TubaOrNotTuba

If your preferred recreational activities include packing suitcases or playing Tetris I have a variation to suggest. Go shopping for a better RV. The models change on a regular basis as to the floor plans and the goal of the manufacturers is to cram as much stuff into a defined space as they possibly can. All in making sure a person can walk from the front to the back and can get into bed usually. I think it would be great fun to have the sort of access to all the data you need to plan. And also knowing the dimensions and availability of all those features. Come on there must be some sort of mind that goes into this industry because they like to pack things. The space is defined by the vehicle but the dreams belong to the customers. If you can make something efficient and cosmetic Lee attractive you might be destined for a career in this field. I have no idea how many designers are required to put the average RV into shape, given that the shape is a rectangle. It really is a grid for those who like to arrange things. In fact some companies will actually allow you to change the layout after you buy the vehicle. I think you get a screwdriver and a couple of wrenches and an invitation to make your rig better than the one beside it. Not sure how this fits into the idea of warranty though. Let’s face it you can easily break stuff. And you cannot put certain components next to others although the companies try. You do not want your electric stove to live in a wet sink. Just just an observation. As for the windows they often seem to be an afterthought. As if someone said well we really should put some windows in just in case. In fact I have seen windows labeled carefully as escape routes which gave me great pause. I am not sure I want to dive out through a window into a parking lot although if everything was in flames around me I would probably go ahead. Remember, those windows are small for a reason. But back to the RV reviews that are out there. Some people have a knack for explaining what’s going on, not everyone. I have seen some reviewers that need to go back to school wherever that might be. We are on our second model and nothing is ideal but we do get a good night of sleep anytime we park up and rolled down the blinds.

We do what we can to be prepared for the next season. The tires have been swapped. That odd bench has been moved out of the path of any tractor coming in to blow the lane free. I have found the shovels. And I went to bed at a reasonable hour. On the newest broadcast the question had been reached that we could have children at home tomorrow. Not us but others. And then, overnight, it rained. We’re back to exactly the same state we were in the last month gray and soggy. It has been a very long autumn and even though the calendar shows that we still have a month to run before winter starting we are waiting. As you do when you’re living this part of the world. Laying on the beach would be a silly thing to do right now. At least the lawn will not need to be mown for another few months. Something to do with cold because we still have lots of rain. I watched the weather from elsewhere on the continent and they’re not getting nearly as clement as ours. When I hear of waist deep snow in the Rockies I cannot imagine what that must be like. We haven’t had waist deep snow since I was a small child. I’ve mentioned before that sea ice is also just a memory. Not that long ago that we would have already been preparing for the seals. Again not us but people around here. Now it’s just wet walking. Does it matter in the long run? Not too much. The tires will still run on a wet roads. Even if there is no accumulated precipitation. It could be worse. We could have flash flooding well that too is unlikely since we have no hills or valleys. I am, proudly, a flatlander. Eventually I should find some photographs from the good old days to show people what it was like back when winter was something to be reckoned with rather than something to be remembered. I am all for climate change but the good old days seem like such fun. Just yesterday I saw a video of someone throwing a snowball. In Ireland. I did not even know that winter was a thing there but I guess I was wrong.

While listening to the news I became aware that the world is not always as we assume it should be. Right now there is a huge music concert tour going on in Canada. Tickets are sold out almost everywhere. Except it would seem in the minds of the promoters. A new batch of tickets has been printed with a careful warning to the buyer. These tickets provide no view of the concert. Are you think about that for a moment. You have turned a really expensive experience into one that could be easily duplicated with a set of headphones and your local stereo. Unless you were there purely for the pleasure of making your way through an unruly crowd this one makes no sense. And the news story was quick to point that out. This concert or these concerts are not meant for everyone. You must really want to get rid of your money to spend it on a ticket for a show you will never see. I cannot imagine that this would have ever gone over a lifetime ago. There were scams even then but none of the idea that you can sell someone nothing in return for something. Come on in, take a seat, look to where the stage is behind that wall. Almost heartbreaking. To think that there are people in the business that have only money on their mind. Yes, I know, that is always been that way but hardly with the level of all the money belongs to us that promoters now demonstrate. I can imagine that the tickets will be a great souvenir of the experience. Nothing for nothing. Perhaps you can take your ticket, buy a fancy frame mount it on the main wall in your house and say that you almost went to a concert. The artist is not at fault. This whole scenario belongs to the promoters. In fact the artist might not even be aware because there is a strong divide behind how tickets are sold. I have managed to go through life without ever overspending for my entertainment. I have no intention of starting at this point. Besides, that artist already came to the island and I did not go then either.

