TubaOrNotTuba

There are many new things to learn each day. For example, I know that ice skates should be sharpened from time to time, and now I’ve learned that snowboards should also have their edge “brought up”. In fact, I saw someone snowboarding for the first time this afternoon. Even though we have a number of boarders in the house, I’ve never had any reason to go to a mountain until this afternoon. To be fair, I was “just” a passenger, but in more than two decades there’s never been any reason to go out to a hill and watch. Here’s what a hill looks like:

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There is a challenge to any cook in using unknown ingredients. Variation in texture, flavour, colour; any or all of the above, for those who seek a multiple choice question in life. My decision to make an impulse purchase has led to the longest soupmaking session of my career in the family kitchen. Pea soup; the ultimate in haute cuisine.

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Let’s begin with a little exaggeration. How about: “This evening I was held prisoner, without food or water, against my will”. No, that raises too many questions. The reality is that I worked through suppertime, without eating, and I would have rather been at home for a birthday, and the doors were locked on the building because we were outside regular hours. There you go, I’ve managed to set a fictional scene and then deflate the whole thing into a heap of banal balloon rubber.

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The day began with a whisper of wind. A swirling of snow, a tapping of bare branches against each other, just enough to promise better times on the way. I checked the road cams before daylight, secure in the knowledge that mercury vapour lamps would show any new accumulations on the various interchanges. After all, with the “snow-dometer” now reading 336.2 cm, we’d never notice any change from the windows of the house.

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My thesaurus is threadbare when it comes to that most useful of descriptive nouns: the gadget. I live in a second language world, so my vocabulary now has terms like gugusse, patente, chose. None very useful to those who don’t live inside the other nation of Canada. Bear with me.

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I’m at a loss about what to answer someone who calls me, at home, at night, to announce that their computer has “caught a virus”. There are so many smart, witty responses that spring to mind. Enough for me to go on tour in the Catskills, if ever I get faith and the need to travel. It’s something that I haven’t heard around the office for ages; we try to keep our software up to date and the problem is one that has been around for decades. I’m actually out of practice.

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Tonight we were a mallcrawler family, out to eat some fast food and lay a few of those new swell loonies on the merchant class. Now, I’m not suggesting that I had any new money, in the sense of greater income or a windfall or a piggy bank that was miraculously found instead of lost. This was just the average “pay is in and it’s time to spend a little bit”.

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Although those immediately concerned had been surveyed for availability and interest, by the time a long day in the trenches of school or office were over, the head count for a birthday supper was down to three. A magical, intimate supper for three. Parents, love your children well.

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It’s Saturday, and I’m at a loss about what to write. Today was a day without detail. I tried; some shopping, some cooking, some delivering food and medication to a sick gas bar employee. Nothing that would interest the world, or bring in a news crew from the major networks with cameras and satellite trucks.

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For the record, even against a much stronger animal, my dog doesn’t “play nicely with others”. As a result, the white wonder is limping this evening; a stress injury that means she won’t be running away any time soon. Take your relief where you can, says the little voice on my shoulder. Anyhow, after a light lunch of spicy clams, we bid farewell, had our faces immortalized digitally and hit the road. A straw vote said to continue our eastward plan and by mid-afternoon we were officially Cape Breton tourists.

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