to go before the beach. There are some minor preparations scheduled before that point but they are scheduled. Keep an eye on me because I might not always be right here. I am free to move. And if you want to send me a postcard from where you have been go ahead.

At some point I was told that the whole point of having time zones was to get rid of confusion. Back when the trains first started to run, noon happened at a different time in each town. And so the scientific world got together and figured out how to make times that made if you will sense. How quickly we forget. I have for the last two hours been trying to watch an eclipse via television. At the same time I am aware of the light changes outside. But what I’ve learned from watching CBC is that they have no hesitation in changing the times they talk about. A mishmash of clips taken days ago mixed with live cameras mixed with forecasts and nothing else that will allow me to synchronize what I was hearing with what I was seeing. As near as I can tell we have moved past the eclipse. It is now safe for me to go back outside etc. While I was out I listened and watched and I notice only that it was dark for awhile. Not dark, dark but you know. They feed different segments to try to give the idea that they are actually covering the subject. For someone like myself, I have to assume the times they mention cannot allow me to anticipate the arrival of the event. And so, I gave up on the TV coverage and went back to what I could base upon my own senses. I could not see the eclipse but could feel the cold and see the light go down. 

I do not want to say that any given system is broken. However, in Canada getting a family doctor is akin to winning the lottery. Not a large lottery but nevertheless. When we move back it took us several years to actually get on someones list. Gave us a chance to avoid those horrible systems or you end up at the doctor’s office to scramble for the openings that are there just that day. We survived. And yesterday son #3 announced that he had finally got a family doctor. Like us he had to wait about a decade. It is fortunate that we are all in reasonably good health. For someone wanting to come to this country be aware that we may have free medicine but you may never get to see a doctor on your own terms. At least not in your lifetime. Do not despair we’re getting a new medical system a new medical facility a new Medical College if you will. We have been told that there will soon be a school for doctors here in the province. I have not yet figured out what that will actually mean for people living here because when you’re a doctor you can go where you want. You can follow the money as many of them do. And yes it’s a wonderful thing to imagine a medical school with doctors coming out the indoor and the outdoor overflowing into the streets but somehow I do not think that is what will happen. Like everything else that the government gets involved in, there will be strict ratios and strict accountability. But back to the current case my son now has a family doctor and that is worth celebrating. He’s one of the fortunate because roughly a quarter of the population of this province is still on a waiting list. And no he does not live in this province but the same rules apply. I went outside this afternoon into the backyard and what I can tell you is that this time of year the wind is still very chilled. Also someone sighted a beaver in their driveway yesterday not me but it does make me wonder period. Was this critter seriously lost. Just going to add it to our list of wild animals seen around the yard.

I enjoy watching sports period. Not the traditional ones. Watching a hockey game leaves me a little bemused. No I found something even better. Give and take a political rhetoric. And we have lots to watch. Multiple channels in a worldwide wreck network if you will. Right now I’m watching four simultaneous court trials. Or at least the lead up to those trials yeah some may never happen. And what I notice is that with the right rhetoric even something I can only watch from a distance becomes more interesting. I was unaware before this just how much posturing went into any given situation. And I’ve tried different levels. From the mundane traffic court cases that are out there. All the way up through constitutional debate. For those involved at the bench level these are serious battles. For those of us watching from our living room, not so much. We can walk away at any point knowing that there will be a new battle tomorrow. Just like sports and TV I guess. I mean, do we really need hundreds and hundreds of hockey games to get us through the long winter in Canada. Unlike those hockey games some of the political battles may actually affect my life at some distant point. Language is a tool. Some of the people involved in the discussion of these court cases have a wit that is sharp edged. Not too much blood drawn yet but one can hope. As for those hockey games well they’ll be around. People make careers out of those. I actually have to admit that I have not been to a proper hockey game in decades. The seats were not that comfortable. Here in my living room I have an excellent couch and it fits me.