What if I had taken a different career path. As far as I can remember I was being shown jobs done by other people. My grand-father showed me how to plant turnips and I actually considered that idea later in life. Buy a piece of land, thousands of tiny holes in the dirt, put a seed in which one and wait to become rich. Obviously I did not go down that road. Then there was the thought of becoming a locomotive engineer. All good until I realized that I would have to learn to sign my name in that big book and I did not know how to sign my name and so I put that career aside. I briefly considered being a painter not of houses but of great tapestries. However I had never seen the tapestry and I was colour-blind or at least I was learned later to be colour-blind in the beginning it was just life. My green was my green. As you can see those potential career paths slip away. Or we take a different direction at the next corner. When you are young there are so many corners. I have been watching advertisements on TV talking about starting another career. No I have no plans in that direction but what if I had wanted to be a doctor. As they used to say in the clamp it’s becoming a brain surgeon. I mean I knew sort of where the brain was and I could guess what surgery might be. It would all be good until I removed someones brain and ended their career paths. Because that is the other part. This is all much more complex then we make it out to be in the classroom. Referring here to school classrooms I cannot answer to the later part of life when you make it to university. What I really should have done starting in an early age was writing a book. It didn’t matter which book but I had great familiarity with that one about Dick and Jane and Spot. I can handle sentences of ten words and usually get the words in the right order. I rather suspect that being an author is like that getting the words in the right order. 

Was that 33 or 34. I get distracted trying to count the holes being punched in my eye by laser. A medical treatment (a capsulotomy) but still to me something very much from the annals of science fiction. They are doing what to your eye? I suppose it could be a scalpel with a fine knife. I’ve learned to remain calm and hold tight to the handles on the frame while the doctor does the thing. That is the other part. There is a name for the operation but I hardly ever have the chance to learn it before the operation is over. Something to look up later when I’m bored. Today things went well. A slight improvement. I have gone from vision that resembled pencil strokes to something a little sharper along the edges and for me that is a good thing. Our trip to town was in the rain going and coming. We also had a passenger coming home which changed the tone of the conversation. I could have stayed in town and gone shopping I suppose although I don’t do that much by choice. Not being able to see the price tags is really distracting for all involved. I also had to buy new sunglasses after I conveniently sat on the older pair. Not something I planned to do but stuff happens. I even have all the pieces so we can try to trade them in for a newer copy the next time we’re in the area. Meanwhile I will accept the newer pair and tell myself that they are more fashionable. Apparently the old pair made me look blind. How did I break them exactly? Well when we were getting in the car I folded them up and put them into a side pocket and then sat on that pocket. Could not have planned it better if I wanted to. And now I’m back home ready to try my newest round of eye drops. That’s the other part of seeing the doctor. New medications alloy think these ones will be for a shorter period of time. I have dripped a lot of drops in my eyes over 20 years. All of them remain without consequence in the end.

What can we do about politicians that fail basic math? Can we simply fire them? Do we have to wait for the next election? Right now our provincial premier is lamenting. He feels wronged by the federal government because they forgot to tell him that they were making a change in taxation. By his calculation that will cost the province a certain number of $1,000,000. The acting actual amount is still unclear. One day earlier he told us that the province had invested in some extra visibility. He had bought some advertising. Without having read the fine print obviously. As a taxpayer I can count can I see how bad this can get to me because not only are we losing money on advertising that is worthless but we are lamenting taxation over which we have no control. Harmony belongs in music not calculation of taxes. But I digress. This may become a boondoggle. One of those situations where the province spends more money than it will ever have. In fact I recall from my history lessons that we did something similar when we bought a railroad. Again I digress. That railroad is gone too just like the tax dollars. Our premier might be a wonderful man but he fails to add up the numbers before making decisions. If they were his dollars that would be one thing but these are public dollars. In a province where the population is constrained by the amount of real estate available. Something about that ocean all around us. I cannot wait to see how this plays out in the court of public opinion. Eventually there will be an election held and if we are fortunate the voters will be able to do some basic math before they put their ex on the spot. Just thinking ahead period. Something our politicians failed to do all too often skills.

If you’re like me you sometimes test old expressions to see whether or not they still apply. Here is 1. I will cross that bridge when I come to it. From where I am that makes sense. We use the bridge to get to the outside world. But where did the expression come from? What allowed this term to be coined into popular vernacular. Where bridge is that rare? I somehow doubt that. Mankind has always needed to cross a body of water in one way or another. Boats are not always the best way. But back to that bridge thing. I have really come to a bridge that I was hesitant to cross. Except, perhaps, when I was on a bicycle. There is something really unsettling about keeping your balance when you do not know what is on the edges of your vision. Just a thought. I have crossed some large bridges along the way in different places and each time I made it from this side to that side without any danger or incident. That was probably new to my bicycle which followed my need to go in a particular direction. Not side to side but straight ahead. That might be where the expression comes from. We all come to hazards that we need to get across. And since we cannot always It could be the fault of that nursery rhyme that mentions about a bridge that falls down . Again more research required . What bridge was it and what were the circumstances ? Was anyone injured ? If you treat things like a moment for a news reporter they somehow become less stressful . You are in control of the report . And the bridge . Even when you have not yet crossed over.

