Posted on August 14, 2014 under Thursday Tidbits with 2 comments

Tall and Small… and Wonderful

 

 

I was walking to work yesterday and passed the Tall and Small café, as I do every other day. I saw the table and chairs and the flowers. It looked so inviting and welcoming. This is a very special place. The food and coffee are terrific and it has an ambience that is unique to the town.

I was humming the Carly Simon song of the same name on my way to work yesterday. I could smell it and sense it in the air. I bet you know what I’m talking about. You can feel September approaching. The students will be arriving soon at St.F.X. The yellow school buses will be back on the roads. The Exhibition will be gearing up and the Ferris wheel will be high in the sky over Fairview Street. The air is cooler and the days are getting shorter. The times… and seasons, are a changing.

Wakes and funerals. Spending far too much time in funeral homes and churches lately saying goodbye to old friends. On my way to Ingonish tomorrow to attend the funeral of a St.F.X classmate.

I had a wonderful chat with one of my teachers from Junior High days at the old Antigonish High School. “ Do you remember…” Sometimes that’s all it takes to bring the memories flooding back. We talked about deceased teachers and administrators, sports teams and the like. It must be a part of aging but reminiscing is something I do a lot of these days.

It’s great to have phone and internet back after a 5 day hiatus. Oh my, but are we slaves to technology or what? I nearly went into withdrawal in the first 24 hours after the lightning strike. We are utterly at the mercy of technology. I think the global economy would grind to a halt if something happened to the internet.

Lots of new stories in the works.

I will give a full accounting of the lightning strike next week… “A Bolt From the Blue”. I must say, I’m getting a wee bit weary recounting the story but people seem to have a genuine fascination with natural disasters.

Have a great weekend.

Posted on August 12, 2014 under Storytelling with no comments yet

A surprising find in the freezer

 

 

I hopped into the shower, sweating profusely, after a session of lawn mowing in very high humidity.  We have “his and hers” bathrooms, one of the luxuries of being empty nesters.  My shower is a typical bath/shower ensemble.  I routinely throw my towel over the curtain rod to let it dry.  These days the results are mixed, as trying to dry anything with the humidex hovering around 40 is next to impossible.

I unfurled the towel, still damp from my last shower, and was about to toss it on the toilet seat when out fell a pair of earwigs.  They ended up in the tub at my feet.  Luckily I don’t have a strong aversion to creepy things but I must admit that I find earwigs amongst the least attractive of the creator’s creatures.  Earwigs must have been standing in the “ugly” lineup when looks were being handed out.

Yes, it is that time of the summer when there is a proliferation of bugs, insects and other creepy-crawlies.  Take your pick: red fire ants, black flies, horse flies, mosquitoes, wasps, bees and, one of my favorites, fruit flies.

Long before the “green movement” grabbed a foothold, all of our household waste was thrown together in one bag and taken off to the landfill.  I can even remember a time when our garbage man (this was the politically correct name back then) came into our yard with a horse and sleigh in the wintertime.

Nowadays, everything we consume is sorted and compartmentalized.  God forbid that a plastic bag get mixed in with solid waste.  (I’m watching you – Ed.)

Not all that remarkably, we generate very little waste any more when there are just the two of us at home.  But in the summertime, when company reaches its zenith, garbage, recyclables and compost pile up at an amazing rate.  This also coincides with the warmest of weather, bringing all of nature’s pests out of the woodwork.

It is now fruit fly season.  Most of us compost and you know exactly what I’m talking about when piles of banana peels, potato skins and chicken bones start to percolate in a bucket on the top of your counter.  It doesn’t take long before an army of fruit flies descends upon the composter; they hover in masses like teenage girls around Justin Bieber.  They are not nearly as gross looking as earwigs but they are a nuisance.  Public health officials have gone so far as to suggest that we should be putting our compost in the freezer during the dog days of summer.

I have this vision of a guy arriving home late after an evening of revelry with his buddies.  He decides to have a nightcap.  He pours himself two fingers of rum with a dash of coke.  He reaches into the freezer and grabs what he believes is a bag of ice.  He’s not paying real close attention and ends up with a few frozen apple cores and some orange peels floating in his glass.

There will be an inquisition in the morning when his wife spots the glass, empty save for the fruit flies buzzing around the strange debris.

What bugs you?

Posted on August 10, 2014 under Monday Morning Musings with no comments yet

We were hit by lightning. No kidding!

 

I was driving Betty around to yard sales on the weekend and ended up at a house in the country where this goat resided. This was not a farm. The yard had all kinds on interesting animals. As she tells me ( repeatedly! ), you never know who or what you are going to see when you’re on the hunt for stuff that other people are trying to get rid of.

We had a very interesting weekend as many of you know. Our house was hit by lightning late Friday afternoon. I was home at the time. You always see people being interviewed on television after some natural disaster and they have trouble finding the correct words to describe what they heard. Include me in those numbers. We’ve all heard loud thunderclaps, especially when they are nearby. Magnify this sound by a factor of 10 and it will give you some idea of the force of the hit to the house. The house shook. I shook. Truthfully, I was unaware that we had been hit until Betty arrived home from work.

You see, the lightning struck the upper reaches of the side of our house and knocked out power to that area alone. Had the power gone out downstairs, I would have been inclined to go looking. When Betty came through the back door, I knew something was wrong. There was concern ( alarm ) written all over her face. “We’ve been hit by lightning” she said. I registered a look of surprise and then went outside to see the mess in the yard and the gaping hole in our house. The arrival of the fire department certainly caused quite a stir in the neighborhood.

It’s not very often that a story just lands in your lap. I already have this one sketched out and believe it or not, there were some funny aspects to the whole affair. Once we realized that no one was hurt and that the property damage was not insurmountable, we found dark humour everywhere we turned. As you know, our house is for sale and we thought that we could add the line “air conditioned” to the description.

One of the interesting things about the lightning hit was that we lost internet, cable and telephone. With cellular devices, this is not a huge issue but it was still weird not being able to access services that we take for granted. It was particularly problematic for me with my writing as I was unable to post my Saturday story. We hope to be up and running with these services mid week.

So, my Saturday story, “Bugged” will appear tomorrow. I have a few others in the queue as well including the lightning story.

Thank you for all the messages of concern on the weekend … and the birthday wishes. From your responses, it is evident that natural disasters are more popular than birthdays! ( although some days, Betty considers me a natural disaster ).

I know what Betty wants for her next birthday: a firemen’s calendar! We were both extremely impressed with the response and professionalism of our local fire department.

Have a great week.