Last night the car was in the garage. Our garage. I use the because we only have one car and one garage. A pedantic point I suppose. Anyhow I heard the adventure being recounted to a friend and I learned that our car was in the bat cave. We have no bats that I know of not even one for baseball. But it means that the car has probably become the Batmobile. And by extrapolation she who drives must think of herself as Batwoman. I think you can see how this is getting more complex as we go. Anyhow we learned that the car leaves no fumes behind when it goes out. Something about that hybrid status that we pay no attention to until something like this is presented as one of the reasons why we went to a big batter in the bottom. We do not have an electric car. Neither does batman as far as I know. The garage has been there for 10 years and it has been used until quite recently as necessary storage space. For all items not permitted in the house. This summer a decision was made to window our holdings. We lost a lot of junk along the way i think. And now we’re getting set for the new adventure of parking inside for the winter. No need just yet because we have not been given our baptism of snow but that too will happen soon. In fact the tires should be swapped this week. Something that will definitely set off the snow must fall now system. It is strange to open the garage door and see a car inside. Quite novel. Even bringing in the groceries meant we had to try new ways of doing things. This is proof that life evolves I guess. Meanwhile I watched a video of some poor guy walking along the road. Apparently he tries to do 20 miles or more a day and all I could think is that at some point he is going to learn that mankind has developed better ways of getting from point A to point B. Bicycles, cars, trains, airplanes. No need to wear holes in your socks to get from here to there. My father used to know how to darn socks which is one of those skills that probably served him well back in the days of living in the country without a car.

If you are employed by a firm that has proper hiring practices, be thankful. Not everyone has that as part of their life. I was fortunate in that most of my working career was spent in a world where there were rules. But, it was not always that straightforward. I remember going for a job interview early on a teaching job. I knew my material they needed my skill set and I really believed that I was going to get the job especially when the interviewer told me that I was going to get the job. Until a couple of days later when I received a call from a secretary that they had decided to go with another candidate. Again part of life. Except that I learned that this successful candidate was married to the person doing the interview and had lost their job and this was seen as a way of levelling up the family budget. I was an outsider and I had no recourse. I might now but those were different times and so I carried on looking for work and with that I took the realization into my heart that sometimes the table is not in your favour. Do not go and spend that pay-check before you actually receive it. No I did not but the temptation would have been strong. A good interview and being told the job was yours. Those are all seen as positive signs. Add no part of the interview was I told that there will be another candidate who would be chosen because of being married to the interviewer. No sense in naming names because it was a very long time ago but I hope they know that they were wrong. When you interview someone be straightforward and let them know if the table is weighted against them. Just humanity. And after that I carried on and my career took a turn for the better and I managed to put in several decades with that same employer. Got my pension and if I had taken the original job that was never an offer. I know this is rationalization but I think I won in this case.

Time to retire to a happy place. I cannot invite my children because they will not know what I am talking about but my siblings may remember. The awesome world of penny candy. Found in every small corner store. A variety that defies description. And with it the way we paid for our rations. We collected empty pop bottles. Another part of the economy that my children may not realize was important. If you roamed the ditch, which we did you might come across an abandoned bottle that could then be traded at the local corner store for a small brown paper bag filled with goodness. Of the sugary kind. I know there are still stores that sell penny candy perhaps one or two per country. A place where you can go to buy things that as I said defy description. How to tell someone else about the red hot or the licorice pipe or the coloured peppermints. Pale pink and pale green. All the same taste. We would learn which store gave the best return on our investment. At the top of the list would be a store that would give you a whole small bag in return for two bottles. I think it had to do with the way that people would go out with their friends buy a couple of pops and then throw the bottle away not realizing how important that was going to be to someone younger than them. It actually would be best served by a full length movie. We could roam those same ditches with a guest star and come back to reap our treasure. We did not put penny candy in our pockets for fear of losing any one piece through a hole in the bottom or by having something melt down and coat the inside of that pocket which would then bring on the wrath of the parent. How to explain why you had goo in your pockets. Probably impossible. For the record the standard 12 ounce pop bottle came with a return value of two cents. How many children even know what a penny is anymore.